Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Published on Thursday, July 15, 2010 by WKRG.com
BP's Live Stream From Sub at Oil Geyser Site
Watch live streaming video from wkrg_oil_spill at livestream.com
Comments are closed
181 Comments so far
Show AllYou can view the vid "straight from the horse's mouth" here:
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk
_english/homepage/STAGING/local_assets/bp_homepage/html/rov_s
tream.html
'straight from the horse's mouth'.............
it was more like straight from the 'factory farm'...............
all i saw was some guys putting up some metal barriers, then the camera seemed to dip down and go underwater. we had a few seconds of nasty business, then the camera concentrated on what looked like a 'petrified penis' with barnacles..............
i gave up at this point.................wtf was that????
It is hard to watch. One minute's worth is a nightmare.
One month's worth and counting?
Buck: I agree -- it's very difficult to watch.
Heck of job -- who's in charge?
It is awful to watch. It would even be worse if there were something in the feed to show the scale. How wide are these plumes at the top of the video?
This should be playing on a large screen on the White House lawn, right next to the organic garden ......
Brilliant!
They should also show it next to the "Doomsday Clock" at the U. of Chicago (you know, the one started in 1947 to depict how close we are to nuclear obliteration).
That indeed was brilliant, wish I had thought of it
wonderful photo op, we care, yadda yadda
Maybe Salazar rubbing crude oil on Michelle lying out in the sun...
Organic garden, ha ha ha. Yes, his wife plants the garden while Obomba picks a Monsanto shill for Secretary of Agriculture.
Yes, Michelle plants an organic garden (so did I) while her husband hires a Monsanto shill to be the Secretary of Agriculture. Sorry about the duplicate comment. I thought the first one failed to register.
The initial reports from this and another site were right on:
BP did indeed punch a hole into hell, and this video shows what no one can coverup this time, the truth.
no hydro-carbons are escaping what you are actually seeing is the mud that we are pumping in escaping out again you see--it just looks like there is still a lot of pressure escaping from the well--but actually that is an visual effect that you get from a mile down and besides you can clearly see that the color is not the same black color it was before we tried to trick you and has nothing to do with the new more toxic dispersant we had to use--we still have 2 million gallons of that crap they banned on us 10 years ago--oh well we can use it again next month when no ones looking.
As of 6:07 p.m. (18:07 local time (CT) as indicated in the feed itself) the flow of brown fluid has ceased. This seems like very good news.
Or is it? I'm not sure what the camera sees is what was leaking the most before. Is it?
I just began looking at the live feed. All I see is a rectangular area enclosed by a steel cage/ence with some robotic equipment hanging above and to the side of it. Is that the area where the geyser had been? Or is the geyser still flowing, outside of the frame of this particular camera. Aside: The photography is actually pretty amazing. The lighting must me enormously powerful to show things so clearly -- which means of course they have not shown us everything.
OOPS!!! Robotic arm waves, and minisub, presumably, with mounted camera pulls away from the cage... passing over some type of 'hi tech' vertical structure... just black water ahead of the camera right now... seems to be following a cable or a rope... can't tell if movement is vertical or horizontal... definitely following a cable to another location... veering off... hovering over a big yellow box...
fascinating -- they are not showing us the gusher location so at this moment we don't know what's really happening
ramble, mutter, mumble, msnbc just said we won't know for another 48 hours if the well is permanently plugged
Because the mud is all blowing up and out, best guess, none of it is in the well. BP reportedly stopped operations, "for a while". My assertion is that they're too gutless to call this experiment a failure that never had a chance. Their mud (full of heavy metals) isn't heavy enough so it's all getting blown out. Their "golf balls" junk shot that they'll try next are probably also too lightweight and unstreamlined to overcome the outflow, but they could actually work if BP (or hopefully the military will take the operation over, hey Mister President, your next term hangs on this one decision.) dropped a few hundred 10 foot long, pencil thin, Teflon-coated heavy metal rods down the well. But BP almost wants to fail! They sure don't want to ask outsiders in. Secrecy and lies when possible!
The blowing mud is from the high pressure mud-pumping, not the pressure from the well. The BOP doesn't work, so they fully expected to waste most of the mud out of the holes in the crumpled riser while mud is slowly forced down the hole. It is the weight of the mud itself that counteracts the pressure and shuts the hole in. It is a balancing act - too much mud, or mud weighted too much and you lose the mud down the hole and the blowout resumes.
