The spreading environmental fallout from the gushing Deepwater Horizon BP oil well is likely to continue throughout the summer, barring the discovery of a bold new idea for how to cap a runaway oil well. It appears that BP lied when it allegedly told regulators over a year ago that it had the technology to deal with a rupture resulting in a leak of 300,000 gallons per day. Clearly, none of BP’s standard responses are working.

It is now estimated that between 800,000 and 2 million gallons per day are spewing into the Gulf of Mexico unchecked, making this by far the worst environmental disaster the United States has ever faced. Containment efforts are limited to the surface, and BP appears to have no viable technological strategy for dealing with massive underwater plumes which may migrate by powerful underwater currents throughout the Gulf and the surrounding coastal areas.

Conservation biologists are now reporting the process of ecosystem contamination is well underway, as birds that eat fish caught in the contamination zone spread the toxins, when they die on land or are eaten by larger animals. So the technical response to the crisis must be more strategic than tactical, a widespread, multi-layered technological strategy, not simply one effort to deal with one aspect of the problem: the source.

We need new ideas, from wherever they might emerge, for each of the following:

1. How to overwhelm the massive upward pressure of the well?
2. How to cap the gushing well, pressure reduced or not?
3. How to execute the plan at 5,000 feet below the surface?
4. How to contain 100% of the surface oil slick, without toxic chemicals?
5. How to contain 100% of the underwater plumes, without toxic chemicals?
6. How to plan for site-relevant immediate response to a blowout?
7. How to clean up the oil in the water, without toxic chemicals?
8. How to clean up the oil on the beaches and in marshlands, without toxic chemicals?
9. How to protect coastal cities from oil arriving by water?
10. How to upgrade all offshore rigs to secure them against similar disaster?

Key suggestions include: volcanic ash, a pipe-and-tire plug with extraction capacity, pouring cement, an official emergency response suggestion forum…

Propose any ideas on these or other technical challenges of the Deepwater Horizon disaster…

If at present, relief wells are the only tested method for closing high-pressure offshore oil wells, especially at such depths, should it not be a regulatory requirement that preventive relief wells be begun before the well itself is opened? Had, for instance, this process taken just one week, the Macondo well would still have poured record amounts of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, but the catastrophe would have been held to one week, not the likely 4 to 5 months it will ultimately take to use one or more relief wells to stop the ongoing spill.

Has there been any effort to contain the underwater plumes, aside from using “dispersants”? Is there any known fabric or flexible synthetic material that could be used to contain large amounts of floating underwater petroleum?

Marine scientist and conservation leader David Guggenheim posted this on Twitter: “RT @torrencesalces: would vol. ash pushed into hole encased in dissolvable mat’l form Roman concrete seal long enough to get more perm cap?”

Could volcanic ash have this effect and allow for a more direct, more reliable way of temporarily sealing the well, or at least slowing the flow to a trickle, while a more complex technologically advanced and permanent seal were devised?

Child prodigy, confirmed genius, and Drexel University engingeering PhD candidate, Alia Sabur, has proposed a very simple, very bold solution that could work to plug the blown-out BP well 5,000 feet beneath the Gulf of Mexico, depending on the structural specifics of the well itself.

According to a report yesterday in the NY Post, Sabur believes it would be possible to insert a narrower pipe, surrounded by tires welded to it, so as to be airtight, but with an inflation mechanism built in to the well-plugging system. Hundreds or even thousands of tires could be included, to maximize the seal potential.

Once the system is in place, and the tires inflated, the flow of oil and natural gas should be stopped, and a flow-control valve inside the smaller pipe could be opened or closed, to regulate pressure and/or extract oil if necessary or advisable.

Thanks to Steven Brower for sharing this discussion on plugging the well: “How about pouring cement (concrete) to plug the mouth of that spill ? Cement is heavier than water so it will sink, and it hardens naturally under water. The Romans poured cement underwater to build Herod’s port in Caesarea, Israel, some two thousand years ago, and it still holds firmly.” [Click here for more...]

