Oil giant BP plc has a very long straw stuck 3048 meters into the Gulf of Mexico sea floor with oil and gas spouting out the top at several thousand pascals. How do BP engineers stop the flow when none of the control valves at the top is working and there’s no way to put a stopper in the straw’s end? The only option is using gravity, notes petroleum engineer Paul Bommer of the University of Texas, Austin.

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How to Kill a Well With Gravity

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