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I was watching the latest attempt to slow down the flow with a new cap. Seems to be working, at least it hasn't fallen off, cracked or simply failed, yet. A guy who was an ex-oil company exec, a liberal sort on Keith Olberman's how tonight (He writes from Huffington Post) was wondering why this wasn't done *months ago*. He noted that these sorts of things are lying around oil companies everywhere and they are made of standard components. I've worked with all the same components of this "christmas tree" latch-up myself in my pipefitting and power plant days. It's essentially a bunch of high pressure pipe and flanges, butt-welded and bolted together. Probably schedule-80 pipe good up to about 900psi or something similar depending on diameter. Anyway, the whole thing can be bolted together and welded up in about a day. So...what gives? Why didn't they get this into place earlier. It is this device that will stem the flow of oil most of the way down before they tap the actual bore-hole to fill with mud and junk to permanently seal it up. This is certainly a valid question. More on the specifics...there appears, according the oil exec guy, a part of the device that is made of a flexible hose. I *suspect* these are the same kind of hoses used to offload and load up, oil tankers. They are made of a very strong synthetic rubber compound that is supposed to withstand a high pressure oil pump turning on full-pressure. I don't know what that would mean, perhaps someone who worked in an oil refinery on the list might know. I've worked with them too but ours were only rated up to 300 psi. This guy is concerned because if the device twists and turns to much, it could rupture this flexible piece (probably a spool piece similar in size and shape to the steel ones that make up the device) especially as the pressure build ups as they get it ready to connect to the lines that are bringing up a lot of the oil right now. Politically we should 'talk up' expropriation of BP and all off shore oil drilling. Won't happen any time soon but it could spark a lot of discussion. David ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
