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‘Top Kill’ Effort Must Succeed or Else…

By Rick Ackerman Posted on May 28, 2010, 2:03 am EDT Last Updated May 28, 2010, 2:56 am EDT

We may all be breathing a sigh of relief by the time you read this, but it remained uncertain at press time whether British Petroleum’s efforts to plug a massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico would succeed. Earlier in the day, the company began pumping a heavy fluid called “mud” into the damaged well, but the process was temporarily halted because the high-powered flow of oil and gas from the well was causing too much of the mud to escape.  BP said such delays had been expected but that they hoped to resume the sealing operation by late tonight.  The effort came amidst reports that oil has been gushing from the well at a rate much greater than what BP had first estimated. The company originally said that about 5,000 barrels of oil were escaping per day, but the latest estimates suggest that the true number is somewhere between 12,000 and 19,000 barrels. Converted into gallons, that implies that as much as 760,000 gallons of oil per day are flowing into the Gulf.

Oil spill 'top kill' procedure diagram

Last week, we linked at Rick’s Picks a very scary article from rense.com that said the “top kill” procedure being used to plug the well was the world’s last hope to get the disaster under control.  The author, who sounded like he knew a thing or two about drilling platforms, explained that abrasive material contained in the gushing oil could eventually widen the well-hole so that virtually unlimited quantities of oil and explosive methane would be released into the water and atmosphere. We would strongly suggest that you read the article to understand what is at stake if BP’s effort fails. The only alternative at that point would be to drill an additional well to relieve the pressure.  This procedure is already under way, but it will still take another two months to complete. During that time, nature could take a catastrophic course on its own, according to the author, who was identified only by the initials “SHR”.  If BP reports that the “top kill” attempt has failed, it will be grave news indeed for Planet Earth.

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  • JPM May 31, 2010, 10:06 am

    I hope everyone has followed Rick’s strong recommendation and read thoroughly the anonymous piece. It seems that if the problem isn’t really solved
    and not just fixed, we have in front of us something at least as serious if not more than Chernobyl. It could
    leave us all with no need of silly gloomy predictions for 2012.

  • Edward0 May 30, 2010, 2:17 am

    I share the reservations of those regarding the source of
    this report. Having said that, Top Kill appears to have failed.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/29/AR2010052900561.html?hpid=topnews

  • Gary Paul May 29, 2010, 11:03 pm

    Don’t oil leaks like this one occur naturally from time to time? (i.e. seismic activity, etc.)

  • SDavid May 29, 2010, 8:42 pm

    The underlying difference (with respect to fm’s comments) is that the Exxon Valdez had a finite supply of oil and when it was depleted, that was the end of it. It provided mother nature the opportunity to deal with the oil spill right away. The situation confronting the gulf is that the oil coming out of the well could carry on for a long time.

    This is something that needs to be dealt with, and now.

  • Esther May 28, 2010, 7:27 pm

    This article would be more credible if a) The author actually had a name; and b) It did not appear on the same Rense page with the revelation that the JOOOOOOOOOOOZE control the gold market.

    Other than that, Missus Kennedy, how was the motorcade?

    &&&&&&

    I have linked only the one article concerning the oil leak at Rense.com — but yes, you are right, Rense’s web site reflects a pathological obsession with the supposed Zionist Conspiracy to Control the World. RA

  • gary leibowitz May 28, 2010, 4:46 pm

    We are s short sighted people. With all the talent in the universe no one thought to ask the question what if?
    If they did ask then the people hearing didn’t want to listen. We go thru life making the most idiotic decisions that affect a planet but we only see this condition in hindsight. What looks suicidal today was thought of as a actuarially accepted practice.

    Whis same principal can be applied to the stock market.

    • Robert May 28, 2010, 5:59 pm

      Agree with Gary-

      Those with the intellectual capacity to ask “what if” and to project the potentially disastrous endpoints of bad decisions are the ones that the less intellectual (who are in power exclusively due to an overwhelming population bias) will come back to rely on to solve the problems when the $#|+ hits the fan.

      I guarantee that there are BP Engineers who knew (and documented) that this well was improperly rigged- and I also guarantee that those warnings were unheeded by the company, and by the company’s regulators, and by the market- a market that probably rewarded BP with higher share price for their “innovative ability” to extract oil at lower cost…

      This is another instance where free markets and capitalism will be distorted by the political left to look like greed factories. It is not greed that drives the few to cease and desist when their warnings go unheeded by the many… rather it is the fear of being singled out and ridiculed.

      The problem is one of self regulation, not governmental regulation.

      But, can you blame the lone Engineer who goes away silent after his warnings go unheeded by the power trust? Nobody wants to be the Boy who cried “Wolf”.

      Would a person choose what’s right against the preservation of the salary that maintains their McMansion and their wives’ Buick Enclave payments? To do so requires a strength of character that ultimately leads to Revolution.

