'Top kill' method 'slows BP oil leak' in Gulf of Mexico

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/us_and_canada/10174861.stm

by pierrefar • 16 years ago

32 34 16 years ago

news.bbc.co.uk

gjm11• 16 years ago

The actual headline says "slows", not "stops". (Has it changed?)

snissn• 16 years ago

(yes)

edit: no seriously it said stop at first, and the bbc ninja edited it

pierrefar• 16 years ago

Yes it has. When I submitted it, I just removed the "BBC News" prefix in the title and nothing else.

mawhidby• 16 years ago

Here's a link to Adm. Allen's talk with NPR referenced in the article. http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/05/there_are_indica...

aero142• 16 years ago

So, BP wouldn't allow anyone other than them to inspect the leak and give an estimate of the flow rate, the 5,000 number is "unreliable", but they know for sure that it is less than before. I hope it's true but mark me down as skeptical.

_delirium• 16 years ago

The short slideshow at the bottom of the article is one of the better concise explanations I've seen of the process.

marltod• 16 years ago

queue Fox News to say that Obama should have insisted that this be done 4 weeks ago.

jonknee• 16 years ago

Which if he had would have meant instantly calling him a socialist for interfering with a corporation's business.

Tichy• 16 years ago

I must admit, I don't understand this. What do US presidents, or for what it's worth, US governments, know about how to stop oil spills 5000 feet below the surface of the sea?

What reason is there to assume that BP is not trying the best it can to stop the spill, and to them being the best experts on the subject?

Also, hasn't the government called in a panel of independent experts already?

jbooth7• 16 years ago

It's simple. When things are going well, everybody spends all their time calling government the problem, cutting funding, shredding regulations and defanging any government enforcement agencies.

Then when things go bad, everyone's pissed that the government isn't omnipotent.

jackfoxy2• 16 years ago

If this story in WSJ is proves accurate, BP has a lot of culpability.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870471700457526...

joezydeco3• 16 years ago

There's some other unsubstantiated stories that Schlumberger pulled their guys off the rig just before it blew up:

http://adropofrain.net/2010/05/rumor-schlumberger-exits-deep...

bradgessler• 16 years ago

Yeah, I haven't seen reports of this from any major news outlets. I'm not sure how much I'd trust that source.

gruseom• 16 years ago

That's interesting. I worked for Schlumberger for a couple of years. They are a good company in their core business of oil services (their software division is horrible, but that's another story). They particularly emphasize safety. I have no idea whether the story you linked to is true, but if the chief SLB person on site made a decision that his people were at risk, it would be consistent with the company's culture to get them out of there at their own expense.

AndrewO• 16 years ago

Anyone know why this wasn't tried earlier? Lower estimated chance of success than other previous strategies? Would have precluded other options if it failed? Some other kind of complication?

dasht• 16 years ago

I'm not an expert. I'm just passing along what I hear Prof. Bea of UC Berkeley saying (and that makes intuitive sense to me).

One of the big risks of the top-kill procedure is a kind of "you push in here, it pops out there" problem. There's a big pipe down into the ground, right? It's constructed in segments. We have limited amounts of information about what condition it's in.

There is risk that they throw mud down, that does indeed slow or stop the current flows, but the flows find a new path busting through the pipes or the joints between segments - and the net result is a flow just as bad or worse as before the top kill but even harder to fix.

That they've only so far "slowed" the flow doesn't give me much encouragement yet. Both plots ("it works" and "it fails and makes things worse") start that way.

'Top kill' method 'slows BP oil leak' in Gulf of Mexico

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