ROV attempting to activate Deepwater Horizon Blowout Preventer
Posted on
May 17, 2010 by
bp complaints
Oil Spill Gulf of Mexico 2010 | Submit your complaints and let your voice be heard!
You Decide
Loading ...-
Resources
- Crude Oil Spills and Health
- Deepwater Horizon oil spill wiki
- EPA Response to BP Spill
- Federal Business Opportunities
- Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP)
- Louisiana Gulf Emergency
- Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinator’s Office (LOSCO)
- Mapping the Response to BP Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico
- National Audubon Society Gulf Oil Response
- Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA)
- Oil Spill Academic Task Force
- Oil Spill Claims
- Oil Spill Emergency Response and Cleanup Training
- Oil Spill Health Related Information
- Oil Spill Response Website
- Report an Oil Spill
- Tracking the Oil Spill
- U.S. Department of the Interior
- White house Response
Sure keep screwing around till the hurricanes start. what happens then? what will be your excuse for why the simplest, best solution was never even tried?
Hammer,
Well what would you propose they do, if the riser burst? they go from a 5,000bpd mess, to 10-30,000bpd disaster.
Plugging the BOPs is a one way ticket if it doesn’t work and plugs up the choke and kill lines, it hoses any attempts to control the well any further via the BOPs, and that includes even after they successfully kill it via the relief wells.
The stack and wellhead NEED to be retrieved so it can be ascertained what screwed up, so they can can insure that it doesn’t happen again.
Knee jerk reactions get knee jerk results every time without exception.
I have never been one to believe in "Conspiracy Theories" . But then, there has never been one as big and elaborate as what is happening now. Is this all part of the bankrupting and socializing of America that is going on in Washington? I am beginning to see the connection.
America will wake up. And we will stop all this. and I personally hope to pull the fingernails out of one of you freaks.
It is very obvious why the BOP failed. It is a shitty design, under engineered and with absolutely no backups. especially for working at that depth. you over educated engineers couldn’t think to install some safe guards? didn’t want to spend the money to set up a head of time the things needed to work at that depth? My grandson would have thought to plan for emergency situations at the depth to be worked at.
They new very well they would be at 5000 ft. yet nothing was set up for contingencies. Jail time is needed for a bunch of people here.
Its hard to believe anyone could be that stupid. the only alternative is intentional!
There’s not a damned thing wrong with the BOP design, it works just fine on 1,000s of wells every f’n day all over the globe, This was a BP screw up, plain & simple, if I was a drilling contractor and they came to me with a f’d up well design like this one for a wildcat, I would have told them to find another sucker. And if I took the well, I damned sure wouldn’t let them talk me into screwing around with a fresh cement job on a damned production string before the 24 hours that it was design to set up for had passed. And I for 100% sure wouldn’t prep a well for a T&A before it was set, and before a CBL was done on it.
On a subsea well no matter if its 600ft or 10,000ft you don’t displace the riser to seawater until you have set the last cement plug and bridge plug and capped the well and are ready to pull friggin the stack.
This whole gawd damned mess was caused by being in hurry and not following a 100years worth of drilling experience and procedures.
When you have your BOP set at a depth so deep you can not get to it to respond to some kind of mechanical mishap, and it does not have any backup systems designed into it to try to overcome any such mishap. I`d say its a piss poor design for the application! and as great as the chance is to have a tool joint at the shear and it is not capable of cutting it there. again piss poor design for the application!
never ever design a hydraulic system that has a chance of catastrophic failure without backup. very few hydraulic systems that don’t have catastrophic potential are designed without adequate backup. they build in backups in hydraulic systems just to prevent production downtime, and no one engineers one in in a situation with such a catastrophic potential as this. and it could have been much worse. we have been relatively lucky so far.
It is so distressing that in bad situations, whether it’s a blowout or a political situation, that those who know the least about the subject always scream the loudest, dream up conspiracy theories, and become abusive of those who do know the intricacies of the situation, in this case the BOP design. That piece of equipment was designed by the best engineerss in the business, and yes, something went wrong, but screaming bad things at people who are doing their best to explain and fix the problem accomplishes nothing.
