Solution to seal off the OIL hole...

I was thinking of a solution to plug up the oil leak. So we got about 200,000 barrels a day, the pressure is extreme, you cant really send any machinery down the to just plug the hole, the pressure would just bust it open. Since the pressure was so high that it blew through all of the safety valves on the rig and then exploded.

So one solution that might work is Bunker Bombs. These bunker bombs penetrate thought bunkers before they explode. There is 2 ways of possible success with these.

The drilled hole is about 3-4 feet wide and the pressure of the oil actually seems to be making it wider, but regardless..we have about 4 feet to work with.

Plan A. You run a long 5,000 feet pipe that is 4 feet wide from the surface to the hole... creating a barrel of a gun type situation... dont lower it all the way to the hole, but maybe 50-100 feet above the hole... and at the bottom of the 5,000 pipe, put a cone so the oil shooting up would be deflected by the cone on the end of the barrel/pipe.

Then you align the bunker rocket bomb, and fire to the bottom of the ocean, it will reach to the cone at the bottom, brake it off, and shoot straight into the oil hole, going as far as it can.. say 10,000-15,000 feet and exploding and collapsing the hole.

Plan B. Using the bunker the same way as Plan A, but about 10-15 feet on the side of the whole.. thus penetrating a new hole next to the leaking hole, then exploding as far as it could go and collapsing the leaking hole from the side and not from within.


The barrel/pipe can even be sealed of at the very end, so there is no water in the shooting pipe, thus giving the bunker bomb no friction to get the bottom of the ocean and will have enough force to break the seal at the end of the barrel/pipe and having enough power and speed to go deep into the leaking hole.

i dont think there is any other way?

Yeah, or it could weaken more of the sea floor and create a much bigger leak.. 50/50 I guess.

I guess it could work, but it's risky.

EDIT to say,

I think this is a good conversation to have, and I look forward to hearing other's ideas on how to stop the leak.

S&F

[edit on 3-5-2010 by broahes]

Well, according to Sorcha Faal a nuke can close it.

Even if it can, the politics would be a bit awkward. Solving an oil company's environmental disaster by using a nuke.

At least disasters like this wake up millions to the fact that oil companies are not a friend of mankind.

[edit on 3/5/10 by NuclearPaul]

reply to post by NuclearPaul


They will have to nuke it to close it it seems, but this is dangerous. It might not seal, it could get bigger. You could make the "mother of all messes".

Maybe the flow will slow naturally. Can always hope.

personally, I like the idea of throwing a match to all that oil.
then we can have our very own lake of fire to throw each other into....

I can't believe that these guys drill wells and haven't sat down before now to find a way to cap the things if they blow like this...
or did it blow so badly that all the safety features went down with the rig??

guess the thing has to run out of oil some day in our not so near future??

Well if the Russian authorities managed to seal a blown reactor at Chernobyl this should be pretty straight forward for the FEMA guys to get their head around and solve this crisis,
Hello, Moscow this is FEMA I am sure you heard but we got a bit of an issue.
any ideas...

I presume this is in FEMAs remit, IMO

I was thinking of something that works like a pop rivet. A long spike made out of aluminum with a steel insert. It could be lowered by cable then guided into place by the robots. The spike or tip would allow the oil to flow around it until the explosive charge would send it several hundred feet into the hole. Then another explosive charge would cause it to expand in diameter plugin the hole. They could also be used in a grid pattern around the hole, like the number 5 on a dice. Four could be detonated at the same time causing the hole to be pinched closed. Seems like there should be devices like this in existence for such an event, but oh yeah I forgot all they think about are the profit$

this is not the first oil well disaster for Haliburton.
Last yr off the coast of Australia, the Montara well
they had the same explosion. They fixed that leak
in 10 weeks. However it was only 250 feet down.
The gulf well is 5,000 feet down, big difference.

www.nytimes.com...

Allthough the bomb theory does seem plausible at first, I'm sure there are many factor's were not considering.

What is holding all of that oil down there ?? Bedrock.

SOLID Bedrock. If you throw a bomb down there and blow more of it up, the pressure of the oil will cause it to leak through the shattered, broken peices of rock. So instead of leaking from one centralized site, that could risk oil leaking from all over the ocean floor.

It may be like going "all in" when playing poker. If the bomb failed, it would fail big.

Ocean floor is it 5000ft.

Oil is at 18000ft.

Thats 13000ft of bedrock. Drill hole NEXT to existing 1, say 5000ft down, and blast with something. You'd be left with 8000ft of solid bedrock, and another 5000ft of "rubble". That should hold it?

Originally posted by harryhaller
That should hold it?

SHOULD, hold it ?? the question is, how much are we willing to bet on that ??

No matter how far down you blast, your still going to have highly pressurized oil running into the rubble of the blast. Worse yet, the blast could cause "cracks" in the bedrock allowing the oil to seep and escape in random area's.

What if the explosion combined with the pressure of the oil causes a bigger hole?

And what about all that natural gas thats leaking out-wouldn't an explosion risk ignitiging the gas,possibly even traveling down the hole into the deposit?

