Some wild ideas for capping/taming this bitch.

[TheMadMonk]

We have a hat on the well, ineffective as it may be.

Just start pouring grout/concrete around it. pile it up to the sills of the shutters and let it set. Get the bloody thing pinned down.

One by one cover each shutter with a collection hood, run further pipes to the surface. If BP can deal with 15k BPD then 50-60k BPD should be achievable with 5 risers servicing the leak. Get the facilities on the surface to deal with whatever flow rate is necessary.

Because of the unknown damage done to the original bore string it's better if it's not completely blocked just at the top alone but allowed to flow at a reasonably high flow rate until a significant length of the string can be properly plugged.


On the surface, use towed booms to feed into oil separators. From the separators, pump the oil into continuous plastic tubing like that used to temorariliy store grain on land. Fill to about 50% capacity to minimise risk of wave action rupturing the tubing. Pinch off in managable lengths. (500-1000 barrel perhaps) tow to processing facility.


Below the surface, a large fabric dome could be anchored over the plume before it has a chance to disperse too much. Gas could be bled off from the apex of the dome to the surface to flare off. Further down the sides of the dome, the same continuous tubing could be filled from spigots in 500-1000 barrel sausages, with a gas relief valve at the top to prevent rupturing. For maximum safety a tethered ascent would be needed. Whole thing operates at close to ambient pressures provided the gas can be bled off fast enough, so no fancy plumbing is needed, just a few fancy (high pressure environment) actuators to turn the taps. BP should like this one. If it works it's cheap as chips relatively speaking.

Note these are not necessarily complete solutions, what they are though is potentially effective stopgaps which would give us time to think properly about a long term solution.


Personally I'm in favour of piling up a whacking great mass of concrete around the whole blowout. Let the escaping oil keep the center open for now. pile it as high as is possible. The higher the better. Now pour in a shitload of depleted uranium shot. This should give enough ballast to make a top kill possible. (oh yeah better make sure all the top kill lines are well and truly secure as they're not going to be accessible)


Formulate a mud with a density even higher than normal driller's mud, price (within very broad reason) is no object. Keep a stockpile on hand for the next time.


Put a stage zero on all new BOPs. Massive hexagonal chunk of metal. 3 rams. 1 hydraulic, 1 mechanical screw, 1 explosive. Main requirement is it must be over engineered to a near paranoid degree and it must be as uncomplicated as is humanly possible while still fullfilling its primary task of blocking the bore.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

1. pity they couldn't freeze it a very low temperatures as it leaked out

then the heavy frozen blobs could fall to the bottom and be collected. I know, I have been watching too much Batman.

[Warpy]

2. The pressure would blow grout/concrete/gravel, what have you

away from the well site before anything had a chance to solidify. An aircraft carrier sunk directly over that well head might have a chance of plugging it up, but I wouldn't bet on that, either.

Besides, heat from setting concrete is what gasified the methane crystals and caused the explosion in the first place, or so we're told.

Your BOP idea might have some merit. You might forward it to one of the national labs or to the oil barons. Who knows? Somebody might actually read it.

[Ozymanithrax]

3. Last report I heard was that the part of the well underground was damaged...

putting a cap on the well would cause it to leak into the earth under the well, which would lead oil leaks popping up everywhere.

However, considering the amount of material coming out of the well, an attempt to pour liquid concrete at the bottom of 5000 feet of water would be to have the concrete just blown out of the way.

They were pumping drilling mud into the well at a far higher rate than you could poor concrete and it just blew the stuff out.

The solution is to drill relief wells. That is the only solution. As a temporary measure they are trying to capture as much of the leaking oil as possible. Capturing that oil is preferable to allowing all of it to just leak away into the ocean.

[TheMadMonk]

4. I'm not evisioning a neat volcano cone with a "pipe" running down the middle.

More, something along the lines of an ant lion's trap. A broad inverted cone. Which, when deep enough, can be filled with a heavy shot to provide some back pressure. Net it over and start pumping in grout via the top kill line. Instead of round shot, use dogbone shaped pieces of high density metal.

[Ozymanithrax]

5. The pipes and concrete underground are damaged, according to reports.

Back pressure on the well would just cause the oil to leak out underground and erupt elsewhere, probably in many places.

Relief wells remove the pressure at the bottom of the existing well, allowing them to pump concrete into the pipes and seal it permanently.

[theHandpuppet]

6. "Taming this bitch"?

Can we have a discussion about this sans the offensively sexist jargon?

[Gregin Orlando]

7. There is no capping oilzilla

BP, and their corporate-owned media whores have lied about this from day one. There are three leaks at the Deepwater Horizon site, as well as two other leaks at different sites. Furthermore, this will not only affect beaches and marine life, it could have a drastic economic impact that goes beyond that. Power plants could be shut down and desalization plants that produce drinking water through reverse osmosis along the Gulf coast could be shut down if oil fouls their intakes. That would cause an economic disaster of epic proportions. For more info., check out this article: http://www.examiner.com/x-38220-Orlando-Independent-Examiner~y2010m6d9-Satellite-imagery-shows-up-to-three-oil-leaks-in-Gulf-FL-power-and-water-supplies-may-be-at-risk