Drill Stream News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Earlier. >> yeah, exactly. but these systems in oil wells are really not fail-safe. if things go wrong, you can turn them off. there are systems to shut a valve, a big valve. even if the drill stream is solid steel rod is still in there, it will cut through it and shut it off. but you have to activate it. you have to turn it on to do that. it doesn't happen on its own. and so it's not -- >> jeff: so it's not like a train where if the conductor goes down, everything shuts down. >> the dead man pedal. in this case, in congressional testimony they said if the battery is dead, the dead man pedal, ...

Pipe within a pipe? it's a difficult business. and then what happened they put the dome over it. the dome kind of looks like a house. i didn't think of that. the bubbles of methane gas turned into this stuff we call clath rates, or this ice crystal. it's a water -- it's one molecule of methane, natural gas enclosed in a few molecules of water. and it plugged up the pipe. and with experience, that wouldn't happen. but they have never tried it like this before. >> jeff: and does it surprise you that they have not tried that before, knowing this is a possibility? >> well, it surprised me a little...