Keep us informed with the facts and your expert opinion, Horizon37.
I thank you Horizon 37 and Hammer mechanic for your comment..
This "batman" solution can be set at the top of the bop with some horizontal level.
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/23462826@N07/4607736206/]
About hurricane and design quality, you are right.
Upstream problem was same in this BOP design.
Why the top of BOP was not divided in 2 parts. One part anchored on the soil and one part set on the soil.
So when the rise was pull and bent, it destroyed the BOP because the top of BOP was not anchored so that we have not clean top for putting new rise. (the drill rise has made problem in the inner of the BOP) because only the top of anchorage fixture would be destroyer, no the BOP.
Moreover, we have to put a strong shied at the top of the BOP for avoiding any fall of debris. (big part of rise that fall on the bop)
So yes, I’m agree on the fact that it’s a only engineer work without scenario consideration, without large vision of design.
well keep you eyes closed as every logical solution is explained away with spin and rhetoric as usual. while nothing of consequence gets done. how is it that the most inept people with no common sense manage to work there way into the positions to make all the decisions. they can talk the talk, but leave it to some one else to walk the walk. too much time in books and not enough time in the real world. Wake up people.
I`m going fishing, you all have fun.
You always want to improve the BOP, but just as airplanes crash, BOP’s fail. You will never design failure out of it.
The real failure, the unforgivable failure is not having a tested protocol in place for the eventuality.
If they can’t come up with a way to kick over a BOP, and stuff that hole, then they should explore some kind of down-hole BOP that would give them two chances to stop the flow.
This is unacceptable. Who knows what’s true or not, but there are some gahstly reports of giant oil plumes in the water that extend vertically for thousands of feet. If true, I’m guessing they are from all the detergents being used trying to keep the oil from showing up on land.
Yes, things will recover, but this is a terribly inefficient use of capital and resources, not to mention that it has the potential to wipe out an industry in an area where that’s all there is for work.
BP has been saying the right things, but Exxon did to, and we all know what happened there. They dragged it out forever, and only paid pennies to the dollar of what they were supposed to.
You’re right horizon, there is nothing wrong with the BOP design, except, it didn’t work as it was designed too. If it didn’t work for the purpose it was designed for, then it was designed incorrectly. Common sense puts these 2 things together. If it wasn’t designed to deal with the possibility of a tool joint, then you’re dealing with some real brilliant engineers. The shear ram was the only thing standing between safety and explosion. You’re going to let the fate of the rig stand on one piece of equipment alone? You sir, are quite a risk taker.
And to you TMM16,
"become abusive of those who do know the intricacies of the situation"
The ones who know the intricacies of the situation are the ones who screwed it up in the first place. How the hell did we get here? There were screwups at multiple spots along the chain. At some point, someone is going to have to take the heat and not pass the blame. We can’t beat around the bush and tell these engineers how wonderful and smart they are. Horizon wants to act like the experienced drillers would have never gotten into this situation. BS. Their signatures and fingerprints are all over this situation. Quit trying to sell me the story that BP/Transocean doesn’t have any experienced drillers that worked on the rig. The experienced drillers signed off on the well design, BOP modifications, etc.
If the supposed experts and "old drillers" haven’t come up with a solution yet, then I expect you to give some more respect to outsiders ideas, because, well, their ideas can’t be any worse than the best in the business. If nobody in the oil business can fix this disaster, then they need to outsource the problem for help.
Of course, we can’t avoid failure.
If this device is used 1000 times a year and one has a failure, I accept it.
But there is not same number of plane that BOP in working.
What is very strange is that when a device has to work only one time; it doesn’t work.
We ask ti BOP security device to work only one time.
And BOP is more simple that a plane.
I have only one question.
Why we are able to send a flight on the moon but not able to close a pipe in the water ?
