I think something bad happened to the BOP (SCRATCH THIS)

[snooper2]

(They just swung the ROV over to it again and it is the riser pipe with the 90 degree bend)



WHEW !!!!!!!! :)




I've been watching the live feed of the ROV monitoring the BOP for hours today with intermittent breaks...I would assume a lot of DU'ers have as well...was away for about 20-30 min..

Went back to look at feed and saw something that didn't look good...didn't look good at all...

Oil and mud gushing out of what looked to be the top of the BOP from about 4-5 different spots. Was a white circular dome area proabably a couple feet across at least that had the cracks/gushing leak. Not the slice in the riser, not the broken end of the riser..This was something new on the BOP. The feed stopped twice and I had to reload (watching from the source, BP's website) and now the ROV is looking at the side of the BOP


Anybody heard anything? The feed now is showing the side of the BOP again. They may be switching feeds as their are several ROV there but I've never seen that and it looked bad...

http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/homepage/STAGING/local_assets/bp_homepage/html/rov_stream.html



more detail on edit

[CountAllVotes]

1. noticed the same thing

watch it here if you can get to the site.

http://www.energyboom.com/policy/watch-live-oil-spill-webcam-will-operation-top-kill-stop-oil

[snooper2]

3. Did it look like the top of the BOP to you?

I was only able to catch about 30-40 seconds of it...

I'm using the BP link now...

That page you provided won't load
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/homepage/STAGING/local_assets/bp_homepage/html/rov_stream.html

[Adsos Letter]

2. I thought it looked like the leaks where the riser is kinked over at 90*

:shrug:

[snooper2]

4. I hope you are right..

Like I said I only caught a little bit of it but it's a view of a leak(s) I couldn't recognize...

[Adsos Letter]

8. I hadn't seen these before either, but I also hadn't seen a shot

of the 90* kink before; swamprat posted a good diagram here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8419419#8419631

It might help orient things a bit...or not.

[PufPuf23]

11. SW's chart is a very informative graphic nt

[Ex Lurker]

6. it definitely looked like part of some kind of structure, not a pipe.

I don't know whether it's a cause for concern or not. If you saw a rocket blast into space without knowing what it was, you'd think it was some kind of megacatastrophe. We badly need an engineer to give informed commentary on these videos.

[snooper2]

9. Well, I'm an Engineer..

but not that kind of Engineer :)

Now if there was an issue with the fiber going to the BOP or any of the communications I'm your man :)

[BelgianMadCow]

7. I was kind of hoping that - so you have seen the similar shot earlier? n/t

[Adsos Letter]

10. No; I am going by what appears to correlate with swamprat's posted diagram

here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8419419#8419631

[BelgianMadCow]

13. thanks - but dammit the CNN "alternate" stream which was showing the multiple leaks is gone

They have only the BP one now.

:grr: - and trying not to read much into it

[Adsos Letter]

15. Yeah, it's frustrating...

I suspect that what BP engineers are interested in monitoring may be different than what we want to see, at any given time.

[snooper2]

12. You are correct

The way the camera shot was it looked totally different

(And much worse than the side shots I have seen)

[Webster Green]

5. Could be a controlled release.

Right now I'm looking at some kind of valve on the BOP with a steel cable attached to activate it from above.

Damn if I know though. it did look kind of scary.

[RKP5637]

14. I saw something for awhile earlier that looked like 3 streams coming up

from the 90 degree bend, I was wondering what was going on too. Now it's back to looking at the mechanism with all of the plumbing, etc. I'm on the BP site too.

[Adsos Letter]

16. Oh, wow! Did something just blow out on the BOP?

[profgoose]

17. hope you all will come over to TOD...we're live blogging this with the feed...

link: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6511

And other relevant links to top kill procedure:

Deep Water Spill - Waiting for Top Kill
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6509

The Gulf Deepwater Oil Spill - the Top Kill Attempt
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6505

The Gulf Deepwater Oil Spill, barriers, flow rates, and top kill
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6501

[Adsos Letter]

19. Thanks! Being uninformed on these things, I have no way to really understand what is happening

it will be good to listen to experts.

[The Stranger]

18. I think the additional pressure from the mud needed to stem the flow down the well hole is going to

expand the leak on the other end, making all of this worse.

Please tell me some engineer somewhere already thought of this and debunked it.

[yowzayowzayowza]

20. They're prolly hopin to push enuf down the system to...

counteract the well and over-flow pressure. The name of the game is to get ~100,000 lbs of mud on top the well flow. If that involves blastin thousands of barrels of mud into the Gulf, so be it. The 'junk' just needs to stem the outward flow long enuf to get the mass in and concrete on top of it.

Errr thatz my rithmatic anyway.

[Kablooie]

21. Here are some tweets from an engineer who's working on it.

There is a chance that it could rupture shallow casing or damage internals on BOP. Odds are slim, but they ARE being acct'd 4. about 7 hours ago via web

Thanks, please note I am not a BP engineer. I am a consulting engineer for these operations. about 7 hours ago via web

Wow, just got a scathing call from mgmt, requesting I tone down my twitter info...