Boat/Ship engines/cooling system.

Ther's more: The WSJ is essentially taking BP's side, telling readers to wait for more information before condemning BP.

Any time you drill in deep water, things can happen. The technology is pretty well developed, but there is never a guarantee that something cant go wrong.

Maybe when we find out exactly what happened in this case, practical engineers and university boffins can improve the technology.

As insinuated, the company is responsible for the development,implementation and improvement of safety routines. The individual worker is responsible for understanding and using those routines.

As in jet airliner travel, one broken part, one human error, or one act of God can blow you apart.

That is my point of view too.

Right now, they need to control the oil, I agree. And they are working on it.

Viewing stupidity in hindsight is a well known human foible.

"hls" wrote in news:0PqdnZLQvZKKwXzWnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:

Nonsence. Planes *have* redundancy due to regulation of them. If the engines stop working, the plane glides and a competent pilot can land it. Any time there's a crash there's a long properly run investigation and changes are made that stop it from being repeated. That's *exactly* why it *is* safe and why oil rigs aren't.

"hls" wrote in news:f8SdnRLE4KFpEHzWnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:

They never prove anything about cause. Only about who's greedy and has the most time and money to waste on lawyers.

Hardly. It's how things don't repeat themselves. Those that don't learn from history are condemmed to repeat it. Those that don't learn history are incompetent.

I was reading that some of those big Ship engines have Intercoolers and Aftercoolers, and some other things I don't understand about.Heck, I don't know much about those big engines.But, if those big engines are picking up some oily/sludgy water in the engine cooling water intakes, I don't think that can be good for the engines water cooling galleries.Perhaps wouldn't affect the Intercoolers and Aftercoolers, but what do I know? Those engines do cost a Lot of money though. cuhulin

Airliners tend to have heavily redundant systems. If one control system fails, there are two more backups. If two engines fail, there are two more, and if they all fail there is still the APU. Reliabily comes from redunancy.

The same thing is true of oil drilling systems. There is as much system redundancy as it's possible to install, and there are shutoff points and safeties at several points in the line.

Some times, in spite of redundant systems, things go wrong. In the case of airliners, it's almost always a bad decision on the part of two or more people at the same time. My suspicion is that the same is true on oil rigs.

Nothing can be completely safe, but a lot of engineering goes into making systems as safe as possible. Sometimes people are negligent and sometimes they just plain screw up, and sometimes they design a system with what seem like perfectly reasonable safety margins until all of a sudden never-before-seen circumstances come up.

I hope we'll know which of these conditions applies in the gulf incident, and I hope it wasn't a bad move on the part of someone who is now dead and can no longer explain what happened. Oil rigs don't have CVRs.

--scott

BP has that new funky green logo. Makes all the difference.

I bought some gas today at an old independent gas station.Quick to get in and out and on my way. cuhulin

Considering the low cost of data recorders, perhaps a CVR of sorts should become standard on oil rigs. The instrumentation is there for the tapping and recording, and a few cameras can also record the relevant areas. What would this cost to add, perhaps $25k on a $350M rig?

Rule change helped BP on Gulf.

snipped-for-privacy@webtv.net wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@storefull-3171.bay.webtv.net:

Hmm. A metal platform in the middle of the ocean with nothing else around and going absolutely nowhere. should be a hit - with accountants maybe.

snipped-for-privacy@webtv.net wrote in news:23568-4BE21BF1-3640@storefull-

There's an Independent gas station nearby that I occasionally walk to for junk food and such. There's a sewer drain right at the corner of the property as I approach it and until this spring - when they replaced the underground tanks there was a constant smell of gas out of that sewer. Went on for *years*.

I know that a lot of that instrumentation is already tapped and recorded. What I don't know is what the survivability odds on those recordings are. I think we'll find out a lot more soon once the thing is stabilized and capped and they can get to doing a proper postmortem.

--scott

I can sense from your posts that you really dont know a heck of a lot about oil drilling.

The following is the best information I have heard to this point, and there can be errors or variations in the actual situation.

There ARE redundant systems, and there ARE monitoring devices. The platforms I have been on also relay the data back onshore and it is available for study.

This "pipe" you keep babbling about is most likely the riser system. When the platform burned and sank, there was nothing that could be done with this.The riser fell freely to the bottom and coiled up like a sick snake.

ROVs (remotely operated vehicles) indicated that the riser was leaking oil in three places (best intelligence at that time).

Before this incident, several things were happening: (1) Apparently casing had been set and (2) Cement run (3) There was an attempt to set a hydraulic packer. AFAIK, they tried this several times and were not able to deploy it.

These are critical times in drilling...times when an incident can cause you the most damage.

From the description of the next events (loud explosions, bumps, fire) it appears that the well blew out. This means that uncontrolled high pressure gas andor oil from the producing formation began to flow up to the drilling rig.

As is usually the case when this happens, a spark or ignition source somewhere ignited the hydrocarbon flowback. If a well spits back the drill pipe at you, there WILL normally be a spark somewhere.

Drilling fluid ("mud")weight is normally the prime controller of downhole pressure. The density of the mud and the depth of the column can offset and even overbalance the pressure of the fluids in the formation.

The blowout preventors (BOP) are there in case the drilling fluid gets gas cut or you take a bubble, or you lose circulation or the static head, or the mud otherwise cannot perform its job.

These are primary and secondary operating and safety controls.

In this case, the BOP did not function. A BOP is a hydraulic tool, set at the ocean floor wellhead in this case, which has rams that can squeeze off the well tubing, seal it off, even cut the tubing to attain control. Repeated attempts to shut it off failed.

Now, this was a case that is similar to the catastrophic failure of an airliner. It shouldnt have happened, but it DID. Something failed somewhere. Auxiliaries did not work either. This came as suddenly and as unannounced as the fuel tank explosions of certain aircraft in the not too distant past.

There is nothing to be done right now but to see if this jury-rigged "bell" will allow the leaking oil to be pumped up and removed. Once this acute problem is remedied, they will probably drill another hole near this leaking one and try to shut it off.

You ought to send one of your academics offshore and see if he can actually do something, or whether he will sit and drink coffee and theorize. I am sure they could have used him when the firefighting started.

They do that from studies, not from people like yourself grousing about others' stupidity.

Cooling systems like the ones you are talking about have to take some abuse. There can be heat exchanged systems or direct water cooling, and the engines and systems are designed to be as troublefree as possible. You cant believe what you find growing up in those exchangers...shellfish, algae, even octopuses. They can foul a system so badly that you have to clean them physically or chemically.

Limited levels of oil in clean water would probably run right through them with minimum damage. If you got into a really snotty emulsion (like mayonnaise) then you might block off the inlet water and have to stop and deal with it.

On the web, Mississippi Islands

Some news reports say Chandeleur Islands,Louisiana.I think the Chandeleur Islands are actually off the Coast of Mississippi.Unless part of the Chandeleur Islands are off the Coast of Louisiana.

Some of that oil has reached the Chandeleur Islands since yesterday.

Of course, the biggest main thing now is to get that oil leak Stopped/under control. cuhulin