Bill Clinton: We May Have to Blow Up Oil Well

By: Brian Montopoli
Topics: Democrats ,; Domestic Issues

Former President Bill Clinton said during a panel discussion in South Africa that it may become necessary to blow up the Deepwater Horizon well that continues to spew oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

Watch the video at left. His comments on the leak start about 2:30 in.

"Unless we send the Navy down deep to blow up the well and cover the leak with piles and piles and piles of rock and debris, which may become necessary - you don't have to use a nuclear weapon by the way, I've seen all that stuff, just blow it up - unless we're going to do that, we are dependent on the technical expertise of these people from BP," Clinton said.

There has been some pressure for BP to simply blow up the well, with critics suggesting the company is forgoing that option out of a desire to get as much oil as possible from the rig.

"If we demolish the well using explosives, the investment's gone," former nuclear submarine officer and a visiting scholar on nuclear policy at Columbia University Christopher Brownfield said in a Fox News interview in May. "They lose hundreds of millions of dollars from the drilling of the well, plus no lawmaker in his right mind would allow BP to drill again in that same spot. So basically, it's an all-or-nothing thing with BP: They either keep the well alive, or they lose their whole investment and all the oil that they could potentially get from that well." (He penned an opinion piece in the New York Times making the argument.)

Some lawmakers have also pushed for blowing up the well.

"For the life of me, I can't understand why BP couldn't go into the ocean floor, maybe 10 feet lateral to the -- around the periphery -- drill a few holes and put a little ammonium nitrate, some dynamite, in those holes and detonate that dynamite and seal that leak. And seal it permanently," Rep. Phil Gingrey (Ga.) said earlier this month.

Brian Montopoli
Brian Montopoli is the senior political reporter at CBSNews.com.
Follow on Twitter »

25 Comments Have Your Say
Email Story Send to a Friend
Share This Tell Your Friends
Tweet This Tweet This
More Share It

Add a Comment

See all 25 Comments


by mijimiji July 1, 2010 1:26 AM EDT: By MIJIMIJI
Forgot to say that the hollow needle would be constructed from existing pipe lying around on any one of the ships in the area. They all have welders, to make a long needle shape and weights collar. One could round up 2 kilometers of 2 tonne cable in less than a day and some shackles and winch ship. Could have plugged it in days. BP know what the pressure is because it was recorded by the drill rig before the fire and reported to land. Pressure x area equals the weight to place around the needles collar. Of course they would have to remember to have its top valve open . I`m happy to design and supervise the whole capping for no charge to help maximise profits so the crying share holders wont need to be asked to help fund the clean up and litigation costs.; Reply to this comment


by wellscheme June 30, 2010 2:54 PM EDT: You have to realize that BP is concerned about the integity of the well casing, not the oil flowing into the gulf. Top kill should have worked, but they saw something in the pressure readings that concerned them about the casing structure. If they do not control the well at a point where the structural integrity of the well casing(s)is reliable, you will end up with a sub-surface(beneath the ocean floor) breach and oil percolating up through many fissures in the sea floor, try to envision containing that. And it is not just a hole in the ground that you can squish shut. The BOP should have been able to do that at the point where that can happen, which is at the wellhead. Beneath that there are at least 9 casings from 36" diameter down to 7 or 8 inch in diameter, each extending to various depths, that make up the well, and quite possibly, depending on where they were in the seal plug operation, there could be drill string in there too. The blow-it-up idea was from a Russian gas well with a subsurface fire, that burned for several years. They used a nuclear device to seal the well 5 or 6 thousand feet below the surface, and yes, it had to be a nuclear device to generate sufficient heat to fuse the rock and form a seal in the well bore. They were really out of options to control that well. Politicians can only mitigate the results and impact of the leak, if they choose to, there is not a damn thing about the leak itself.; Reply to this comment


by Morndenkainen June 30, 2010 12:59 PM EDT: Clinton was a decent president. When he left office he left us with a budget surplus, not a deficit.

Some people ask why they dont do the simple thing and hydraulically crimp the pipe shut, and then fill the well with mud.

Here's the answer, its because they've invested hundreds of millions of dollars drilling the well. Theyre not out to lose money by shutting down a well and oil field that they can still profit from. If they "blow up" the well, they cant get any more oil out of it, and no one will give them or anyone else a permit to drill there. Ever... The end result is that although BP may have to pay out $30 billion to clean up their mess, they still stand to make $30 billion and $1 or more off the oil in the reserve and with the two relief wells drilled, they get twice the volume, dont have to pay for new permits or inspections since this is an "emergency", get to bypass some of the required safety equipment, and when theyre done, they get to say, "Look at us, we fixed it!". All while making even more money than they were before...; Reply to this comment

by Ruler4You June 30, 2010 2:30 AM EDT

Why not let the people who deal with this stuff make the decisions? B.J.Clinton was barely a president. He clearly has no expertise in anything not inside his pants.