From ABC News: “[Kevin] Costner has been funding a team of scientists for 15 years in hopes of developing a technology to clean up massive oil spills, and his research has created a powerful centrifuge that he claims can separate oil from water and dump the oil into a holding tank.”

In a recent conversation with my friend with some knowledge about this, he mentioned that the company has no intention of capping that well. They consider it something like a $75B asset that cost $7-8B to construct. To cap it by way of a “Junk Shot” is to lose the well. Many suggestions for stopping the flow are reasonable, but would destroy the potential to open the well again. Apparently the company is only considering methods that will ensure continued access to the oil, hence the delay. There is a reliance on public ignorance and an interest in diverting some of the consternation over to the Federal Authorities as they try to work with the company, which is pursuing its interests primarily.

I posted this document on my Facebook page at the end of April. I will try to add the photos here but if I can’t, then they can be found at: http://browerpropulsionlab.com/downloads/ as a .zip file with the words Deepwater Horizon in the title.

The following text (written by an anonymous source) accompanied the photos:

You may have heard the news in the last two days about the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig which caught fire, burned for two days, then sank in 5,000 ft of water in the Gulf of Mexico. There are still 11 men missing, and they are not expected to be found.

The rig belongs to Transocean, the world’s biggest offshore drilling contractor. The rig was originally contracted through the year 2013 to BP and was working on BP’s Macondoexploration well when the fire broke out. The rig costs about $500,000 per day to contract. The full drilling spread, with helicopters and support vessels and other services, will cost closer to $1,000,000 per day to operate in the course of drilling for oil and gas. The rig cost about $350,000,000 to build in 2001 and would cost at least double that to replace today.

The rig represents the cutting edge of drilling technology. It is a floating rig, capable of working in up to 10,000 ft water depth. The rig is not moored; It does not use anchors because it would be too costly and too heavy to suspend this mooring load from the floating structure. Rather, a triply-redundant computer system uses satellite positioning to control powerful thrusters that keep the rig on station within a few feet of its intended location, at all times. This is called Dynamic Positioning.

The rig had apparently just finished cementing steel casing in place at depths exceeding 18,000 ft. The next operation was to suspend the well so that the rig could move to its next drilling location, the idea being that a rig would return to this well later in order to complete the work necessary to bring the well into production.

It is thought that somehow formation fluids —oil /gas— got into the wellbore and were undetected until it was too late to take action. With a floating drilling rig setup, because it moves with the waves, currents, and winds, all of the main pressure control equipment sits on the seabed — the uppermost unmoving point in the well. This pressure control equipment — the Blowout Preventers, or “BOP’s” as they’re called, are controlled with redundant systems from the rig. In the event of a serious emergency, there are multiple Panic Buttons to hit, and even fail-safe Deadmansystems that should be automatically engaged when something of this proportion breaks out. None of them were aparentlyactivated, suggesting that the blowout was especially swift to escalate at the surface. The flames were visible up to about 35 miles away. Not the glow –the flames. They were 200 –300 ft high.

All of this will be investigated and it will be some months before all of the particulars are known. For now, it is enough to say that this marvel of modern technology, which had been operating with an excellent safety record, has burned up and sunk taking souls with it.

The well still is apparently flowing oil, which is appearing at the surface as a slick. They have been working with remotely operated vehicles, or ROV’s which are essentially tethered miniature submarines with manipulator arms and other equipment that can perform work underwater while the operator sits on a vessel. These are what were used to explore the Titanic, among other things. Every floating rig has one on board and they are in constant use. In this case, they are deploying ROV’sfrom dedicated service vessels. They have been trying to close the well in using a specialized port on the BOP’sand a pumping arrangement on their ROV’s. They have been unsuccessful so far. Specialized pollution control vessels have been scrambled to start working the spill, skimming the oil up.

In the coming weeks they will move in at least one other rig to drill a fresh well that will intersect the blowing one at its pay zone. They will use technology that is capable of drilling from a floating rig, over 3 miles deep to an exact specific point in the earth –with a target radius of just a few feet plus or minus. Once they intersect their target, a heavy fluid will be pumped that exceeds the formation’s pressure, thus causing the flow to cease and rendering the well safe at last. It will take at least a couple of months to get this done, bringing all available technology to bear. It will be an ecological disaster if the well flows all of the while; Optimistically, it could bridge off downhole.

