BP seek solution after oil spill setback

Link to the article: Channel 4 News

By Julian Rush

Updated on 09 May 2010

Methane ice crystals halt BP's attempt to stem the flow of oil gushing from its well in the Gulf of Mexico. Methane too may have been the original cause of the fire.

The huge, 93 ton, steel and concrete box that BP had hoped to place over the leaking pipe from the well head has been moved 200 metres to one side while engineers decide what to do.

As they lowered it into position, a sludge of methane ice crystals began forming in the top of the box, clogging the hole where BP had hoped to fit a pipe to take the oil to a ship on the surface.

The methane comes from the oil itself, dissolved in it in the pores of the rock beneath the sea bed. Indeed, methane may have been the cause of the original fire.



Professor Robert Bea from the University of California Berkeley, a former engineering consultant to BP, says he has seen transcripts of interviews with three survivors of the blast on the Deepwater Horizon rig. They say a gusher of oil and water spurted out of the top of the drill pipe on the rig as a bubble of methane gas rose up the drill column from the depths.



Alarms designed to warn of the highly flammable gas failed to go off, they said, and the huge cloud of invisible, odourless methane enveloped the rig and was ignited, perhaps by a spark from electrical equipment or motors.