It's hard to make clear sense of BP's efforts to fit a cap over the Gulf oil well, in part, because BP is spinning like mad to control the news, and mislead people, if necessary. (For example, in their trademark patronizing way, BP didn't inform many people watching what they thought was the topkill procedure on live feed that they had stopped the procedure). In part, problems in understanding occur because news reporters garble the news out of ignorance. Nevertheless, the news reports out of the LA Times seem fairly reliable.
Two days ago, CNN reported that BP was closing four valves in the cap only slowly. CNN has reported several times that the engineers are closely monitoring pressures, but that just sounds wrong to me: they don't have a hermetic seal on the riser pipe, so pressures would be a secondary concern. Instead, I think they are closely monitoring flows. They are trying to create as dry and dessicated an environment as possible - in a leaky vessel a mile below the surface of the sea, no less! - in order to minimize formation of methane clathrate hydrate ice. Talk about Sisyphean labor! There's a lot of water coming up with the oil and natural gas that must be accomodated as well. Nevertheless, since ice could gum everything up, slow-go is the game.
All of this effort is to buy time, of course, to finish the relief wells. There is no assurance they'll be able to capture enough oil to save anybody's ass, however. The cap might remain just a leaky vessel - in fact, to maintain the dessicated environment, they might have little choice but to keep it leaky. And all bets are off if hurricanes pass nearby - as they are almost bound to!
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