BP

[bobthebuilder]

I have been watching news and commentary concerning the the BP oil disaster on C-span and other sources. It seems to me that somebody on this board should have a better understanding of the relevant technology than I do. My impression is that BP is too concerned with capturing oil and not enough with plugging the leak. How would you go about resolving the problem?

[franz]

To date, in the entire history of the oil drilling industry there are 2 absolutes. 1, nobody, not even PeMex has drilled into a monster like this well, and the only driller ever to come close was PeMex with a well in the Gulf that poured out for about 9 months before being stopped.

2, nobody has ever converted a blowout, even on land, to a producing well.

Factor in the location of this well was established by the Bureau of Mines, not BP. Louisiana had permitted BP for 3 wells in shallow water, and Bureau of mines refused to permit those wells and substituted the deep water well.

At this point, BP has attempted every known method to shut this well down, and met with no success. Mud was pumped in (bear in mind this is done thru a very small pair of holes in the BOP) and stopped on orders from the CoastGoofs. At the same time BP was pumping mud in BP was bringing marine skimmer equipment under contract around the globe to come to the Gulf and be ready to skim. The Coast Goofs in combination with the Presidunce have caused all of this equipment to remain where it sat by announcing the Jones Act would not be waved.

BP then moved on to the containment dome plan which flopped due to ice crystals.

BP then continued on to the cutting of the riser followed by attaching the dome that remained in place till a couple days ago.

Wonderful Federal employees finally granted permits to dyke off islands and swamp inlets, as well as use skimmers constructed locally using barges and tanker trailers.

2 days into waterborne skimming with essentially large vacuum cleaners, the Coast Goofs forced all the skimming barges into port to be inspected for compliance with the Jones Act,as well as proper life vests and fire extinguishers and released them to return to skimming in less than 24 hours after conducting absolutely no inspections. Sure seems like the CoastGoofs could have dropped extinguishers and life vests from a helo if that was truly a concern. After releasing the barges the Costal Comedians changed their story to one of electrical safety.

Since the Costal Comedians failed to properly impede progress the ghyno-American who had issued the permits for the dredging to build dykes pulled the permit because the sand being dredged needed to come from a mile away rather than where it was taken from.

Almost from the time the drilling ship sank, BP began drilling 2 wells to intercept the existing well so the blowout can be stopped by injecting mud followed by cement. This is pretty much an industry standard technique.

Oddly, just a few months ago Barak the Brilliant guaranteed a drilling loan to Brazil's oil company for offshore drilling in even deeper water than BP is currently in. It is merely coincidence Barak's buddy & financial backer is a major investor and player in the Brazillian company. It is also merely a coincidence the available drilling ships for the next 2 years are under contract to drill in the Gulf. Barak the Brilliant then phonied up a study claiming 8 well known scientists in the petroleum drilling business agreed with him and issued an order stopping all drilling in the Gulf. Within hours drill rigs were pulling pipe and preparing to head South to Brazil with long term contracts.

Now I'm a fairly easy going guy, so I'm subscribing to the theory Toyota hired a sub from North Korea to torpedo that drilling rig to get the media's attention off their possibly faulty cars, and the Congress issued a permit to torpedo the drillship so Nancy & Barney could slip a ton of crap under the carpet while all the dimwitts with J School Diplomas report on the oiled pelican.

[nutrivet]

Well Franz since what most of what you have said is true and doesn't reflect well on this administration, A general will be pulled from a critical post to carry on further responses.
The people manageing obombuscare have estimated he only needs 8 hours sleep + or -.
So with -8 we are sure all missions will work.

[markkw]

A few points of comment here. USCG didn't stop Topkill, BP did because it became evident that the blow-out damage extends below the surface and if they plug the big hole, it's just going to blow a much larger and uglier one in the sea floor.

The friend of the prostate in chief is George Soros, the fellow responsible for crashing the Bank of England and making billions in the capitalist system who now insists that we much subscribe to socialism at a minimum with the ultimate goal being a full-blown dictatorship - of course with one of his many puppets sitting in the chair.

The utter incompetence shown at every level by the current band of blithering completely worthless idiots (that meaning about 75% of all elected officials with 24.9% just being stupid) is beyond belief! These so-called "ivy league elite" don't have the sense God gave a squirrel - hell, they make my emu look like Einstein!

The GoM incident is just a small scale sample of what's to come. Rest assured, the prostate in chief was all mushy on the Russian president yesterday because they have a lot in common, both want to see the United States fall under the rule of the communist iron fist.

[franz]

Mark, the CoastGoof Admiral in charge of the BP screwup is laboring dilligently to take credit, and I see no reason to not let him have it.

