Plugging the Harvest

[don]

To Plug: (1) An object, such as a cork or a wad of cloth, used to fill a hole tightly; a stopper. (2) a piece of favorable publicity or a favorable mention usually incorporated in general matter.

To Harvest: The act or process of gathering a crop.

By all measures this is a rich well. The operative word is now containment....


BP presents oil containment plan: official
(AFP) – 3 hours ago

WASHINGTON — Under intense US pressure, energy giant BP presented a new plan to roughly triple the amount of oil it is capturing from a ruptured Gulf of Mexico well by the end of June, to more than 50,000 barrels a day.

"After being directed by the administration to move more quickly, BP is now stepping up its efforts to contain the leaking oil," the official said Monday on condition of anonymity.

"They have now outlined a path to contain more than 50,000 barrels of oil per day by the end of June, two weeks earlier than they originally suggested," the official said.

The oil company is currently siphoning up about 15,000 barrels of oil a day to a ship on the surface, about half of the 25,000 to 30,000 barrels believed to be streaming into the Gulf.

In a letter, BP outlined plans to bring a vessel for producing and storing oil from South America, two additional tankers from Europe and a 3,800-foot, six-inch flexible pipe from Brazil to reinforce the existing efforts to suck up crude from the leaking well.

The outlines of the plan were produced as President Barack Obama was to depart on his fourth visit to the Gulf since an April 20 explosion destroyed a BP-leased deepwater rig, unleashing the worst oil spill in US history.

Obama is to address the nation in a speech from the Oval Office on his return on Tuesday, the official said.

With new estimates showing that the oil is gushing into the Gulf at a rate double what was previously thought, the administration on Saturday said it had given BP 48 hours to come up with a revised plan to contain the leak.

Under its original plan, BP said it could expand its containment effort to capture between 20,000 to 28,000 barrels a day by mid-June and 20,000 to 50,000 barrels by mid-July.

The revised strategy would increase the capture of oil to a range of 40,000 to 53,000 barrels a day by the end of June, which would grow to 60,000 to 80,000 barrels a day by mid-July, according to the administration official.

However, BP cautioned in its June 13 letter to Coast Guard Rear Admiral James Watson, "The quoted numbers represent installed design capacities and any unplanned events will impact actual delivery."

The administration official said: "We will continue to hold BP accountable and bring every possible resource and innovation to bear."

Obama is scheduled to meet at the White House Wednesday with top BP officials, including chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg and possibly CEO Tony Hayward, amid increasingly testy relations between the administration and the oil giant.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp...qw-d5ulBlwcwIw

[GRG55]

Re: Plugging the Harvest

...The operative word is now containment....[/I]


...

A variation on one of the key entries in the "Ben Bernanke Handbook of Words for Public Discourse"

[alcyone]

Re: Plugging the Harvest

When you read the description of the blowouts at the Gullfaks C in Norway and the Deepwater Horizon it appears that this is one of the major risks to deepwater drilling. Our addiction to oil has just about exhausted land based wells and low pressure shallow off shore sites and now the Peak Oil crunch is forcing us to pursue the more risky deepwater wells. Scientists are now saying that Oil Volcano Pressure from deepwater wells is too Strong For Containment

Situation is Out of Control: Risk of Blowout on Norway’s Offshore Gullfaks C Platform

by Ruth Astrid Saeter

Two gas leaks were detected at Norway’s the Gullfaks C oil platform Wednesday afternoon, and the situation worsened Thursday when the well was destabilized due to a loss of formation pressure. Eighty nine people were evacuated from the platform. The well has suffered similar incidents, one as recenty as April 30th this year and again in December 23rd 2009.

“Three major events of this kind in less than five months proves that Statoil is not able to control this situation,” says President of the Bellona Foundation, Frederic Hauge.

Bellona has received new information that sheds some light over what actually happened on Gullfaks C, which is operated by the Norwegian state owned oil company Statoil. The situation remained unresolved Friday afternoon.