I worked on oil rigs, so I'm a familiar with this stuff.
So, if this is so, and I respect your experience, why is there mud still flowing out, if they have temporarily stopped, so I understand, the pumping operation?
Could you explain?
tungsten rods would be ideal
so if a "topkill" is the standard in such cases (that aren't freakin 5000+ feet deep) why is it 37 days into this before it was attempted?
besides criminal incompetence and sociopathic leadership?
instead the bp, transocean and halliburton ceo's still sleep soundly in their king sized beds -
and in the case of halliburton - probably being massaged by a teenaged east european prostitute forced into sex slavery in dubai....
maybe someone can tell me - after all the transgressions by halliburton why are they still receiving no-bid contracts from the supposed "liberal" obama administration?
Why wasn't it tried before? Maybe because if the mud, followed by concrete, actually worked, the well head would be of no more use to BP? The previous efforts were all aimed at capping the leak, not plugging the well, so that BP could still use it again?
This, to me, is the most damning evidence, if any more is needed, that this admin. thought more of BP than it did of the Gulf .....
>>
so if a "topkill" is the standard in such cases (that aren't freakin 5000+ feet deep) why is it 37 days into this before it was attempted?
<<
I don't know but my speculation is that they wanted to save the output of the well first if they could, hence the first big iron box 'dome' with piping on top to extract the oil after placement of the dome over the geyser. Then the attempt to stick a smaller pipe inside the geyser pipe and siphon off the oil but that got only 20% or so and the geyser continued. FINALLY, a top kill is attempted.
Maybe a top-killed well on land can still be later repaired and put into production. I don't know. But how are you going to attempt repair of a top-killed well under 5000 feet of water without risking another disaster?
It cost them a billion bucks to bring that well in. Add to that the loss of a half-billion dollar floating drilling rig. It all boils down to dollar bills and economic sense to 'save' the well and screw the environment, because they know in the end they are too big to fail and the taxpayers will bail them out. Sure BP has promised they will make everyone and everything whole again. Just like Exxon has with Prince William Sound after running their Exxon Valdez freighter onto a reef.
Lately we hear of a new underwater LAKE, not a "plume", 22 miles long, 6 miles wide and a thousand feet deep wandering about under the surface of the gulf, waiting its turn to get into the heavy currents. And hurricane season approaches. Couldn't these 'plumes' be siphoned up by tankers? Has anyone tried? That's simple pumping equipment and basic sonar, no?
It's goddamn worrisome.
Keep consuming useless crap folks, we need oil to produce and distribute it. Don't recycle all you can. Unless....
Lose one of your cars. Lose your reach for the hot water tap. Turn off the goddamn shower when you soap up. Have *half* the year where you are neither heating nor cooling. Boo hoo, can't live in the real world??? Are we screwed? You think this is the last of these? Are we just bacteria in a petri dish, are we in control of anything at all?
"The way that I live, determines the way my people survive"
Graham Nash
Drill Baby Drill
It's goddamn worrisome.
Keep consuming useless crap folks, we need oil to produce and distribute it. Don't recycle all you can. Unless....
Lose one of your cars. Lose your reach for the hot water tap. Turn off the goddamn shower when you soap up. Have *half* the year where you are neither heating nor cooling. Boo hoo, can't live in the real world??? Are we screwed? You think this is the last of these? Are we just bacteria in a petri dish, are we in control of anything at all?
"The way that I live, determines the way my people survive"
Graham Nash
Drill Baby Drill
yeah, right.
I hope CD keeps this live stream video prominent on their site for some time, this is the best running commentary on the state of the country I have seen on this, or just about any, site .....
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth many more .....
Even better views and commentary of the blowout can be had at The Oil Drum.com
It's the site the oil industry insiders and deckhands comment on.
And they are saying that this thing is out of control, the 'Top Kill' was a bust. Flow rate is unchanged, and all the mud was basically pumped into the oil stream and out into the ocean.
Actually, though I find the written commentary here interesting, the "commentary" I was referring to in my post was the unwritten commentary of the video itself. Words can say no more than this .....
right aquifier, it should be being broadcast 24/7 on every tv station around the world until they 'fix' it.................