There is a very complete record of this situation over on Oildrum written by well experienced drillers. Bur. Mines & Minerals along with the CoastGoofs and the Crotch of Enginitwits are all in up totheir necks and they bear the responsibility for screwing the pooch on the post blowout events. BP clearly owns the blowout, and the government owns every bit of the post blowout mess.

In time to come we will see Soros a lot more, he's heavily into Braziloil, and needed drilling ships. None were available for a 2 year window till the Halfrican Boy stopped drilling in the gulf! If ships currently in the Gulf go to Brazil they will not come back, and the US drillers currently aboard will NOT have jobs in Brazil for long. Remember who is guaranteeing the loans to Braziloil? The Halfrican Boy did that with his DemoCRAP pals in Congress.

A bigger problem is what is going on behind the scenes in DC while everybody is focused on the Gulf.

The frightening thing is China and Vietnam companies are both drilling between Floridumm and Cuba. If either of them has a blowout what will they do? My bet is pull pipe and haul ass. It will be more than a repeat of PeMex soaking 300+ miles of Texas shoreline, and we will be told they can't be held accountable due toInternational Law just as PeMex did.

Worry about the stupid bastards who voted for Obama.

[bobthebuilder]

Change the topic if you wish, but the original question concerned the mechanics of stopping the gusher, not a request for reactionary political clap-trap. What technology should be employed, or could be employed?

[markkw]

Very true Franz, everyone else is still drilling in the GoM except US!

[markkw]

Jun 25, 2010 18:52:23 GMT -5 bobthebuilder said:

Change the topic if you wish, but the original question concerned the mechanics of stopping the gusher, not a request for reactionary political clap-trap. What technology should be employed, or could be employed?

Bob,

To address your question about stopping it, based on what I know to date, the only way to stop it is to:
Get the relief wells in place and pump the snot out of them to lower the pressure enough so as to allow capping or topkilling the blown well head without running the risk of blowing out the sea floor.

[franz]

The technology that is CURRENTLY being employed and has been employed since around day 3 of the blowout is drilling 1 or 2 depending on what day it is and what Fed is pissin on who's boots to intersect with the bore of the blowout aproximately 2600 feet below the floor of the Gulf. You'll notice 2 floating drill rigs with stem in the water near the blowout site in pictures.

The releivers go straight down to about 2000 feet into the ocean floor and then turn horizontal to intersect the blowout. Reported within the last 24 hours, hole #1 is well along the horizontal path and on target to hit the casing within days (that can change in a heartbeat).

Once the rotary hits the existing casing the rotary and stem must all be pulled back, and the rotary replaced on the cutting end of the stem with a tool called a mill. The mill is basicly a large 2 or 4 fluted vertical mill cutter. It will gnaw through the casing of the blown well, be pulled back and then mud will be pumped down the #1 hole to flow into the casing of the blowout. There will probably be cementing of the casing and horizontal to the rock prior to milling.

This method of intercepting and blocking with mud followed by cement is being taken because attempts to pump mud into the blowout failer either because of a downhole flau in the casing, or because of obstruction in the BOP preventing mud flow.

A couple things you need to keep in mind about the blown hole; the rotary bit and a few thousand feet of drillstem are still in the casing, cut off at the same level the drill casing was cut by the shear when the drill casing was cut so the cap could be fitted. Nobody is sure where the rotary is relative to the bottom of the bore, and some reports indicate an operator error on the drillfloor destroyed the rubbers in the BOP just before the blowout happened. Any way you cut it the drillstem to the rotary cutter is hollow and it is believed flowing oil along with the oil flowing thru the casing.

You also need to realize this is Light Sweet Crude very akin to Texas or Pennsylvania crude, and it is heavily laden with both gas and abrasive. Both of those are major PITA given the depth of water at ocean floor. The abrasive component alone makes the job more difficult by the hour.

The pressure on the pool of oil is also extremely high. Given the primary concern of whatever the hell you do don't make it worse, each and every attempt runs through one long list of What Ifs. Once BP and the driller agree on what to do and how to do it they have to get the procedure approved by Uncle Sugar's Hall Monitor.

I can easily sit here and ask why the hell they didn't first run the saw around the casing, cut it, and then after lifting the casing an inch with airbags, (actually kerosene bags at that depth)make a second cut on the drillstem. I'd be willing to bet a few guys from the saw company and drilling company shouted themselves mute advocating that, and were told to saw straight across. We all know how that worked out, don't we.

The first containment should have worked well by all estimates, but it turned into a gigantic icecube full of gas laden sea ice with a stream of hot oil flowing through it. This well definitely proves every day that the best laid plans of men are no match for a blowing well.

