A Petroleum Engineer's Explanation

There is a lot of profiteering that will go on here and also a lot of blame. If I shorted Gulf stocks the day before this platform explosion and bought a company that puts out oil well fires the week before, I'd have the FBI at my door within hours of these revelation if not minutes. And still no major investigation. Let's look at the evidence: www.ireport.com...



Cheney's Halliburton bought a company called Boots & Coots which became well known for putting out some of the world's largest oil and gas fires. 8 days before the disaster www.chron.com...



Cementing of the oil rig well was finished only 20 hours before the explosion www.npr.org...



BP sent workers from the well head testing company home 11 hours before the explosion on April 20 -- "without performing a final check www.huffingtonpost.com...”





There are reports of a team from Schlumberger, which is highly regarded for their safety, asks a BP company man to use the Cement Bond Log (CBL) to dump fluid down the well and BP's company man refused. Schlumberger rep decides to leave citing safety issues but only if they called in their own transport as BP rep would not let Schlumberger leave on a BP Chopper.



adropofrain.net...


www.ireport.com...

reply to post by Edrick

I believe people need to be aware of the cataclysmic path this oil "spill" will (if not already) take us on. Some scientist speculate that the Gulf of Mexico was formed by an asteroid that collided with the earth millions of years ago, killing most of the life on it. See links below.

Is the Gulf's Origin Heaven Sent?
www.aapg.org...

How we wrecked the ocean.
www.ted.com...


What I was wanting to get at is how ironic it would be if the Gulf of Mexico, formed by a extinction event....millions of years later was host to its own extinction event? (or cause of one)

This is my very first post so I hope did okay....! (I appreciate everyone's opinions and thank everyone for contributing to abovetopsecret.com......love it!)

[edit on 29-5-2010 by jonnboi99]

reply to post by billyjack



Thanks for the technical information. I did have a few questions on it though:

1. “When the “company man” (the BP guy in charge) removed 16.5 #/gallon mud from the riser with 8.4 #.gallon sea water he immediately reduced the hydrostatic pressure 2000 psi & it was over.”

If I recall correctly they were in the process of sealing off the well to phase from an exploratory mode to a later production mode (Sorry if I do not know the technical terms here). If that is the case why would you switch from the mud to the water?

2. “A “bottom kill” is vastly easier and is what the relief wells are about. Unfortunately for that to work the relief well must intersect an 8 ¾” diameter well bore 3 miles underground in the dark.”

Hitting an 8.75” bore laterally 3 miles underground does not sound ‘vastly easier” to the uninitiated. However, this is what was done with the ITOX1 spill in 1979.

3. In regards to that ITOX1 spill in 1979, if the history books are correct, they lost drilling mud pressure too and as you say, it was over from there. In addition the BOP preventer failed there too. It eventually took them 10 months to finally stop the flow.

It would seem to the uneducated on well drilling, hitting pockets of different pressure is part of the game and nothing new. What risk management procedures are in place to compensate for the surprise pressure differences? In your opinion, were they followed?

I appreciate any information you can provide on this.

Thank you very much OP - it wasn't too detailed or scientific!

I'm wondering, are you basing this post on your (appreciated and vast) previous experiences only? Or are you also considering the small amounts we've heard from the MSM, such as suddenly the rig's engines sped up out of control, pressure leaked into the engine room, then everything blew.

What's your take on three different "fail safes" not working on this particular day, 20 hours after Halliburton worked on the thing.

Thanks again!

I would like to add the following link to this discussion and thank the OP for his clear explanation.
This link should further clarify how drilling operations work.

www.treesfullofmoney.com...

Can't we just shoot a crapload of magnets into the damned pipe? Wouldn't that clog it up a little faster? Maybe throw some other crap behind it to start jamming things up.....

reply to post by KANE OG


"junk shot"
just sayin ...that is not working....

reply to post by billyjack


I have one question. This may have been asked before so if it has than i apologize. Question is does the oil industry use back flow systems in their piping? If they do how did this fail in this case and if not they why dont they use them?

Thats actually more like 3 questions

[edit on 30-5-2010 by middleclasssoldier]

this is the stuff i work on all day long so it would make sense to me that it would be used in the oil industry as well.
www.southcoastwaterprotection.com...