Why is the picture so clear? I would have expected the waters around this blowout, I mean 'spill' to be quite murky at the least?
Found this buried in a comment on HuffPo yesterday. I really appreciated this reporting by Rachel Maddow. Deja vu, anyone:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show#37368377
I don't know the context of this, but in one of my walk-bys while NPR was on this morning I heard a sentence by Obama to the tune that this lead was something we haven't experienced before -- or words to that effect. After having watched this video yesterday, it was a WTF moment.
That leak was 200 feet under the water, whereas this one is 5,000 feet.
Another great must-view video to add to the collection with the Booming 101, which I hope everyone has had a chance to view.
Now it's showing a semi-close up of some valves and such with a robotic arm tightening bolts. I am still wondering why the picture is and was so clear, even when spewing whatever. Most aquariums have more sediment than this 'deep water.' Some think they fudged the 'moon walk' I am starting to wonder about this? Can any one explain?
Let's cut the chase with this. I'm sick of seeing the words "BP's Live Steam", etc. Let's get some other cameras down there to verify all this. They found the Titanic, let's find the real leak. This site most likely isn't even the main leak. We all know that BP has been lying about everything from the start. When other cameras finally verify the lie, lock all the BP execs up immediately. Hell, toss in "heckofajob" Salazar as well.
It seems common sense when you see stuff, whatever color, still spewing out - that the operation isn't working.
Where is the main oil rig that burned and sank? Wouldn't that be over the leaking well? Wouldn't there be hundreds of feet of burnt and tangled metal that would be impossible to get through? What kinds of toxic materials went down with the rig? There just seems to be too many unanswered questions, or actually too many unasked questions. I guess big corporations win, no matter what country they're stationed in.
This is the latest on The Oil Drum.com :
http://www.theoildrum.com/
You have to plug all the holes!
When the rig went over the TWO strings of pipe severed off! One went to the riser, the other to the BOP. They pump down the pipe (top side) it comes back up the casing (backside) Top kill is when they pump down the pipe.
It comes back up the casing outside the pipe. This is why it still spewing out!
You have to pump mud down both sides with a GOOD SEAL!
~~~~~~~~~~
You won't want to hear my wild idea. Blow the wellhead off, let the pipe blow out like spaghetti, then all you have to do is cement the 36" casing with the pipe gone.
Build a structure on the sea floor for the pipe coming down from the ship to stabilize it, feed and rotate the pipe as they work on the well.
Get your oil tools made and ready. Clean around the well head below the BOP and set shaped charges to shear the casing.
If the pipe does not come out you have to run a tool down to shear it down-hole. Set a 36" plug with inline valve and pour cement on top.
The oil has to go through 7" pipe opening at the bottom of the well, so that will restrict the flow at the top where the tools are being used.
Sometime ya just gotta get wild with it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Feel free to paste this idea to OIL PATCH blogs and see the reaction!
~~~~~~~~~~
You won't want to hear my wild idea. Blow the wellhead off, let the pipe blow out like spaghetti, then all you have to do is cement the 36" casing with the pipe gone.
~~~~~~~~~~
Why not? It's a desperate move, but better than trying a nuke as some have suggested.
Hey, SaboCat, if yer there, what do you think?
If I understand what you're saying, NMBill, we'd wind up with a thirty-six inch pipe (casing?) positioned vertically and protruding from the gulf floor and still flowing oil out into the gulf? Would the pressure inside the pipe be lower because of the larger diameter and therefore 'easier' to work against when trying to plug the flow? Would we be attempting to cement in place a 36-inch 'plug' with a valve in the center that would still allow oil production? Not that that is a bad thing if the procedure makes the uncontrolled flow 'easier' to stop. What would stop the well from blowing the casing out like spaghetti as well? Obviously I'm clueless and defer to those who have been there.
You want the pipe out of the hole!
The valve stays open when you run the plug, that way pressure doesn't build up and interfere with what your are doing. Once the plug is set, oil flows to the ship once the cement sets; you shut the valve.
I've done more research, Half way down the well there is a plug. The pipe string stops there. The plug has to be leaking or damaged because it's not plugging.
Below this plug, they have a blowout, believed to be cause by a bad cement job. The pressure is getting past the plug and making it to the surface.
