So if this is correct, the pressure from the Deepwater Horizon gusher will defeat all conventional attempts to plug the well, because the walls of the well have been fatally compromised. If we manage to cap the well at or below the seafloor, the pressure will simply blow out the sides of the well below it, finding fissures (or creating them) in the seafloor, before creating countless seeps and blowouts for miles around.

If these experts are right the well cannot be capped. The best we can hope for is to capture as much of the oil as possible and keep the environmental damage minimized while a deep kill is attempted with the relief well underway. If the relief well fails...

Why you should be pissed off:
If the folks at The Oil Drum are correct with their hypothesis, the failed blowout preventer (BOP) and casing pipes are collapsing, BP knows they are collapsing, the government knows about it as well, and they are all conspiring to keep us in the dark.

So what is it that the Obama Administration is trying to hide?
When enough is eroded away the casings will buckle and the BOP will collapse the well. If and when you begin to see oil and gas coming up around the well area from under the BOP? or the area around the well head connection and casing sinking more and more rapidly? ...it won't be too long after that the entire system fails. BP must be aware of this, they are mapping the sea floor sonically and that is not a mere exercise. Our Gov't must be well aware too, they just are not telling us.

All of these things lead to only one place, a fully wide open well bore directly to the oil deposit...after that, it goes into the realm of "the worst things you can think of" The well may come completely apart as the inner liners fail. There is still a very long drill string in the well, that could literally come flying out...as I said...all the worst things you can think of are a possibility, but the very least damaging outcome as bad as it is, is that we are stuck with a wide open gusher blowing out 150,000 barrels a day of raw oil or more. There isn't any "cap dome" or any other suck fixer device on earth that exists or could be built that will stop it from gushing out and doing more and more damage to the gulf. While at the same time also doing more damage to the well, making the chance of halting it with a kill from the bottom up less and less likely to work, which as it stands now?....is the only real chance we have left to stop it all.

It's a race now...a race to drill the relief wells and take our last chance at killing this monster before the whole weakened, wore out, blown out, leaking and failing system gives up it's last gasp in a horrific crescendo.


No wonder the President spends his time playing golf, partying with celebrities and generally living it up while he can. Once the public finds out how deeply his government conspired with BP to cover up the extent of the disaster, the American people are going to call for his resignation, if not for his head on a pike.

But as horrific as the scenario painted for us by this group of experts may be, there is one possible scenario even more cataclysmic, a methane eruption wilder than any nightmare Roland Emmerich could dream up.

Quite frankly the magnitude of what Terrence Aym suggests is possible isn't believable. It isn't because he's necessarily wrong, but because what he suggests could occur is so horrific that we can't allow ourselves to consider the possibility.

According to Aym, geologists report that there is a massive lake of methane gas trapped deep under the well at an incredible pressure of 100,000 psi. As the oil rushes out and weakens the seafloor, a collapse could cause a blowout of super-pressurized methane.
If the huge methane bubble breaches the seabed, it will erupt with an explosive fury similar to that experienced during the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens in the Pacific Northwest. A gas gusher will surge upwards through miles of ancient sedimentary rock—layer after layer—past the oil reservoir. It will explode upwards propelled by 50 tons psi, burst through the cracks and fissures of the compromised sea floor, and rupture miles of ocean bottom with one titanic explosion.

The burgeoning methane gas cloud will surface, killing everything it touches, and set off a supersonic tsunami with the wave traveling somewhere between 400 to 600 miles per hour...

[snip]

...A supersonic tsunami would literally sweep away everything from Miami to the panhandle in a matter of minutes. Loss of human life would be virtually instantaneous and measured in the millions. Of course the states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and southern region of Georgia—a state with no Gulf coastline—would also experience tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of casualties.

I hope this scenario is far-fetched, but neither is desirable.

All that we can say for certain now is that the well failed, and that it likely failed because corners were cut, warnings were ignored, and rules were ignored or discarded. This applies to the companies involved and the government to which they must answer.

Barack Obama infamously boasted several weeks ago that he met with experts so that he'd know "who's ass to kick" for this disaster. The Obama Administration signed off on the drilling of this well.

The buck stops with the man sitting behind the Resolute Desk.

 
Posted by Confederate Yankee at June 21, 2010 08:43 PM

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Remember, he did say he was going to fundamentally change the country.