How Can they Stop the Oil Spill?

[paiute]

Question not answered

One way to avoid catastrophic disasters is to over-regulate all exploration.
That may, or may not work, but will come at a price.

How much are you, personally , willing to pay for a gallon of gasoline , if you can be 100% certain it is produced at zero environmental cost to the Gulf?

What about if it's the Arabian Gulf?

Or do you maybe feel you already pay enough to keep the Arabian Gulf clean?

The question remains. In a properly regulated operating environment, how many similar events would be tolerated per year? Per decade?

 

[Soapy Sam]

The question remains. In a properly regulated operating environment, how many similar events would be tolerated per year? Per decade?

None.
What makes you ask?

 

[macdoc]

Can you imagine when they start mining clathrates on purpose...

 

[Soapy Sam]

So we just keep drilling until there's not another affordable drop left, whatever the consequences?

That seems to be the plan, yes.

What about our descendants?

What about them?

What about our ecosystem?

The damage to our ecosystem is not caused by spilling oil. It's caused by burning it. Every barrel of oil currently tarring and feathering seabirds would otherwise have been burned, directly or indirectly and would have entered the ecosystem in some form.
When we see the stuff wash up on a beach we are presented with the reality of habitat destruction caused by our hunger for energy.
That we do not object when we personally do, on purpose, what has happened here by accident might seem a tad hypocritical.

Any particular people in mind? Nigerians?

Americans mostly, Californians in particular, closely followed by Europeans.

 

[barrymore]

None.
What makes you ask?

That is outrageous. Just because something happens does not mean it is a failure of regulation. I could get in a car accident, but it does not necessarily reflect on the driving laws and regulations.

I am tempted to send a crudely drawn cost curve to politicians just so they do not make some rash and stupid decisions.

 

[EHocking]

The article doesn't mention another known problem; shear rams cannot cut and seal the double wall areas where pipe sections are screwed together even for lower tensile strength (older) drill pipe, and certainly not a section of the drill string that had drill collars too.

The source quoted in my last post outlines that a study of shear ram functional capability was done in 2004 which highlighted the fact that the current configurations and capabilities were probably inadequate.
The IADC (International Association of Drilling Contractors) overrode the MMS recommendation and the MMS watered down their directive.

The problem has been known practically ever since BOPs were invented and certainly were known as a well design concern for deep water drilling.

 

[Soapy Sam]

Not like the industry was unaware.....

continues

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18881-oil-industry-failed-to-heed-blowout-warnings.html

I don't honestly see the relevance of much of this article. The BOP was tested immediately before the displacement. It worked perfectly or operations would not have proceeded.
We have no evidence whatsoever that the BOP malfunctioned.
The critical point remains that the well did not kick until the hydrostatic was reduced by displacing the riser to seawater. Given the speed of the kick, it certainly looks like gas had been migrating into the casing from the reservoir before this was done. The fact it did not reach surface earlier suggests that at least one element of the BOP was closed and stopped the gas reaching the riser. After the BOP test, it was (I presume) opened- and again must have functioned perfectly. You don't say a switch malfunctioned because someone was electrocuted when he stuck a finger in the light socket. You say it was "on" and functional.

Sounds to me like this was not something that would happen to a normal well, but this one was sunk through layers of methane hydrate, and the casing cement was in direct contact with the methane. The heat from the cement (it gets very warm) may have caused a pressure spike larger than any of the systems there were designed for.

I have no information regarding the geology of the well. I agree that something about the cement job did not work as intended. Whether that was due to inadequate procedures, inadequate knowledge or a failure to carry out adequate procedures properly is something we will have to wait to learn.
I understand BP personnel will be interviewed by a congressional (senatorial?) committee tomorrow. We may start to learn the details then.

On the matter of shear rams cutting drillpipe. I'm not aware what drillpipe (if any) was below the seabed at the time. Does anyone have a link to that information?

 

[Tricky]

On an unrelated note. Do any of you work in the Petroleum Industry?

Im about to graduate with a Petroleum Engineering Degree and am currently looking for a job. If any of you know of anyone please let me know.

I also have internship experience.

I not only work in the petroleum industry, I work for BP in the Gulf of Mexico. Obviously, I can't make any official comments, but several people, especially Clownshoes, obviously know what they are talking about.

I know that the entire resources of BP have been turned toward fixing this problem. All other projects are on hold as every available engineer with applicable experience is set to the task of developing a solution.

As an environmentalist, I am proud to work for BP. They are the most environmentally conscious of the oil companies. They were the first to state that Global Warming was a fact and that they would work toward reducing it. They invest heavily in alternative energy and are the worlds largest producer of solar energy.