Crude oil is like flat soda pop. It's got fizz. Think of how the bubbles expand as they rise. Even though they are pumping mud down, as it comes back up with the gas, the gas expands making the mud light and defeating the purpose of it.
They have to circulate under pressure to squeeze the gas back into the formation. They need a good seal to do that.
We are looking a the riser pipe spewing, where it's bent over on top of the BOP with tears in it. This riser pipe lays over and runs through the Mississippi mud and comes up where we see the crooked pipe spewing out stuff.
They say the mud there is really deep!
The BOP does have a broken line coming out the side of the BOP. If you pump down the riser pipe, it returns up the casing and comes out the side of the BOP. Vice-Verse.
The need to smash those bubbles down and circulate, it's like a diver getting nitrogen in the blood. The gas will be forced back where it came from.
It takes extreme pressure! But not too much or you fracture the formation further. It takes time to soak in.
I'm sure they are using expansion devices to make a seal, not a very good one at that.
hey galen, wanted to say thanks for posting this link. these guys have been indispensable. with so many non-expert experts out there pontificating, those guys are a refreshing change of pace.
thanks again.
I think there are two major escape points for the oil/gas mixture. I think they are showing us one at a time, probably the lesser of the two.
Yes, I think the current video shows the secondary leaks from the point where the riser tube bent over from the top of the BOP. About 25% of the leak *was* coming from these cracks before (when the estimate was 70,000 bbl/day from the end of the tube and 25,000 bbl/day from the secondary leaks about the BOP.
I don't think the rig would go straight down. The giant pontoons probably still held some air causing the whole rig to sink a little slower than it would have otherwise, giving it time to drift horizontally as it sank. Maybe. Or not. But what happened to the video showing an apparently horizontal pipe spewing oil/gas horizontally with the flow immediately turning vertical? What are we seeing now that has an apparent three or four 'jets' of material flowing out of what appears to be some sort of damaged tank or pipe, whatever? When did the gross appearance of the view change?
Did you see how it tipped over? That caused the pipe to bow, it severed the pipe! I believe they did the garden hose fix shown on you tube.
What everyone keeps forgetting is that BP exists to make a profit.
If they 'kill' this hole, choke it off completely, they lose billions in potential profits.
So we get to play the waiting game for the next 3-6 months to see if the relief wells can be drilled and work.
To me it looks like a soda can lying on its side. A jagged hole or holes have been cut in the side of the can. The contents are blowing out of the can as though it had been shaken just before the holes were cut. But there is nothing that reveals a sense of scale. How long is my 'soda can' from left to right for example?
This is the riser pipe where it bends over from the top of the BOP. The riser pipe, when not bent is 22" diameter outside, 21" inside (1/2" thick pipe).
The horizonal leak, they arn't showing anymore...
They first reported three leaks in the risor, they capped
the end leak, it was easy as there was little pressure or
volume.
then they kept showing us the horizonal leak, then for
a few days they showed the cracked leaks that we are seeing
now that are close to the BOP., then they went back showing
the horizonal main leak until top kill.
It appears that the "crack leaks" we are watching are close
to where they are suppossed to be pumping mud.
It also appears that the leaks are much, much worse than when
they originally showed them to us.
They may never show the horizonal leak again.
To top it off, with as much as they have lied, none of these
videos may be what is really going on
This is too depressing to watch....it literally means the complete end to our beautiful gulf coast, the marshes, as well as every single living organism therein, beginning with plankton all the way up to the greatest--sharks and dolphins--what we need is to eliminate the use of all oil (and coal, even natural gas) NOW--imported, obtained through war, or otherwise.
RIGHT!!!!
ain't it the truth. I been thinking about all the creatures since this started, and kinda surprised nobody was talking about them. Amy had a guy on Democracy Now last night who was not an oil man, but a wildlife guy. He was too angry to cry, but did tell us the low down about how it is. It is too hard to bear. so many critters loved that gulf- came there to breed. even if they did not live there. now the whole ocean gonna be empty.
I hate the fact that "the Exxon Valdez" has become a unit of measure as in "the most conservative estimate puts the amount of oil spilled at three times that of the Exxon Valdez." Too bad "Valdezes" is so hard to say. May I suggest "EV's" as in "middling estimates suggest 15 EV's have already been released?"