I worked on an oil rig in La. in ‘77 as a welders helper. I learned nothing about drilling, but I have lot’s of visual memories of the splendor and hugeness of those things. Also, the food they served out there was first rate.
OK, my qualifications as a petroleum engineer are a bit thin. Anyway, here is my idea.
Make a solid lead pencil shaped rod 40-50 feet long. The front is a sharp pencil point, the first half of the pencil is tapered so it goes from half as wide as the pipe, to 4/5 as wide. Then the back half of the pencil, where the graphite would be in a normal pencil, there are sequenced explosives, powerful enough to expand the lead, but not enough to damage the pipe.
Where the eraser would be on a normal pencil, will be a timer. That 50’ rod of lead will drop down that pipe faster than you can say “top kill didn’t work so well, how’s that drill baby drill stuff looking now?” Then bang, 30’ of lead expands against the inside of the pipe. Sequenced explosions of course, because liquid doesn’t compress, it must be given some time and a way to get out of the way.
Right now, the giant-expanding-explosive-lead-pencil idea sounds pretty viable… 
I see 2 problems here.
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the pressure/speed of the oil coming out of that pipe has to be enormous, even in comparison to the normal pressure around it. it probably would shoot something like that straight out of the pipe.
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If my understanding is correct, the pipe they are trying to close off is parallel to the ocean floor. Gravity is not a friend to your situation
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the fish may get lead poisoning… especially if any of them came from the state of California. (the other two comments are serious)
just wait till the oil-canes (oil hurricanes)
and yeah, it’s all bent up so it’d be hard to stick that thing in. if they could cut the top off somehow, maybe.
but i’ve already accepted the fact that any industry dependent on the gulf (except oil) and soon to be east coast is screwed.
bp doesn’t care either. they care that they are losing their oil.
it’ll probably never be really plugged either, just reduced when they drill another well there.
you’re talkin bout stopping an oil volcano basically…oil is usually plugged by miles of rock…and the pressure is enormous down there.
oh well, just another thing leading to a global economic collapse…once everyone wastes all their bailout money…
i think this idea is better than all of bps clearly moronic ideas. it’d help if bp cared. but they obviously don’t
Even worse, the exploding pencil could end up being shot high into the atmosphere by the force of the oil, and land in Canada or Mexico, where it continues to explode 
Do you think Haliburton cares, either?
Gulf oil spill: firms ignored warning signs before blast, inquiry hears
Documents suggest BP, Transocean and Halliburton ignored tests indicating faulty safety equipment, says committee
I think it’s a straight line shot to black hell
There is 2 leaks. One at the end of the riser pipe, lying parallel to the bottom, after it fell over. The second leak is at the kink of the riser pipe, at the top of the BOP (blow out provider), from where it cracked when it bent over. Anyway, at this moment, BP is cutting off the pipe at the top of the BOP, getting ready for the next plan. At that point, I am quite sure it is a straight shot down for about 3,000 feet.
The mud used for the failed “top kill” was pumped in at 6800 psi. However, they knew most of it would go out the route of least resistance, the hole at the top, rather than down the higher pressure well. They hoped to plug a well gushing at maybe not so high psi as you might think, by just piling mud so deep down the pipe, it would be so heavy as to block the oil. I don’t know the psi of the oil rushing up the well, but it is likely a lot less than 6000 psi.
A long enough lead rod could be made to have as much psi at the front as would be needed just by gravity. Hell, at this price, there is no real reason not to use depleted uranium.
I am not a petroleum engineer, there may be be lots of reasons why my idea may be unfeasible. The idea that the gush of oil is so powerful, that it could resist a du rod as big as those monster rigs could lower, seems unlikely to me . I am just frustrated a bit, as all coastal Floridians, I have dreams of putting some kinda cork in it.
This is what the Russians have done
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpPNQoTlacU
Makes my idea seem kinda wimpy. A lead shaft pencil thingy, when you could use a nuke.
No joke though. Something must be done.
An equivalent amount of oil to that has been released after the Deepwater Horizon explosion leaks into the Niger Delta EVERY FRICKIN’ YEAR!