You are walking on the razors edge when you put complete trust in a single shear ram. All it took was time and a disaster was bound to occur.
When horizon says the shear ram didn’t work because it was at a tool joint, that means there wasn’t a backup shear ram to save the day. I don’t see how complete trust could be put into a single piece of equipment.
Normally, you would design it in such a way that if one is blocked with a joint, the other would consequently be unblocked. It wasn’t just one engineer who approved this mistake in the BOP design, it was many. And we can’t sit around and pat them on the back telling them that they tried their best. That isn’t how it works. When professional engineers sign off on the design, they are taking liability for any flaws. When 11 guys die, those flaws become apparent and someone is going to jail.
I suggest you quit putting trust in the experts who got us into this situation. Their judgment has been proven wrong once already, that is one times too many…
You are stupid, so me too !
Group: the only flaw in the logic of the riser exploding and unleashing an infinite increase in flowrate is that flow of an oil well is determined via Darcy’s law. I’m one fingering this so I’m not detailing it. Suffice it to write that the flow would increase, yes, yet only by a Finite amount governed by the Darcy equation. Again, quickly, the pressure drop is key. If your fear is the riser is good for only 800 psi, then the increase of differential at the sandface for Darcy’s equation would increase by this amount alone. Not a monstrously incalculable amount. Stick to calculable facts we know and understand completely.
Junk shots are better known as bridging agents. Experts know that sized particles that cover a broad range, or spectrum, most completed form a pressure sealing barrier. This isn’t child’s play. This is done all the time. It doesn’t plug the choke and kill line if it is sized correctly and it will be, if the right people, in the right places make the right decisions. G-d make this so quickly. Worse case scenario the junk shot plugs the riser kink instead of in the BOPE, if the riser thus only holds an extra 800 psi and gives, then the sandface pressure drop increases only by the amount that the kink in the riser was holding back beforehand.
First try the funnel or umbrella lowered via a riser package from another rig. This will catch the belch should the riser give way yet don’t perpetuate false fears. The real ones have people trembling as it is. Leadership doesn’t necessitate a lack of fear, it demands conveying courage in place of it. Courage is simply the right thing to do. People stop trying sometimes when facing that a problem is too big to overcome. If you can weigh a bear surely you can put it in a cage. Weigh this bear and cage it. Then cap it (the well not the bear; don’t even try PETA).
Make the problem as simple as possible and absolutely no simpler…Einstein.
Don’t guess on the result of the riser bursting scenario. It is calculable.
H37,
First, thank you for your informed commentary. I didn’t discover this thread until a few days back and there is a lot of silly talk out there all over the web.
I agree with you in that the junk plug idea has too many unknown variables to want to risk blowing out the kinked riser. Every piece of ‘junk’ that goes through without plugging the hole(s) may end up hitting the kink with the force of a hammer blow. And who knows how much more it can take.
Most of the reservoirs in Deepwater are sand producers, and we may also have had several weeks of sand-blasting of the riser kink. And also the BOP components. There may not be any good edges left to hold the ‘junk’ if they’ve been smoothed out by sand erosion. If it was a coarse sand it may have loaded up the well and killed it long ago, but a fine sand could be produced for quite a while and just be building up small dunes in the rise of the riser adding to the load.
If they do try it they had better have Plan D, or whatever letter they’re at now, ready because if something happens to the kink, who knows what will be left of the BOP/LMRP/riser complex when the kink goes. Maybe it’ll just be a single gushing oil leak that they could stab into and block the flow, but there are lots of other worse possibilities.
And that was a crazy well design to make into a producing well. Most discovery wells are P&Aed because it would be too dangerous for the various casings and liners to deal with all of the pressures and temperatures expected over the well’s lifetime (Completions/ production/ possible water injection, etc). But they had a $70,000,000 investment (or whatever it cost) and look at how much money one could save if it was made into a producer. How this got by whatever their “adult supervision” was is a mystery to me.
