He said in such a situation, normal procedure would be for the contractor's crew to secure the well by closing off the huge valve sitting on the seabed known as a blowout preventer.

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Safe to say that the Department of Defense does not have a submersible with arms to shut off the valve of a deep-water oil well.

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The Blow Out Preventer is off the well which is being controlled by a down hole safety valve.

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TF2 was where Valve first introduced free-to-play, as well as microtransactions with its hat system (among many other initiatives).

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That starts off with a "junk shot, " in which material such as rubber tires and golf balls is pumped into the shut-off valve, or blowout preventer, that sits atop the well.

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Valve runs Steam - an alternative games store marketplace - as well as developing its own titles.

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Studies of the blowout preventer's two control pods suggest that a flattish battery and a dodgy valve meant that neither was in a fit state to close off the well automatically when they should have, which BP takes as evidence of poor maintenance by Transocean.

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In addition the chief executive of Valve - the creator of the influential science fiction games Half Life and Portal, as well as the Steam community and marketplace - was honoured with an Academy Fellowship, Bafta's highest accolade.

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The superintendent of the Pecos Valley Artesian Conservancy District, Dennis Karnes, can still remember sitting on a well-pipe as a boy and being launched into the duckpond as soon as the farmer opened the valve and natural pressure spewed several thousand gallons a minute of ground water against his legs.

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