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BP collected over 15,000 barrels of Gulf oil Tuesday
HOUSTON |
HOUSTON (Reuters) - BP Plc captured a little more than 15,000 barrels of oil with its containment cap system on Tuesday from the leak in the Gulf of Mexico and is aiming to nearly double capacity to handle it at the surface, the U.S. official overseeing the operation said on Wednesday.
U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen said at a news conference in Washington that BP is working to increase processing capacity at a drillship and a service rig at the water's surface to 28,000 barrels (1.18 million gallons/4.45 million liters) a day to handle the load as the company ramps up the collection rate from the seven-week-old leak.
"If we get this thing to 28,000 barrels a day, that's where I want to be," Allen said.
The collection rate has slowly ramped up since British energy giant BP installed the system last week. On Monday, it captured 14,842 barrels, and the cumulative total reached about 57,500 barrels with Tuesday's tally, according to BP figures.
U.S. government scientists have estimated the leak to range from 12,000 barrels (504,000 gallons/1.9 million liters) to 19,000 barrels (798,000 gallons/3 million liters) a day, with one estimate as high as 25,000 barrels (1.05 million gallons/3.97 million liters) a day.
Allen said that team is revisiting its data to try to reach a more solid estimate of the leak's flow rate.
"I'm not going to declare victory or anything until I have hard numbers," Allen said on Wednesday.
The containment cap, placed atop the gushing well pipe a mile below the ocean surface, is being used to funnel some of the escaping oil and gas from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico to the surface to be collected in ships and taken away.
Even with the containment system in place, large amounts of oil continue to spew into the ocean. The spill is causing an economic and environmental disaster along the U.S. Gulf Coast.
The system is BP's most successful effort so far to corral the leak, which began after Transocean Ltd's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded and sank in April, killing 11 workers.
OFFLOADING OIL
Initially BP said that Transocean's vessel Discoverer Enterprise, the drillship that is receiving the collected oil, had a processing capacity of 15,000 barrels a day. Allen said on Wednesday that this figure was "conservative" and its maximum processing capacity is 18,000 barrels a day.
Another ship on Wednesday began offloading oil from the Enterprise to transport to shore, BP said. BP spokesman Jon Pack said he did not know where the oil would be shipped. Texas and Louisiana are home to 43 percent of U.S. refining capacity.
BP can add another 5,000 to 10,000 barrels a day of capacity with a service rig, called the Q4000, that was used for the company's failed "top kill" effort to smother the leak last month, Allen said.
That rig is being hooked up to seabed equipment that will, as planned, pull oil and gas from a failed blowout preventer and enhance the containment cap system.
The Q4000 should be in place next week, Allen said.
However, the Q4000 has no storage capacity, Pack said. The seabed system is expected to divert up to 5,000 to 10,000 barrels a day to the surface, but that oil will be burned off with equipment BP is retrofitting for that purpose, Pack said.
(Editing by Will Dunham)
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1- Stick a smaller pipe in to the well casing with a heavy gauge inflatable bladder.
2- Fill the bladder with compressed air or hydraulic solution to temporally stop or slow the leak.
3- Fill the pipe with cement to cap.
Why you use mud and golf balls that will be pushed back out by the crude oil pressure I will never know.
Tim Mack
“Kiss – Stop the leak! Keep it simple stupid
1- Stick a smaller pipe in to the well casing with a heavy gauge inflatable bladder.
2- Fill the bladder with compressed air or hydraulic solution to temporally stop or slow the leak.
3- Fill the pipe with cement to cap.
Why you use mud and golf balls that will be pushed back out by the crude oil pressure I will never know. Tim Mack”
Tim, the method you describe has been used for many many years and is called in the oil business a “Packer” and is an excellent method and works quite well… if nothing is spewing out of the top at thousands of pounds pressure. Also they only work if the hole lowered into is reasonably round (not some stupid irregular cut off top) but not like the messed up top opening now available.
Right now, the safest thing to do that would stop and seal the leak is to use what they now have…using the cut off riser… and fit it with something over it that that can use some type “compression clamp” method instead of relying on weight from above to hold it in place that could easily blow off its seat. Whatever is compressed needs a gasket or liner that will not be destroyed by huge pressure and is mold-able and malleable… but not use floppy stuff… as the flopping if not a perfect seal will tear it up.
Admitedly, if the hole hand not been cut until the blade stuck and then crimped off, then the hole might then have been round enough to fit a packer like you mention into the full opening pipe by lowering it down on the end of my “devil forked riser” method shown in my crude drawing… to keep pressure coming up less while inserting it. It would depend on the calculated upward force with the orbit valves full open.
Chances are the riser top only goes down a little way into the BOP, so even this might not work. If the pipe inside the BOP were long enough, then there would be room to set a packer.
In that case a very long thin “stinger” would have to be on the bottom of the lowered packer to guide it into the opening, and the upper full opening orbit valves would give some relief to the pressure coming up during lowering process. See:
http://i1000.photobucket.com/albums/af122/alkanalkan/A-Solution.jpg?t=1275769802
to see the devil fork method, but imagine the packer instead of the cap on the bottom of the 3 pronged devil fork.
This would be an option if the pipe had logically been cut using many little cuts around the perimeter to make a round opening instead of the stupid “stuck blade — crimp off” method.
Look at the high resolution video below of the leak after the stupid cut… as it shows all the leak to one side of the opening mostly coming out the part the blade cut, and there is no round opening even now to insert such a packer on with a long stinger to guide it inside. The hole is NOT round. If it were round, the leak now would be even worse however as the flow would be stronger. (BP lucked out on that one) LOL.
The only simple thing now is use a better type cap with a liner of soft metal and compress it to fit and hold it in place with a “compression clamp” as the next option is much more dangerous one than using the cut off riser now in place.
The next option is to unbolt the cut off riser part of the BOP top and lower another BOP on my devil fork so the robots can see to tighten it — tightly compressed to the bolts (which is a type compression clamp).
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