05-30-2010, 04:19 PM
Marc Anthony wrote:
Why don't they retry the top kill? "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again" comes to mind. The only real solution beyond that is going to be the relief well, and it will take almost 3 months to complete. We already have one of the biggest environmental catastrophes—ever—on our hands at the one month mark; if the well keeps gushing for an additional 3 months, the whole Atlantic ocean might be poisoned.
Not likely. Natural oil seeps put much more oil into the ocean than the BP gusher:
http://pecancorner.blogspot.com/2010/05/...seeps.html
BP is trying a new 'containment' method now, which involves cutting the pipe and dropping a collecting structure over it.
The big problem appears to be a high amount of natural gas in the formation, which is blowing the oil out at high pressure.
In the meantime, I wonder why they don't try this method of getting the surface oil up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5SxX2EntEo
AFAIK this is not a joke. Probably not practical to spread hay over the entire surface area, but near the coast it might work to help prevent beach and marsh contamination.
/Mr Lynn