The Special "TOP HAT" Cover on Top of the BOP has Apparently Blown Off!

Not this again, I give up.



You have an important U2U



[edit on 1/7/10 by masqua]

reply to post by JustMike


Ok, I am going to do the best I can to describe it. I was looking at the other cameras on & off so I didn't watch it solely. I noticed them getting close to something that looked like a dark tank (like a propane tank) on the sea bed. The water was murky until they got up close to it. Then I saw that it looked like a pipe - I have no way to figure the scale but I would say maybe 3ft. in diameter at the most. I had markings & a few numbers on it - maybe going up 2-3ft. That area of the pipe was very dark brown - almost like it was really rusted & the markings/numbers were light. As they went up the pipe there were various sections that were painted yellow - same as all the other equip. they have down there.

Like I mentioned before, it looked like it had been sunk right into the sand. Also, the water in this area was super calm. The sea bed looked very sandy & not bumpy like we have been seeing. As they went up the pipe, it just looked like various connections - no valves or anything like that - that I noticed. When they got to the top area, there was a yellow "cap" that kind of looked like a lego piece (best I can do There was nothing attached to it at the time but it certainly looked like a piece that could be removed & added to.

Oh yes, it appeared to be going pretty much vertically but it also did not look like it went that far up off the sea floor - maybe 15 or 20 ft. I am sure I am forgetting something but I think that is everything.

Originally posted by GATruthseeker
The other interesting thing that I saw was a large yellow & brown pipe that was sunk right into the sand.

Are you talking about this thing:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/c529535251f9.jpg[/atsimg]

That thing is pretty huge, some kind of tank, likely part of the new system they are hooking up down below when they plan to replace the top hat with some permanently bolted on replacement. A short part of it at the top is painted yellow and a much longer section of it at the bottom is simply rusty looking. I captured this image and video of them sinking it pretty deep into the sediment near the BOP (it appeared to sink about 8 feet or more into the soft sea floor). They kept moving it around, apparently looking for a good spot for it. That was going on a few days ago.

EDIT ADD: BP Pile Installation (24477 KB video)

[edit on 1-7-2010 by Divinorumus]

reply to post by GATruthseeker


and also to:

reply to post by Divinorumus


Okay, I'd agree with Divinorumus on this one. It's likely that this was just part of the riser system or at least the upgrades that are being made to it. I was curious mainly because (as far as I know) they have never shown us any images of the sunken Deepwater Horizon platform itself and as it's not all that far away, I wondered if they had sent an ROV over there to check around for possible salvageable materials.

EDIT to add: in case some members don't know where the sunken Depwater Horizon actually is, I think it's worth posting some details. In a news release dated April 26, 2010 entitled Transocean Ltd. Provides Deepwater Horizon Update, the company stated:

The rig sank in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico after an explosion and fire last week, and it is now located on the sea floor approximately 1,500 feet northwest of the well center and away from any subsea pipelines.

To see this news release go to this page on the Transocean site and click on the link for the above-titled release.

Also, if you wish to find the precise location of the blown well, then you can locate it in Google Earth and similar programs by entering the following coordinates:
Latitude: 28.738138
Longitude: -88.365944

(Note: Be sure to include the minus prefix in the longitude as it's a West Longitude reading.)

You will probably find that the location pre-marked on Google earth for the oil leak is not accurate. The above coordinates are taken from the Halliburton document that was prepared for BP (and that I've referenced a few times in this thread) and they are likely to be correct.

Many thanks,

Mike

[edit on 1/7/10 by JustMike]

Would anyone happen to know how accurate those depth readings are on those ROV displays?

I've been recording a lot of this stuff and saving on a hard drive (for later viewing at 16x instead of wasting so much time watching it live) and I've noticed that the depth reading on the SAME ROV working dispersants at the BOP and top hat at the same position deviate from day to day.

This deviation doesn't happen in minutes or hours, it happens over a day or two. I've noticed that it's been fluctuating between 4875 to 4932. Is this just an error that deviates from day to day, or is the gulf floor slowly pulsating up and down over the course of a few days?

Anyone else been keeping an archive of this stuff and been comparing it from day to day, week to week, and soon month to month? How can the top hat be at 4932 feet today, but at 4875 feet a few days ago, and then at around 4930 feet a few days before that, and so on and so on. ?

reply to post by Divinorumus

Hi Divinorumus,

yes, I'd noticed the same thing. Right now, Enterprise ROV 1, which is watching one side of the LMRP cap, is showing a depth of 4,960 ft. Skandi ROV 2, watching the cap from the other side and therefore stationed at a virtually identical "real" depth, is showing 4,932 ft.

Query: could the outflow from the well be affecting the gauges' ability to take "true" sea water depth readings? I don't know, but the thought just occurred to me. Here's my reasoning: an excess of lighter materials in the surrounding waters might cause this small-percentage difference in what we see.

