FBI escorts undersea evidence to NASA base in hunt for oil secrets
From: The Australian
September 06, 2010 12:00AM
The Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer is lifted out of the Gulf of Mexico. Picture: AP Source: AP
深水地平線的防噴器被吊出墨西哥灣。圖片：美聯社來源：美聯社
INVESTIGATORS looking into what went wrong in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill are a step closer to answers.
調查人員正在調查到底深水地平線石油洩漏是什麼出錯，答案一步更近。
A key piece of evidence is now secure aboard a boat after engineers took 29 hours to lift the 15.24m-long, 300-tonne blowout preventer from 1.6km beneath the sea, and the five-storey-high device looked largely intact yesterday, with black stains on the yellow metal.
一關鍵的證據現在是有把握在一船上，在工程師花去 29小時從 1.6公里下的海底，去升起15.24米長、300噸重的防噴器後，和五層高的裝備昨天看上去很大程度完好無損，有黑色污漬在黃色金屬上。
FBI agents will escort the device back to a NASA facility in Louisiana for analysis.
聯邦調查局特工將護送設備回美國航天局在路易斯安那州的設施進行分析。
Crews had delayed raising the device after icelike crystals called hydrates, which are combustible, formed on it. The device could not be safely lifted from the water until the hydrates melted.
Hydrates form when gases such as methane mix with water under high pressure and cold temperatures. The crystals caused BP problems in May, when hydrates formed on a 100-tonne, four-storey dome the company tried to place over the leak to contain it.
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The April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon killed 11 workers and led to a massive 780 million litres of oil spewing from the undersea well.
Investigators know the explosion was triggered by a bubble of methane gas that escaped from the well and shot up the drill column, expanding quickly as it burst through several seals and barriers before igniting.
But they do not know exactly how or why the gas escaped. Nor do they know why the blowout preventer failed to seal the well pipe at the sea bottom after the eruption, as it was supposed to.
Documents have emerged showing part of the device had a hydraulic leak that would have reduced its effectiveness, and the fail-safe "deadman" trigger had a low, perhaps even dead, battery.
Steve Newman, president of rig owner Transocean, told Congress there was no evidence the device had failed, and suggested debris might have been forced into it by the surging gas.
But there has been testimony the blowout preventer did not undergo a rigorous recertification process in 2005, as required by the federal regulations.
A Transocean official has said he knew the blowout preventer was functioning because he personally oversaw its maintenance, and he said the device underwent tests to ensure it was working.
George Hirasaki, a Rice University engineering professor, said the blowout preventer should have sheared through the drill pipe and shut off the flow of oil. But there may have been sections of pipe or a thicker section that it could not shear through, he said.
AP
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/fbi-escorts-undersea-evidence-to-nasa-base-in-hunt-for-oil-secrets/story-e6frg6so-1225914498871
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