Is the BP Gusher Unstoppable?

From a Mother Jones blog: "Sharon Astyk at ScienceBlogs points the way to a seriously scary comment thread at The Oil Drum, a sounding board for, among others, many petroleum geologists and oil professionals."

Excerpts from what one of those professionals from The Oil Drum, identified only as "dougr," says:

All the actions and few tidbits of information all lead to one inescapable conclusion. The well pipes below the sea floor are broken and leaking...

To those of us outside the real inside loop, yet still fairly knowledgeable, [the failure of Top Kill] was a major confirmation of what many feared. That the system below the sea floor has serious failures of varying magnitude in the complicated chain, and it is breaking down and it will continue to.

What does this mean?

It means they will never cap the gusher after the wellhead. They cannot...the more they try and restrict the oil gushing out the bop?...the more it will transfer to the leaks below. Just like a leaky garden hose with a nozzle on it...

One of the most trustworthy sources on The Oil Drum is consulting engineer Alan Drake.

Drake, a New Orleans resident and Katrina evacuee, is very well recognized, respected within The Oil Drum, and is working directly on this problem at a high level.

Drake has repeatedly expressed concerns that Beach Polluters are again cutting corners by only drilling two relief wells. Success rates in that type of rock formation are only around 60% per well. Drilling just two means that statistically there is a one in six chance of total failure and that they'll have to restart the process two months from now, spending an additional three months before the next shot at blocking the blown out well at its base.

What happens if this gusher is really unstoppable? If the relief wells don't work? If the huge reserve they've tapped into just keeps spewing?

Over a thousand miles of vibrant, living Gulf coast reduced to a toxic wasteland for decades. Thousands of square miles of ocean habitat rendered lifeless. Thousands of miles of beautiful, pristine beaches, potentially all over the Atlantic, smeared with toxic oil.

And you thought our oil habit would merely result in global climate change!

Let's hope and pray this thing can be stopped. But regardless, it's well past time to change our ways. We need to develop alternative energy in a big way, and we need to do all we can to reduce our energy use. And we need to put pressure on our elected representatives like never before.