[edit on 30-5-2010 by middleclasssoldier]

I dont understand why everyone is saying this is an extinction event, its happened before and all though the environment is screwed it was not an extinction event. given time it will recover. Hopefully they will actually learn a few lessons here.

www.usatoday.com...

reply to post by billyjack


Thank you!!
Finally someone that knows what they are talking about.

A great input on this topic.

S&F

Tom

reply to post by rbilly001


Apparently there is an "Exxon Valdez spill" volume of oil (some estimates put it at considerably more, but no one really knows at this point) being hurled into the Gulf of Mexico each day since day one. This amount of oil, it is speculated, will, at some point, kill every organism on the planet if it's not stopped. That, my friend, is why it's being labeled an "extinction level event" by some people. This is not something to be taken lightly or used politically as it's clearly being done by the so-called "leaders".

reply to post by billyjack


Thanks for sharing your knowledge, didn't know a lot of what you posted and I understand some of this a bit better now.

I just hope this disaster is dealt with soon, it's already been going on too long and I just feel like nothing is being done, or at least not enough and/or they're not trying hard enough period.

I live in the NE US so I really would like to continue going to the beach but I'm definitely not going to be going if there is oil in the water... tourism is going to be mashed over the head because of this - lots of people are, and will continue too lose their jobs. It's very unfortunate, specifically because something like this could have been prevented

reply to post by billyjack


This post is Udder disinformation. That fact you call it misinformation is retarded. From the 12 post's I have read, the only thing your responding too is what is said on the TUBE by CNN/MSNBC,FOX,700 CLUB, The Stock Exchange?. You haven't tried to mention the technology BP is suppressing. I'm sorry but as anyone thought of taking the concept of say, an Aquarium filter? How about a celebrity figure who has spent $24,000,000 of his own income on development of a water based water filter to separate oil[Kevin Costner’s ‘Ocean Therapy’ machines tackle Gulf spill That's right. A celebrity. This page say's and I quote. 24 May 2010

"Kevin Costner has given millions of dollars to research into cleaning oceans after oil spills.
Machines designed to clean oceans after oil spills are to be tried out by BP in the Gulf of Mexico this week."

Have not seen this on any news source what so ever via the Tube.
-----------------------------

How is it 2 men can spend 25-million on a concept for a clean up effort, when nothing has been cleaned, yet $1 billion has been spent on "clean up duty's" already. OMG the list goes on.

Have not seen this on any news source what so ever via the Tube.

SO I guess my point is why haven't you elaborated on alternative means of plugging this gush vent and info on clean up procedures???

reply to post by middleclasssoldier


You have only added to the information that can be used to SUE BP.


No second line.

My Family runs a business that manages the Environmental safety on 249 Oil rigs, this includes every aspect of this problem. we have 40+ years in this business.

the casing is inadequate on this well, and blow off had no back up activation. this is no accident, this is negligence of safety standards.

the inadequate casing makes most standard solutions impossible. though there is not really standard solutions, this has never happened before at this depth, the pressure makes it almost impossible. usually a job with a problem is in 1/2 this depth and secondary blow off is standard.

we spent the entire morning discussing solutions, every single one ran into the problem with the intense high pressure, drilling other wells to relive pressure, then Bottom kill might work out better, that would take a long time and require 3 to 4 relief wells to be drilled.

we actually turned down BP job management because they wouldnt let the Envormental Safety people have the proper budgets for direct action to fix problems, see where that put them.

Originally posted by SneakAPeek
reply to post by billyjack

 

This post is Udder disinformation.

G,day
If it's not one person it's an udder....

i may be late but but wasnt the big shot done
before the nuke and all

i asked my pops about a nuke
he was a mud logger out in the gulf for the gov in the 80s
they got some good ideas for shale but that is off topic

I think that it is an understatement to say that the current BOP's that are in use have some inherent design flaws. Wouldn't a couple of manual valves come in handy right about now. Highway street signs are designed to break away when they are struck by a vehicle. Shouldn't the riser be designed to do just that, break away clean above some sort of redundant valve. I'm no expert by any means, but this just seems like common sense. It's not like there haven't been any previous examples to learn from. This is history repeating itself 30 years later. When will they ever learn.

Hey BP why not take like 1% of your profits and put it into some useful R/D for situations like this. I'm sure the math could be done, but let's see 1% X 30 years = countless Billions that should have been spent on research for just such an event.

I think all the top big wigs at BP need to be locked up at Gitmo, in a month they will be able to look out the window to see what they have done.

s0 the pops is head of the western region in B.O.R