It seems to me that even a minor change in water density could result in "non-true" readings: we know that excessive gas in water can affect the buoyancy of ships because the water is less dense, so could not this outflow be causing similar pressure variations in the immediate environment of the blowout?

It would be handy if we had either an ROV operator or a submariner who could clarify this for us.

Regardless of the reasons, for practical purposes we have to assume that the depth readings we see cannot be relied upon as accurate enough to determine any rise or fall in the sea floor.

EDIT to add: actually, if the amount of oil/gas/hydrates being released into the water is affecting its density and therefore the gauges, then this becomes a very useful way of monitoring the escaping (non-captured) outflow. When the gauges show the ROVs are not so deep (but in fact they're right where they were before), it could mean there are more products contaminating the surrounding water.
(End of edit.)

Mike

[edit on 1/7/10 by JustMike]

Originally posted by JustMike
Skandi ROV 2, watching the cap from the other side and therefore stationed at a virtually identical "real" depth, is showing 4,932 ft.

I used Skandi 2 to make my comparisons. Maybe the difference is a result of the ROVs being pulled to the surface and re submerged and something gets reset and recalibrate each time. Anyhow, I thought to check this after hearing someone on C2C last night claim that the gulf floor had risen about 100' (of course you can't believe a thing you hear on that show ).

reply to post by Divinorumus

Hmmm.... I just checked back to the early part of the thread for images from there. In the video I posted on June 23 and in the screen shots other members posted that same day, Skandi 2 is showing a depth around 4,928 ft, and it was apparently "parked" slightly higher than it is now. So, that would suggest Skandi 2's gauge is reasonably consistent.

If my "less dense water" idea is completely off the wall (and that's not unlikely), then Skandi 2's readings don't seem to show that the sea floor has either risen or fallen by any appreciable amount in that precise location. Certainly not by 100 ft anyway.

From what I've read about that Coast to Coast show (as we don't receive it over where I live), it could be they're just taking up on something that someone heard someone say. If they have reliable hard data from a source we can verify I'm sure we'd all like to know about it.

Hey, anybody watching Enterprise ROV 1? That TopHat is really doing a lot of moving around.
www.bp.com...

Sorry forgot to put the link.

[edit on 1-7-2010 by Chance321]
www.bp.com...
Just added the link for Skandi ROV 2 If didn't know better, I'd swear that thing was gonna come off.

[edit on 1-7-2010 by Chance321]

reply to post by Chance321

It looks pretty violent, but then, it's been looking more or less like that for some days now, namely since they "successfully refitted" the LMRP cap.

I guess the BP PR types have a unique standard of determining what is "successful". To give a loose analogy, it would be like if I had a badly leaking pipe in my house and the plumber came along and patched it up with a temporary fix to slow down the leak. (That's like when they put on the cap in the first place.) Then my plumber comes back later, takes off the jury-rigged patch and gives it a clean then puts it back to make a "successful" repair, leaving it leaking worse than before...

Okay, okay. That's not entirely fair, I know. This ain't no household plumbing. But the point in that this cap is now so unstable and poorly fixed that I find it hard to believe it's capturing as much as it did before. It must make the decent engineers they've got grit their teeth when they see it like this. This abortion of a patch-up quick-fix job is so poorly set up that it would give any decent engineer nightmares.

Mike


[edit on 1/7/10 by JustMike]

Originally posted by JustMike
reply to post by Divinorumus

 

Hi Divinorumus,

yes, I'd noticed the same thing. Right now, Enterprise ROV 1, which is watching one side of the LMRP cap, is showing a depth of 4,960 ft. Skandi ROV 2, watching the cap from the other side and therefore stationed at a virtually identical "real" depth, is showing 4,932 ft.

Wouldn't the depths change depending on where the tides are at at that moment?

Hello to everyone Yesterday my friend who is an expert engineer in deep water drilling for a major oil company (no not BP) came back from a 3 month drilling trip and I got a chance to sit down with him and get his opinion about what is really happening at the deepwater horizon site. The stuff that he told me just blew my mind. Since he has to remain anonymous I’m going to relay information to you guys the best I can.
First thing I showed him the live feeds that everybody is watching of the wellhead spilling oil and he says that whatever it is certainly is not a deepwater horizon site. The pressure is supposed to be at least 30-50 thousand psi and that’s why the explosion happened (standard drilling equipment is certified up to 15000). So that little funky cap would be blown off as soon as you just stick it into a stream of that pressure. At one point there is a fish swimming through the oil current with that pressure it would be torn to pieces (water jets are used to cut metal at much lower pressure). So he and other engineers he works with are certain that that live feed is FAKE (it can be a video of several other either depleted or leaking wells as it turns out there is quite few of them).

So I asked him what according to him is going really on ? They assume based on total media blackout that the wellhead is gone and there is just raw hole in the ground spilling oil uncontrollably. The hole is growing bigger because it’s constantly grinded off with the immense pressure of the flow. That is opinion of a guy that worked in deepwater drilling for last 15 years.