      Benjamin Franklin was so right when he said “I do not suffer fools gladly”

    • Celty May 29, 2010, 6:16 am

      Bravo Gary.
      The Titanic was unsinkable. No one foresaw the collapse of the World Trade Towers (planes maybe, but not the collapse), and we have lost 2 space shuttles.
      Might I suggest a new term. ‘Criminality of Arrogance’.
      I also agree with Robert, that it appears or will be found that BP greed spawned this. I have already read rumblings that there was an arguement just prior to the inceident concerning the removal of the special drilling mud for reuse and replacing it with much lighter and denser seawater.

  • Steve May 28, 2010, 4:18 pm

    How about this – the department of the government overseeing oil well drilling is managed in the same way the SEC is managed, ie: do a ‘good job’ at the SEC get paid off by Goldman with a multimillion dollar banking job. Take that to the next logical step – Obama and Bush are the problem, not a solution. And finally – look in the mirror because the reflection looking back put Obama in office, and that same reflection refuses to obey United States Statute I if one didn’t vote directly for Obama.

  • Rich May 28, 2010, 4:11 pm

    Typo: as much as 798,000 gallons

  • Rich May 28, 2010, 3:43 pm

    Kudlow making hay of a different sort pointing out BP not only fuels the Pentagon but trades with Iran illegally.

    Meanwhile, the USD PnF target is 112…

    http://stockcharts.com/charts/gallery.html?$usd

  • fm May 28, 2010, 3:43 pm

    Give me a break from the pollyannas. After the Exon Valdez there was a record harvest of fish. Today the area is long back to normal. Like duh. Oil is a Gaia product. Good ole Mother Earth learned how to eat oil a billion years ago. Red Adair solved the blow out problem decades ago on the plains of Texas. The only ones to have problems today -BP- are those that go cheap and don’t have an “acoustic switch” on the cut off. Learn and move on… FM

    • Puddin May 31, 2010, 2:17 pm

      Ridiculous. The Valdez was a fart in the wind compared to this. the valdez was a spill from a finite source, not an almost impossible to cap gushing oil well a mile under the ocean.
      Better get grip on reality or ‘Mother’ will eat you, sooner rather than later. Idiot.

  • Benjamin May 28, 2010, 12:03 pm

    For a better understanding as to where I’m coming from, this short eassay by one Willis Eschenbach is a good place to start…

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/31/climate-caution-and-precaution/

    note: I don’t know that Mr Eschenbach would agree, but I think he would more than not. But since I don’t know, I can’t say I speak on his behalf.

    I rather like the idea of using hay to assist in the cleanup, even it means that people will have to bear the costs for perhaps decades to come. Hay is going to be relatively more affordable, certainly seems to work, and doesn’t present any more additional risks that we can’t guage as of yet. Perfect example of the precautionary principle in action, imv. Part of the worry is that North America will be ruined by oil rains. Well, since we needed to keep the fish and the people cleaner anyway, and hay apparently works, we could deal with that potential problem as we deal with existing problems. Not eliminate, perhaps, but cope with it over time at least. Much better than doing things we can’t be certain of, imo.

    About the gasses, I don’t know, as I’m not chemist or engineer. But my instincts tell me that because the ice became a problem, the methane/hydrate freezing at those depths as it did with the dome they tried to put in place…. Hmmm…. But assuming there was a problem to deal with, I’m sure a realistic, relatively less expensive and less risky means could be used to cope with that too. If some hillbilly in overalls can show us how to deal with the oil, or some Hollywood director build a machine to seperate oil and water… Why on earth can’t a problem like methane be dealt with as well?

    It of course would be better if BP/government succeed in plugging it up. Again, I do not stress no action at all. It would be better not to strain already limited capital in laying down hay and however we might deal with gasses (broken window fallacy, we should not commit the error of!). But if they do not succeed, I don’t think we’re doomed either. Not geologically, anyway.

    Win lose or draw, what I’m really (yes, REALLY) hoping and praying for is for people to cope with this despite what governments and big business have thrown at us. It would SOOOO further errode their credibility, and how is that going for them as it were? Yeah… dum dee dum dum…

    Look for silver linings, folks!

  • Benjamin May 28, 2010, 10:53 am

    Rense. Ah, that conjures up memories for me, it does! Suffice to say, tempting as it is to do so, I won’t commit the logical (and ironic) fallacy of ad argumentum Hiterlum, and dismiss the whole because of the part (rense.com is a lot like one Bob Moriarty, ie, for those who know that name).

    We do have a very real situation here, and it potentially could get much worse. However, I hasten to add a couple points. Off the top of my head, three things occurred to me, both as this has continued to unfold from day one (well, more like seven, once I caught wind of it) and from reading the rense link provided by Mr Ackerman…

    1) Death by poisonous gasses: Of course they can kill. Canaries in mines told us as much. But the ring of fire in the pacific alone probably dwarfs what is coming out of this hole in the Gulf. And don’t forget, Saddam turned the skies black with his mindless destruction of the oil wells in Iraq, post Desert Storm. We’re alive.

