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BP: Mile-Long Tube Sucking Oil Away From Well
Updated at 11:35 p.m. ET
Oil company engineers on Sunday finally succeeded in keeping some of the oil gushing from a blown well out of the Gulf of Mexico, hooking up a mile-long tube to funnel the crude into a tanker ship after more than three weeks of failures.
Millions of gallons of crude are already in the water, however, and researchers said the black ooze may have entered a major current that could carry it through the Florida Keys and around to the East Coast.
BP PLC engineers remotely guiding robot submersibles had worked since Friday to place the tube into a 21-inch pipe nearly a mile below the sea. After several setbacks, the contraption was hooked up successfully and funneling oil to a tanker ship. The oil giant said it will take days to figure out how much oil its contraption is sucking up.
Special Section: Disaster in the Gulf
Oil Spill by the Numbers
Gulf Oil Spill Containment Efforts
The blown well has been leaking for more than three weeks, threatening sea life, commercial fishing and the coastal tourist industry from Louisiana to Florida. BP failed in several previous attempts to stop the leak, trying in vain to activate emergency valves and lowering a 100-ton container that got clogged with icy crystals.
A researcher told The Associated Press on Sunday that computer models show the oil may have already seeped into a powerful water stream known as the loop current, which could propel it into the Atlantic Ocean. A boat is being sent next week to collect samples and learn more.
William Hogarth, dean of the University of South Florida's College of Marine Science, said one model shows oil has already entered the current, while a second shows the oil is 3 miles from it — still dangerously close. The models are based on weather, ocean current and spill data from the U.S. Navy and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, among other sources.
Hogarth said it's still too early to know what specific amounts of oil will make it to Florida, or what damage it might do to the sensitive Keys or beaches on Florida's Atlantic coast. He said claims by BP that the oil would be less damaging to the Keys after traveling over hundreds of miles from the spill site were not mollifying.
"This can't be passed off as 'it's not going to be a problem."' Hogarth said. "This is a very sensitive area. We are concerned with what happens in the Florida Keys."
BP had previously said the tube, if successful, was expected to collect most of the oil gushing from the well. On Sunday, the company said it was too early to measure how much crude was being collected and acknowledged the tube was no panacea.
"It's a positive move, but let's keep in context," said Kent Wells, BP's senior vice president for exploration and production. "We're about shutting down the flow of oil from this well."
Crews will slowly ramp up how much oil the tube collects over the next few days. They need to move slowly because they don't want too much frigid seawater entering the pipe, which could combine with gases to form the same ice-like crystals that doomed the previous containment effort.
Two setbacks over the weekend illustrate how delicate the effort is. Early Sunday, hours before a steady connection was made, engineers were able to suck a small amount of oil to the tanker, but the tube was dislodged. The previous day, equipment used to insert the tube into the gushing pipe at the ocean floor had to be hauled to the surface for readjustment.
The first chance to choke off the flow for good should come in about a week. Engineers plan to shoot heavy mud into the crippled blowout preventer on top of the well, then permanently entomb the leak in concrete. If that doesn't work, crews also can shoot golf balls and knotted rope into the nooks and crannies of the device to plug it, Wells said.
The final choice to end the leak is a relief well, but it is more than two months from completion.
Top officials in President Barack Obama's administration cautioned that the tube "is not a solution" to the spill and said they are closely monitoring the situation.
"We will not rest until BP permanently seals the wellhead, the spill is cleaned up, and the communities and natural resources of the Gulf Coast are restored and made whole," Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said in a joint statement.
Meanwhile, scientists warned of the effects of the oil that has already leaked into the Gulf. Researchers said miles-long underwater plumes of oil discovered in recent days could poison and suffocate sea life across the food chain, with damage that could endure for a decade or more.
Researchers have found more underwater plumes of oil than they can count from the well, said Samantha Joye, a professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia. She said careful measurements taken of one plume showed it stretching for 10 miles, with a 3-mile width.
The hazardous effects of the plume are twofold. Joye said the oil itself can prove toxic to fish swimming in the sea, while vast amounts of oxygen are also being sucked from the water by microbes that eat oil. Dispersants used to fight the oil are also food for the microbes, speeding up the oxygen depletion.
