Now he had to cope with a wild, seemingly unstoppable gusher in conditions that had no precedent. The pressure readings the technician was calling out stopped dropping at roughly 6,000 psi, meaning that the flowing oil was successfully pushing back against the pump engine's 30,000 horsepower. The pressure readings just wouldn't drop—even when BP tried again with denser mud.
By May 27, it had become clear to even its main supporters like Tony Hayward that the top-kill attempt had failed. And by the end of the weekend, BP had new overseers. Chu killed top kill on May 28, worried that BP's efforts would cause a subsurface blowout and make the gusher impossible to control.
By mid-June, Chu wrote an e-mail to his team, including physicist Richard Garwin, who had helped invent the hydrogen bomb as well as cap burning oil wells after the Persian Gulf War, and Tom Hunter, former director of Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico. Quoting Gregory Peck in The Guns of Navarone, Chu wrote: "Your bystanding days are over! You're in it now, up to your neck! They told me that you're a genius with explosives. Start proving it!" Of course, Chu quickly noted that explosives—despite calls for the U.S. Navy to bomb the well shut, with nukes if necessary—were not likely to be useful "on this mission…the rest rings true."
What finally worked
Despite Chu's oversight, BP remained in charge of critical information flowing from the deep-sea blowout. Chu's team had to know what to ask for and request it specifically in order to get their hands on data. The government scientists got enough information to give their blessing to BP's "top hat" approach, which—taking a lesson from the failed cofferdam—boasted circulating methanol to prevent methane-filled ice from forming. By June 3, the top hat was capturing roughly 15,000 barrels a day—or three times early estimates, and the upper threshold after which BP's Tooms had calculated "top kill" would fail—with no discernible impact on the flow of oil into the ocean.
Even when BP began pumping oil and gas through a line from the blowout preventer to the Q4000 well-servicing ship—at Garwin's suggestion—the flow of oil into the sea remained undiminished. The Q4000, which had pumped the mud for top kill, had specially designed flares for oil and gas that enabled BP to burn off as much as 10,000 barrels a day—bringing the total amount of oil prevented from flowing into the sea to as much as 25,000 barrels a day at times. Because this containment still failed to show any visible improvement in the amount of oil flowing from the wellhead, Secretary Chu's back-of-the-e-mail math suggested that at least 40,000 barrels a day must be gushing from the well.
What finally worked on July 12 was a smaller blowout preventer installed atop the failed blowout preventer at the well's head on the seafloor, replacing the top hat. This "capping stack" had risks, however, such as creating the kind of subsurface blowout that would end up draining all the estimated 110 million barrels of oil in the entire formation. But government scientists calculated the flow would have to be 100,000 barrels per day—or nearly twice as much as it actually was (roughly 50,000 barrels per day)—for that risk to be realized.
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12 Comments
Add CommentThe author really seems to be in awe of Secretary Chu. I believe a more detached evaluation of his role would lead one to conclude that he was of much less importance, and probably added a lot of delay to the effort.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis timeline shows how the oil industry needs more stringent regulation and preventive measures. The lack of informed facts -- perhaps favored by the multiple players in the situation and conflicting interests -- led to an unacceptable delay in blocking the flow.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe all know the environmental effects. Check out how it impacted the livelihood of local communities: http://ckne.ws/emLefc
Soccerdad-
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood points. A lot more needs to be learned about what really happened those first 60 days and about who was REALLY in charge of operations. Also, with regards to "Chu versus the oil volcano", doesn't the U.S. still have THOUSANDS of top-notch physicists, engineers, oil experts and other experts in hydrodynamics and computer modeling??? Why no "Mahattan Project" approach, instead of literally a handfull of old guys in a room. One, who's main claim to fame was "quantum laser cooling"? Seems kind of strange to me. Why weren't AT LEAST 100 people involved in brainstorming this catastrophe? Is this what we are going to do if an asteroid is heading our way - have Dr. Chu and a few of his buddies handle it?
There are high school kids that could have come up with better things to do than "top hats", "junk shots" and "top kills" - it only takes a calculator to figure out that all things could NEVER have worked - and Dr. Chu and his "dream team" should have know this as well (and probably did). The public was being taken for a ride those first 60 days. When it comes to the "science", it's as simple as that. This was more about politics, liability and egos, than science.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat I find most disturbing is 1) that the author cannot distinguish between "science", which had very little impact in the spill, and "technology", which may have helped end the spill, despite the almost total lack of meaningful command and control by either the government (local, state, and national) or by BP and its minions; and 2) why Scientific American cannot find a way to block the crap that shows up in comments 6 and 7. Come on people, monitor the list and don't leave it up to us to report the abuse!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisbob
OK, then please explain the "technical" merits of the "junk shot", "top kill", "top hat", etc,, that BP and the administration told (lied to) the public had good likelihoods of success - when they KNEW none of these things would work!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am starting to getting corroboration of this below (much more to come):
http://www.cnbc.com/id/42675268
http://www.npr.org/2011/03/05/134268980/could-cornstarch-have-plugged-bps-oil-well (Thanks to the apathy of people like you, we might never know)
rab2411-
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhere were the super-computer simulations of this disaster? I have never heard that any were created (maybe SA should ask this question)?
And, where were the independent government labs, such as, Sandia, Los Alamos, Lawrence Berkley,Brookhaven, Oak Ridge? Why weren't they brought in to help brainstorm solutions? Wasn't this more about who was going to be liable for damages, rather than about who was best equipped to find solutions and who SHOULD have been put in charge of the the science and problem solving?
What are we going to do if an asteroid is heading our way? - have some (incompetent) independent contractors (maybe the same ones with a reputation for causing problems) along with maybe 3-4, high level, scientists (some we don't even know), working in secrecy, behind closed doors, to solve that problem too? Somehow, that prospect doesn't give me much sense of security.
rab2411-
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry, I thought you were referring to my comments - my bad. I guess we may be in agreement as to your point #1.
No prob. And as to my second point in my original post, the references to postings 6 and 7 are no longer relevant, since my hitting the "report abuse" label seems to have helped the editors delete the referenced spam!! I guess we have to self-police after all!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI also reported those (forgot).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswww.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1378679/BP-oil-spill-Day-scientists-hail-recovery-Gulf-Coast-pictures-real-damage.html
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow S-T-U-P-I-D do you think we are, anyway?
Plenty stupid!
The author of this article does seem rather enamored of Dr. Chu. While undoubtedly talented in his field, what did he really bring to this effort besides double-thinking what to try and vetting their efforts? The whole thing seemed rather ineptly handled, but in the end they got the thing capped. They say. Next stop, paint all our roofs white.
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