Couldn't using explosives lead to a much greater catastrophe?

How about a simple expandable plug (crud but simple)

Its not a permanent fix but will aid till some thing more plausible will do

Or we could just nuke the crap out of it

Edited for sarcasm

[edit on 3-5-2010 by hillbilly4rent]

Originally posted by harryhaller
Ocean floor is it 5000ft.

Oil is at 18000ft.

Thats 13000ft of bedrock. Drill hole NEXT to existing 1, say 5000ft down, and blast with something. You'd be left with 8000ft of solid bedrock, and another 5000ft of "rubble". That should hold it?

Bu..ocks ... that oil is in reality not 18000 ft but 30000 ft (some 9,5 km) down there , "it is on the limits of human technology". Plus, when they drilled in, with the top of the art mobile platform of newest generation(still safety measures could have benn screwed), the pressure was so great that it not only ripped apart the "sucking" device but also :

+ send completely all three back-up plans into utter oblivion (in just under a minute),
+ destroyed the super-duper multi-milion oil rig and sunk it precisely on top of the leak(which makes matters worse, because they had to first get that derillict oil rig out, from the place of the leak in a depth of 5000 ft (some 1.7 km)) ,
+ not only destroying the rig from pressure, but also the 4 feet tube(the one of the biggest made for oil companies) on the bottom, with the
super-heavy reinforced concret multi-hundred ton "anchor" ,
+ this not a "tube" leak but a "fracture-soil" leak that must be somehow filled ,
+ the pressure was so great that that oil ignited and exploded on the platform ,
+ if those morons try an concusive explosive charge of any type, they can ignite the super-pressured natural gas on the top of the chamber (that is the main reason for that pressure in the oil) and that leak-crack will become 1/2 a mile wide crate-hole with a 200.000 barrels not in day but in a hour,
+ and top it all off, this damn oil chamber is nearly as big as half of Saudi Arabia (the main Saudic oil chamber is as big, wiki) with several billions barrels of oil. It goes as to the coast of Florida or central Mississipi.

Ladies and Gentlmen, we are so unbelievably screwed .

[edit on 12/08/09 by Durabys]

[edit on 12/08/09 by Durabys]

In another thread I posted what BP is planing to do next
www.abovetopsecret.com...
it has a link back to the story

Originally posted by Silcone Synapse
What if the explosion combined with the pressure of the oil causes a bigger hole?

And what about all that natural gas thats leaking out-wouldn't an explosion risk ignitiging the gas,possibly even traveling down the hole into the deposit?

Couldn't using explosives lead to a much greater catastrophe?

My thoughts exactly.

If this initail leak is supposed to have been caused by an accidental gas ignition, then i would not want to risk that again.

We have no idea how much gas is stored or building inder the bed there, would anyone really want to try sending explosives down there?

I wonder if sealing the well permanently is an option, kind of what they did with Chernobyl?

If they still want to drill for the oil afterwards, they'll just have to go in another way.

Is there any way of getting enough concrete down that far in one huge go?

I know the pipe is 4-5ft, but have they said it is now any bigger than that after the explosion?

If the pipe is pretty much the same size, i think it will be a case of getting an object that is the same size (enough to wedge in there), then adding a huge mass to the top of it so it has the strength and weight to push down past the pressure of the gushing oil.

Kind of like a huge concrete or metal ball with a massive column of heavy material on top of it. A ship or another vehicle with a crane could then lower it down into place.

That probably sounds laughable, but anything can be plugged if the force applied to the hole is great enough. The maths guys and girls on here will probably be able to work out the amounts needed for this.

Looking back over what i've said, i can see it comes from a guy who has no clue about pressures, engineering or everything else that comes into it.

I do think that the more ideas people chuck out there, the more they can work with to get it sorted. You never know, a thread like this may just produce something they can adapt and work with.

Maybe a bit naive to think they'd look to a conspiracy forum for answers, but they obviously are struggling despite the supposed expertise they have.

CX.

a big giant tampon... with a nuke inside?
lol

Originally posted by foxhoundone
Well if the Russian authorities managed to seal a blown reactor at Chernobyl this should be pretty straight forward for the FEMA guys to get their head around and solve this crisis,
Hello, Moscow this is FEMA I am sure you heard but we got a bit of an issue.
any ideas...

I presume this is in FEMAs remit, IMO

I am about to split a gut laughing at that post. FEMA? Are you serious?
You're not are you?

These clowns can't even figure out how to get emergency trailers to
people after Hurricane Katrina. And you think they have the answer to
a blowout in the bottom of the gulf? I am sure Halliburton and all the rest
of the experts are hard at it and will figure something out soon. But
FEMA? I can't get over that. I know this is off topic, but I couldn't resist.



[edit on 3-5-2010 by endtimer]

reply to post by hillbilly4rent


I was thinking of a simple answer as well, maybe a kevlar balloon angioplasty a thousand feet or so down then concrete or some other filler behind it.

When all else fails...use a very small yield nuke and that should seal it permanently. To bad the side effects are such as they are though.....although the side effects of the oil will probably be far worse.