220mph,
I like your idea of the “umbrella”. Once in position it could be adjusted to cover a variety of areas. It just needs an adjustable pump placed in the lower part of the production pipe. When oil/hydrate slush is pouring out the bottom, increase the pump speed. They even make progressive cavity pumps that can handle thick, sand cut fluids, like our hydrate slush (they’re for heavy oil in Alberta at a variety of viscosities, temperatures, and sand cuts). They’ve been tested in Deepwater, but I don’t know if they have any that could handle the volume required for this job.
Bravo petroleum engineer, I couldn’t agree with you more. There is more than 1 flaw in the exploding riser. Even at 3mil gal/day inside that 6 5/8" drill pipe, the pressure drop is still only around 2psi. I dare anyone, do the calculation of the pressure drop inside the drill pipe directly before choke. You’ve got straight drill pipe in the BOP. Pressure drop is (density * velocity^2)/2 . Density has to be less than 1000kg/m^3 otherwise oil won’t float. Next take a range of velocities using various flow rates based on Q= V*A. Go from 210k gal/day to 3mil gal/day.
And you better make sure your units match because it would really look foolish to post something that is completely incorrect mathematically.
If the junk plugs the choke in the riser which is the worst case scenario, the pipe will only feel a 2psi increase. 2psi increase going to blow the system apart? Lol, suuuuuure. The riser is already dealing with fluctuations in the wellhead pressure. You think it remains a constant 3,000psi exactly? Pleeeease. It varies up and down by way more than 2psi and the riser hasn’t exploded.
If the wellhead pressure was gigantic, the riser would have already blown apart at the pipe choke. So the pressure can’t be high.
Plus the material is fatigued at the choke. So it isn’t even healthy enough to hold the pressure it normally should. The choke is acting like a leaking cap. Plug the cap and the pipe directly behind the choke will remain intact, prove me wrong…
Horizon, continue to run your mouth on here without any sort of proof that the riser will blow up. We don’t care, we will just ignore you. Your only hope is to prove that the velocity is so high, and the pressure drop is so large, that when we plug the hole, the pipe will self-destruct. But you haven’t proven anything. So man up, do some calculations, what is the velocity for the pressure drop you are proposing? Is the flow before the choke really that large? 3mil gal/day is too small of a top range estimate?
Hoodyz: I don’t agree on your estimate of the pressure drop. My statement is different. Re-read my statement.
I agree with you concerning the shear ram argument. IXTOC was the same. Shear ram failure. Everyone will see this soon enough.
Yours is talking about how much flow we would have if it blew up. You are correct in your analysis.
Mine is talking about how much pressure drop we have at the current moment when it isn’t exploded. It is pipe flow we are dealing with. Bernoulli’s describes it and it is 100% fact. The flow in an unchoked pipe MUST follow Bernoulli otherwise it violates the laws of the universe.
Hoodyz: will you drop that argument and look into the Darcy’s law equation and simply calculate the increased flow with the max burst differential of the riser internally versus 5000′ of seawater and then show everyone in here that flowrate?
What seems to have happened was several avoidable mistakes made while the company man is taking every shortcut under the sun to bring the job in on budget.
Short cementing on casings and liners. Short on cement plugs. Short on mud as they unload to transport. Short on time waiting on cement. A total disregard for anomalous BOP tests. Replacing the mud with sea water on a live well.
The BOPs worked exactly as they were supposed to, the ancillary equipment did not, meaning the people.
