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| Deepwater horizon before the accident |
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| 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."
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| oil gushing out from the oil well |
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| 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.
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| 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.
