Seafloor collapse around well head reported

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Tango3, May 25, 2010.


  1. Tango3

    Tango3 Aimless wanderer

    probably more truth in that sarcasm than we'd like to hear; this thing makes me sick...
    from the gov dragging their butts giving LA "permission" to dredge up some sand barriers( because of potential environmental impact of building the sand berms.(?)
    How about the environmental impact of a few hundred million gallons of crude washing up???
    That same gov ( Obama,now ) contritely saying 38 days in: " my responsibility, I take responsibility" when its BPs responsibility.
    His useless additional hot air accomplishes nothing, adds nothing, infact "oh-bama" is just that; a great big zero in this time of critical emergency ..
    Glad we got to snorkel the dry tortugas a couple of years ago...keerist.

    They are grilling BP's top drilling engineer on c-span in the way only half informed congressman can. arguing over "qualitative and quanitative "concrete logs.

    "Sir: So when you put the string in tha' ho and twist it it drills deeper into substrate...
    "Yes Senator."
    "how many centralizers were in the well ?"
    I do not recall senator I'd have to check the logs...
     
  2. Tango3

    Tango3 Aimless wanderer

  3. Tango3

    Tango3 Aimless wanderer

    <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/2Bj_kco8qTQ&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="257" width="320"></object>
    Oil and gas are leaking from the seabed surrounding the BP Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico, Senator Bill Nelson of Florida told Andrea Mitchell today on MSNBC. Nelson, one of the most informed and diligent Congressmen on the BP gulf oil spill issue, has received reports of leaks in the well, located in the Mississippi Canyon sector. This is potentially huge and devastating news. If Nelson is correct in that assertion, and he is smart enough to not make such assertions lightly, so I think they must be taken at face value, it means the well casing and well bore are compromised and the gig is up on containment pending a completely effective attempt to seal the well from the bottom via successful “relief wells”. In fact, I have confirmed with Senator Nelson’s office that they are fully aware of the breaking news and significance of what the Senator said to Andrea Mitchell.
    Furthermore, contrary to the happy talk propounded by BP, the Obama Administration and the press, the likely success of the “relief well” effort on the first try in August is nowhere near a certainty; and certainly nowhere near the certainty it is being painted as.
    About five days ago, I responded to someone in comments with the following:
    Yeah, but I am absolutely convinced there is such a lack of integrity, from pretty much top to bottom, of the well that totally plugging it at the top just creates the blowout of whatever remaining seal they have with the cement at the wellhead. I believe they have a total cluster**** in about every regard and are just not admitting it:
    1) BP used, if not substandard, then very close to it, casing that under the circumstances was inappropriate. It is fragile.
    2) They did not install somehow or another at least one major casing segment seal, and the remaining seals are now either completely blown out or on their way to it and as a result oil and gas flow is not only coming up the inside of the casing, but the outside of the casing between the casing and well bore walls in the rock.
    3) BP specified a light and fluffy cement and, additionally, there may be significant breaches and voids making the cement job weak and disintegrating.
    4) Even at best, the cement is in the upper depths of the well bore where the natural geologic rock structure is the loosest, weakest, most porous and fragile (hell some of it may effectively be silt). The oil and gas, which has a natural well pressure of 12,000 or so psi is going to erode and corrode through and around the cement and the porous well bore rock.
    5) Being attached to the Deepwater Horizon rig by the riser, and perhaps drill string too, when all hell broke loose and it exploded, shifted and sank, it put various pressures and forces through attachment to the BOP in turn attached on the well casing head. This action may have kind of reamed out and loosened that whole situation making it even looser and more susceptible to 2 and 4 above.
    6) The BOP, to the extent it had restrictions present initially, has now been eroded and reamed out by the long term flow of gas and oil upwards and then the caustic flow of drilling mud the other direction from the attempted Top Kill. It is totally ****ed way worse than it even was initially.
    7) The reservoir of oil in Macondo is way larger than most anybody realizes and certainly bigger than BP will admit. It is a huge mother lode. Could flow forever.
    8) Did I mention that the natural well pressure may be as high as 12,000 psi??
    The Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf States and all of us are totally ****ed.
    As Sir Richard Mottram famously said:
    We’re all ****ed. I’m ****ed. You’re ****ed. The whole [thing] is ****ed. It’s the biggest cock-up ever. We’re all completely ****ed.

