Deep Water Spill - Waiting for Top Kill

[profgoose]

This is the day when the top kill of the leaking BP well in the Gulf of Mexico will likely be attempted. Kent Wells, Senior Executive VP for Exploration and Production, has given a technical brief on what is likely to happen. Having tried a number of other ways of describing the underlying idea, a more mundane example came to mind. If you have roots growing into the drain that runs out of your house, and you turn the tap on in a bathroom, the water will still be able to get down past the roots, and there is no problem. However if you flush a toilet or equivalent higher flow, this can’t easily get past the roots, and thus the water backs up and flows back out into your basement.

Essentially that is what is being tried. The well has a certain ability to get oil through the Blowout Preventer (BOP) at a given (though debated) flow rate. If the volume is increased, by pumping mud into the well below the BOP, then the well will “back up” and the oil will flow back down the well. As it does more mud enters the well. This is dense enough that, as the column grows longer it pushes down on the oil, and applies enough pressure, due to this weight, to overcome the pressure in the rock. Without that positive difference, there is nothing to drive the oil out, and thus the well is “killed.”

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6509

[jtrockville]

1. TheOilDrum.com has been indispensable throughout this disaster.