But oil is still our backbone. In response to incredible demand, BP and other companies have pushed the envelope on engineering to tap fields that as recently as ten years ago were conisidered inaccessable. Practically everything we do in the deep water is experimental. While safety is always first, there are simply situations that cannot be anticipated.

I'll be spending most of my working time as well as doing volunteer cleanup work, should the oil hit the beaches. This is a terrible catastrophe, but there is nothing to do but try to minimize it.

Perhaps I'll provide some details if they are cleared for release, but I'm pretty busy right now.

ETA: Oh, by the way, setting off an explosion is a terrible idea. We fracture the rock to make it MORE porous. This would just create an enormous area of leakage.

 

[Soapy Sam]

That is outrageous. Just because something happens does not mean it is a failure of regulation. I could get in a car accident, but it does not necessarily reflect on the driving laws and regulations.

I am tempted to send a crudely drawn cost curve to politicians just so they do not make some rash and stupid decisions.

Not sure what you consider outrageous here.
I have spent half my life on wells like this. I was on a well drilled in a mile of seawater in 1979. I've never been involved with a blowout yet. I don't plan to be. "None" is how many blowouts I find acceptable, ever.

Perhaps you misunderstood me in some way?

 

[macdoc]

Yet the parent company had safety concerns and afaik some of the fallbacks had not been tested under the conditions that exist that deep.

You would know more about that tho.

It's not the blow out - that can happen....it's the carnage that occurred and is still occurring.

Light circuits have a ground fault detector ...just sayin'

 

[Soapy Sam]

I not only work in the petroleum industry, I work for BP in the Gulf of Mexico. Obviously, I can't make any official comments, but several people, especially Clownshoes, obviously know what they are talking about.

I know that the entire resources of BP have been turned toward fixing this problem. All other projects are on hold as every available engineer with applicable experience is set to the task of developing a solution.

As an environmentalist, I am proud to work for BP. They are the most environmentally conscious of the oil companies. They were the first to state that Global Warming was a fact and that they would work toward reducing it. They invest heavily in alternative energy and are the worlds largest producer of solar energy.
.

As a service company hand, with no points to earn here, I'd agree that when it comes to environmental awareness - BP is as good as it gets.
The entire industry is actually far more environmentally alert than most folk in onshore office jobs would ever believe.

 

[Soapy Sam]

Yet the parent company had safety concerns and afaik some of the fallbacks had not been tested under the conditions that exist that deep.

You would know more about that tho.

It's not the blow out - that can happen....it's the carnage that occurred and is still occurring.

Light circuits have a ground fault detector ...just sayin'

And that makes it safe to stick your finger in the socket? Of course not. You have safety concerns and you take precautions.
Drilling in deepwater has hazards. Of course companies have safety concerns and take precautions. But yes, some of the equipment is edge of the art.

Your comment that "It's not the blowout" is interesting as it underlines the psychological difference between the objective view of the environmental disaster with the view on the rig.
To me, the blowout is very much the issue. If the blowout is prevented, there is no environmental problem and I get to go home alive. If there is a blowout, both matters become very doubtful.

You see, - any influx of gas or oil into a well should be detectable on surface.
There are people paid to watch the level of the mud pits on the rig 24/7.
These guys are known as mud loggers. They are generally the lowest paid and the highest qualified (academically) people on the rig. When gas started migrating into the well, they should have caught it.
They didn't.
That means either the influx was unbelievably fast, or something operational confused them. The mud engineer was (it seems) offloading mud to a boat, so some of his pit levels would be falling. If they were watching the wrong pits, the mud loggers would see - not the slow, but accelerating increase in volume due to gas expansion, but an actual decrease. (ETA- That might happen because one switch was set wrongly, so a single tank that was going down happened to be included with those being monitored- a scarily easy mistake to make).
Another psychological factor is that the well was in it's last couple of days. Minds might be less on the job than they should have been. Hey- what can go wrong now? The reservoir is cemented off.

But it wasn't.

 

[paiute]

None.
What makes you ask?

Because one just happened. Does that mean that we were overregulated or underregulated?

 

[barrymore]

Not sure what you consider outrageous here.
I have spent half my life on wells like this. I was on a well drilled in a mile of seawater in 1979. I've never been involved with a blowout yet. I don't plan to be. "None" is how many blowouts I find acceptable, ever.

Perhaps you misunderstood me in some way?

I am saying that the pursuit of perfection is doomed with failure, especially when politics are involved. Accidents are going to happen regardless of how many regulations are out there. Yes, I would like to pick off the low-hanging fruit, but the costs that amass due to regulation will quickly become weighty without having much, if any, effect on the number of accidents. Enforcing costs and penalties after the fact would be more effective once you reach a certain threshold of preventative measures.