So I asked him about possible scenarios how it can play out (no matter if there is the wellhead or not), and here they go :

1. There is absolutely ZERO chance that the flow can be stopped at that pressure with any other method than nuking it (that’s why Russians used it because nothing else worked) so either that or let it run dry. Both options are very bad but the other ones are even worse.
2. There is about at least 30% chance of the seafloor cave in. In other situations it does not happen because drilling is done at much lower depths so the weight of the water above an emptied reservoir is not big enough to crash the seabed. In this particular case the well is so deep that the total mass of the water resting on top of that cavern is billions of tons. When the pressure drops to a critical point the huge amount of weight resting on top of it can make it cave in.
3. The chance for methane explosion is about 15% but still should be consider a real factor especially because of the very uncommon mix of 40% methane in the flow. That means that the amount of methane in the reservoir is huge and in case of explosion it could be an E.L.E. especially if we try to nuke it as it was never done before with anything even remotely close to that level of gas.

SO LET’S SUM IT UP. WE ARE LIED TO AND THE SITUATIONS IS MOST PROBABLY MUCH MUCH WORSE THAN IT IS BEING DESRIBED. MY FRIEND ADVISE TO ANYONE LIVING ANYWHERE CLOSE TO THE SHORE TRY TO RELLOCATE A SAFE DISTANCE FROM THE SHORE (AT LEAST 50 MILES BUT HE ADVISES A HUNDERED). DO NOT WAIT UNTIL THE LAST MINUTE BECAUSE IF SCENARIOS NUMBER 2 OR 3 PLAY OUT THE WARNING TIME THAT YOU’LL HAVE IS GOING TO BE 5-10 MINUTES SO PRETTY MUCH ENOUGH TIME TO JUST S&*T YOURSELF. GOOD LUCK TO YOU ALL.

reply to post by solo32_98

The depths would fluctuate according to tides, but not by a great deal. And even then the fluctuation should be the same for all ROVs that are in reality at the same depth and so relative to each other, there should not be any noticeable variation.

Our concern (as you also noted) is that those two ROVs, which were clearly at around the same depth give or take a couple of feet, show depths that differ by way more than a couple of feet.

However, we do know that the mean depth to the well head at the sea floor is 4,992 feet as the Halliburton document (that I linked to and quoted from in this post on June 25) states this to be the case. (Mean depth is calculated to allow for variations in tide.)

So, we can work backwards from that to establish ROV depth on the basis of the height of that part of the BOP above the sea floor. As the overall height of the BOP itself (from its lower mounting flange to the top of the riser adapter) is 53 feet 10 inches, and the upper section we see most (the flexible joint plus the riser adapter on top) is 109 inches (just over 9 feet), then if an ROV is positioned level with the middle of the riser adapter then it's about two feet or so down from the top of the BOP, and that would place it about 50 to 51 feet or so above the BOP's base.

However, the BOP is not sitting right in the sea floor but rather on the well head that protrudes about 2 feet above it. Even so, give or take a foot or two, we can say that the ROVs positioned to watch the LMRP cap are roughly 50 feet above the sea floor. (We don't need to be super precise here; we just need a figure somewhere in the ball park.)

This gives them a mean depth of somewhere around 4,940 feet below the sea surface. So, based purely on dead reckoning from the know, mean depth (to the mudline -- ie the sea floor) the Skandi ROV seems somewhat nearer the mark than the other one.

Mike

reply to post by yarosh


Thanks for sharing that information with us, it's something I'm going to think about for a little while, I hate to say it but it makes more sense to me then what I am hearing and seeing or think Im seeing.

the whole take on this goes like that THE FLOW OF THE OIL SEEMS INCONSISTENT WITH THE PRESSURE INSIDE THE WELL ON THAT VIDEO... the actual amount of oil that we are talking about is covering a quarter of the gulf so how the hell could it come out of the feed that we are watching? it flows like my tap water and we are talking about a reservoir the size of MOUNT EVEREST... judging the amount of oil plus the whole media blockout something is definately going on and for sure it's not that pipe in the feed

there is a big chance that the reservoir that they drilled into is much larger that was prevously expected and just might be a thing that we never have dealt with before. this thing already is officialy the biggest oil disaster and the official versions always seem to smooth things down so people don't know anything or they would ask too many questions, also do you remember that bp admitted in the first few weeks that there was another much smaller leak from another rig (don't remember the name of it) so even officially we HAVE DEALT WITH TWO SEPARATE LEAKS? Mybe the feeds are from the other leak? I don't remember anything beeing mentioned that the other leak was contained...

I think they need to drop a giant grid of steel mesh, layered with mesh and cement tthat hole up!!

reply to post by yarosh


You should really read some of the threads before you go repeating things as if they are new info.