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Speaker 1: Linda dot com slash brain Stuff. Welcome to brain Stuff
Speaker 1: from how Stuff works dot com where smart Happens. I
Speaker 1: am Marshall Brain with today's question, what is a blowout
Speaker 1: preventor and how does it work? And why did the
Speaker 1: one in the Gulf of Mexico fail? As everyone is
Speaker 1: now aware, there's a gigantic oil geyser on the floor
Speaker 1: of the Gulf of Mexico that's spewing more than a
Speaker 1: million gallons of oil per week into the gulf. The
Speaker 1: Deepwater Horizon platform, which had been sitting over the well,
Speaker 1: endured an explosion and fire that eventually caused that rig
Speaker 1: to sink. When the deep Water Horizon exploded, there's a
Speaker 1: gigantic piece of failsafe equipment on the well that should
Speaker 1: have prevented any oil from leaking out. This piece of
Speaker 1: equipment is called a blowout preventer or BOP. Its job
Speaker 1: is to immediately plug the well in the event of
Speaker 1: an emergency. Obviously, the blowout preventer below the deep water
Speaker 1: horizon failed, so let's take a look at how blowout
Speaker 1: preventers are supposed to work in any well drilling operation.
Speaker 1: The blowout preventer is one of the first pieces of
Speaker 1: equipment that appears on the ocean floor. It's a massive structure.
Speaker 1: Imagine a gigantic set of valves and hydraulic pistons, all
Speaker 1: encased in steel. It's several stories tall and ways many tons.
Speaker 1: It attaches to the wellhead, the pipe and flange system
Speaker 1: that extends from the ocean floor at the top of
Speaker 1: the well. During drilling, the drill fits down through the
Speaker 1: blowout preventer and into the well. You can understand why
Speaker 1: a blowout preventer is needed if you think about what
Speaker 1: happens during drilling. The goal of any drilling operation is
Speaker 1: to find a lake of oil and or natural gas
Speaker 1: buried deep under rock. In the case of the deep
Speaker 1: water horizon, the water in the gulf was a mile deep,
Speaker 1: and then the drill punched through more than two miles
Speaker 1: of rock to reach the oil. All that water and
Speaker 1: rock on top of the oil creates pressure tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of pounds per square inch of pressure. The oil
Speaker 1: wants to burst out of the ground once the underground
Speaker 1: lake is punctured. What normally keeps the oil in place
Speaker 1: is the pressure of the drilling mud. This mud is
Speaker 1: a natural part of the drilling process. As the metal
Speaker 1: drill bit cuts the rock, The mud helps pull the
Speaker 1: bits of rock out of the hole, and it also
Speaker 1: lubricates the bit. The mud is always circulating under pressure,
Speaker 1: and that pressure opposes the pressure of the oil that
Speaker 1: wants to come out, keeping the oil in the well.
Speaker 1: But what if something goes wrong during drilling? The well
Speaker 1: can kick. The kick comes in the form of too
Speaker 1: much pressure. In the worst cases, that pressure can blow
Speaker 1: all the mud right back up out of the well
Speaker 1: and create a geyser of high pressure oil and or
Speaker 1: natural gas. The blowout preventer is there to handle these situations.
Speaker 1: If the drilling crew loses control of the well, the
Speaker 1: valves on the bob are supposed to kick in and
Speaker 1: stop the flow. One approach, called an annular bob, can
Speaker 1: close around the drill and seal things off at the
Speaker 1: top of the blowout preventer, or two hydraulic rams can
Speaker 1: slide in from the sides and force a rubber seal
Speaker 1: across the pipe. In the worst case scenario, a sharing
Speaker 1: ram can cut right through everything in the pipe and
Speaker 1: seal it off. It might be necessary to later drill
Speaker 1: another well once a BOB triggers, but that is better
Speaker 1: than an unstoppable geyser of oil, especially on the ocean floor.
Speaker 1: In the case of the deep Water Horizon, the well
Speaker 1: did in fact kick with a huge bubble of natural gas.
Speaker 1: Once the bubble escaped at the surface, the gas exploded
Speaker 1: and burned, eventually sinking the rig, But the BOB should
Speaker 1: have deployed and stopped that leak. Neither the signals from
Speaker 1: the rig nor robotic subs after the fact have been
Speaker 1: able to activate the rams in the BOB, or the
Speaker 1: BOB may have partially activated and jammed for some reason,
Speaker 1: only blocking part of the flow coming out of the well.
Speaker 1: Now what rescue cruise might be able to attach a
Speaker 1: second BOP on top of the failed BOP and activate it,
Speaker 1: or they may try to shoot shredded tires and other
Speaker 1: junk into the bob under gigantic pressure to try to
Speaker 1: plug the pipe, or they will drill relief wells that
Speaker 1: take the pressure off and cap the first well. No
Speaker 1: matter what, it will take a long time to clean
Speaker 1: up the mess from this failed piece of equipment. Do
Speaker 1: you have any ideas or suggestions for this podcast? If so,
Speaker 1: please send me an email at podcast at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
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