We can’t live in a society dependent on cheap oil and then be surprised when there’s huge environmental damage as a result.
Why not?
Wasn’t the great outcome of the “Industrial Revolution” man’s ability to produce massively and cheaply? And haven’t we done enough work in the mean time to add “safely” to that list?
The problem here is greed. You can’t regulate man’s desire for more, more, more money. But you can poke him with a sharp stick when he gets too greedy, as BP et. al. have done.
We need to wash the greed out of government. Those who are responsible for protecting society should have no other want than to protect society… nothing about lining their own pockets.
I say make an example of the entire chain of command, or at least the top few officials, as they do in China. Hang 'em high and let 'em dangle for all to see. Plenty of animals are dying and people are getting sick, what’s wrong with offing a few of those responsible?
Seems good in theory, but the pressure might be a problem as you mentioned. I am personally just amazed that BP didn’t plan ahead and think of such a possibility (I’m sure the thought did cross their minds). It might seem that greed cause this over sight, but I would say it is stupidity (I suppose greed could be considered stupid). Any idiot knows to prepare for such disasters ahead of time, however unlikely. They would have saved themselves and the taxpayer a lot of money, not to mention the damage to the environment and people who’s buisnesses are shutting down.
I bet the FED will take over BP when they go bankrupt. might even take them over because they are to corrupt or something. 
Also like the second idea. just wonder why they used a nuke instead of dynamite. Even if we had to nuke it, I bet it would still be safer for the enviornment then all the oil that is currently pouring out.
I think it is fear of unemployment, not greed
During a pressure test, the rubber blow out seal was clamped tight around the drill pipe. A worker hit a lever accidentally, which pulled the drill pipe up about 15 feet. They all agreed not to mention it. But later a worker watching the mud circulate, saw large chunks of rubber (the previous error had torn up the blow out seal). He fished out some big chunks, and went to show them to the chief of the drill team. Because the hole was already a month behind schedule, costing millions a day, he didn’t have the guts to shut it down. It could take several weeks to inspect and replace that seal. Fearing for his job (who wants to blow 50 million of the big hats cash on a hunch that could be wrong?), he told the men to forget about the rubber chunks and keep a’drilling baby.
I don’t think it is BP’s greed at the root here. People weren’t empowered to make crucial decisions that could cost BP a few million, they feared blame and being fired. This was a bottom up screw up. BP has lost about 70 billion in stock value. Likely this fubar will be north of 100 billion $ before it’s over. At it’s root was the lower level workers not telling a big hat, or even the drill chief, that maybe they had screwed up a 50 million dollar seal. Then the drill chief not ordering a halt when he saw the chunks of rubber. The big hats, knowing the huge potential losses at stake, would not have been afraid to order a 50 million $ seal replacement. The men on the ground, fearing for their jobs, preferred to think more optimistically. They had never seen a blow out, but they had seen plenty of people fired for screw ups. A roustabout cares about keeping his job, the market value of BP stock did not ever enter into their calculations of risk.
I’m not sure how to fix this. If we don’t fire people that screw up, does that improve safety? Much like cops never see it when another cop screws up, the obvious signs of the bad seal were ignored. The only economic incentive for most of the guys on the rig was to protect their pay check by not having to tell a big hat something that would make him swear, yell, throw his hat on the ground and start shoving people out the door.
Why is the oil under pressure? Is it the pressure of all the ocean and sea floor pushing down on it?
That would make some sense to me, but then again, if you told me there were miles of rock under there holding the pressure of the ocean back, I would have believed that too.
I remember seeing those Iraqi oil geysers way back too. They didn’t have an ocean above them. But they were certainly under tremendous pressure.
But it seems like whenever I see a Texas oil rig, it’s pumping the oil out.
When the oil comes out, what goes back in. Eventually wouldn’t a void form under there, and then the ocean floor would fall in causing a huge tidal wave?
An another thing, I don’t think I have seen a picture of one of these oil rigs in the ocean with a oil tanker parked at it filling up. Isn’t that what they are supposed to do? What does an oil rig do when there are no tankers filling up?
