TexasCHLforum.com

Cobra Medic wrote:

KD5NRH wrote:they were told that there wasn't going to be a CBL

Isn't that a major safety oversight?

Not according to the Feds; there is (or at least was at the time) no requirement for the CBL.

LarryH wrote:After all, BP doesn't have a plan after fifty days

Doesn't have a plan? Relief wells are what works in these situations. Just because they take time to drill doesn't mean that they're not the most effective action.

aardwolf wrote:I'm surprised nobody mentioned the scuttlebutt about the CBL crew bugging out before the explosion.

They "bugged out" because they were told that there wasn't going to be a CBL. They didn't have anything else to do, so they went home. Perfectly normal thing to do when you're in a not-very-fun environment and don't have any reason to stay.

Right2Carry wrote:The year was 1979. The blowout of the Ixtoc I, drilled by the Mexican-run Pemex, retains the dubious record of causing the world's largest accidental oil spill, dumping an estimated 138 million gallons over nine months. Eventually, Pemex cut off Ixtoc I with two relief wells and a cement seal.

With top BP executives, scientists and Obama administration officials searching for a solution to capping the Deepwater Horizon blowout off the Louisiana coast, perhaps they could find a blueprint in the Ixtoc I experience, observers say.

You mean like, say, drilling two relief wells and planning to cement it in as soon as the RWs get the flow low enough?

Yeah, I can't imagine why they haven't thought of that.

drjoker wrote:If 40,000 barrels of oil weighs thousands of TONS, why are they using flimsy devices weighing less than 1 ton to plug the leak? Simple physics states that it will not work.

Simple physics states that if you just stick a plug in a blowout well, the casing blows out below the seafloor and there's no way to stop the leak.

Maybe you should try learning a bit about well control. They've already spent enough to buy a plug weighing millions of tons if that would work.

GOP wrote:If the BOP's were damaged, and the early reports are that this was a KNOWN issue before cementing, then BP is in serious trouble, like criminal charges trouble.

From the testimony so far, a couple of people overheard the BP company man make a comment that implied he was aware of the damage to the annular preventers, and was depending on the shear rams if anything went wrong.

karder wrote:I certainly don't expect Obama to have the answer to this problem, but he needs to take control of the disaster away from BP and bring in some scientists who can engineer a solution.

You really think BP doesn't want the well shut down? Or do you want the same type of management and bureaucracy that has screwed up every Federal project so far in charge of this?

The most qualified wild well engineers in the world are already working on the solutions. You're not going to find better ones wandering around some Federal lab.

TexasGal wrote:As someone posted, the oil companies are looking into alternative fuels too.

BP has a decent investment in wind energy here. IMO, that sort of diversity is good business sense.

TexasGal wrote:refused to allow experts from other countries (some of whom have more experience with deep sea rigs) to come to our aid saying there was a law against foreign ships in our waters.

Uhh...Deepwater Horizon, Discoverer Enterprise, (the current drillship handling the recovery) and a lot of Transocean's other vessels are Marshall Islands flagged.

The Annoyed Man wrote:Drilling closer in is MUCH safer to the environment, but the trade-off is that people have to look at oil rigs on the skyline when they are vacationing at their Malibu homes.

Exactly; if this same problem had occurred onshore, the media wouldn't have bothered to go look because it would have been shut down before they could get there.

I had a roofer tell me just yesterday that you can now have solar roofing tiles installed on your home when you have your roof redone. They only operate at about 10% efficiency compared to other solar panels, but a roof is a large area, so there is still significant power generated. Anybody got the bucks to run right out and install that?

Sounds like your roofer needs to get up to date. Thin-film PV of the type that can be laid directly on metal roofs is capable of roughly 18% overall conversion efficiency, which is about half the maximum efficiency of standard panels, but also at a significantly reduced materials cost. The process is quite a bit different, but like any product, as they gain market share and increase production, costs are going down. When we priced it for the house we were considering building, total add-on for a grid-tied PV system covering about 1,000 sq ft of roof with the capability to add wind turbines later would have been around $12,500. That includes a lot of custom wiring that wouldn't be necessary for most people, and really isn't that bad on a ~$200k house plan. A basic system would be closer to $6-8k.