Is Simmons Right?

I’ve called him a few names here, because of his nuke the well idea.

But he also said:

The main leak is 5 or 6 miles away.

And, that BP is chasing a mouse, while ignoring the tiger behind it.  He claims that this leak could not be the cause of as much oil as is being seen in the Gulf alone.

Now, BP has just said today that the reason the top kill did not work, is because of a leak way down in the well.  

Officials suspect that the mud could have been escaping from the well far below the ocean floor, possibly through a rupture disk, a built-in weak point in the steel pipe that lines the well.

– NYT

A rupture disk.

These things are  put in the subsurface well to pop off and basically start leaking if the pressure reaches an overload point. Of course, BP is not saying what pressure the one’s in this well were set to.   But, it seems pretty likely that if they leak from the mud, they’ll leak from the oil. Even if they weren’t before-they might well be now after the mud. Seems like it would have to be a pretty big leak to stop a 30,000 horse power pump (the top kill mud pump) from filling the well.   If that’s in fact happening, oil would have to wind it’s way up, and certainly could be coming out at a point far distant from the well itself.