There is widespread recognition of the disastrous environmental effects of an oil well blowout or explosion, which typically results in a significant oil spill. One such explosion in the Gulf of Mexico resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in environmental damage as well as significant loss of business revenue in the Gulf region.
Many systems and devices are known which attempt to contain and resolve oil well blowouts/explosions, typically by attempting to cap or seal the damaged well. However, none of these systems/devices have in fact proven to be effective, particularly with blowouts of deep undersea oil wells, as the Gulf spill in 2010 proved, spilling oil in huge quantities, unabated for months, even with continuous, and very expensive, attempts to contain the spill. Accordingly, there is a significant present and ongoing need for a reliable system which is capable of preventing and/or containing an oil spill resulting from failure of an oil well, such as might occur in a blowout, explosion or other cause.