News Flash: Dome won't work and BP knows it!

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The disaster in the gulf is much bigger than anyone is letting on. We are now are being told that the BP well is spilling as much as 2.5 million gallons of crude oil into the gulf a day. {thanks to readers for the correction} The best hope for capping this runaway oil well in less than 3 months is the so-called containment dome that BP is building in Golden Meadow, LA. This scheme isn't even realistic.

First, it should be pointed out that if these new estimates of 60,000 barrels are day are correct, then even the very best case scenario for the Dome fix leave three-quarters of the oil escaping. According to very positive story from Fox News about the Dome:

It should be on the seabed by Saturday, and as early as Sunday should start pumping oil up to the Deepwater Enterprise, which is capable of storing 139,000 barrels of oil, processing it at a rate of 15,000 barrels per day.

That means that a tanker capable of holding a little over two days of spill is able to suck up only a quarter of the oil that may be leaking. That's the best case scenario and even that is out in LaLa Land.

This dome is much more about BP appearing to be working towards a quick solution, than it is about a real solution. The chance that this dome will work are very slim and this reality is being withheld from the public by BP, the government and the media. Consider Deleted "The $600 million Deepwater Horizon drilling platform sunk directly over the well head." There is a big pile of junk over the well head. That is the problem that will complicate the efforts to stop the leak and almost certainly means that current efforts to construct a dome to drop over the well are for public consumption and not a serious attempt to solve the problem. Examine these reports from this mornings newspapers and draw your own conclusions. From the NY Times we have this interview with Gregory McCormack, the director of the Petroleum Extension Service at the University of Texas about the use of such domes to cap wells:

Q. What are containment domes, anyway? Have they been used successfully before?

A. These are large concrete and steel structures that trap oil leaks on the sea floor and funnel them through a pipe to the surface. The oil then can easily be recovered at the contained area on the surface. They have been used in shallow waters under 1,000 feet previously and have functioned effectively.

Q. How likely are the domes to work? What could go wrong?

A. There is no reason to believe that these structures will not work as well in deep water as in shallow water. They need to be able to be placed directly over the leak so that the oil will rise to the surface. Any obstruction that prevents this placement will be a problem. Severe weather could handicap both the placement and oil recovery operations.

I put the next to last sentence in bold because in this morning's Dallas Morning News they carried an article about why the Blowout Preventer [BOP] failed and the difficulty in fixing that problem, in which they let this little piece of info out. Again I have put the important statement in bold:

"We have a collapsed pile of steel on the well bore," said Brian Petty of the International Association of Drilling Contractors. "It's hard to get to the BOP."

These are two very authoritative sources, quoting people who seem to know what they are talking about. You put two statements together and you realized that while their rig is still spilling oil, BP is blowing smoke. They punched a hole in the Earth at a depth of 5,000 ft. and they don't know how to plug it. They have been experimenting with the Earth and our government let them do it.