The "Up to the Minute" BP Livefeed Discussion Thread

Originally posted by niblo
I was watching most of yesterday but on a diffenrent computer so wasnt signed in here, the pipe with bubbles on BOA deep C was swaying and shaking, quite voilently at times, anyone any idea how its been the last 12 hours since no cams are on it now?

By the way, anyone got a link for the feeds page thats sancreations.com or something? Watching on morpheas now which is good but prefer not havin to scrollo up and down cause im lazy

I saw it at around 3 this morning for a few minutes, but it was hard to tell because it was so close up. but it seemed to still be swaying. It got scary for a while yesterday, I thought it would fall....did you read the article I posted about that? They are saying it COULD fall over!

Another big eruption on boa 2!

reply to post by StealthyKat


Post a link to your article Stealth..........Do any of you (and you know who your are) ever sleep??? lol Thanks for keeping us updated on this underwater adventure.....

reply to post by Cloudsinthesky


OK....I'll see if I can find it.....did you see the eruption on boa 2 just now? It left a big gash on the seabed....you can see it now because they are looking at it.

reply to post by StealthyKat


My video capabilities are down right now due to a system crash......So I am living through you..........

reply to post by Cloudsinthesky


Check this out

Newsweek gives a balanced view on the danger on the potential of a complete structural failure of the well:

The likelihood of a complete collapse is difficult to assess, in part, engineers and legislators say, because BP hasn’t shared enough information to evaluate the situation. But a handful of clues suggest that the company is concerned. On Friday, BP spokesperson Toby Odone acknowledged that the 45-ton stack of the blowout preventer was tilting noticeably, but said the company could not attribute it to down-hole leaks. “We don’t know anything about the underground portion of the well,” he said. But, the stack “is tilting and has been tilting since the rig went down. We believe that it was caused by the collapse of the riser.” The company is monitoring the degree of leaning but has not announced any plans to run additional supports to the structure.


As many have speculated ... concerns over structural integrity are what led BP to halt “top kill” efforts late last month. When it was digging this particular well, the company ran out of casing–the pipe that engineers send down the hole–and switched to a less durable material called liner. This may have created several weak spots along the well that would be particularly vulnerable to excessive pressure or erosion. So instead of sealing the well, the company has been focused on trying to capture the oil as it flows out the top.

At this point, some experts say, additional leaks wouldn’t matter much. “It’s very possible that there are subfloor leaks,” says [Roger Anderson - an oil geophysicist at Columbia University]. “But that doesn’t change the strategy moving forward.” The linchpin of that strategy involves drilling relief wells that would absorb all possible leaks, both at the top and the bottom of the hulking, teetering structure. Relief wells are drilled straight down into the sea bottom. After running parallel to the existing well for a few thousand meters, they cut in and intersect the original well bore. BP is drilling two such wells, one on either side of the main well. Once they are complete, the company will use them to pump heavy fluid and cement into the main well, stopping the oil at its source. The approach usually has a 95 percent success rate.

But to work, the well must be sealed as far down as possible–if it’s sealed too high, oil could still escape through any leaks beneath the seal. In this case, relief wells will have to drill down to 5,500 meters, and that takes time, at least until August. The real question now is whether the entire structure can hold out long enough.
One of the dangers which the relief wells are racing to try to beat is that the blowout preventer (BOP) is leaning and might fall over.


The well casing itself is attached to the BOP. And - as discussed below - the BOP is very heavy. So if the BOP fell over, it would likely severely damage the structural integrity of the casing.


As the Times-Picayune notes:
The integrity of the well has become a major topic of discussion among engineers and geologists.

"Everybody's worried about all of this. That's all people are talking about," said Don Van Nieuwenhuise, director of geoscience programs at University of Houston. He said the things that BP has being doing to try to stop the oil or gain control of it have been tantamount to repeatedly hitting the well with a hammer and sending shock waves down the pipe. "I don't think people realize how delicate it is."

"There is a very high level of concern for the integrity of the well," said Bob Bea, the University of California Berkeley engineering professor known to New Orleanians for investigating the levee failures after Katrina, who now has organized the Deepwater Horizon Study Group. Bea and other engineers say that BP hasn't released enough information publicly for people outside the company to evaluate the situation.

***
When wells are drilled, engineers send links of telescoping pipe down the hole, and those links are encased in cement. The telescoping pipe, called casing, unfolds like a radio antenna, only upside down, so the width of pipe gets smaller as the well gets deeper.

The cement and layers of casing are normally quite strong, Van Nieuwenhuise said. But with the BP well, there are several weak spots that the highly pressurized oil could exploit. BP ran out of casing sections before it hit the reservoir of oil, so it switched to using something called liner for the remainder of the well, which isn't as strong. The joints between two sections of liner pipe and the joint where the liner pipe meets the casing could be weak, Van Nieuwenhuise said.

Bill Gale, an engineer specializing in fires and explosions on oil rigs who is part of Bea's Deepwater Horizon Study Group, said the 16-inch wide casing contains disks that are designed to relieve pressure if necessary. If any of those disks popped, it could create undesirable new avenues for the oil to flow.

Bea said there are also concerns about the casing at the seabed right under the blowout preventer.

Van Nieuwenhuise said he's never actually heard of oil from a blown out well rupturing the casing and bubbling up through the ocean floor. He would consider that an unlikely, worst-case scenario.

