ziggy12345 wrote:The accoustic switch was not installed.
I really, really hope that any investigation finds that, if the acoustic rams had been fitted the accident wouldn't have happened, or at least not been as severe and cost lives. Hopefully someone of the American "Sue 'Em Till They Bleed" mentality will take the legislators responsible for not insisting they be fitted as standard to the cleaners. Would be nice to see Cheney in court and found guilty for something.
And thanks for the information ziggy. Much appreciated.
Having the accoustic switch fitted might have stopped the slick but it would not have stopped the accident. If the BOPS were not operating properly then I doubt it would even have stopped the slick.
Indeed, but perhaps you could explain just what an acoustic switch is and why the Americans thought they were not needed while the Norwegians and Brazilians take a different position?
an independent expert noted that “the initial likely cause of gas coming to the surface had something to do with the cement,” and the fact that Halliburton “was handling the cementing process on the rig.”
The oil well explosion in the Gulf of Mexico could be a well-timed and profitable accident for Halliburton, the global oil company with the famous connection to former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. Just eight days before the uber-Valdez accident, Houston-based Halliburton acquired Boots & Coots Services, also based in Houston, in a $240 million cash and stock deal.
Halliburton is currently under investigation by the Australian government for a massive blowout in the Timor Sea in 2005 caused by its faulty application of concrete casing.
Boots & Coots, which uses the graphic of a burning oil well to represent the ampersand in its name, specializes in "pressure control and well intervention services." In other words, when an oil well explodes, Boots & Coots can step in and help remedy the problem.
An acoustic switch is just a remote control. The BOP is linked to the surface by multiple redundant electric and hydraulic control lines, but if these all fail (eg. are severed in an accident) then an acoustic remote control sends a coded sonic signal down the pipeline and triggers the BOP.
However, the problem seems to be the BOP used here had never been tested at these depths and using the thicker, stronger drill pipes employed. It may not have been powerful enough to shear through the pipe, especially if a pipe joint happened to be passing through the BOP at the time.
I've read an (unconfirmed) detailed report at TOD apparently an eye witness account that gives the background on how the cement failed (they were using cement with nitrogen bubbles in it to make it foamy) and how the crew failed to spot the (limited) warning signs before the blowout (all within one minute).
To me , employing a BOP which had never been tested in equivalent real world conditions is the major scandal.
In what is looming as another public relations predicament for Goldman Sachs, the banking giant admitted today that it made "a substantial financial bet against the Gulf of Mexico" one day before the sinking of an oil rig in that body of water.
The new revelations came to light after government investigators turned up new emails from Goldman employee Fabrice "Fabulous Fab" Tourre in which he bragged to a girlfriend that the firm was taking a "big short" position on the Gulf.
"One oil rig goes down and we're going to be rolling in dough," Mr. Tourre wrote in one email.
According to a leaked National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration memo obtained by an Alabama newspaper, if the riser erodes any further and creates more leaks, up to 50,000 barrels, or 2.1 million gallons, per day of crude oil could begin flooding Gulf waters every day.
When this disaster first occurred, the media downplayed it. BP spokespersons were quick to claim that the leakage was minimal and that crews would eventually be able to contain it. But as time went on, it became clear that things were not under control and that the spill was far more serious than we were originally told. (Gee, sound familiar? Remember Katrina?)
Yet some of the media reports still seem more like press releases than actual reporting because they continue to repeat what the public relations cleanup crews (pun intended) would like the public to believe rather than what's actually happening. Reality, it seems, has a nasty habit of interfering with corporate spin.
People from around the world have been giving the hair off their heads, the fur off their pets' backs, and the tights off their legs to make booms and mats to mop up the oily mess spewing out of the sunken BP-leased Deepwater Horizon oil platform which is lying on the seabed of the Gulf of Mexico.
Gas Hydrates form readily at low temps and high pressures and clog up pipes very quickly. When testing wells in deep water a continual stream of methanol is injeced into the well to stop hydrate formation.
They are common in deep waters lying around on the sea bed but are difficult to break down so there is no easy solution to this problem. BP is going down the wrong road. They are worried about their image so have to try and stem the oil flow but in reality they cant. Better to just let it flow and concentrate on drilling the relief well. In the end it will be the best option
