Laying Pipe (21 inches vs 4 inches)

Just a random thought from an uneducated layman, but maybe this deep-water drilling for oil thing wasn't such a great idea, after all?

Article via RAW

BP has succeeded in capturing "some" oil and gas by inserting a mile-long tube into the main Gulf of Mexico leak, but would not say if it was a significant percentage of the gusher or just a dribble.

Despite the uncertainty, it was still the first tangible sign of success in more than three weeks of efforts to prevent at least 210,000 gallons of oil from spewing unabated into the sea each day and feeding a massive slick off the coast of Louisiana.

BP senior executive vice president Kent Wells refused to be drawn on quantity Sunday, ...

"We will look to... capture as much of the oil as we can," he told reporters in Houston, Texas. "At this point, we don't know what percentage we will capture" by the process, in which the oil was sucked up as if through a straw to the giant ship.

A BP statement said simply that the four-inch (10-centimeter) diameter tube inserted into the 21-inch leaking pipe using undersea robots had captured "some amounts of oil and gas."

Since BP wouldn't comment on quantity, I thought I'd make a little visual aid. In the very simple graphic shown to the right, the black circle is 21 units in diameter, to represent the 21-inch diameter pipe / hole that oil is flowing out of. The lighter teal circle is 4 units in diameter, to represent the 4-inch diameter "sucking straw" that is pulling oil up to burn off. The area of the teal circle is just over 3.6% the area of the black circle. Look at that cute little teal circle. So tiny and cuddly. The oil pipe followed me home from school, mommy, can I keep it?

I have zero data on the suction rate or force of the 4-inch extraction pipe. It may be a fast-flowing siphon, a miracle of modern engineering built to suck like nothing else has ever sucked before. Or it might just use the same pressure that's making the existing leak flow. If the later, then I imagine it doesn't catch too much of the leak, fluid dynamics being what they are... but, I suppose, even if it were just 3.6% of the flow, that's still like 7,600 gallons per day less being poured into the ocean. It's better than nothing, I guess, and it's not like I'm an expert on oil, physics, or engineering.

Hey, I've got an idea, though, one that I think we could all get behind. Instead of going to war over oil in the Middle East, how about we just don't freakin' pour what we've got left into the ocean?

That's what really wrenches my gut about all this. The ecological catastrophe is horrendous, and will poison the Gulf for generations, but even worse is the thought that the oil companies who aren't involved with this particular spill are probably going to be able to sell crude at a higher rate thanks to this disaster. We need to get on solar and wind power ASAP, because burning dinosaurs seems to be more and more to looking like a really bad idea in general. That's just my opinion, though, your mileage may vary - and you'd better have a car that gets good mileage, 'cause the oil is gonna get real expensive again in the near future.