The Outhouse - The Greatest Comic Book Forum

by **Strict31** » Tue May 11, 2010 3:07 am

thefourthman wrote:I only assume two things with that 1. that getting the oil is still a priority
and
2. nothing when a corporation or the us government is involved is done simply. the simple solution would have been to have the damn safety valves. the simple solution to hiring people to do things on boats in the gulf waters was to hire the fishermen who couldn't do anything else, but they brought in other people for two weeks. I would guess they lowered it down saw it was clogged and gave up. Seems to me if the problem is ice crystals you warm the metal up and then lower it so it melts the ice...

I'm sure they want the oil, but it really is a matter of needing a release valve. If you keep filling a balloon with water, even after it's stretched as far as it will go, eventually the fucker pops.

They can't just cap the pipe, because eventually the pressure will build up.

And yeah, safety valves would have been a nice touch. Maybe Doc Brown and Marty can take care of that shit when they take the deLorean back into the past. They've gone a bit past the "would have beens" at this point.

But that's not gonna keep physics from causing methane build-ups when you go drilling in the ground from petroleum; it'll just keep shit from exploding. Best way to avoid it is to stop relying on oil for energy. Maybe use nuclear power. I'm sure nothing bad could ever happen with that.

by **MrBlack** » Tue May 11, 2010 7:47 am

MoneyMelon wrote:Like somebody's gonna say "Just get a big cork" and all the engineers slap their foreheads and say "Shit! Why didn't we think of that!"

"Wait you fool, corks float!"

by **kingbobb** » Tue May 11, 2010 7:59 am

the well is about 9000 feet deep. That's nearly 2 miles of water. To put it in perspective, the Russian sub that sank a few years ago was in 300 FEET of water, and was very difficult to get to. Modern manned subs have maximum depths of around 1000 feet. This well is 9x as deep as that. The pressure at that depth, and the extreme cold, is what is making this a challenge. Concrete would likely float before it reached that depth. The water is so cold that some of the gasses escaping from the breaches crystallize.

In some ways, deep water drilling is harder than rocket science.

by **Derm** » Tue May 11, 2010 8:40 am

The article in Time says that there is a safety valve that should have stopped this from happening but it's not working for some reason.
They have robot subs down trying to activate it but so far it hasn't worked.
Regarding the heat the metal first and stick it in the water idea, I'm pretty sure by the time anything gets down that deep it's not going to retain any of that heat.
When the ice blocking things up first came up as a problem they were speculating that they could build and attach heaters to the cap but sounded like they couldn't be sure if that would even work.

by **Spidey-Man** » Tue May 11, 2010 8:44 am

these things happen. im not concerned.

by **CountD** » Tue May 11, 2010 8:45 am

Man of Steel wrote:these things happen. im not concerned.

Why should you be? after all, it's just the environment.

by **Spidey-Man** » Tue May 11, 2010 8:52 am

the earth survives. it survived asteroids and ice ages, dinosaurs and man. it'll be ok.

im not going to cry over dead fish. it's the cost of living the lifestyle we do. that occasionally these things will happen.

Do we stop driving cars because it does FAR more environmental damage and kills 40,000 people every single yr? No. acceptable losses, apparently.

same with this. same with anything.

by **CountD** » Tue May 11, 2010 8:54 am

Man of Steel wrote:the earth survives. it survived asteroids and ice ages, dinosaurs and man. it'll be ok.

im not going to cry over dead fish. it's the cost of living the lifestyle we do. that occasionally these things will happen.

Do we stop driving cars because it does FAR more environmental damage and kills 40,000 people every single yr? No. acceptable losses, apparently.

same with this. same with anything.

by **Spidey-Man** » Tue May 11, 2010 8:58 am

i''m glad there gone too./ :lol:

My lifestyle makes me happy. That takes oil and no indians. ;-)

by **CountD** » Tue May 11, 2010 8:59 am

Man of Steel wrote:i''m glad there gone too./ My lifestyle makes me happy. That takes oil and no indians.

you realize that this is an american indian comic book message board?

by **Spidey-Man** » Tue May 11, 2010 9:02 am

CountD wrote:you realize that this is an american indian comic book message board?

I didnt see the video poker.

by **achilles** » Tue May 11, 2010 9:24 am

Here's the deal. The ice crystals aren't water ice, they are gas that forms into ice because of the pressure. The threatened to float the hat thingee up off the ocean floor, (at around a mile deep).

The new plan is to use a pipe within a pipe, the inner pipe would carry the oil to the surface, the outer pipe would pump warm water down into the hat thingee, melting the gas ice. What happens to the gas then, I don't know, nor do I know why it won't then also float the hat thingee off the ocean floor---I assume that they pump it out as well.

There was a safety valve system, but it didn't work because it wasn't designed for the pressure they encountered at the well from the gas mixed into the oil at that depth---they simply had never done anything that deep and weren't expecting it. Though they should have been, it's not like it wasn't unforseeable.

by **Chesscub** » Tue May 11, 2010 9:50 am

And if the Mineral Management Service under the last administration wasn't more worried about getting their cocaine and sex, maybe more effort would've been put into keeping this shit inspected and put together properly when it was built.