Update on BP's top kill efforts, now largest spill in US History

[GRG55]

Re: Update on BP's top kill efforts, now largest spill in US History

GRG55, I suspect you know it already, but BP WILL be changing the "drilling procedures" a LOT so as to over design this well for safety and not skimp on using "too much" cement when cementing the different sections of the completion ;)

Show us the evidence that BP "skimped" on cement or anything else while setting the intermediate casing sections on the blow out well and then you might have a case for what you are implying above.

You can't, and therefore you don't.

The methods that are used to drill these wells come from the collective experience of all the operators in the Gulf of Mexico, not just BP. There's lots of accusations floating around, many of them in highly emotional and perjorative wrappings. As an engineer I couldn't give a damn what the world thinks of BP...I am only interested in what actually happened and why. That means stripping out all the emotion and politicization around this tragedy and trying to extract the facts.

Comparing how the Macondo well was drilled and cased with procedures used in the high Arctic or Norway is not nearly as relevant as comparisons with how the most experienced operators in the Gulf of Mexico are drilling similar wells through the same geology and to the same targets in the adjacent exploration blocks. And so far I have seen no compelling evidence that the way BP drilled and cased Macondo differs materially from the way Exxon or Shell or any other experienced GoM operator would have drilled and cased that same well. Let's remember that the well was completely cased and had passed the positive and negative pressure tests before the blowout. It is the sequence of events that happened after that allowed the blowout to occur.

[GRG55]

Re: Update on BP's top kill efforts, now largest spill in US History

GRG55, what is the incremental cost of drilling a relief well along with the main well, when examined in the context of an entire project like this? Does it raise the cost of the oil extracted by one percent, or by 50% or double it? Since a relief well is apparently the only truly effective remedy for a blow-out under sea, how much do we raise the price of a barrel of oil if we ALWAYS install them to be ready for the rare event when we actually use them? Thanks again for your amazing technical insights here.

I'll come back to an analogy I used before. This blowout is something like having all the engines on a B747 fail in quick succession. We can safely surmise that something failed at the bottom of this fully cased well to allow formation oil and gas to enter the wellbore. That is like having the first engine fail on the airplane. Rare, but it should not be catastrophic. What turned this into a blowout is a sequence of subsequent events culminating in the failure of the last line of defense, the blowout preventors. That was like losing the last engine on the plane. At that point you know you can't keep it in the air and you are going down.

It all comes down to a matter of risk management. We could build even more redundancy into our commercial aircraft fleet and therefore try to further reduce the fatal accident rate - and we do try to make changes from what is learned from each and every air crash investigation. The same thing will happen after the investigations into the Macondo blowout are completed. Drilling a simultaneous "relief well" may not be the answer [is six engines better than four?], we'll just have to wait and see as the real facts come out as to what actually happened and why. That should be what drives changes in procedures and regulations.

[Master Shake]

Re: Update on BP's top kill efforts, now largest spill in US History

Show us the evidence that BP "skimped" on cement or anything else while setting the intermediate casing sections on the blow out well and then you might have a case for what you are implying above.

You can't, and therefore you don't.

The methods that are used to drill these wells come from the collective experience of all the operators in the Gulf of Mexico, not just BP. There's lots of accusations floating around, many of them in highly emotional and perjorative wrappings. As an engineer I couldn't give a damn what the world thinks of BP...I am only interested in what actually happened and why. That means stripping out all the emotion and politicization around this tragedy and trying to extract the facts.

Comparing how the Macondo well was drilled and cased with procedures used in the high Arctic or Norway is not nearly as relevant as comparisons with how the most experienced operators in the Gulf of Mexico are drilling similar wells through the same geology and to the same targets in the adjacent exploration blocks. And so far I have seen no compelling evidence that the way BP drilled and cased Macondo differs materially from the way Exxon or Shell or any other experienced GoM operator would have drilled and cased that same well. Let's remember that the well was completely cased and had passed the positive and negative pressure tests before the blowout. It is the sequence of events that happened after that allowed the blowout to occur.

