[QUOTE=champagne;38976]The cap was wobbling big time today. Is Thad Allen trying to pull the wool over our eyes? This from the press briefing 7/2:
[I]Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Richard Harris with National Public Radio. [/I]
[I]Richard Harris: Good morning, I have two quick questions, one of which is BP had been planning to install a sub-sea dispersant dispenser essentially, by about now, I wonder if that’s in place and also about the Q4000, it seems to have reduced its oil collection capacity to about 8,000 barrels a day and I wondered if there’s a reason for that? Thanks.[/I]
[I]Adm. Thad Allen: First of all BP has constructed and has proposed an is being reviewed right now, an autonomous sub-sea dispersant delivery system that could be used in event that the site was abandoned for hurricane and there was no way to mitigate the flow of hydrocarbons out of the well bore. There’s been no approval or any decision made on that, it’s merely been presented as an option and we are reviewing that inside the administration right now. [/I]
[I]Could you restate your second question please?[/I]
[I]Richard Harris: Yes, I was curious about the Q4000, which seems to have reduced the amount of oil it’s collecting from last week or so to about 8,000 barrels a day from 10,000. I wonder if that’s – obviously not a big deal, but I was sort of curious about why that had happened. [/I]
[I]Adm. Thad Allen: We’ll will go back and I’ll give you a statement on a later – my guess is it’s probably due to environment conditions that are out there you know while they’re hooked up and they’re working, there has been some wobble down on the well bore itself as the sea state is moved around you know that stub of pipe is not fixed it’s kind of at an angle, it can move a little bit and we can’t – you know it is – the actual hydrocarbons coming up change in their makeup from time to time as far as amount of gas, oil and water that are collected in that. [/I]
[I]And it’s not unusual to have that fluctuate. What you really need to do is kind of level that out over a number of days and kind of average it to get the exact time because it will vary on a 24-hour basis. [/I][/QUOTE]
I saw that too. And I could have sworn that the entire surface casing/BOP/LMRP was swaying quite a bit too. It was hard to tell if it was the ROV that was moving or the surface equipment but I watched it for a good while and it looked like it was the surface casing assembly that was moving. Thad’s comment confirmed it!
I wonder how much back and forth stress and tension can the surface casing take before it starts to fatigue and crack.