Hammer there are 4 backup systems on these BOPs, there are 2 control pods, each has a backup system.
a) they did not put a down hole safety valve in the drill pipe.
b) they should not and I emphasis should not have displaced 3,000ft of casing to seawater with a fresh cement job down hole.
c) The LMRP will not separate if either annular BOP is energized, the hydraulic logic on the control pods will not allow it. The system rightfully figures that if the annulars are closed there is a reason, and that reason would be pressure under the annulars (at the LMRP connector) and you don’t want it to come unlatched on accident.
d) it could be that the the riser collapsed before they hit the emergency disconnect. This would have pinched the drill pipe not allowing it to move and when you hit the EDC button it initiates a pre-programmed sequence of closing the blind shears and blind rams afterwords we know the shears did not close because there is a tool joint or some other obstruction preventing it. This would not allow the sequence to continue to the next step, which would be to close the all of the choke and kill valves if they were open. This sequence also has to complete or the logic program will not continue. Even if the LMRP latch did unlock and if the drill pipe were pinched by the collapsed riser and the shear rams had a bight on the drill pipe or the pipe rams were closed it could not physically move because the drill pipe is holding it together.
e)The LMRP connector is presently in way too much of a mechanical bind to release now.
Seems they managed to get it in 😉
One BP official said it was containing most of the oil from teh leak, another countered that they won’t know how much for several days …
Seems to me that is another simple issue … take a picture of the inserted tube … show whether the leaking is largely stopped or not …. and tell us how much oil is being collected onboard at surface … again – should be very simple
IF this straw and stopper was successfully controlling the leak they would have immediate video from the ROV’s that a still shot (or video clip) coule be taken from … if it was largely successful I can’t imagine any reason they would be shouting from rooftops – getting the proof out there asap
BP: Mile-long tube sucking oil away from Gulf well
By JEFFREY COLLINS and JASON DEAREN (AP) – 1 hour ago
HAMMOND, La. — In a major step toward containing a massive Gulf of Mexico oil leak, BP said a mile-long tube was funneling crude Sunday from a blown well to a tanker ship after three days of wrestling to get the stopgap measure into place on the seafloor.
The contraption was hooked up successfully and sucking oil from a pipe at the blown well Sunday afternoon after being hindered by several setbacks. Engineers remotely guiding robot submersibles had worked since Friday to place the tube into a 21-inch pipe nearly a mile below the sea.
Kent Wells, BP’s senior vice president for exploration and production, said during a news conference that the amount being drawn was gradually increasing, and it would take several days to measure it. Company spokesman Mark Proegler at the joint spill command center in Louisiana had initially said the tube was containing most of the oil coming from the pipe, which is contributing an estimated 85 percent of the crude in the spill.
Hey you junk shot experts. Help me out. Maybe I am wrong but I think BP said they might actually try mud before the junk. Do you think this could actually have a chance to work or do you think it would be to check the integrity of the flow line?. Thanks for any input. Really enjoy reading you comments here.
Seems ‘all the Presidents men’ … the "intellectual firepower" Obama’s czar dudes assembled last week …. didn’t really come up with the HOT TAP idea first either … a May 9 news story that BP was already considering the hot tap
"BP may also try what it calls a "hot tap" option later next week: drilling a hole into the existing broken pipe lying on the sea floor and drawing oil out. Robotic submarines would install a connector between the old pipe and the new."
http://www.ocala.com/article/20100509/ARTICLES/100509667?p=1&...
220mph,
Here is the real story on the insertion tube, be cautious about what local news media puts out, they usually are the last to know anything, and being modern reporters, what they don’t know they make up.
http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/go/doc/2931/551935/
If this thing was a success BP would be flapping their wings about it all over the news stations.
Horizon37 … thanks … seems its pretty much exactly what one would expect … this Mickey Mouse attempt is simply spat out once inserted … the pressure just spits it right back out
According to the article I posted above BP has been considering the hot tap since at least May 9th … a hot tap fixture could have been built in a day or less …
And the hot tap process has been successfully used in deepsea environment … a quick search shows successful operation a year ago
subsea hot tap drilling rig
to simplify my original "2 port" design take the lower picture above … on teh bottom half of the hot tap clamshell "saddle" include a matching "T" … have the drill drill all the way thru the riser to the bottom "T" … the bottom T would have a RAM valve that would consist of a pipe rather than a solid ram
Once drilling was completed the ball valve would be closed – the drill head would be removed and replaced with a riser spider and a new marine riser attached … valve would then be re-opened allowing oil and gas to be diverted to new marine riser
As the RAM is closed into the riser – the upstream side of the hollow ram would be open to the flow in the old riser and the oil and gas would be deflected into the drill side of the hot tap and up the new marine riser
I don’t think its necessary to even completely block all flow with the RAM … just redirect majority of the flow … this allows the end of the old riser to be cut off and a cap as I have described before to be installed … a small flow should be able to be overcome in installing the cap … especially if the cap has a valve on the end that can be open during cap install
diverdan,
Given BPs past performance it would surprise me if they even tested the lines first.