So, that article about the Schlumberger engineers bailing out just before the explosion was bogus?

[GRG55]

Re: Update on BP's top kill efforts, now largest spill in US History

So, that article about the Schlumberger engineers bailing out just before the explosion was bogus?

I am at the point where I don't believe much of anything I read about any topic in the mainstream media any more. On Macondo the noise has completely overwhelmed the signal...

[flintlock]

Re: Update on BP's top kill efforts, now largest spill in US History

I'm beginning to doubt BP will ever get another chance to drill a well in waters this deep. So we may never know what changing any "drilling procedures" would accomplish. Sounds like maybe the "relief well by August" is being very optimistic. What happens if that does not work? How long will this thing gush? Years? Decades?

[D-Mack]

Re: Update on BP's top kill efforts, now largest spill in US History

Obama's Katrina or Three Mile Island or both?

President Obama says Gulf Disaster "Should Serve as a Wake-up Call that it’s Time to Move Forward" on Energy and Climate Bill

[flintlock]

Re: Update on BP's top kill efforts, now largest spill in US History

More like Chernobyl if this continues. But I really don't see what Obama has to do with it. I doubt any human effort could contain a spill of this magnitude. And I have not heard any evidence that his administration was regulating drilling any differently than previous ones.

[metalman]

Re: Update on BP's top kill efforts, now largest spill in US History

thank you. facts... how refreshing.

[GRG55]

Re: Update on BP's top kill efforts, now largest spill in US History

I'm beginning to doubt BP will ever get another chance to drill a well in waters this deep. So we may never know what changing any "drilling procedures" would accomplish. Sounds like maybe the "relief well by August" is being very optimistic. What happens if that does not work? How long will this thing gush? Years? Decades?

I would be happy to take the other side of that bet. I don't have any difficulty imagining there will be more deepwater rigs drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico five years from now than there were just before the Deepwater Horizon ignited. As the cheap supply of oil depletes it has become a difficult and dangerous job to find more of the stuff. The citizens of the USA may finally be starting to understand that...some day maybe their politicians will catch up with them.

The current ban on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico makes some sense because there are simply not enough resources in the industry and the government agencies to deal with a second simultaneous serious offshore incident at the moment. But a complete and permanent ban on drilling in the basin that supplies 10% of USA daily consumption of both crude oil and natural gas would be another matter entirely. I do not see that happening.

As for how long it keeps flowing, the relief well is the best shot and will be tried more than once if necessary. Also, the collapsed marine riser is attached to a high pressure fitting on the top of the wellhead/BOP stack, so removing the riser [either cutting it off, or using the remote underwater robot vehicles to unbolt the flange] and positioning a second BOP or new riser manifold connection is still an option. The reason this hasn't yet been attempted is because the current thinking is the riser is acting as a choke and limiting the flow to a large degree, and therefore removing it will likely increase the flow measurably...which means if they are subsequently unable to position the BOP or new marine riser they will have a bigger problem on their hands. As I said...difficult and dangerous.

More like Chernobyl if this continues. But I really don't see what Obama has to do with it. I doubt any human effort could contain a spill of this magnitude. And I have not heard any evidence that his administration was regulating drilling any differently than previous ones.

Chernobyl didn't stop the world from continuing to build nuclear reactors. The Macondo blowout won't stop the world, including BP, from drilling deepwater offshore wells.

[KGW]

Re: Update on BP's top kill efforts, now largest spill in US History

It should, for the ocean is infinitely more valuable to life than oil and its products. But I'm not holding my breath. . .

Chernobyl didn't stop the world from continuing to build nuclear reactors. The Macondo blowout won't stop the world, including BP, from drilling deepwater offshore wells.

[GRG55]

Re: Update on BP's top kill efforts, now largest spill in US History

It should, for the ocean is infinitely more valuable to life than oil and its products. But I'm not holding my breath. . .

