They are dropping the well head cap into place! -EPIC FAIL ...

[GreyGeek]

right now... 1:03PM CST

They finally cleaned up the cabling and such and at 8:30PM, CST, they moved the cap onto the well head. The oil promptly gushed out the bottom, taking the path of least resistance. They aren't getting a drop to the surface. They can't use the excuse of Methane Hydrate this time because they are heating the cap.

[GreyGeek]

Re: They are dropping the well head cap into place!

They are still trying at 6:35PM, CST.

The cap has got various lines hanging from it on all points of the compass. They can't get the lines clear enough to move the cap on top of the well head.

Cameron is right. These clowns don't know anything about deep sea ROV operations. Those ROVs are bouncing around like a rider on a bucking horse, but ROV cameras off to the side show that the well head and other ROVs are not moving at all. There is no current pushing them around, just rookie ROV drivers. It reminds me of my first day flying. When the instructor gave me the yoke the airplane began pitching, rolling an yawing erratically, as I over controlled the craft.

They won't get the cap on tonight, and it is more than likely they won't get it on at all.

What I bet will happen is that one of those "rocket fins" on the side of the cap will sever a heat line and the cap will freeze up like the big one did.

EDIT: 6:49PM, CST
I WANT TO SCREAM AT THEM!!! They've got cables and wires and pipes dangling from all sides and one even goes under the cap and comes up on the other side. They'll never be able to put the cap on the well head that way. Hasn't any of them ever put an engine together and had to dress the wires and cables so they aren't pinched, stretched or clamped wrong? Have they ever dressed the cabling in an electronic device? IF that crew represents our brightest and best then God help us.

[GreyGeek]

Re: They are dropping the well head cap into place! -EPIC FAIL ...

At 9:00AM, CST, I captured an image of failure, the oil GUSHING out from around the "cap". Even worse, BP is continuing to pump dispersants into the oil ... the very same, highly toxic "corexit" dispersants, even though there are better and less toxic dispersants. Combined with oil it's toxicity is enhanced. At a concentration of 2.61 ppm it is fatal to most marine life forms.

BP directly and indirectly owns a piece of "corexit". So, in pumping nearly a million barrels gallons of dispersant into the oil they are making a tidy profit on the side. It is a tangled web of ownership.

[kyonides]

Re: They are dropping the well head cap into place! -EPIC FAIL ...

Could they end up burning the oil? I mean, that seems the only thing they haven't desperately tried, yet...

[GreyGeek]

Re: They are dropping the well head cap into place! -EPIC FAIL ...

The Coast Guard and private individuals are trying to set fire to every oil patch they see. The problem with that is that it only burns of the light aliphatic hydrocarbons (primarily light hydrocarbons with Carbon chains less than 10 C -- pentane, hexane, octane (gasoline), .. up to decane) and aromatic hydrocarbons (the carcinogenic Benzene, Tolune, etc ...). What gets left behind is the thick hydrocarbons with more than 10 carbons in their primary chain, right up to light paraffins (waxy stuff). The black heavy oils saturated with paraffins are what is covering the beaches with inch thick "tar" that soaks into feathers and makes birds so heavy they can't walk, plugs their nose, eyes, ears and mouth. That stuff doesn't burn and it clogs Kevin Costner's oil vacuuming invention. If there is one advantage to it, it is that the paraffin component is great enough that at the tarballs formed at sea do not spread out and seep into the beach sand when they reach shore. A soft of giant kitty litter scoop could be used to clean the beaches where tar balls are the major or only problem.

[kyonides]

Re: They are dropping the well head cap into place! -EPIC FAIL ...

So we're not far from seeing things like this one on a daily basis...

(The author is baph and its licence is Creative Commons...)

[GreyGeek]

Re: They are dropping the well head cap into place! -EPIC FAIL ...

I was watching an ROV going down slope toward the DWH well head. At around 4K feet it stirred up the bottom. In the debris which broiled up was the red body of a tube worm (http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explor...ature_600.html), which was obviously dead. The entire bottom was covered with an amorphous layer of dispersed oil several feet thick.

I watched two other ROVs which were about 4000 units Northwest of the DWH well head, doing a "Mux sweep". They were at the same Latitude but separated by about 400 units in Longitude (about 15 apart camera to camera), which one could tell because when detritus floated out of the view on the western camera it almost immediately floated into view on the Eastern camera. They were following a cable ("mux"?). At one point they came across another pipe which was perpendicular to their direction of travel. A mixture of dispersed oil and sea bottom sediment came flowing down hill, washing over the pipe. It reminded me of a mud slide video I saw. The flow was more than 15 feet wide and a couple feet thick.

As I typed this CBS New showed a video of the Coast Guard Representative talking about the "success" of the cap. Then HE SAID THIS: "We want to get as much oil from the well into production as we can". That revealing statement SUMS up exactly WHY BP is failing to stop the leak. They DON'T want to stop it, they want to "produce" (make a profit) on as much oil from the well as they can. If they stop the leak they can't get any profits from the well. Also, I have to wonder why an employee of the US Coast Guard considers himself a representative of BP?

After one day of the "cap" in place they've produced 6,077 barrels of oil (about $500,000) but it does NOT appear from the videos of the leak that the rate of the leak has been slowed at all, so that 0.07 Barrels/second isn't making a dent in a well which is leaking at over 1.15 barrels OR MORE per second.

BP claims that they can "close doors" on the cap which will take advantage of formation pressures to push more oil to the surface. Perhaps most of it, but NOT all of it. So, for the sake of profits, we'll learn how much oil leaking into the environment is acceptable to BP. Let's say they can recover all but 10% of it. That leaves 8,600 barrels per day leaking into the Gulf for who knows how long. Will the President accept that? If he does, will the American people accept it? I hope the answer is NO in either case and that we put a freeze on all BP assets in America and liquidate them to cover the costs of recovering the environment and STOPPING COMPLETELY the leak.

[kyonides]

Re: They are dropping the well head cap into place! -EPIC FAIL ...

Also, I have to wonder why an employee of the US Coast Guard considers himself a representative of BP?

You're kidding us! Who is that guy? (Let's shoot him! Bah! Just kidding... I'd be better to put him in jail right away.)