posted on May, 14 2010 @ 02:40 PM
I think this will work! What do you think??
Breaking News, Mississippi Press ยป
Way to stop Gulf oil spill? University of Alabama professor says method 'will absolutely work'
By Ben Raines
May 14, 2010, 2:07PM
(University of Alabama)Philip Johnson, a University of Alabama professor, told the Press-Register that a possible solution to the oil leak at the
Deepwater Horizon site in the Gulf of Mexico "involves additional gas injection into a deep point on a pipe."After reviewing video footage released
Wednesday by BP PLC, a University of Alabama professor says a common industry technique known as "gas-lift" could be used to collect oil from the
Deepwater Horizon spill before it is released into the Gulf of Mexico.
"Having reviewed the video of the oil spill, I now know of a way to collect that oil that will absolutely work, is not hard to rig up, and that is
very familiar to BP," Philip Johnson, wrote in an email to the Press-Register. "Basically it involves additional gas injection into a deep point on
a pipe."
Officials with BP, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to
inquiries for comment about Johnson's suggestion.
Johnson is a co-author of an industry text entitled "Standard Handbook of Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering" and teaches a variety of courses to
oil engineers all over the world, including one on gas-lift design and optimization.
He said the technique is often used in marine archeology, in addition to the world's oil fields.
Johnson said the technique would take a larger pipe than the one BP is considering for a second try at capping the oil flow using a containment
structure, this one called a top hat.
"The gas lightens the fluid in the pipe and carries it upward," Johnson wrote of his idea. He also wrote that the procedure works at depths "far
greater" than the 5,000-foot depth of the sea floor at the leaking well site.
Johnson said the technology involved "will work, and it is not nearly as difficult as the top hat they are trying now."
Johnson said the gas used to carry the oil upward could simply be air pumped underwater from huge compressors sitting on ships at the surface. He
likened the mechanism to a "big vacuum cleaner."
"If BP can slip a smaller pipe ... into the open end of the leak and gas lift it with air injected into a coiled tubing string inside the inserted
pipe, it will vacuum-up the bulk of the oil. The lifting process will even pull the introduced pipe firmly into the open end of the riser," he wrote.
[edit on 14-5-2010 by discl0sur3]