Ok - here goes some of what I know.

I Think that was a drill rig - floating but had anchors into the bottom!

It might have more than one drill stem working. Likely only one.

They were talking about underwater robotics turning off the flow from T's.

A T is normally put on post drilling. Preventer are for drilling.

So it would sound as if drilling was completed and the hole was being
changed over from drilling to production. T's hook up to pipes
the pipes run to a production rig. Think umbrella - ribs are pipes to
the production rig in the middle. A larger pipeline is routed to
the mainland from the production rig.

Underwater T's are used like faucet knobs. Turn on this or off that.
Companies are in business to put on and others to play with them.

It sounds like a coupling that was used blew or a T itself blew.

That deep, you have to have robots to look and see and to do anything.
They don't sit on the bottom and are brought out from the mainland.

Not being an insider (I have friends in the business and such) I don't
have any first hand on this. It might be the pressure was far in
excess of what was expected at that site. The T might have burst.
If so - then another has to be brought out and sent down by robot...

What I want to know is why the Coast Guard waited around and did so
little - and why did it take a 1 hour until disaster - to do an all out...

The cargo planes dropping solvents - where are they - why not burns -
why not containment or more of it... Something stinks on this -

I suspect the far left let this go proving to the press that off shore
wells can't be put near Santa Barbara or off the East coast or Florida.

This long delay speaks volumes!

Martin


Stuart Wheaton wrote:

As I understand things, there is a blowout preventer on the sea bottom.
How does that device work? Is the presence of 5000 feet of well
casing sticking out of the preventer and crumpled all over the floor of
the gulf capable of keeping the pressures and flows regulated enough
that the BOP thinks everything is OK?

What would be the method of converting the floating drill rig activities
into some kind of permanent production facility?