"So, first you have oily water that may be toxic to certain organisms and also the oxygen issue, so there are two problems here," said Joye, who's working with the scientists who discovered the plumes in a recent boat expedition. "This can interrupt the food chain at the lowest level, and will trickle up and certainly impact organisms higher. Whales, dolphins and tuna all depend on lower depths to survive."
Conservationists in Florida said oil could wreak havoc in the Keys or the environmentally fragile Everglades.
"Obviously this is a fear that we had about where the oil might go next," said John Adornato, regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association.
Oil has been spewing since the rig Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20, killing 11 people and sinking two days later. The government shortly afterward estimated the spill at 210,000 gallons — or 5,000 barrels — a day, a figure that has since been questioned by some scientists who fear it could be far more. BP executives have stood by the estimate while acknowledging there's no way to know for sure.
News of the tube's success was met with tempered enthusiasm by the leader of a coastal parish in Lousiana that includes environmentally sensitive marshes and islands.
"It's definitely good news," Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said after a BP vice president called to brief him.
"It will be better news when they get it stopped," he said, noting the underwater oil plumes. "We have a large mess out there."
© 2010 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Oil company engineers on Sunday finally succeeded in keeping some of the oil gushing from a blown well out of the Gulf of Mexico, hooking up a mile-long tube to funnel the crude into a tanker ship after more than three weeks of failures.
Millions of gallons of crude are already in the water, however, and researchers said the black ooze may have entered a major current that could carry it through the Florida Keys and around to the East Coast.
BP PLC engineers remotely guiding robot submersibles had worked since Friday to place the tube into a 21-inch pipe nearly a mile below the sea. After several setbacks, the contraption was hooked up successfully and funneling oil to a tanker ship. The oil giant said it will take days to figure out how much oil its contraption is sucking up.
Special Section: Disaster in the Gulf
Oil Spill by the Numbers
Gulf Oil Spill Containment Efforts
The blown well has been leaking for more than three weeks, threatening sea life, commercial fishing and the coastal tourist industry from Louisiana to Florida. BP failed in several previous attempts to stop the leak, trying in vain to activate emergency valves and lowering a 100-ton container that got clogged with icy crystals.
A researcher told The Associated Press on Sunday that computer models show the oil may have already seeped into a powerful water stream known as the loop current, which could propel it into the Atlantic Ocean. A boat is being sent next week to collect samples and learn more.
William Hogarth, dean of the University of South Florida's College of Marine Science, said one model shows oil has already entered the current, while a second shows the oil is 3 miles from it — still dangerously close. The models are based on weather, ocean current and spill data from the U.S. Navy and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, among other sources.
Hogarth said it's still too early to know what specific amounts of oil will make it to Florida, or what damage it might do to the sensitive Keys or beaches on Florida's Atlantic coast. He said claims by BP that the oil would be less damaging to the Keys after traveling over hundreds of miles from the spill site were not mollifying.
"This can't be passed off as 'it's not going to be a problem."' Hogarth said. "This is a very sensitive area. We are concerned with what happens in the Florida Keys."
BP had previously said the tube, if successful, was expected to collect most of the oil gushing from the well. On Sunday, the company said it was too early to measure how much crude was being collected and acknowledged the tube was no panacea.
"It's a positive move, but let's keep in context," said Kent Wells, BP's senior vice president for exploration and production. "We're about shutting down the flow of oil from this well."
Crews will slowly ramp up how much oil the tube collects over the next few days. They need to move slowly because they don't want too much frigid seawater entering the pipe, which could combine with gases to form the same ice-like crystals that doomed the previous containment effort.
Two setbacks over the weekend illustrate how delicate the effort is. Early Sunday, hours before a steady connection was made, engineers were able to suck a small amount of oil to the tanker, but the tube was dislodged. The previous day, equipment used to insert the tube into the gushing pipe at the ocean floor had to be hauled to the surface for readjustment.
The first chance to choke off the flow for good should come in about a week. Engineers plan to shoot heavy mud into the crippled blowout preventer on top of the well, then permanently entomb the leak in concrete. If that doesn't work, crews also can shoot golf balls and knotted rope into the nooks and crannies of the device to plug it, Wells said.
