‘Spillcam‘ is running — but BP’s latest update, just published to its website in the past hour, does not reveal much:
“Top kill” operations continued over the night and are ongoing. There are no significant events to report at this time. BP will provide updates on progress as appropriate.
Despite BP’s insistence that the results won’t be known until much later on Thursday, and that the video may not indicate whether the operation is succeeding, viewers of the live feed video are inevitably speculating about just what the cameras at the Macondo well are showing, especially since the view was obscured a couple of hours ago, as this video shows:
In the last significant update, 8pm CDT on Wednesday, BP’s chief operating officer Doug Suttle suggested it appeared that mud was coming out of the rupture; a good sign, but too early to be certain.
This was before the view became obscured by some kind of murkiness, and later cleared — which has since been repeated a couple of times.
Viewers are hoping to divine something from the ‘Warhol-like’ video feed. Heading Out, a frequent contributor of ‘Tech Talk’ pieces on The Oil Drum, wrote that at 8.47pm it appeared that the flow had decreased, “leading me to suggest that the well is now full of mud, and they are reducing the flow to see if the well behaves.”
He added:
The leaks at the tops of the riser do appear to be getting bigger. However they look like crack leaks, which seem to get longer preferentially to wider, with less overall increase in flow. I would expect, since BP has more than enough pump capacity, that they will just increase the flow to balance any increase in leakage.
And then:
UPDATE 8.5: Oh, and if you were wondering why you can’t see the camera feeds any longer. Oil and gas are lighter than water and float off upwards, mud is heavier and so the plume is dispersing and settling back downwards, around the well. Good job we have pressure gages. (9:07 pm)
Later, after the picture had cleared, he said it appeared that the pressure was still lower than it had been in earlier images, adding:
This could, however, be because the cameras have moved, or changed lenses, but the pictures do have several common features. And the heights of the plumes from both side jets are significantly shorter.
As the Houston Chronicle wrote late on Wednesday, BP’s comments suggest that if the top kill effort is successful, rather than the flow ceasing, the colour would change to show some of the mud being being pumped into the well flowing out, and the picture could become cloudy (as it has, temporarily):
If the mud pressure is able to overcome the pressure of the oil and gas flowing out, eventually we should see the flow from pipe on the SpillCam starting to slow. That could take a couple of hours or longer, if it works at all.
However, problems like mud pumps breaking down or pipes failing could also change the appearance of the flow.