Why it’s gushing
I think it is a bit like champaign, or a warm shook beer. The rotting of the swamp that ultimately produced the fossil fuel deposit, creates also a lot of gas, if it is trapped under impermeable rock. Each well is a bit different, some have little gas that quickly is gone, then the oil must be pumped up. Others are the opposite extreme, little oil, but a lot of gas.
As far as the theory that taking lots of oil out of the ground will cause a cavity, leading to an earth quake as the ground settles, well, that sounds smarter than the Islamic tits theory. In practice, removing oil does not seem to be connected to sink holes or earth quakes. I suspect this is because the oil is not in a tank, but rather in the spaces between sedentary rocks. So after the oil and gas is removed, there is still rock to rock contact to hold the ground up.
Here is a link to an interview with a survivor who talks about the seal snafu.
The front page NY Times said they gave up on plugging the oil leak.
Instead, BP hired a new press agent, who previously worked for VP Cheney’s Haliburton, and was also in the Bush White House.
you cannot make this stuff up:p
Here’s the story
BP Hires Dick Cheney’s Former Press Secretary To Quell PR Disaster
by Jon Bershad | 1:24 pm, June 1st, 2010
It’s a bit of an understatement to say that British Petroleum has a bit of a public relations problem right now. Every day it seems like there’s another story about a BP exec being grilled on cable or an internet campaign mocking them (those stories are just from the past few hours). To help stem the tide of bad press, BP has hired Anne Womack Kolton, former spokeswoman for Dick Cheney. With the oil spill only getting worse, it’s a bright idea for BP to hire someone from the Cheney team. After all, he is the guy who got away with shooting a friend in the face.
Womack Kolton was the head of public affairs at the Department of Energy and, in 2004, was the press secretary for the former Vice President. Raw Story has a description of her time with Cheney:
While at Cheney’s side, Kolton defended the secrecy of the Vice President’s Energy task force, a group which held secretive meetings with energy company executives. When the General Accounting Office — the research arm of Congress — sued the Administraton for records relating to Cheney’s meetings, Kolton (then Womack) was at his side.
“We are ready to defend our principles in court,” she said. “This goes to the heart of the presidency and to the ability of the president and vice president to receive candid, discreet advice.”
A blogger at the liberal web site Daily Kos notes that BP was reportedly among one of the companies that Cheney met with.
In 2004, Womack Kolton also drew attention from the left after Cheney made comments suggesting a Democratic victory would precipitate a terrorist attack.
What is a corporation like BP ?
A bunch of shares that used to pay fat dividends, but won’t for the foreseeable future. A stock price down 40 %.
I totally agree that BP should pick up the the check for this one. They say they will. Lawyers will tear at their liabilities like hyenas for many years.
Yet all have lived so long in denial. A world where a spill such as is happening, could never happen. Preparations for the “not ever gonna happen blow out”, are cobbled together. It is now a desperate and roughly cobbled together response.
Evidently not. Industrial accidents and environmental degradation because of industry are still around and shan’t go away so long as capital’s time horizons extend only as far as an investment’s returns.
I can’t see us getting rid of greed whilst we live under an economic arrangement that relies on competition rather than cooperation.
I’m with you on making an example of those responsible but I’d prefer it to be done in a rather less terminal fashion.
I don’t see why that matters. A few months before this disaster, Obama announced that he wanted to expand offshore drilling. Is Obama therefore responsible? No, and neither is Bush/Cheney.
BP drilled because we (consumers) demanded the oil. They wouldn’t be making profits unless consumers bought their product. So I think we bear some responsibility for this accident.
What kind of system is that? How does it work? I am truly interested in this subject and would like to know any thoughts on it.
Back to the subject. This oil spill is awesome. Im happy that not only do we not have a plan to fix it, but BP is just making shit up and hoping it will work. Why dont they get some really smart people from everywhere working on a solution. Who cares who is paying for it? I get to pay for it beacause of other peoples screw up. We all get to pay for it. Hooray for new environmental issues. Hooray for more economic issues. More political issues. More social issues.
Fix the problem. Quit screwing around.
That is how I look at it.
December 21, 2012… See the signs.