Reply to this comment


by Morndenkainen June 30, 2010 1:07 PM EDT: Crimp the pipe hydraulically, then plug the well with cement, far easier, and you dont need to worry about the effects of putting a hundred tons of lead in the bottom of the ocean. Worried about stress on the metal? There's a reason its as thick as it is. Pipe to hard to crimp with the oil flowing through it or a drill shaft in the way? You'd be amazed at what heavy hydraulics can do. I've witnessed a quarter being stamped out to the size of a dinner plate in about a second.

by JJames100 June 29, 2010 11:18 PM EDT

My jaw sags in awe and my eyes fill in sorrow, as I watch befuddled BP executives and government officials stumble through explanations of how hard it is to stop the flow of oil from a well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. As an unprecedented ecological disaster unfolds slowly before our eyes we learn that for more than forty years we have allowed oil exploration and production in the Gulf and apparently in other parts of the world?s oceans as well, with no real emergency plan in place; should an undersea blowout occur. Our government under every President since Richard Nixon has apparently allowed permits for over thirty five thousand wells to be drilled into the seabed of the Gulf and no one asked ?what would be the plan if a fail-safe blowout preventer ever failed? as apparently it did, below the Deepwater Horizon some six weeks ago in the Gulf. It?s the equivalent of local government allowing developers to plan and build a city with no fire department. This is not a partisan problem, it?s a structural problem.

In spite of that, what?s now needed is a brute force, cartoon simple solution to end the spewing oil?Superman or Popeye need to drop a giant anvil on the hole and stop the leak. Now for a moment that may sound amusing, but if you simply knock away all the expensive drilling and oil extraction equipment on the ocean floor you are left with a hole in the ground spewing oil and gas out at a specific rate and volume which can be measured by inserting instruments in to the open hole. Given the hole diameter, oil flow rate and volume almost any first year engineering student could tell you with great accuracy, the force or pressure coming out of the hole. I?m confident, whether they have chosen to share accurate information with the public or not, both BP executives and a number of senior government officials know exactly what those numbers are. If they don?t, they certainly have the equipment to find out. Those numbers should not be ambiguous nor private. They should simply be accurately measured.

Once you have a valid number for the pressure being exerted by the oil spewing out of the hole you can easily calculate the force required to overcome that pressure. The remainder of the problem is rather straightforward it would seem. Quickly, you need to build a very large weight, essentially in the shape of a plumbob, move it to the location of the well and then lower and guide it down and into the hole. The plumbob?s mass must be greater that the force exiting the hole and it diameter at its widest point, greater than the diameter of the hole. Gravity will then drive the weight into place, seal the hole and keep the plug in place.

This strategy of course comes at the expense of knocking aside the tens of millions of dollars of equipment at the bottom of the gulf used to extract the oil from the well but the choice whether to destroy BP?s and its subcontractors equipment, or stop the flow of oil, should be self evident.

http://independentviews.wordpress.com/

Reply to this comment


by mijimiji July 1, 2010 1:06 AM EDT: By JIM SULLIVAN Auckland New Zealand July 3
J James idea to plug the 500 mm dia. hole with a heavy weight is a solution,but bp want to sell remaining oil.
Just needs to be a hollow needle with a soft outside to make a good seal, lowered by wire and guided into broken pipe with three robots. It would also have a collar half way up apon which doenut shaped weights could be lowered until the oil engineers are sure it wont pop up when its valve is closed. Now they would attach a smaller diameter pipe to it. Open valve and start selling oil again.
It sounds simple. So why not ?


by Sireal June 29, 2010 7:53 PM EDT: BP is concerned about their investment!!!!?? Their investment and company are forfeit in the face of the devastation they have caused. The company must be stripped of its assets and all their drilling projects scrutinized in detail to ensure they are not repeating their negligence elsewhere, this must hold true for all oil companies drilling anywhere in the world where spills like this are common place and these multinationals thumb their nose at the People and the Law and act with impunity in the third world and now here. Time to bring down the Beast that is Corporate Terrorism!; Reply to this comment


by sluggopyle June 29, 2010 7:12 PM EDT: This is a sorry piece of journalism. Clinton clearly says, "UNLESS we're going to do that (blow it up), we are dependent on the technical expertise of these people from BP". It's a rhetorical point. He's not saying "let's blow it up" -- it's a conditional phrase. This headline completely changes that meaning, for no higher purpose than, I suspect, gathering eyeballs for advertisers. The quote is right there in the text (duh?!).

Whatever editor let this piece of swill out into the world should be fired, immediately if not sooner.; Reply to this comment


by ffotoragg June 29, 2010 3:13 PM EDT: ALSO ! we don't need a ban on the jones act---the act is for transporting CARGO between the states and everyone else----they would not be delivering any cargo---none is involved---so WHY HAVEN'T WE USED NORWAY OR ANY OTHER COUNTRY'S OFFERS OF HELP????; Reply to this comment


by ffotoragg June 29, 2010 3:10 PM EDT: bill clinton needs to check the scientific facts before he speaks--i know he means well, but according to a group of scientists--a year before bp decided to explore in that very spot---geologists sonared the floor of the gulf, and immediately under the oil reservoir, there is a METHANE RESERVOIR about 15 to 20 miles long, and in their word, 'tens of feet high'------normal methane mix from oil drilling is about 5%--the amount of methane from the spill is 40%--if anyone tries to blow up the well, it could be a catastrophe of epic proportions--for anyone who wants to catch up on these facts, go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dk-matai/gulf-of-mexico-danger-of_b_619095.html--thanks; Reply to this comment


by amydugan1 June 29, 2010 11:17 AM EDT: Clinton sounds like he would have accepted foreign help week 1 and gave press address week 1 asking all in our country to mobilize our resources to help week 1, and send James Lee Witt of FEMA ASAP. and then lastly point blame. Clinton would focus on fixing it and he said we should go easy on Obama's low emotion. My take of his comments is Obama is erring not in low emotion BUT by not fixing it and doing the 3 things listed ASAP but is instead trying to hold someone accountable .
check out my Bill Clinton blog
http://adugan-billclintonblog.blogspot.com/; Reply to this comment