Solutions & Answers

So, the brave, tireless heroes at BP have positioned a four-story, 100 ton, steel-and-concrete condom over the grave of the Deepwater Horizon. And meter by meter, foot by foot, they are lowering it down over one of the three broken pipes.

If it works, I guess they're a third way toward getting everything capped. Then they can focus on cleaning up the mess they created. If the giant condom doesn't work, we all have to shave our heads and create a giant absorbent pad to stuff into the pipes. So. Pray, people. Pray!

In the meanwhile, the folks over at NOLA.com have put together a great explanation of What Happened On The Deepwater Horizon.

The short version is that the rig was about to temporarily cap a well it had dug, and hand the whole operation off to a permanent pipeline or production rig. But the disconnect process went completely sideways. The Halliburton-constructed cement casing blew up like a glass pinata. A thunderous  blowout belched a boiling motherload of pressurized natural gas into the bottom of the rig, where it exploded into a raging fireball and eventually sank the Deepwater Horizon to  bottom of the sea, leaving behind three very angry pipelines that are currently spewing two hundred thousand gallons of crude from the bowels of the Earth each day.

And here we are...