The final choice to end the leak is a relief well, but it is more than two months from completion.
Top officials in President Barack Obama's administration cautioned that the tube "is not a solution" to the spill and said they are closely monitoring the situation.
"We will not rest until BP permanently seals the wellhead, the spill is cleaned up, and the communities and natural resources of the Gulf Coast are restored and made whole," Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said in a joint statement.
Meanwhile, scientists warned of the effects of the oil that has already leaked into the Gulf. Researchers said miles-long underwater plumes of oil discovered in recent days could poison and suffocate sea life across the food chain, with damage that could endure for a decade or more.
Researchers have found more underwater plumes of oil than they can count from the well, said Samantha Joye, a professor of marine sciences at the University of Georgia. She said careful measurements taken of one plume showed it stretching for 10 miles, with a 3-mile width.
The hazardous effects of the plume are twofold. Joye said the oil itself can prove toxic to fish swimming in the sea, while vast amounts of oxygen are also being sucked from the water by microbes that eat oil. Dispersants used to fight the oil are also food for the microbes, speeding up the oxygen depletion.
"So, first you have oily water that may be toxic to certain organisms and also the oxygen issue, so there are two problems here," said Joye, who's working with the scientists who discovered the plumes in a recent boat expedition. "This can interrupt the food chain at the lowest level, and will trickle up and certainly impact organisms higher. Whales, dolphins and tuna all depend on lower depths to survive."
Conservationists in Florida said oil could wreak havoc in the Keys or the environmentally fragile Everglades.
"Obviously this is a fear that we had about where the oil might go next," said John Adornato, regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association.
Oil has been spewing since the rig Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20, killing 11 people and sinking two days later. The government shortly afterward estimated the spill at 210,000 gallons — or 5,000 barrels — a day, a figure that has since been questioned by some scientists who fear it could be far more. BP executives have stood by the estimate while acknowledging there's no way to know for sure.
News of the tube's success was met with tempered enthusiasm by the leader of a coastal parish in Lousiana that includes environmentally sensitive marshes and islands.
"It's definitely good news," Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said after a BP vice president called to brief him.
"It will be better news when they get it stopped," he said, noting the underwater oil plumes. "We have a large mess out there."
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What's with your rant about Obama? This article is about an oil gusher in the gulf that deeper beneath the surface is heading out to the greater ocean. Like an iceberg, most of the mess is not seen from atop. It has nothing to do with liberals or pinko commies. It's about the tower of babble fool. It's about greed and arrogance. It's about lawyered up corporations that politically are deeply entrenched in a government that in meaningless written words holds on to some historical intent of being for the people and by the people. It's only for a few now who will destroy even themselves with enough time.
The non-democratic corporations run by bean counters and lawyers who function under the pressure of wall street and very wealthy investors arrogantly trump the realities of the earth's and humanities needs. Will anything change? Doubtfully not until the dysfunction reaches cataclysmic proportions.
Consider the 21 inch pipe is gushing at full capacity...now a 6" pipe is supposed to suck up all that oil ?
Now consider if there is a stopper that wedges into the remaining 21 inches -- this will make a super jet that will clog the 6" and/or send backward pressure to cause / exacerbate leaks in the 1 mile long twisted and crumpled piping.
by ejavam07 May 16, 2010 11:50 PM EDT
Just a little math here... a 21" pipe gushing oil (at full throttle) into a 6" straw. Assuming that the 6" straw is sucking at full tilt ..., and there is no resistance in the straw, would mean that if A = pi * r ** 2, the percentage that is actually coming up the straw would be A = (21 ** 2) / (6 ** 2) or about 1/12th of output, right? So this is wonderful news, right?
by greco99-2009 May 17, 2010 12:22 AM EDT
Plus the following 'miracle' will be required to make this contraption work - No pressure differential at the junction. Otherwise there will be either crystallization or gaseous expansion
I guess it may take longer than 'days to measure' the oil being 'sucked up' -- because there is relatively little oil that will be captured this way compared with the oil that is leaking...
I think this is just the same BS as when BP announced there was 'only' 1000 barrels leaking per day (for reference a 1/2 inch garden hose will fill a small pool (about 400 Barrels) in a day.
