BP Oil Spill Updates

What I don't understand is this. When they were sawing the pipe to place the cap on, they panned out on the video and showed that there is a flange WITH BOLTS about 5-10 feet below where they were cutting. Hmm, lessee, a perfectly flat surface with bolt holes right there, but we'll cut this stupid pipe in a completely irregular cut so that there is still oil leaking like crazy.

I saw that too, and assumed that the ROVs cannot generate the torque required to unbolt the flange. That was the only reason I could think of.

Yep. It's not like they're idiots and would have not thought to try the bolts if they could.

• For the last 12 hours on June 17th (noon to midnight), approximately 8,020 barrels of oil were collected and approximately 4,770 barrels of oil and 24.5 million cubic feet of natural gas were flared.

• Optimization of the dual recovery system continues; on June 17th, total oil recovered was aprox. 25,290 barrels.
approximately 16,020 barrels of oil were collected,
approximately 9,270 barrels of oil were flared,
and approximately 50.3 million cubic feet of natural gas were flared.

• Total oil recovered from both the LMRP Cap and Q4000 systems since they were implemented is approximately 204,200 barrels.

• The free standing riser installation is progressing for the long term containment option.

Source

So they have gained about 10,000 barrels per day so far with the new arrangement, roughly 67% improvement.

towermonkey wrote: What I don't understand is this. When they were sawing the pipe to place the cap on, they panned out on the video and showed that there is a flange WITH BOLTS about 5-10 feet below where they were cutting. Hmm, lessee, a perfectly flat surface with bolt holes right there, but we'll cut this stupid pipe in a completely irregular cut so that there is still oil leaking like crazy.

Why don't they just send a few scuba divers down there with a new flange and bolt it on?

Cause the current world record depth for a scuba dive is 1,083 feet. The well head is over 5,000 feet deep.

Wayne Harrison wrote: Yep. It's not like they're idiots and would have not thought to try the bolts if they could.

Am I detecting sarcasm or do you really think they aren't idiots?

jf1acai wrote: I saw that too, and assumed that the ROVs cannot generate the torque required to unbolt the flange. That was the only reason I could think of.

They had a saw right friggin there.

From the latest press briefing:

First of all, I'm very pleased to report that in the 24-hour period ended at midnight last night we actually were able to recover 25,000 barrels of oil. This is our new combination recovery system of both the Discoverer Enterprise, which is linked by the riser pipe to the wellhead, and our exploitation of the choke and kill lines bringing additional oil up and the process on the Q4000 and that is gas and oil that has flared off.

This is a significant improvement moving forward. However, we know because of the new flow rate numbers that we need to increase capacity. There are additional vessels being brought into the area. We anticipate by the end of the month of June the capacity will increase to about 53,000 barrels a month. Following that, there'll have to be a decision made when we reach max capacity with the recovery system we have on the scene with the containment cap.

At that point, the option will be to actually unbolt the flange and that small section of pipe that remains where we needed to shear cut and actually replace it with a very solid, bolted-on cap that could be linked to a new flexible production system will allow us to use production platforms and shuttle tankers.

Once that's in place, we have the (inaudible) at that point to increase capacity on the production to 60,000 to 80,000 barrels. That should be somewhere around the middle part of July. We continue to move forward on that and it's proceeding apace.

Source

I don't know why it was not done before.

"Yep. It's not like they're idiots and would have not thought to try the bolts if they could."

rofllol