like a mile underground?
its a 21 inch pipe with a one inch steel wall.

just put a charge on a pipe, and push it down the shaft.

is the oil under so much pressure that it would push through a mile of dirt to keep coming out ?


or does BP want to keep the line open to be able to harvest that oil later?



why not unbolt that flange that is always on TV,

and bolt on a new pipe with two OPEN valves on it (two to ensure NO restriction)

once it is bolted on, SHUT the valves.

i don't see how you can put a man on the moon, you can drill down many miles for countless oil wells, but you can't stop a leak

 

The extreme pressure, distance down and the working conditions are big problems. Simply pushing a charge way down and setting it off my make matters worse, and probably would. Besides, if they could reach into the pipe with something like that they could also reach in with an expanding plug of some type. Explosives might be better set off round the outside of the pipe and well below the surface. But, it takes time and is risky. If they make it worse and open up a large ragged hole this might go on much longer

I think they should lower a long steel shaft, tapered like pencil and hanging from the blunt end. Use a robot on the sea floor to guide the sharp end into the pipe. The weight and taper will close the hole like a needle valve. This could be designed to slip down into the pipe a ways and have a very gradual taper. Then steady the shaft to keep it upright and lower a cap down over that to afix to the cut pipe Or just pile rubble and concrete to steady it. I don't know why they have not thought of this. It seems like a no-brainer to me. It's tedious, but seems doable and simple. They have about twelve working robots on the sea floor now.

Once the releif well is dug, and if it intersects where they want it to, which is right at the top of the reservoir where the original well is and something like 3000' below the sea floor, the pressure might be less and eventually will go down as the oil is taken.

The original well is, or was, full of concrete, drilling mud and sea water. All in balance to control the pressure. Right before the explosion, on a ship tied to the rig, it began raining concrete and debris. The ship called the rig and said what's up? The rig told them there was a bad problem and to get out of there! Then came the explosion. So it seems the lower concrete plug is blown clear out and the pipe is completely open. The concrete liner between the well pipe and the drilled hole might be the problem too, as they used a small number of centering pieces to hold the pipe on center and assure a good lining. There is speculation that the gas might be coming in from pockets way above the oil pool and that the liner is not on center and surrounded by a good concrete seal. The methane gas quantities are a big variable and hard to control.

Now that the pipe has been cut off above the sea floor, and is pointing straight up, it seems like they have a far better chance of doing something. But the pressure is very high and there is gas. Also the temps are low, so the capturing box, or funnel, or whatever you want to call it, apparantly, gets blocked with ice from the cold oil and expanding gasses freezing the sea water.

 

the oil is under very high pressure, think up to four times the pressure a steam ship uses. cracks have opened up on the sea floor, up to a half mile from the drill site. probably due to fisures in the rock formation. to stop the leak they must get below the rock formations that is allowing the other leaks or they will be chasing them as well. the progress on the second well for pumping the slurry in, is several weeks ahead of the projected schedual.

if the companies weren't being forced to drill in deep water. this wouldn't of happened. shallow and land wells are much easier to work on....but most of those areas have been placed off limits for decades.....

also, the well is 30,000 feet below the ocean floor.
cc

 

I've always wondered that myself...

There's probably a really good reason that flange can't come off to bolt something onto that flange face.
That flange was the last flange of the original 21" drilling riser with a HUGE "quick disconnect" immediately under that.
There must be a really bad problem with removing that flange and expecting it to hold some very high shut-in pressures.
Still, it seems like a better way to seal off against moderate back pressure than a rubber gasket pressed against a jagged piece of crudely sheared 21" pipe.



I understand the formation pore pressure (shut-in bottom hole pressure) is(was) tremendous (20-30K+psig) and with a bore length of 18,000+ feet from the bottom of the sea floor to the pay zone, you'd need to collapse and bridge-over quite a large segment of that bore length down low to oppose that much pressure. The method of filling with heavy mud from the bottom via a relief well is a known practice. Just takes time (and good aim).

EDIT:
Don't forget that well still has 6-1/2"+ diameter drillstem in the middle of it. There isn't an open casing to push anything down that well.
Also, the BOP's probably partially crushed/sheared whatever IS there so don't count on putting anything down that drillstem either.

 

I suggest reading on this site:

http://www.theoildrum.com/

Beware- the language on there is sometimes a little more offensive than you are used to from here, but there are a lot of oilfield guys on it.

AlpineRAM

 

Why cant they just push a smaller pipe inside of the broken one and let it come to the surface??????????????

 

That's the best idea yet!

 

Once upon a time they use to drop Nitro down wells to P&A them, then they ran out of crazy people to pack the Nitro.. At least they got a big bang out of their job.

 

Old footage of the Russians using a nuke to stop a gas well fire. Leave it to the crazy Russians, they used a nuke four times and it has worked everytime, so far.

 

yeah, put a few old car tire inner tubes around to seal it up,

just like rednecks put a flat inner tube around a cooler, then inflate it to hold it while they go tubing down the river.


i tell ya, if these BP guys were on DTR and watched more country music videos, we coulda had this done already....

 

Here is an article that shows some real concern for any explosives.
There is another, I will try to find it and post it too.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/201006...s_ts2862/print

 

Here is the other.

http://my.auburnjournal.com/detail/153055.html

 

Wonder what the world would do if there were an earthquake that caused a leak like this or even worse? Seems like we aughta be doing more research and testing on capture and cleaning anyway. Apparently there are smaller countries that appear to be well ahead of OUR game. It would probably just get blamed on Bush and snuffed off for awhile to make it seem worse anyway...

 

You will have to help me out here and tell us who that is. Then you will find that all of those small countries experts are from the US and England or were trained by them.

 

The shock wave and heat from the nuke would set off the methane hydrates.. Like posted on another thread the planet would look like one (possibly several) great big smoking meatball"s". However the S & P waves from nukin' a well is fun to watch (been there done that). There is communication between zones they can not totally plug this thing for fear of blowing things out of the sea bed... That is why they rigged a siphon.