Deepwater Oil Spill - the Hurricane season

Five years ago shortly after Kyle invited me to help him start The Oil Drum, Hurricane Dennis, a category 4 hurricane, struck the Gulf of M...

Early coal mining machines and their use

This is part of a series of Tech Talks that I write on Sundays. It is meant to provide some background information on the extraction of fos...

Deepwater Oil Spill - closing the relief ports

The rate of oil recovery from the Deepwater well in the Gulf of Mexico has increased from the 6,000 bd recovered on Friday, to some 10,000 b...

Deepwater Oil Spill - sealing the cap and jet pumps

There has not been much change down on the sea bed where last evening BP were able to put a cap onto the short riser section coming out of t...

Deepwater Oil Spill - capping the riser - Part 1

The vertical section of the riser was cut, using a Shear at 9 am this morning. Lower Riser Assembly (LRA) atop the Blowout Preventer (BOP...

Deepwater Oil Spill - working on the riser

There has been a lot of activity at the bottom of the Gulf today, not all of it immediately successful, but all working toward to current ai...

Deepwater Oil Spill - cutting the Riser

At present they have started cutting through the pipes around the riser. At 8:45 am they had the shearing machine set on the riser and then...