Re: US Oil Spill Response Team: Plan To Deploy Dome In 6-8 Days
Re: US Oil Spill Response Team: Plan To Deploy Dome In 6-8 Days
Containment box arrives onsite near source of Gulf of Mexico oil spill
By The Associated Press
May 06, 2010, 6:56AM
Patrick Semansky / The Associated PressThe barge Joe Griffin sails down a channel Wednesday on its way to the Gulf of Mexico carrying a chamber, right, that will be used to help contain oil leaking from the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling platform onto a ship in Port Fourchon, La.
ON THE GULF OF MEXICO (AP) -- A boat carrying a
100-ton concrete-and-steel contraption designed to siphon off the
oil fouling the Gulf of Mexico arrived Thursday at the spot in the sea where a blown-out well is spewing hundreds of thousands of gallons a day.
Another boat with a crane plans to start lowering the box to the seafloor later in the day. Engineers hope it will be the best short-term solution to controlling the leak that has only worsened since it began two weeks ago.
A rapid response team planned to head to the Chandeleur Islands off Louisiana's coast Thursday to look into unconfirmed reports that oil from the spill had arrived there, Coast Guard Petty Officer Erik Swanson said.
The boat hauling the specially built containment box and dome structure pushed off Wednesday evening from the Louisiana coast and arrived at the site of the disaster Thursday morning.
The Joe Griffin would meet up with another BP-chartered boat, the Boa Sub C, a Norwegian vessel that will use a crane to lower the contraption to cover the gusher of oil spewing from the seabed -- something that has never been tried before at such depths. BP spokesman Bill Salvin said the drop is expected at about noon on Thursday.
The dome-like top of the structure is designed to act like a funnel and siphon the oil up through 5,000 feet of pipe and onto a tanker at the surface. Oil has been gushing into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate of at least 200,000 gallons a day since an offshore drilling rig exploded and sank last month, killing 11 people.
"We're a little anxious. They're gonna try everything they can. If it don't work, they'll try something else," Capt. Demi Shaffer told The Associated Press aboard his boat just after it set off. The AP is the only news organization with access to the containment effort.
A 12-man crew aboard a supply boat was carrying the precious cargo.
The 280-foot Joe Griffin, owned by Edison Chouest Offshore, also was involved in helping fight the fire that resulted from the oil rig explosion.
The vessel is named for a boat captain who worked with company founder Edison Chouest, when Chouest was still in the shrimping business.
The operator of the oil rig, BP PLC, has tried several high-tech undersea tactics to cap the leak. The containment dome endeavor is unprecedented and engineers are fully aware of the risks.
First, crews need to properly position the four-story structure above the well as it sinks deep into the mud at the bottom of the Gulf with the help of a remote-controlled robotic submarine. A steel pipe will be attached to a tanker at the surface and connected to the top of the dome to move the oil.
"It's very dark down there ... and we will have lights on the (submersibles), and we know exactly where to put this and guide it into place," said David Clarkson, BP's vice president for project execution.
That process presents several challenges because of the frigid water temperature -- about 42 degrees Fahrenheit -- and exceptionally high pressure at those depths. Those conditions could cause the pipe to clog with what are known in the drilling industry as "ice plugs." To combat that problem, crews plan to continuously pump warm water and methanol down the pipe to dissolve the clogging.
They are also worried about volatile cocktail of oil, gas and water when it arrives on the ship above. Engineers believe the liquids can be safely separated without an explosion.
Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry tried to moderate expectations that the containment box would be a silver bullet.
"I know we are all hoping that this containment system will work, but I want to remind everybody that this containment system is a first of its kind deployed in 5,000 feet of water," Landry said.
Asked to handicap the odds of success, Bob Fryer, a senior executive vice president for BP's Deep Water Angola, offered up this assessment: "This has never been done before. Typically you would put odds on something that has been done before."
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