Re:Top kill fails to plug leak
by jsz0 on Saturday May 29, 2010 @09:19PM
(#1389634)
I appreciate how much of a challenge those conditions must be but I still don't understand why they were so unprepared to fix a leak. Couldn't a 5,000ft leak have been simulated by a computer or in a lab environment? It seems like they're just throwing untested solutions at the problem hoping something will work. With the amount of money these oil companies make there is no excuse to not be fully prepared.
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It's for much the same reason you'd struggle to stop an avalanche or a hurricane.
All of the remedies they've tried are ones already tested and modelled like you mention - but at the end of the day this happens so infrequently and under such varying circumstances it's hard to cover every eventuality.
One of my friends pointed out that it's much akin to running one of the mars landers - it takes a long time to sort out what to do, send down the ROV's and give it a shot.
Agreed. I bet for a mere $20 million (ok, maybe $100 million, who knows) they could setup an operation to create a man-made "controlled" leak on the ocean floor at 5000 feet depth. And then they try out various methods of stopping that leak. Take notes. Fine-tune. Then they stop the test. Document everything, train people, put resources in place to be able to implement the same solution when a real leak occurs.
I'm sure they did run computer simulations. However, this is the first time they've had to physically stop the leak.
Good point. However, I think it should not have been the first time they had to stop a physical leak. They could have carried out experiments, at the same depth, with the same set of equipment. Except not under emergency conditions.