Also they have yet to say they have figured out a method of gaining access to the choke and kill lines to start with. The only way to get a clean connection to them is to remove a section of riser, and attach the same adapter they use at the surface, which is a tensioner support ring from a slip joint section. Which has the choke and kill and other lines attached to it, this is no small hunk of iron it’s about 5ft in diameter and weighs in the neighborhood of of 10,000lbs. This is all assuming they can get ROVs to disconnect a riser section in the first place. They could try and knock off the flex lines at the gimbal, but again that is probably beyond an ROVs capabilities. I have yet to see an ROV that could swing a 15 or 20lb sledge hammer which was in all likelihood what the roughnecks used to make them up.
Thanks. Just saw the BP quote today that stated they would try the top kill next weel. They actually stated gallons per min of mud they will inject. Hopefully , they will give out more detail soon. Despite their past mistakes, I would bet with the experts from so many companies and agencies working this problem, they will do it right.
(Fingers crossed)
220mph,
As said before your idea will work except for cutting the drill pipe.
Maybe they could after milling the window, change out the mill head and put on a wide jaw shear that could grab the the dill pipe and shear it off.
I think capping off or otherwise shutting off the the downstream side of the tap is a bad idea, if you do this it isolates the well from the 5,000ft head of seawater that is helping to control the flow from the well. Once you do that cap off you have for all intents completed the well, and isolated it from the seawater column, this will allow the well to reach its full production potential of whatever that might be through the kinked riser, as the riser from the tap fills with oil.
The best approach would be to gas lift the riser or if that could not keep up lower in a submersible pump and let whatever seawater wants to come in the other end of the busted riser come in, they can separate it from the oil at surface.
I hope everyone got to see 60 Minutes tonight. It pretty much showed exactly what happened. The annular had been damaged a month before the accident. One of the PODs was nonoperational. And BP made the decision to not fill the drill hole with "mud" when Halliburton put in the plugs. According to the engineering professor studying this accident for the government this is ultimately BP’s fault.
I am sure if you go to CBS.com and then to Sixty Minutes, there will soon be a synopsis of the half hour segment.
The TV folks (60minutes) just ran a useful article on the problem.
Of 4 folks talking, the good parts were interviews from the Electronics Tech on board and a Ca prof.
Apparantly the BOP was damaged a few weeks before the accident. During a pressure test with the annular closed, they slid the drill pipe 15 feet down and got chunks of damaged annular rubber seal up thru the mud flow.
That says three things:
1) The junk shot might help block leaks around this compromised seal.
2) The drill pipe can slide through the annular and probably did when the platform let go. Without pictures, I’m not sure how to tell where where the drill pipe ends.
3) We really have a sad path for information about the state of things.
Horizon … the shear might work but I think a rotating blade cutter of some sort would probabl;y make more sense – we don’t know the location of the drill pipe in the riser – it may be to one side or another and if so a shear might miss it … a rotating blade might also be able to cut a harder material like a tool joint?
the blade could be nearly the same size as the riser pipe … once the initial hole is drilled into the riser we could cut thru that hole with the rotating blade which should engage the drill pipe wherever in the pipe it may be …
The the tip of the RAM valve would need to be tapered so it forces the drill pipe apart
Not capping the end I guess is an option … especially if you don’t cut off the pipe … there would be several thousand feet of riser on the floor – plus what you called the hump – the riser pipe suspended above the sea floor in that vertical loop … if you can create enough suction on the relief port at the hot tap to capture the oil …. and I think the gas in the oil would help with that as would the buoyancy of the oil … then you are right you might as well use the sea pressure as an effective cap …
That said would the head in the new marine riser be the same? once it is filled with oil you have the same head it seems …
Also – isn’t the kink the effective restriction? Only "X" amount of oil and gas can make it past the kink at the BOP stack and enter the old riser?
