As British Petroleum tries to stop the oil from gushing from of its blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico, an Orange County man says he has contacted the oil company about a way to plug the underwater oil head and still allow it to function later. And it all has to do with temperature.
BP is still losing as much as a million gallons a day from the uncapped well. Chris Lindsey, an entrepreneur at heart in Dana Point, has come up with a method that uses freezing and carbon dioxide.
His idea is to spray carbon dioxide under the water's surface, like the recent efforts made to fill the oil well with mud. Lindsey says it could be done with something as simple as a scuba diving tank and a conveyor belt like device.
"It's a sled connected by two cables to the bottom of the ocean floor carrying as many canisters as you like because the number of ships out there right now we could have hundreds of tanks delivered every hour," said Lindsey.
The freezing temperatures would create the equivalent of a stream of dry ice, literally freezing the oil, according to Lindsey's plan. He says the oil turns into a rock when it sits at temperatures 140 degrees below zero, a sort of instant "oil-sicle."
Lindsey's ancestors were once part of the great Kansas oil boom in the 1900s. Years later he remembers his father using dry ice to clean up oil spills at their Pomona gas station.
Lindsey claims there would be no side effects on wildlife, since carbon dioxide evaporates into water and air.
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Just a few days after Lindsey submitted his idea, British Petroleum called him back and said they will be in touch.