It’s a sad day when something like this happens to any rig, but even more so when it happens to something on the cutting edge of our capabilities. The photos that follow show the progression of events over the 36 hours from catching fire to sinking: download photos in .zip format file.

Here is a link to another forum where this is being discussed:

http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/55402/Has-anyone-entered-a-suggestion-to-Deepwater-Horizon?frmtrk=CR4digest

An important proposal for preventing future recurrences of this disaster, and for helping the entire Gulf of Mexico region to recover economically, would be to invest heavily in renewable resources, specifically solar power, wind power and undersea wave power.

The governments of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, could all be investing heavily in moving to a production-for-export renewable power-generation sector, for which they could win funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

This transition should have begun long ago, but could now clearly get into full swing, if public pressure motivates politicians to act. Individual scrutiny should be put on each and every politician with some role in deciding development, environment and entrepreneurial funding, tax policy and incentives, to determine how pro-active they have been, or plan to be, on shifting to renewables.

UPDATE: On rebuilding the Gulf coast economy by way of major investment in clean, renewable energy production: http://www.casavaria.com/cafesentido/2010/06/09/6425/

In response to Denver, we have not seen any concerted effort, at least not on a large scale, in connection with the Deepwater Horizon disaster, to use fabrics or absorbents to collect undersea oil. There are techniques available that allow for the use of highly absorbent materials, including human and animal hair or down, but it is unclear how these methods would be deployed on a scale as large as the current (still spreading) disaster. Ideas for the best non-chemical absorbents, how to mass-produce, optimize and deploy, are welcome…

US Coast Guard setting up panel to examine best ideas for cleaning up the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Bloomberg reports: “‘There has been a lot of concern that there are significant ideas not getting full voice,’ [Coast Guard Commander Howard] Wright said today in a telephone interview. ‘The government wanted to make sure that all the best technology is being applied and there was good oversight of that process.’ The new group will include representatives from the Coast Guard, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Interior, Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Agriculture, Wright said.”

Maybe the craziest idea so far: the “nuclear option”… there has been mounting speculation that a nuclear device could be dropped deep into the ruptured BP oil well, then detonated to effectively melt the surrounding geology, permanently sealing the well. The environmental fallout could be devastating, and such a detonation has never, truly, been a “controlled” explosion, as so many believe.

With one after another BP failure, the US government has now responded, with one official saying bluntly “It’s crazy”. According to the New York Times: “Government and private nuclear experts agreed that using a nuclear bomb would be not only risky technically, with unknown and possibly disastrous consequences from radiation, but also unwise geopolitically — it would violate arms treaties that the United States has signed and championed over the decades and do so at a time when President Obama is pushing for global nuclear disarmament.”

The nuke is not our best option, clearly. Let’s keep them coming guys…

The official Deepwater Horizon Reponse page includes a special forum for suggestions. As of today, over 20,000 suggestions for how to close the well have been submitted, and BP has reportedly been evaluating them through an internally established review process.

The suggestions are sorted as: “Not possible or not feasible in these conditions”, “Already considered/ planned”, or “Feasible”. According to the response site, “The feasible ideas are then escalated for a more detailed review, potential testing and field application. So far, around 100 ideas are under further review.”

The Joint Information Center also includes an electronic information submission form, to deliver the technical specifics, including attachments of up to 2MB.

The official response site is operated by the Deepwater Horizon Response Unified Command, which is comprised of the following corporate and governmental entities: BP, Transocean, USCG, the Minerals Management Service, NOAA, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Department of the Interior, the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, the Department of State, USGS, CDC, OSHA.

SAND BURMS in Louisiana: Are burms a real solution? I keep hearing they are “necessary to keep the oil out”, but some environmentalists seem to think burms are necessary only if nothing else is done, and even then, will not be a real “barrier”, but ultimately will be more like a filter. Does anyone know if this is a reasonable way to spend time and money when other options exist?