    2) Terror at 5,000 feet: I can’t stress enough how well aware I am of the depths involved and how incredibly difficult a task(s) this presents to engineers. But shouldn’t the water on top actually help? What’s the psi of the ocean sitting on top? I don’t know either but it’s probably a lot, which is in part at least making this so damn difficult.

    What I also don’t know is for how long nature could maintain the pressure of the gas and oil. All I know is that it ISN’T inexhaustible, as SHR seems to think. Pressure seeks to equalize. And it’s not like we dug a hole to the center of the core. It will equalize with the pressure of the water on top at some point, that much I’m sure of.

    3) I’ve no “cute” title for this one. This isn’t the first ongoing man-made disaster along these lines. I don’t know how many or how severe they have been, but I learned from a fairly recent story I read that there was at least one. No, not IXTOC. It was a mining town, in either PA or WV. For years, a methane fire burned underground after an accident there had caused a leak. People continued to live in the town and surrounding area for (iirc) decades. Only recently was the land was judged to be nearing a destabilization point that forced people to move out.

    That said, of course there are things to worry and be pissed off about. There are many things to speculate and blame to be laid (I say BP is ultimately an eco-terrorist group and so too is our government). There are many ideas and uncertainties. There is already tons of damage that will take years to cope with, and there is probably more in the pipe (pun intended). What I worry about most are two things…

    1) Responsibility — The unwillingness and so-called inability to act created this disaster even before BP thought to drill here. It will rear its ugly head for years to come. People assume government is there to protect them from disaster. It never could do any such thing, of course, but that’s what people have thought over the decades. This will be at the same time weakened as it will be re-enforced. Promises will be made, fingers pointed… all adding up to nothing.

    Which is to say that the idea of private property will suffer further to keep truly free markets buried. Would that I could go into this in depth, but I’m sure lewrockwell.com already has, and I haven’t the room here besides.

    2) Panic — Does anyone have the courage to do nothing anymore? Now, I don’t mean absolutely nothing should be done, but when there’s talk of nuking the hole shut, I for one worry that humanity is going to potentially make this problem worse than it had to be. If pressure will equalize over time, we can cope without blowing it wide open. I would think this would make a bad problem worse because if all that oil does gush up at once… Why throw rocks at a raging lion? Are we in some hurry to get fishing and tourism back online (what was surely already suffering in this “recovery” already)?

    And if the panic attacks are to keep the earth from blowing up into a bigger problems, rather than mere mortal concerns about shrimping and beach-going… We don’t know that it will, and have reasons to believe that it won’t. Yes, it can remain an active “volcano” for years to come, but that doesn’t mean it will constantly be spewing oil and other toxic junk into the ocean and skies. Nor does it mean it will increasingly do so until we “please think of the children!”

    The problem today is that so few have the courage to do nothing, to let nature take it’s course. Again, this says more than I can say here. Part of nature being property rights, we probably wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with. But since we trusted government/big business relations for so long, we lost our most powerful way to cope with things like this.

    I say let nature take its course. It was going to anyway, and it will do so regardless of what they do or don’t do. Not that we peons matter anymore, but I just have to say that because I’m not hearing many say what needs to be said. This isn’t a crisis of oil, or machines, or anything else other than our ability to cope without _truly_ free markets.

  • Paul May 28, 2010, 8:37 am

    If the top kill, is unsuccessful, then there are two other options available to try and contain the oil flow from the well which would be implemented while waiting for the relief well to be drilled. I recommend reviewing ‘Kent Wells’ technical update page on BP.com to learn details of the current operations and the two further options in addition to the relief wells currently being drilled.

  • GH May 28, 2010, 6:25 am

    Check out these other blow outs. http://home.versatel.nl/the_sims/rig/losses.htm

    The offshore business is not a really safe ‘space’ to operate in. It is as chaotic and filled with fractals and black swans as the investment industry. When the risks associated with a sloppy human operation is layered (actually multiplied) on top of the inherant risk that nature supplies, you end up with a somewhat predicable result, a real mess. It is not the end of the world, it is the way of the world. Maybe a bunch of windmills and solar panels don’t look that bad anymore, unless your a bird. 🙂

    • BDTR May 28, 2010, 5:39 pm

      Quite a list, GH, thanks for the broadened, historic perspective. It magnifies the arrogance of mentality, corruption of standard and abject criminality of both business and government.

      This BP incident is the perfect metaphor of our times. In our hubris we have tapped our own dark end which stands now to overtake and destroy us. Top kill indeed.

      We lost our way some time ago in another perfect metaphor when one’s selfish desires fatally overcame the interests of another. Earth’s inhabitants have been paying a very steep price ever since. Sad that we don’t yet understand that we are what we destroy.

  • Other Paul May 28, 2010, 4:13 am

    I do hope the leak is stopped in the next day.

    Many humans have died and so have trillions of animals and plantlife, large and microscopic.

    The damage seen and unseen is enormous, now and in the future–more than BP is worth. It’s too bad that lawyers will be the only ones who will benefit from this tragedy.

  • Jim May 28, 2010, 3:32 am

    Well I guess the term “black swan” would certainly be appropriate here.


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