What are all the other oil companies and independent contractors doing?

[gristy]

Are all hands from around the world on deck? If I was in charge of this thing, I would be staging top-kill, bottom-kill, side-kill, any-kind-of-kill you can think of teams on mock-ups of blown wells all over the gulf. I'd have engineers and roughnecks in conference rooms and in front of their computers thinking and debating and trying things out, and then relaying instructions to teams on rigs set up above blown well mock-ups to test out their ideas. There'd be just a beehive of engineering activity all over the gulf. Not just at the blown well. There would be ideas being tried out left and right, with the coast guard, NOAA, Shell, Chevron, and every submersible and drilling rig independent contractor in the world participating. Yeah, we've only got one blown well. But we can build countless mock-ups of the blown well, and try out dozens of ideas.

Criminy this sounds like a great idea to me.

[Cleita]

1. Sorry, but that's sick. n/t

[gristy]

2. And what's this business of just one rig drilling one relief well?

What if it misses its target? What if the drill pipe were to snap? WHY DON'T WE HAVE 4 RIGS EACH DRILLING A RELIEF WELL, ALL OF THEM COMPETING WITH EACH OTHER TO GET TO THE BLOWN FIELD FIRST AND START RELIEVING THE PRESSURE AT THE BASE OF THE BLOWN WELL? The more I think about all the things they could and should be doing, the more disappointed I become.

[tammywammy]

3. They're drilling at least two relief wells. n/t

[pnwmom]

4. You think all the competitors want to help? Maybe they're happy to see BP in trouble.n/t

[Turbineguy]

5. This is bad for all oil companies.

They are helping BP plug this.