[ImFatYoureFat]

So to get started, my uneducated suggestion is that they put a giant cylinder over the leak so as to at least contain the oil as it rises to the surface. I understand the problems with depth and pressure so ideally there is some fabric that is highly mailable (plastic, rubber, etc.)

With little background in physics I would think that the pressure of the oil's need to rise to the surface would exceed the pressure of the water's need to collapse the cylinder.

Criticism of this or any other idea is more than welcome.

[Ixiaus]

I would imagine just "putting a cylinder" over the leak would not contain it. To begin with, the floor of the ocean isn't a solid surface, there's a lot of mud which means the opening to the hole isn't "clean cut" - any kind of "well" uses an inner sleeve so that you can connect a pipe to the "hole". That's usually where the blowout preventers would go, I imagine, would be in the sleeve inside the hole. So, the opening to the well is probably pretty muddy and unstable.

When that well blew out it popped off the connecting pipe and began releasing thousands of barrels of oil at very high pressures. Even if the "hole" were clean cut and they could easily mount a fitting to it, the pressure alone would make it extremely difficult (try turning the garden faucet on high and then connecting a hose to it, possible, but rather difficult).

This is why blowout preventers exist, if a blowout happens the well is sealed from inside itself (as I understand it). I think it is ridiculous that mandatory blowout preventers never made it into law. Bright side of it is this incident will (or should) inspire reform.

I think everything they are doing is about as much as you can do at that depth with such high pressure.

[moe]

Extending on the cylinder idea, how about a cone?

My naive thinking would be a cone with a large diameter and a relatively small hole at the top. Plug a hose (or rather a pipe) into that hole and suck off the oil into tankers faster than it would push out on the sides at the bottom of the cone.

This could surely not catch all of the stream, but perhaps a worthwhile percentage?

[ars]

They tried that. The cone floated away.

The oil is much lighter than water. Plus it has methane which is even lighter than that.

[SapphireSun]

I think the problem is that they originally did do something like that (the pipe itself), but the pipe is thin and the oil flow was well contained. Under these conditions, the cylinder has to be much wider and therefore much heavier. Additionally, there will be turbulent flow that will mess with the stability of the conduit.

Maybe if there was a gradually thinning cone, you could get it back to laminar flow partway up.