    I may have been uncomfortably close to the mark. And the quote from Sir Richard Mottram was dead on the money; if Senator Nelson is correct about the breach of fundamental well integrity, the game is close to over for the Gulf of Mexico. We shall see where this goes from Nelson’s initial comment. But make no mistake, Nelson is a careful guy not prone to overt hyperbole, and he clearly understood the ramifications of what he was saying.
    It also means, of course, that BP and the Obama Administrations continue to give the American public short shrift in the truth and honesty departments. How surprising.
     
  4. ghrit

    ghrit Bad company Administrator Founding Member

    What I have seen (limited to what's on the remote cameras) if the casing is breached, the escaping oil is coming up somewhere away from the well head. Seems unlikely, but I suppose it's possible. The weakest point in the seabed is where the rock has been penetrated, thus I would expect escape to be right around the casing at the sea floor. It ain't coming up there. Now, giving Sen Nelson a bit of his due, this whole thing is third hand, and may well not be his words. I need corroboration, or it's rumor. Even zero would lend some (limited and minimal) credibility.
     
  5. Tango3

    Tango3 Aimless wanderer

    the oildrum had this to say re Nelson:"
    Deep Water Spill - Oil in the Water - and Open Thread

    Posted by Heading Out on June 8, 2010 - 10:30am
    Topic: Environment/Sustainability
    Tags: deepwater horizon, oil seeps, oil spill [list all tags]



    Senator Bill Nelson of Florida spoke on MSNBC on Monday, about the possibility of oil leaking up from the seabed in the vicinity of the Deepwater Horizon well that is currently spilling oil into the Gulf. (The implication being that the well casing had "sprung a leak.") The story will inevitably grow, but it may well be that he is confusing two quite separate events. You might remember that when tar balls first started appearing on the Florida beaches recently they were analyzed, and on May 19th the Coast Guard issued a statement that included the following:
    A sampling of tar balls discovered on beaches at Fort Zachary Taylor State Park, Fla., Smathers Beach in Key West, Big Pine Key, Fla., and Loggerhead Key in the Dry Tortugas National Park, Fla. were flown by a Coast Guard HU-25 Falcon jet based in Miami, Fla., to New London, Conn. Tuesday for testing and analysis.
    The results of those tests conclusively show that the tar balls collected from Florida Keys beaches do not match the type of oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The source of the tar balls remains unknown at this time.
    At that time it was conjectured that the tar balls had come from natural seeps under the Gulf. Cutler Cleveland recently wrote a guest post on the topic of these natural seeps, and their size, relative to the current spill, but because of the new furor I thought it worth expanding a little on what he wrote, relying on two of his sources – the National Research Council’s Oil in the Sea III Inputs, Fates and Effects (2003) ; and Dagmar Schmidt Etkin’s Report “Analysis of U.S. Oil Spillage,” which API issued last August.

    <!-- close content div --> There's more… (1148 words) | Comments (1) | <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"> SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title:'Deep Water Spill - Oil in the Water - and Open Thread', url:'http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6576', author:'Heading Out' }, {button:true} ); </script>ShareThis | Permalink | Without comments | PDF version
     
  6. fortunateson

    fortunateson I hate Illinois Nazis!

    Quick question:

    Isn't this something that would be better handled by the Army Corps of Engineers?
    I know the Russians had used nuclear demolition devices to stop the flow of some gas wells a number of years ago.
    Wouldn't the Army Corps be similarly equipped?

    Is Obama just making a point of putting this in BPs lap for political purposes - to stop drilling maybe - to take over another sector of the private market perhaps?
    Or is it a CYA move in case the government shows themselves to be inept?

    Or maybe it's out of the scope of what the Army Corps does? I honestly don't know.
    Can someone answer?
     
  7. ghrit

    ghrit Bad company Administrator Founding Member

    The COE cannot handle it, way out of their area of expertise.Their bag is dirt moving, bridge and levee building and occasionally schools, water and waste water plants, and jirga halls. BP and the oilmen are the ones to handle it, as they are. It's too bad that they were under prepared and under wary, but they were, and the learning curves are steep and painful when you blunder. Zero is following the oilmen's lead, putting it where it belongs (who could possibly not know that?) and is making political hay while doing so. The problem is that he is going about it from a finger pointing mode rather than a leadership position. He KNOWS (one of the very few things he knows besides his name) dot gov is inept at the business of doing anything constructive, and particularly so since his staff is loaded with non producers that have never met a payroll.