I'd like to see the video that would have certainly been made by the robotic subs (ROVs). No video? Makes you wonder if this is more PR / scam to buy time...
Woods Hole / MIT has some of the most technically advanced deepwater submarines...but, BP has denied this offer for (free) assistance...
Trust but verify...lying to Federal Officials is a crime...false reports cause real harm...
The Republicans just blocked a Democrat bill that would have raised oil companies' "responsibility cap" from $75 million to $10 billion. So who do you think is going to pay the overages? Us the tax payers.
On the 9th of April Sarah Pailin said in New Orleans ?it's perfectly safe to drill in the Golf?, 11 days latter 11 people are dead and we have one of the worst man made disasters in history. Spill baby spill. That woman is an idiot.
On the outset, BP said ?trust us we can handle this?. They gave a low ball estimate for the spill rate and tried to leave everyone with the impression they could take care of this themselves. The Obama administration didn't trust them. NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) did there own calculations and determined that the spill rate was five times what BP said. And Obama declared all hands on deck. He sent out the coast guard the EPA and Interior. BP's initial reaction made this spill a lot harder to clean up.
Now I know the Teabagger, Republicans want to blame Obama. It happened under his watch, bla bla bla. It's a man made accident and everything is not his falt. You don't want him to regulate healthcare, banks, big business etc. but he should have better regulated this, give me a break.
For 8 years this country was led by two oil guys, fossil fuel guys. There looked the other way, they didn't regulate tough. So we've had the worse mine disaster in decades and now we have the worse the worst oil spill. I don't think its a coincidence.
Republicans need to stop making excuses and blaming this administration when all the planning and permitting occurred under Bush.
The Obama administration have been on this sense day one and I can give you a time line and I will if anyone wants to dispute it or can't look it up themselves.
independent_midwesterner... You must be a dumb Teabagger, Your rhetoric has no substance. You just repeat what you've herd on fox noise or from some other teabagger. Lets see any facts to back up your rants, Oh ya facts to teabaggers are like WMDs they don't exist!!
Now his socialist buddy in Brazil and the US haters in Turkey showed him up!!!
A couple of days ago the New York Times published an interesting article that notes that some experts estimate the oil is gushing at a rate of as much as 3.4 million gallons of oil per day, far, far above what BP is saying. Here is the link to the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/us/16oil.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&src=ig
I have washed oil off of sea birds before, and I'll do it again. I hope that the CEO of BP, who declared the amount of oil as "tiny" compared to the size of the Gulf, will get in an airplane and fly commercial coach, not in the corporate jet, and help clean the coast and the birds, if it comes to that. It's the least he could do.
Consider the 21 inch pipe is gushing at full capacity...now a 6" pipe is supposed to suck up all that oil ?
Now consider if there is a stopper that wedges into teh remaining 21 inches -- this will make a super jet that will clog the 6" and/or send backward pressure to cause / exacerbate leaks in the 1 mile long twisted and crumpled piping.
by ejavam07 May 16, 2010 11:50 PM EDT
Just a little math here, because I don't think it could possibly be as bad as they are now saying: 21" pipe gushing oil (at full throttle) into a 6" straw. Assuming that the 6" straw is sucking at full tilt (like those guys at BP must have done to get this deal in the first place), and there is no resistance in the straw, would mean that if A = pi * r ** 2, the percentage that is actually coming up the straw would be A = (21 ** 2) / (6 ** 2) or about 1/12th of output, right? So this is wonderful news, right?
by greco99-2009 May 17, 2010 12:22 AM EDT
Plus the following 'miracle' will be required to make this contraption work - No pressure differential at the junction. Otherwise there will be either crystallization or gaseous expansion
I guess it may take longer than 'days to measure' the oil being 'sucked up' -- because there is relatively little oil that will be captured this way...
I think this is just the same BS as when BP announced there was 'only' 1000 barrels leaking per day (for reference a 1/2 inch garden hose will fill a small pool (about 400 Barrels) in a day.
I'd like to see the video that would have certainly been made by the robotic subs (ROVs). No video? Makes you wonder if this is more PR / scam to buy time...
Trust but verify...lying to Federal Officials is a crime...false reports cause real harm...