I am not qualified to say whether we are there yet, but I do not have confidence in politicians making rash decisions and taking advantage of an unfortunate situation to build political capital.

 

[BenBurch]

The point of regulation is not to make accidents impossible, but to make them improbable.

 

[AlBell]

I don't honestly see the relevance of much of this article. The BOP was tested immediately before the displacement. It worked perfectly or operations would not have proceeded.
We have no evidence whatsoever that the BOP malfunctioned.

I'd say 5000 bopd into the Gulf implies BOP malfunction.

And tests so far as I can determine do not involve shearing pipe.

The critical point remains that the well did not kick until the hydrostatic was reduced by displacing the riser to seawater. Given the speed of the kick, it certainly looks like gas had been migrating into the casing from the reservoir before this was done. The fact it did not reach surface earlier suggests that at least one element of the BOP was closed and stopped the gas reaching the riser.

Pipe rams maybe and annular in any case (presumably).

After the BOP test, it was (I presume) opened- and again must have functioned perfectly. You don't say a switch malfunctioned because someone was electrocuted when he stuck a finger in the light socket. You say it was "on" and functional.

Could be, but sure not functioning now.

Based on your knowledge, with the 9 5/8 (or 7": whatever) hanging from seafloor rather than off lower casing, would the last cement job have normally extended upward all the way to seabed closing annulus between larger casing & 9 5/8? I guess probably not; cement would have stopped at base of larger casing; iirc reports were they did set a packer at seabed around the 9 5/8.

I have no information regarding the geology of the well. I agree that something about the cement job did not work as intended. Whether that was due to inadequate procedures, inadequate knowledge or a failure to carry out adequate procedures properly is something we will have to wait to learn.

Once deeper than continental shelf, methane hydrates are expected rather than rare.

I understand BP personnel will be interviewed by a congressional (senatorial?) committee tomorrow. We may start to learn the details then.

I hope so.

On the matter of shear rams cutting drillpipe. I'm not aware what drillpipe (if any) was below the seabed at the time. Does anyone have a link to that information?

It was mentioned earlier that drill pipe was sticking out of the BOP stack and leaking a bit of oil. The ROV video posted above showed a valve being installed on this pipe sealing that (minor) leak.

 

[Soapy Sam]

I'd say 5000 bopd into the Gulf implies BOP malfunction.

Nope. It shows it's open. If nobody closed it, that's how it will be.

(ETA- which is not to say it's not broken. It doesn't prove it was broken before, is all I'm thinking.)

And tests so far as I can determine do not involve shearing pipe.

I would presume(!) such tests exist. I can see no way to carry one out in the field that would not involve potentially losing the drillpipe downhole. It's a last resort action.

Based on your knowledge, with the 9 5/8 (or 7": whatever) hanging from seafloor rather than off lower casing, would the last cement job have normally extended upward all the way to seabed closing annulus between larger casing & 9 5/8? I guess probably not; cement would have stopped at base of larger casing; iirc reports were they did set a packer at seabed around the 9 5/8.

No. (ETA- or at least not necessarily and very probably not.) The aim would be to get an agreed minimum overlap. (Agreed by operator and supervisory authority). Info found while drilling (lithology samples / cores / wireline logs) would be used to define zones they felt MUST be isolated. The cement job would be complex and almost certainly involved setting packers.

The aim would then have been to set multiple further plugs inside the casing.

Once deeper than continental shelf, methane hydrates are expected rather than rare.

Not always, but definitely something you would be watching for.

It was mentioned earlier that drill pipe was sticking out of the BOP stack and leaking a bit of oil. The ROV video posted above showed a valve being installed on this pipe sealing that (minor) leak.

So it was. Mind you, some things that were in early reports were confused- there seemed to be an impression that there was a pipeline on the seabed leaking oil. I initially thought this referred to a production pipeline from another well, but now suspect they were actually talking about the drillpipe you mention.

Incidentally, for anyone wanting to see a bit of what life on the Horizon Explorer was like, there is a Facebook page set up by her "alumni". Looks like a really nice rig- and one with a good "family" ethos on board. They're not all like that.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=104546352921787

 

[AlBell]

The Senate hearing are underway.

It's amazing how little Transocean and Halliburton know about anything. I'd say they are dancing damn close to lying under oath.

BP is a bit more forthcoming.

 

[Soapy Sam]

Any links, Al?


ETA- Found some. http://news.ca.msn.com/top-stories/cbc-article.aspx?cp-documentid=24204112

Ye gods. Tim Probert. I worked with him thirty years ago in England. I didn't even know he was with Halliburton.

Looks like the game's afoot;- "pass the hot potato".

 

[AlBell]

On live now; a link is at http://www.msnbc.msn.com