Welcome to the BP Junk Shot Child Diary the 13th. This is a subset of the Mother Ship the Third. Don't rec this, rec the Mothership diary so that we keep this solidly on the rec list with ONE pointer only.
Come here to continue to comment, commiserate, look at the links share any news, point out any significant happenings, excellent to egregious, at the live cams or on the shore. A huge thank you goes to khowell for all her hard work keeping the Motherships going and the children in order and coordinated these past few days. It can't be an easy job. I'm not sure when she's been eating and sleeping. Thanks, khowell! You've been doing marvelously!
Where do we stand? According to Official for Public Consumption BP, Top Kill may have worked, we need another few days to be certain! According to sources I have far more faith in, Top Kill failed soon after it started. The BOP we've all been staring at for the last few days looks in frighteningly bad shape. You can decide for yourself who to believe. So where are we now? Follow me below the fold
According to this cool article at the Oil Drum, we're on to Plan B, the Junk Shot. The basic idea is as follows:
The first part of this is to try and reduce the size of the hole in the BOP. And for this they used a variety of what everyone is calling a junk shot. It actually isn’t. Given the problem that I am about to outline, they have an ally that folks normally don’t have. As Secretary Chu has pointed out there is the full intellectual strength of the Federal Labs behind this attempt, so where one would normally just chop up tires and similar materials, there is a fascinating mathematical problem in designing plug pieces of the right shape that will fit the constraints, and which will accelerate the blocking of the flow path. So I suspect that some of the shapes that will appear in the flow, will have been specificially designed for the problem.
Basically, they're trying to block the passage through the BOP in order to stabilize the flow, and allow the cement plug time to set up.
What is being used? Again from the above link:
Now here’s the first catch, we don’t want them [the junk being shot] to be hard enough that we will damage the passages, nor soft enough that they will bend distort and compress and squeeze through the hole. Rubber turns out to fit the bill.
As far as we know, the junk shooting has started. According to folks on the Oil Drum, very little to no information is being given out, so, although I would love to be able to say it's going well, and the leak will soon stop, I can't. I have no idea how it's going.
Perhaps we can infer how it is going. From nika7k's latest update:
Relevant Recent Breaking News:
NYT: BP Engineers Making Little Headway on Leaking Well
The company [again] suspended pumping operations at 2:30 a.m. Friday after two "junk shot" attempts, said the technician, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the efforts.
"The suspension of the effort was not announced, and appeared to again contradict statements by company and government officials that suggested the top kill procedure was progressing Friday."
Washington's Blog opines that BP may be moving beyond Top Kill to the LMRP phase.
I think we will be hearing a lot about LMRP so I thought I would include a definition of that here (also from Washington's Blog who, in turn, got it from the BP site):
In parallel with the ongoing top kill operation, preparations have been made for the possible deployment of the lower marine riser package (LMRP) cap containment system.
Deployment would first involve removing the damaged riser from the top of the failed BOP to leave a cleanly-cut pipe at the top of the BOP's LMRP. The cap, a containment device with a sealing grommet, will be connected to a riser from the Discoverer Enterprise drillship, 5,000 feet above on the surface, and placed over the LMRP with the intention of capturing most of the oil and gas flowing from the well.
The LMRP cap is already deployed alongside the BOP in readiness for potential deployment. If it is decided to deploy this option, this would be expected to take some three to four days.
In addition to these steps, planning is being advanced for deploying, if necessary, a second BOP on top of the original failed BOP.
As with ANY information during this incident, it remains to be seen what is indeed happening.
Thank you nika7k.
For now, I'm hoping with every fiber of my being that none of us ever is in the position of having to describe the beauty of the Gulf of Mexico in the past tense as Cormac McCarthy described the beauty of the earth in the last paragraph of The Road:
Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.
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I'm having trouble with some link somewhere. I'm going to add them back in, but wanted to get this up to relieve nika7k -- edit -- all links are back.
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The video feeds we are watching:
BP video feed
CNN multi camera view
All BP videos
WKRG - Mobile/Pensacola
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Estimated gallons of oil leaked as of 8:00 this morning (according to WKRG): 39,813,860.
Estimated gallons of oil leaked as of 8:30 this evening (according to WKRG): 40,361,500.
Previous children diaries from today:
LiveBlog -- Diary 13 -- Middleagedhousewife (current diary)
LiveBlog - Diary 12 - nika7k
LiveBlog - Diary 11 - Overseas
LiveBlog - Diary 10 - conchita
Junk Shot LiveBlog - Diary 9 - khowell
Top Kill LiveBlog - Diary 8 - Garrett
Thank you, today's hosts!
Previous live blog children prior to today:
Top Kill has begun! - Tomtech
Top Kill LiveBlog - Diary 1 - khowell
Top Kill LiveBlog - Diary 2 - conchita
Top Kill LiveBlog - Diary 3 - sc kitty
Top Kill LiveBlog - Diary 4 - Garrett
Top Kill LiveBlog - Diary 5 - liveblog
Top Kill LiveBlog - Diary 6 - alkalinesky
Top Kill LiveBlog - Diary 7 - miep
Thank you previous child hosts -- I've been lazy and cut and pasted many links and paragraphs from your diaries, and enjoyed the fellowship of them.
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Other dKos diaries tonight on the spill:
Meteor Blades has posted a Photo diary that needs to be seen, especially by glib folks who chipperly declare that there are some clear beaches out there. Warning: will make you cry.
Fishgrease has posted a new diary indicating "We're being lied to, consistently, by BP, Our Government and in the most damaging fashion, by Our News Media." Very depressing, but very important and well worth the read. Thank you, Fishgrease. I can't begin to tell you how grateful I am for your voice and insight.
If anyone has found a link that seems really useful, or a great diary that is not listed above, please let me know in the comments. I'll try to keep an eye on things and post them. The more information, the better. Please alert me in the comments if any links are broken.
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Update 1: From the comments, Yasuragi recommends this from Rockman at the Oil Drum.
Update 2: From Johnsonwax and Onomastic below that in the comments, a story in the LA Times on possible criminal charges against BP. From the article:
The investigators, who have been quietly gathering evidence in Louisiana over the last three weeks, are focusing on whether BP skirted federal safety regulations and misled the U.S. government by saying it could quickly clean up an environmental accident.
UPDATE 3: CHILD 14 IS NOW UP: Thank you, Johnsonwax!
The team has met with U.S. attorneys and state officials in the Gulf Coast region and has sent letters to executives of BP and Transocean Ltd., the drilling rig owner, warning them against destroying documents or other internal records.
It's a step in the right direction. Let's hope the penalty isn't just some superficial fine.
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Don't post images or videos, to keep bandwidth down, unless something significant happens, and you feel a screenshot or video is worth a thousand words.
If you'd like to volunteer to handle an upcoming child liveblog, please post a comment to the the Mothership diary linked above. Thanks!!