This is a story that was featured on 60 Minutes tonight. Parts of the survivor interview can be found on Youtube.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/05/16/60minutes/main6490197….
You all seem to forget there a 2 annular BOPs this is not an accident they know if they have to strip in or out of the hole under pressure one of them is going to get damaged, I have seen them seal on pipe when you would not think they could, they are a big rubber doughnut any imperfections in them are closed up as they apply more hydraulic pressure. They will take a lot of abuse and still function just fine.
220mph,
The only portion of the riser that is probably full of oil are the up slope and down slope of the riser at the hump that is floating, the rest is half full or more of seawater, or drilling mud on the section right after the BOPs. The oil and gas are just flowing along the top portions of the riser pipe that is horizontal. That is why there little 4" pipe is not going to be very effective unless they modify it to get the end of the pipe up to the top portion of the riser where the oil is flowing.
That is why the flow ebbs and surges at the broken end of the riser, it slows down until enough pressure builds up at the high point of the hump where its full of gas with oil running along the bottom, to force the oil down into the horizontal section that is open. As more oil is forced into the lower section of horizontal pipe its pressure is reduced there and more gas comes out of solution.
The top of the hump is 1,500ft off the seabed, or so they say, so that means the oil and gas in the riser at the hump has to be at least 2,337psi at the top of the hump to even start to flow since a ‘U’ tube has the same pressure on both sides for there to be no flow, 1,500ft of API 30deg oil has a hydrostatic of 570psi that means that the side towards the BOPs has to have at least 2,671psi inside the riser to flow out the other end. now if you want to mess with a riser that is rated at 1,460psi new that has 2,700 plus on it, be my guest.
hmmm. reading that it sounds exactly like a lot of 60 Minutes hatchet jobs of the past … an account from a single individual with seemingly no corroboration (other than the manufacturered type by asking a third party if it sounds reaonable)
There are a number of things in a quick read of the story that don’t add up as well … at least to me
They could well be true … and some of the comments do coincide with other reports … and it seems increasingly clear BP practiced some poor decisions and processes … sensationalizing makes zero sense however at this point
And some of the comments are just laughable oit seems … such as that the elak is as large as the Exxn Valdez every three or 4 days …
horizon – I understand about the old damaged riser … the hump acts as a secondary valve of sorts … it builds pressure until the gas allows flow to "burp" through …
I was talking about the new marine riser … it will have a true 5000 feet of vertial head as it reaches from sea floor to surface … that should be far more "head" than is in the "hump"??
Horizon37, I know you’ve said there are gas infiltration sensors and seals in place on rigs to prevent the sort of runaway operation and explosions that were vividly described in the 60 minutes report. This was also reported elsewhere, if my memory serves.
However, something as basic as this seems unlikely to be reported with such certainty by a person who was actually on the rig, and who should certainly know about the gas precautions.
And also, such a peculiar statement should be shot down rather quickly, one might assume, by other rig personnel, or by an official denial of something so ridiculous.
So is it possible that it wasn’t ridiculous? We know this well was gassy. From the video, it looked really gassy (layman’s eyes, but man, that was a lot of bubbles of highly compressed gas).
Could it have been belching pretty regularly? Shutting down generators and other motors quite frequently? Stopping production and delaying progress on the well (and we know they were in a hurry to get this one completed).
Could the sensors have been disabled by idiot supervisors who were desperate to keep the work going and get that well capped, production-ready, and announceable at the quarterly stockholders’ meeting on April 27th?