    So far as nuking it goes, that would have two possible outcomes. One, it might work. Two, it might open a hole that would depressurize the whole formation and burp it into the gulf. I ain't interested in that coin flip. The nuclear experiments that DOE carried out in the 50s (60s?) were canceled for some reason, might have had to do with fallout. (There were thoughts of making canals by blasting with small nukes.) I can't support this, but the Russian experiment didn't work, or so I've read.

    I am hugely annoyed that zero continues to point out that BP is going to pay for it, forcing them to repeat, ad infinitum, that they acknowledge that. In fact, they said so before he started repeating himself. And we have another photo op coming next week where we get to listen to it again. And, of course, the MSM shows the downside and worst possible face and Congress gets to do the usual round of hearings and insults of good men that don't know. (They, too, are learning, and if they can't work on the problem because they are listening to self serving politicians, who will do the work?)

    How many times to we have to hear that 2 plus 2 is 4?
     
  8. fortunateson

    fortunateson I hate Illinois Nazis!

    Take heart. His lack of leadership is not even lost on liberals these days. Oh they're not complaining - except where he's not doing their bidding. But down deep even the worst of them are disillusioned.
     
  9. Capt. Tyree

    Capt. Tyree Hawkeye

    Finger Pointing Leadership

    PBO's stages of divide and conquer neighborhood agitation uses "high" oratory in four phases to:
    1) VERBALIZE
    2) CHASTISE
    3) PENALIZE (and finally)

    4) SOCIALIZE
     
  10. Tango3

    Tango3 Aimless wanderer

    Okay been watching the multiple rov feeds onandoff for a few days now; I see a familiar picture at depth 4930, ( 4925+-) I have seen several rov shots at around 1500 feet there is definitely some equipment bop (?) )(lmrp?)at1500 feet that is spewing, in addition to the 4930ft bop they've been sawing on check out the data in the images. heading and depth..

    http://mxl.fi/bpfeeds/
    the middle row far left feed (oceaneering "bullseye cleanup )shows spewing (depth 1503). and the middle row second from the right.feed (familar image from the skandi neptune (dispersant operations) depth4926.5

    erp... they're down...( off)
     
  11. ghrit

    ghrit Bad company Administrator Founding Member

    I suspect that ghizzy at 1500 feet is the disconnect they are preparing for installation in the event they have to move the drill ships for a hurricane. Can't use it until the well is controlled, if it ever gets that way.
     
  12. Tango3

    Tango3 Aimless wanderer

    uh uhkay g" for us non oil idiots whats a "ghizzy" and why would oil becoming out of it?
     
  13. ghrit

    ghrit Bad company Administrator Founding Member

    ghizzy = widgetron. Dunno it's right name. But we aren't looking at the same pic, I don't think, no oil around the one I was looking at. It has four of what look like tanks around the outside? It isn't on screen this morning.
     
  14. ghrit

    ghrit Bad company Administrator Founding Member

    Here's a pretty good schematic of what's going on. "Ghizzy" is at the top of one of the free standing risers shown. Now we know --

    http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_int.../downloads_pdfs/Technical_briefing_061810.pdf

    If a hurricane comes along, the risers can remain in place while the surface equipment heads for safer waters, then come back afterward and reconnect rather more easily than the two ships with hanging risers. (Clear Leader and Discoverer Enterprise in the schematic.) You can make some pretty good guesses at what the streaming vids are looking at with this schematic, which I think will be updated now and then.
     
  15. Brokor

    Brokor Live Free or Cry Moderator Site Supporter+++ Founding Member

  16. Tango3

    Tango3 Aimless wanderer

    from the infowars article:

    "Described as the “lame duck climate strategy,” Obama is planning to secure enough votes in the Senate to pass a weakened energy bill and then drag out the conference long enough to ensure the stronger provisions contained in the original House version are added “after lawmakers have faced voters in November, thereby cushioning the vote’s political impact.”

    thats' a euphemism for" GOING AGAINST THE WILL OF THE AMERICAN CITIZEN"!!
    s.O.B.
     
  17. Seawolf1090

    Seawolf1090 Retired Curmudgeonly IT Monkey Founding Member


    AKA. "Ramming it down their throats!"
     
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