2010 Gulf Oil Spill

In the wake of tragedy of the BP oil spill I hope to see some kind of money put in to research to keep things like this from getting out of hand.

BP tried using the ‘TOPHAT’ or  40 foot dome on top of the last string of riser to stop the leak. BUT hydrate ice crystals formed and wont allow the oil to pass through the top. this problem was anticipated but not to this degree.

A similar method of this nature was used in June, 1979 for Ixtoc I called the ‘steel sombrero’. Oh and that didn’t work either.

Technology  of 1979! That did not work then is still in use today so why is it still in use today? Unproven and untested  I’m pretty sure if BP was to announce a 2 million dollar prize to the person with the best solution to a problem of this nature they would have already fixed it. BP is projected to pay over 500 million dollars in cleaning up this spill and thats on the low side. 500 MILLION DOLLARS! Thats one hell of a pay day. BP should go ahead and throw in an extra 10 million for research and development for oil spill containments and leaks. Better yet why not 10% of the cost to clean up this whole mess also be put back in to future innovations in being able to prevent or respond to such events. Proactive is better than reactive. This type of event will happen again. The next time it may not be BP or PTT (Montara oil spill in Australia Aug 09) but it will happen again. The question is will the oil companies be ready for it or will there at least be a service company ready to show up and save the day at a moments notice?