It would be crazy, but crazy has happened before. Money can make people do crazy things.
HammerMechanic, your expressed desire to be pulling our fingernails out in some future Nazi utopia wasn’t exactly pleasant reading. However, I do have a question to pose for you.
Tossing aside the question of how a mixed-up bunch of folks like us would be doing to conspire to keep a massive oil-well accident going, do you really think the focal point of the effort to create a vast socialist dictatorship is going to be the multi-national oil companies?
The most profitable industries on the planet? The biggest of big money? Ya really think they’re the point of the spear in the movement to redistribute the wealth?
Might want to rework your basic premise there a little. And rethink the whole torture thing. Very hard to come up with any good things that have come out of regimes that make torture a big part of their administrative policy.
Some annulars can take a lot of abuse before failing. I was a service hand on a horizontal well drilled under pressure (rarely more than 1000 psi) through a series of annulars about 20 years ago (RBOPs were too expensive for a poor-boy turnkey job). Some of the annulars could last four days or more, through hundreds of thousands of rpms and 30 or more connections before they failed. Some of them lost a lot of rubber before they failed, other failed after just 3 or four connections. They all looked the same going in, but there was a large variation in durability.
The bottom line, according to this CBS story, is that BP ostensibly told Halliburton to not use "mud" when they put in the plugs in the concrete, according to this survivor. That should be easy to verify when this is further investigated. BP’s CEO at first was going to be interviewed for the story, but later backed out. He could have denied the statements made by the survivor if he felt they were not true. How can this be a "hatchet job" by CBS when BP was given the opportunity to state their position?
Also, what is your take on the Purdue mechanical engineering professor who estimates the leak at 70 million gallons a day?
budderflyman,
The professor is an over educated idiot, and needs to get a real job flipping burgers.
That would equal 1.6 million barrels a day, that is 4 million less oil than Saudi Arabia ships in one day. There never has been a well on this earth that could produce that much oil.
Well, first I think that at that rate, the reservoir should be emptied out just about now, and the problem is solved!
2nd, I think BP is mighty optimistic if they think they’re going to suck up 70 million gallons a day with a 4 inch pipe! Holy smokes, that sucker would have to suck!
Going forward with that comment on the 4 inch pipe, which is apparently what they’ve stuck in the end of the riser to potentially suck up 85% of the leak, I gotta wonder about a few things.
First, a four inch pipe handling the load from a 21 inch pipe is pretty impressive, even if the 21 inch pipe is kinked. Since burst pressure is 800 PSI and wellhead has been reported at either 2400 or 3000PSI, that kink has to be pretty generous in order to handle what is passing the BOP without bursting, and general flow from the well must be mainly restricted at the BOP.
Otherwise, there’s no way a 4 inch pipe would ever handle it. And since the kink can’t be doing more that a third of the restricting at most (and had probably been sanded out to restrict hardly all all at present), the reports of highly massive quantities leaking from the well are probably exciting, but mostly inaccurate.
After all, a four inch pipe has a twelve inch cross-section. Sand out a half inch in a 21 inch kinked pipe and you have almost the same cross-section, even without the original openings. And the 4 inch pipe sure isn’t going to be operating at the equivalent of up to 600 PSI.
[On Edit: Dang X-posts! Horizon37 stole all my thunder! Rotten concise replies, grumble, grumble, grumble…]
With all due respect, despite often great work by CBS/60 minutes they do cut and paste, and have been wrong. It would also depend on the terms of the interview. Als,o Haywrd has said he will not comment on the investigation until it is complete. Really nothing wrong with that.
Despite the runors and comments we hear from this or that person, it is only fair to wait until the pieces are put together. I am not necessarily a BP fan but I understand why the president would not go on. Nothing but downside at this point.. All that is in the past and really will all be dealt with later . All BP can do now itis show they can get this thing stopped and mitigate damage–the latter being extremely difficlult.