A more likely problem, he said, is that oil could find its way into open spaces in the casing string, known as the annulus, and travel up the well in areas where it isn't supposed to be. This scenario could be one reason why more oil than expected is flowing at the containment cap that BP installed earlier this month to collect the oil.

Bea is more concerned about the worst-case scenario than Van Nieuwnhuise. In an answer to a question, Bea said, "Yes," there is reason to think that hydrocarbons are leaking from places in the well other than the containment cap.

"The likelihood of failure is extremely high," Bea said. "We could have multiple losses of containment, and that's going to provide much more difficult time of trying to capture this (oil)."

Meanwhile, observers monitoring the video feeds from the robotic vehicles working on the sea floor have noticed BP measuring a tilt in the 40-ton blowout preventer stack with a level and a device called an inclinometer.

cheers Mike, cant seem to scroll down past the first 8 sc reens when im on this computer and watching Sanaracreations for some reason.

And yeah Stealthy I seen that post, Came from Adm Allen if I remember rightly? I thought the same when I was watching it last night, seen it close up and it never seemed to stop, the only other 2 ROVs online were watching it from a distance and it was like an upside down pendulum, honestly thought it was going to go. But Ive been thinking that for ages and it never does so maybe its more solid than we all give it credit for.

Seems the damage problems we should be most worried about are further down under the seabed where we cant see though. Time will tell i suppoise.

Might be an idea to keep an eye on that deepwater horizon study group for more information.

Did any of you catch BP using that inclinometer they mentioned ta the end?

reply to post by Cloudsinthesky



LMAO.....sorry to hear that! It has settled down somewhat, but it has been very active this morning....this morning I saw a huge eruption of black clouds....then the camera surfaced and it was covered in oily residue. They haven't been showing the BOP much for some reason..hmmmmm

reply to post by niblo

Upside down pendulum is a perfect discription! They aren't showing it so far today but I keep checking.

It was around 2am GMT I stopped watching and it was bouncing around real bad, any idea what time they stopped showing it?

reply to post by niblo
They were showing it at around 3 am, but only a very close up shot so you couldn't really tell for sure if it was swaying. You can bet I'll be watching for it though....

Deep C 2 just started monitoring the collar again. The condensate seems to be still growing at the join. Bubbles still percolating out at a steady light stream.

Isnt moving around like last night. Quite a lot of build-up though isnt there?

Boa/1 came to life for a wee while as well but isnt doing much now.

All these ROVs and they only seem to use a few at a time lately.

Doubt they need all the assets to just monitor. I do find it interesting that they are keeping a couple at what I would call a safe distance from the BOP stack. I have been wondering about the amount tilt and how much torque that must be putting on the fittings at 50+ tons for the new BOP/Cap assembly.

Here is BPs twitter...Admiral Allen sure likes to spew BS: BP Official Twitter

Stack pressure currently stands at 6904 psi. Temperature steady. Consistent with well that has integrity. -Adm Allen LOL how long has it taken to get it to 6900 PSI? Does he see the leaks? If there was integrity it would have been at the 7500+ PSI they wanted all along. Oh and what happened to opening the cap if "large amounts of hydrocarbons build up?" (as he said here): marketplayground.com...

We've been in a series of meetings w/ our science team & BP to discuss re-mobilizing assets and moving to static kill operations. -Adm Allen Wait...I thought you had well integrity? If so why this 'static kill' (top kill with fancy name).

DD3 now running the casing pipe down; plans on latching on to the well around midnight CT tonight -Adm Allen Oh and let me guess we won't get to see those feeds...despite the fact that you ordered BP to do more monitoring.

Gecko Topaz completed another seismic pass and detected no anomalies this morning. Will attempt another pass tomorrow. -Adm Allen Oh so the anomalies that were there a few days ago just vanished into thin air? (water in this case).

He is backtracking his statements, making new ones despite his previous orders. So in my opinion it is clear he is not working for the government, but for BP. If he wasn't working for BP then all the crap he ordered them to do would have been done already.


[edit on 25-7-2010 by DragonFire1024]

reply to post by niblo

No I wasn't on last night...I stopped watching around 6 pm, so I don't know what time they took it off.



[edit on 25-7-2010 by StealthyKat]

Originally posted by Bluetwo
Deep C 2 just started monitoring the collar again. The condensate seems to be still growing at the join. Bubbles still percolating out at a steady light stream.

It's funny how they have all these leaks going and they would rather have the ROVs stare into the same open water spots for hours. BOA DEEP C 2 still says "bubble count ops" and yet it's sitting in a spot where you cannot even see bubbles.

Originally posted by DragonFire1024

Originally posted by Bluetwo
Deep C 2 just started monitoring the collar again. The condensate seems to be still growing at the join. Bubbles still percolating out at a steady light stream.

It's funny how they have all these leaks going and they would rather have the ROVs stare into the same open water spots for hours. BOA DEEP C 2 still says "bubble count ops" and yet it's sitting in a spot where you cannot even see bubbles.

LOL! Yeah.....I hear that! There was a LOT going on earlier this morning, but it seems to have settled down. I have to say I agree 100% about what Thad working for BP......he's their puppet!

is midnight CT less than an hour away?

its only just past 6 here in Scotland so not sure if Im right or not. What exactly do they mean by DD3 running riser pipe down and attaching to well?