Oil leaks and a crazy plan that just might work

Call it a quirk, call it a personality defect. But when I hear of a problem, especially when it is an engineering problem, it will just get stuck in my head like a bad Barry Manilow song.

I cannot get rid of that inner brain demon until I at least give it a shot. Well, here is my shot at this oil leak.

Before hand, let me say that I am not a petroleum, geological, or even a mechanical engineer. It may be the stupidest thing ever to be sketched, not taking in account the…..whatever.

But what the hell, at least it will be out there.

The problem is stabbing the hole from 1 mile away, remotely, with robots. So you need something with a relatively small diameter. Also the pressures involved are immense, and we have to assume that the flow of oil needs to still be there, flowing to the surface.

This idea is to have a pipe within another pipe. Pipe is one resource that is readily available. The diameters of the pipe can be scaled accordingly.The outer pipe to inner pipe is used to inject mud down to the sliding bulkhead. This applies tremendous pressure to the bulkhead, forcing the compression of the Vitron body. Compressing to a oval shape, it expands to a much larger diameter, pressing a seal against the well head pipe walls. It will also multiply the force applied by the mud several times over, so you could well have a compression of well over 30k PSI. Adjustment of the lateral force of the seal can be controlled by adjusting the injected Mud pressure.

Once it is sealed on the outside, the inner pipe allows the oil to be pumped to the surface and into a tanker.

Thoughts???