Try explaining that to the heavily subsidized farmer in land-locked Nebraska who wants to know why he should pay more for his farm implement diesel fuel, more for his natural gas sourced ammonia fertilsers, more for his petroleum chemical based herbicides and pesticides, and more to the energy consuming handlers and transporters that he uses to get his crop to market.

[we_are_toast]

Re: Update on BP's top kill efforts, now largest spill in US History

Try explaining that to the heavily subsidized farmer in land-locked Nebraska who wants to know why he should pay more for his farm implement diesel fuel, more for his natural gas sourced ammonia fertilsers, more for his petroleum chemical based herbicides and pesticides, and more to the energy consuming handlers and transporters that he uses to get his crop to market.

Whether they drill in the Gulf or not, that farmer in Nebraska is going to end up paying more for all the things you've listed. His choice is to push his government to transition from a fossil fuel based economy to an Alt-E economy, and move his business off the fossil fuel train wreck so he has something to leave his children, or continue down the suicidal path he is on and watch his business, his children's future, and his country all die.

[GRG55]

Re: Update on BP's top kill efforts, now largest spill in US History

Whether they drill in the Gulf or not, that farmer in Nebraska is going to end up paying more for all the things you've listed. His choice is to push his government to transition from a fossil fuel based economy to an Alt-E economy, and move his business off the fossil fuel train wreck so he has something to leave his children, or continue down the suicidal path he is on and watch his business, his children's future, and his country all die.

Well he might already be producing corn for conversion to ethanol...although he isn't using any of it in his John Deere. I am sure he'd be happy to "push his government to transition from fossil fuel", provided there's a cash grant or three from Congress that he's eligible to collect.

Cynical? Me? Nah...

[KGW]

Re: Update on BP's top kill efforts, now largest spill in US History

As I said, I'm not holding my breath. . .

The straight to hell circle you describe above plays right to the corporate energy structure: would they have it any other way? The quality of life is not being improved by our having overshot our biological foundation through the overuse of fossil fuel. That there are those who have difficulty understanding these relationships is unfortunate, but I am not going to convince them of anything. I will leave that to the figurative brick wall

Try explaining that to the heavily subsidized farmer in land-locked Nebraska who wants to know why he should pay more for his farm implement diesel fuel, more for his natural gas sourced ammonia fertilsers, more for his petroleum chemical based herbicides and pesticides, and more to the energy consuming handlers and transporters that he uses to get his crop to market.

[KGW]

Re: Update on BP's top kill efforts, now largest spill in US History

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/05/26/t...ll-photos.html

BP's Photo Blockade of the Gulf Oil Spill

Photographers say BP and government officials are preventing them from documenting the impact of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

As BP makes its latest attempt to plug its gushing oil well, news photographers are complaining that their efforts to document the slow-motion disaster in the Gulf of Mexico are being thwarted by local and federal officials—working with BP—who are blocking access to the sites where the effects of the spill are most visible. More than a month into the disaster, a host of anecdotal evidence is emerging from reporters, photographers, and TV crews in which BP and Coast Guard officials explicitly target members of the media, restricting and denying them access to oil-covered beaches, staging areas for clean-up efforts, and even flyovers.


Last week, a CBS TV crew was threatened with arrest when attempting to film an oil-covered beach. On Monday, Mother Jones published this firsthand account of one reporter’s repeated attempts to gain access to clean-up operations on oil-soaked beaches, and the telling response of local law enforcement. The latest instance of denied press access comes from Belle Chasse, La.-based Southern Seaplane Inc., which was scheduled to take a New Orleans Times-Picayune photographer for a flyover on Tuesday afternoon, and says it was denied permission once BP officials learned that a member of the press would be on board.


“We are not at liberty to fly media, journalists, photographers, or scientists,” the company said in a letter it sent on Tuesday to Sen. David Vitter (R-La.). “We strongly feel that the reason for this massive [temporary flight restriction] is that BP wants to control their exposure to the press.”


rest of story at the link