The Deepwater Horizon oil spill continues to be absurdly bad. Even in the time it's taking me to write this post, thousands of gallons of oil have bled into the Gulf. The enormous leak is so challenging that even underwater robots couldn't solve it.
Right after the rig explosion on April 20, BP sent robot after robot to activate the blowout preventer -- a giant valve -- underwater at the well head. But the conditions were too difficult and the robots came away unsuccessful. Oil continued to gush out. Last week, BP tried to stem the leak with a 100-ton concrete and steel dome structure. That failed on Saturday when methane hydrates -- combustible ice -- got into the dome and clogged up an outlet for the oil.
This sucker is still leaking -- and badly (Treehugger video) -- so BP has had to come up with more techniques. According to CNN, one of the potential solutions is a double pipe that has a gasket. If the pipe can be shoved into the riser pipe that's leaking oil, it would allow the oil to be offloaded to ships. If that fails, BP will try deploying a smaller dome "top hat" equipped with methanol to prevent methane hydrates from plugging it up.
Another last-ditch effort that BP said it was considering on Monday sounds almost too insane to be real, but it apparently worked before in Kuwait during the Gulf War: the "junk shot." Essentially a bunch of stuff like golf balls, rope, and shredded tires will be lumped into a ball and shot into the well. If the ball can form a barrier with the half-open blowout preventer, it might make it possible for cement to be injected into the site to seal the leak. Even a junk shot would take a couple of weeks to ready, though.
I don't even want to tell you about the relief well plan because, while it is currently being drilled, completing it would take several months and we don't have that kind of time. The spill is already on track to make the Exxon Valdez look small. Whether the junk shot, the top hat, or even a better bot ends up stemming the spill, that's fine with me. It just has to work.
Photo: The Deepwater Horizon spill viewed from the Chandeleur Islands in the Gulf of Mexico on May 8. Credit: Stewart Long via Jeffrey Warren.
Get more of the Oil Spill Wide Angle:
- Oil Spill Seen From All Angles: Big Pics
- Artificial Islands Can't Save La. Coast, Say Geologists
- Volatile Methane Ice Could Spark More Drilling Disasters
Tags: Conservation, Green Tech, Oil Spill, Pollution, Robots
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