A tribute to the mystery plumber

Deepwater horizon before the accident

after the accident

In 2010 on earth day there was a blow-out in an oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. The oil platform deepwater horizon was damaged claiming 11 lives. And resulting in a massive oil pollution which ranks 4th in the world bringing discredit to the oil giant British Petroleum (BP).  

As per reports the reasons behind the accident were loosening of regulations to suit BP who chose riskier procedures to save time and money making a series of cost-cutting decisions and not having a system sufficient to ensure oil well safety.

There are also conspiracy theories that this accident was deliberately done to evacuate the fishing community from the Gulf coast making way for an oil refinery and further the top management of BP sold their shares in BP and bought shares in the oil clean up company just before the accident; making more money cleaning up an oil spill then producing oil.

However this is not an article about the case study of the accident or a conspiracy theory.

This article tells the story of the mystery plumber who most believe helped to stop the oil spill which lasted nearly 3 months, a story of not complicating things, a story of simple thinking which proves to be most beneficial.

After the blow-out uncontrolled oil started to flow from the oil well, BP failed to stop the flow, they received 300,000 ideas from around the world, NASA was called but still the problem was not solved, some U.S. Govt.  high ranking officials called the person who designed a Hydrogen bomb, the plan was to detonate a thermonuclear device and solve the problem citing successful Soviet attempts to seal off runaway gas wells with nuclear blasts.

Meanwhile engineering Professor Robert Bea received a late-night call from an apologetic plumber." The caller gave him a very simple design Professor Bea, an expert  researcher, thought the idea looked good and sent the sketches directly to the US Coast Guard and to a clearing house set up to get ideas from outside sources for how to cap the well.

When Bea saw the design of the containment cap lowered onto the well, he marvelled at its similarity to the sketches from the late-night caller, this brought Bea to tears. Professor Bea writes that what the plumber gave was a design of a simple plunger; “You can kind of see how a plumber thinks this way. That's how they have to plumb homes for sewage."

oil gushing out from the oil well  

the cap designed as per the mystery plumbers idea, stopped the oil flow

The simple plumber thought that if a plunger can create so much pressure to clear a choked sewage line, a big plunger will certainly create so much pressure to stop the oil gushing out of the well.

a plunger

No complex calculations, no NASA, no super computers, no hydrogen bombs only a simple thinking of a plumber who refused to even give his name hence known as  "mystery plumber" Solved the gulf oil spill crises.

This article is a tribute to the "mystery plumber" and all the people who believe in simple thinking for it is a well-known fact that for most big problems the solution is often simple.

Simple solution are the best solution.