[art]

Has there been any mention of what is inside the BOPs. I have heard that they were preparing to circulate out the riser with seawater prior to setting the last (uppermost) cement plug, when the well blew out, so this should mean that the drill pipe that was in the well at the time was open ended. However, a retired engineer that I know who worked for the same company as I did for 33 years says that the casing parted and the upper part is now in the shear rams. I will have to ask how the casing was blown upwards, as the packoff and slips on the casing hanger would have had to failed to allow the casing to have been blown upwards. Either way, the DP or the casing that is now hanging from the partially closed shear rams is no longer perfectly round.

What I cannot understand is why BP has not considered using coiled tubing to try to re-enter the well, by first making a run with a lead impression block to determine what the position of the rams are, and what the shape of the partially sheared pipe is.
If the opening is large enough, it would seem that they could them attempt to run the coiled tubing into the well to a suitable depth where they could begin pumping heavy mud down the CT and circulate it back up to the mudline.
When they attempted to pump the kill mud into the BOP stack, the fluid would have taken the path of least resistance and very little, if any would have been pumped down the well, with coiled tubing, you have established a path to a deeper depth, where the hydrostatic pressure provided by the weighted kill mud would at least decrease the flow, or, if a high enough pump rate could be established, overcome the oil flowing from the reservoir.

If the top of the pipe/casing hanging in the shear rams is deformed enough to prevent the CT from entering, I see no reason why a mud motor and a mill could not be run to mill thru the partially crushed section until a full opening could be established.

Running CT into the well would allow circulation to be established, just as drilling the relief well, and cutting (milling) a window into the original well's casing to allow circulation to be established. Once the well has been killed by the heavy drilling mud, then pump enough cement slurry to replace the full volume of kill mud.

I would imagine the ID of the choke and kill lines that BP originally tried to 'top kill' the well thru were 3" ID, which large ID coiled tubing can easily replicate. Getting the CT into the BOP stack from surface is made easy by the fact that BP already has a riser in place as part of the collection apparatus. Even if there were no riser in place, the ROV could easily guide the end of the coiled tubing into the cut off portion of the marine riser on top of the BOP.

Coiled tubing is a proven method of well intervention on live, flowing wells.

[art]

Do NOT forget that the filth of the media accept the government 'experts' figures on the amount of oil that the well is flowing as gospel. And why should the government be accurate in these estimates, as the more oil that these 'experts', report as flowing into the Gulf, the more money BP is liable for when it comes to determining fines and penalties.
Another thing the lying, liberal, filth of the media WILL NOT tell, is that NONE of the government 'experts' have ANY real world experience in the oil and gas industry. In fact, NBC 'News' was quite infatuated with one professor, whose educated eye could predict the flow rate just by observing the cloud of oil flowing from the cut off section of the marine riser.
I am sure that ALL the oil and gas companies are duly impressed, since an 'educated eyeball', would eliminate the need for ALL those costly and time consuming well test programs that are done on each and every zone in each and every discovery well. I am certain that BP has a very good idea of what the well is producing from the interpretation of the electric logs and wireline formation pressure samples taken during the logging program prior to BP making the decision to run casing into the well. However, the filthy sewage of the media would NOT believe these figures if BP were to release them, and when this all comes to trial, BP will undoubtedly release the logging data to refute the claims made by both the government 'experts' and their willing propaganda writers in the media.

NEVER FORGET THAT THE SEWAGE OF THE MEDIA PROFESS THEMSELVES TO BE "EXPERTS ON EVERYTHING", when in reality, they are KNOWLEGABLE ABOUT NOTHING".

[franz]

For those interested in how the releif well is being drilled and will intersect the blowout here is a good description.
www.theoildrum.com/node/6674#more

[nutrivet]

I met this couple and we had converstions about the heat now. There was also some mention during our discussion how his Grandma forcasts tsunamis hitting the gulf . It lies in the half superstition of this person way down in S. Africa but also further. It was shown to me that there is a belief that since it became soo hot, something bad will happen in the future. Something always happens in the future but it occurs how the disaster response will be played later.
The fact is that many rigs are going to move because of current mandate. The well-heads, sealed, who knows. Many are leaking from old wells of long ago. Around 30,000 Americans are being impacted by this screwed response-just the working sector.
SO the way this will be played is: The inevitable hurricane and tsunamis Woulda hit those rigs, bases, hi-tech drilling facilities. Woulda. All that pollution was avoided!
All that was avoided because of the deep thinking of this administration.
It's almost like you have granny right there in the... Let's just see where perfect good facilities are being driven to and what happens. No matter what happens it will be played a certain way.