The discovery comes at a critical time when world media attention is focussed on events unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico after the BP-operated Deepwater Horizon well explodes on April 20th and oil is making landfall in Louisiana’s vulnerable marshes and bayous . BP officials there are finally admitting that the gusher at the sea floor is spilling significantly more than 5,000 barrels of oil a day. Meanwhile, BP has still not come up with an effective method to cap the well.
Three critical events

For the third time in five months, a critical event has occurred in Statoil’s well 34/10-C-6 on Gullfaks, during drilling of a side track. The last event occured this Wednesday afternoon, at 3.47 pm, when the well was destabilized. Statoil immediately began efforts to establish pressure control on Gullfaks C. But all efforts toward stabilizing the well with heavy mud have so far been unsuccessful.

The well is still unstable, and the pressure still not under control. Currently the Blowout Preventer (BOP) is the only safety barrier.
Not acceptable

“This is not acceptable,” said Hauge. “According to Statoil’s own report on the event to the Petroleum Security Authority (PSA) of May 19th, different parts of the BOP were replaced that day. We also know that the O-ring on the BOP was mended around Christmas last year, when there was a similar gas leak on December 23rd,” Hauge added.

Wednesday, increased levels of gas were detected in the platform shaker. The levels were so high that an emergency situation was declared - and non-critical staff was ordered to the life boats. The evacuation was later cancelled, as lower concentrations of gas were observed.
The situation is getting worse

Thursday however, the situation took a downturn, and because of a change of pressure in the well, a total of 89 people were evacuated. One hundred and fourty people are still on the platform.

So far Statoil has injected 600 cubic meters of heavy oil mud in the well in an attempt to stabilize the pressure. The mud keeps flowing into the reservoir, however, and is lost. Six hundred cubic meters is twice the amount of mud which is normally at disposal on the platform.

Statoil therefore is depending on mud from other sources and additional mud is now being transferred to the platform from supply ships.
‘The situation is out of control’

According to Bellona’s sources, the drillstring is stuck in the well.

“Bellona’s position is that the situation is out of control, and that there is still a real risk of a blow out,” says Frederic Hauge.

“What happened on Gullfaks C just before Christmas last year, was defined as the most serious event on the Norwegian shelf in 2009, with a category Red 2-definition, “said Frederic Hauge. “What we are experiencing on Gullfaks C right now is an even more serious situation.”

He also alluded to an event that according to Bellona’s sources occurred on Gullfaks C on April 30th – but which has not been reported to the PSA.

“As far as we know, there was instability in the well on April 30th. When a new situation occurs less than a month later, we question Statoil’s ability to judge in this situation and their will to take safety seriously. It is nothing less than sensational that Statoil is responsible for three events in five months. This is dramatic,” said Hauge.

[charliebrown]

Re: Plugging the Harvest

Is it fair to ask why this containenment was not brought online a month ago?

[Rajiv]

Re: Plugging the Harvest

Under intense US pressure, energy giant BP presented a new plan to roughly triple the amount of oil it is capturing from a ruptured Gulf of Mexico well by the end of June, to more than 50,000 barrels a day.

"After being directed by the administration to move more quickly, BP is now stepping up its efforts to contain the leaking oil," the official said Monday on condition of anonymity.

"They have now outlined a path to contain more than 50,000 barrels of oil per day by the end of June, two weeks earlier than they originally suggested," the official said.

The oil company is currently siphoning up about 15,000 barrels of oil a day to a ship on the surface, about half of the 25,000 to 30,000 barrels believed to be streaming into the Gulf.

The revised strategy would increase the capture of oil to a range of 40,000 to 53,000 barrels a day by the end of June, which would grow to 60,000 to 80,000 barrels a day by mid-July, according to the administration official.

So is the amount of oil leaking from the blowout 3-5000 barrels per day initial estimates, 15000 barrels per day (current collection,) 25-30,000 bpd (current estimates) 50,000 bpd (end of June collection) or 80,000 bpd (end of July collection estimate) or some number much higher?

I am confused! Seems like thay are chasing an ephimeral target!