It is hard to forget the flailing efforts by both industry and government to stop the runaway well in 2010, including the failure of the blowout preventer and the preposterous"
junk shot" attempt to jam golf balls and shredded tires down the gushing well.
It reminds me of the "
junk shot" solution that was attempted to plug the Gulf oil spill.
The Deepwater Horizon spill was only about a month old-no spill-cam yet, no top kill or
junk shot or umpteen other attempts to plug the cursed hole--when we saw a note from MoJo reporter Mac McClelland flicker across our tweet stream: "Has oil made landfall in Port Fourchon, LA?
"Top Kill," "Top Hat," "
Junk Shot," and the "Lower Marine Riser Package" have all failed, and the Macondo Prospect, the whimsically named reservoir of oil that is flowing freely into the Gulf of Mexico--its meager 100 million barrels that would have provided only five days of oil by American standards--is now adrift with no fixed destination, causing ecosystem failure wherever it goes.
MAY 26 - The so-called "Top Kill" and
junk shot. Heavy drilling mud and metal particles and rubber balls were pumped into the well to block the oil.
Still another option is a
junk shot which would involve a concoction of rubber pieces, golf balls and other items to be pumped down to plug the blowout preventer stack.
BP spokesman Robert Wine said crews were continuing to pump heavy drilling fluid into the leak and also had tried a "
junk shot," where various types of debris are placed into the leak site to try to clog it.
Chief operating officer Doug Suttles said the "
junk shot" was an option.
Some 1 million tonnes of chemical dispersants have already been used to prevent the oil from reaching aquatic and human life on shore, but other ploys - such as "
junk shots", injecting old tyres and golf balls into the hole, and using a "top hat", or a device placed over the well - could soon come into play as well.