How do we know the pipeline in CA is actually shut down at this point in time?

[lonestarnot]

The spewing cauldron pictures from that last spewer from hell was on the tv box constantly. Why haven't we seen pictures of this one?

[NYC_SKP]

1. The only way to know is to compare input to output.

And I'm not even sure that this is possible, I'm not familiar with the wellhead equipment or presence of flow metering gear at either end of the pipe.

At Deepwater Horizon, there were submersible bots with cameras, and they weren't on the scene for quite a while.

Great question!

[lonestarnot]

3. I want some of those over there now.

[Cleita]

2. They plugged that leak, but who knows about the rest of the line.

It seems inspections haven't been a regular occurrence because there aren't enough inspectors to cover all the oil pipelines that are in the state. Welcome to the new small government model the Republicans like so much.

[lonestarnot]

4. How many do they have? Two?

[Cleita]

5. There are oil pipelines all over the state. How do you get two? I don't know how

many this particular company has in my state. There are many oil companies operating throughout the state. I hope our legislators get rid of all of them. Just shut them down.

[lonestarnot]

6. Not two pipelines, two inspectors.

[Cleita]

7. Oh, okay. Yeah they probably have very few. I don't know but I'll look it up.

Now they want to bring the oil bomb trains with Alberta tar sands through these counties.

[lonestarnot]

8. Electric car prices going up?

[Cleita]

9. The cars still have to be charged with some kind of fuel charged electricity, all of

it nasty other than solar and wind.

[petronius]

10. I don't see any reason to doubt it - the dozens to hundreds of county and state

employees as well as the volunteers milling about would certainly notice if oil was still flowing up out of the ground. This wasn't a wellhead, where capping it might be difficult, it was a distribution pipeline where 'shutting it off' just means no longer sending oil down the pipe. That should be pretty easy.

I doubt they've actually fixed the pipe yet--the rupture was underground and maybe isn't even excavated yet--but 'shutting it off' doesn't require repairing the leak...

[lonestarnot]

11. So it could be leaking anywhere then even though it's shut off or does the whole line drain when

it's shut off?

[petronius]

12. One of the articles I saw said they had been ordered to remove any remaining oil

in the pipeline "within ten day" - I'm not sure how many days are left. I would imaging that, once a pipeline is shut off, the oil that was already in transit below the shut-off point continues to drain toward the terminus of the line, probably more and more slowly and eventually pooling up as the push from behind is removed...