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Did BP Keep Drilling Even Though It Had Lost Control of the Oil Well Much Earlier?
The New York Times noted
yesterday:
Even though it was more than a
month before the explosion, the [Deepwater Horizon] rig’s safety audit
was conducted against the backdrop of what seems to have been a losing battle to control the well.
On the March visit,
Lloyd’s investigators reported “a high degree of focus and activity
relating to well control issues,”
adding that “specialists were aboard the rig to conduct subsea explosions to help alleviate
these well control issues.”
As I pointed
out last month:
The Deepwater Horizon blew
up on April 20th, and sank a couple of days later. BP has been
criticized for failing to report on the seriousness of the blow out for
several weeks.
However, as a whistleblower previously told
60 Minutes, there was an accident at the rig a month or more prior to
the April 20th explosion:[Mike Williams, the chief
electronics technician on the Deepwater Horizon, and one of the last
workers to leave the doomed rig] ... says going faster caused the bottom of the well to split open,
swallowing tools and that drilling fluid called "mud."
"We actually got stuck. And we got stuck so
bad we had to send tools down into the drill pipe and sever the pipe,"
Williams explained.
That well
was abandoned and Deepwater Horizon had to drill a new route to the
oil. It cost BP more than two weeks and millions of dollars.
As
Bloomberg reports
today, problems at the well actually started in February:
BP
Plc was struggling to seal cracks in
its Macondo well as far back as February, more than two months
before an explosion killed 11 and spewed oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
It took 10 days to plug the first cracks, according to reports BP
filed with the Minerals Management Service that were later delivered to
congressional investigators. Cracks in
the surrounding rock continued to complicate the drilling operation
during the ensuing weeks. Left unsealed, they can allow explosive
natural gas to rush up the shaft.
“Once they realized they had
oil down there, all the decisions they made were designed to get that
oil at the lowest cost,” said Peter Galvin of the Center for Biological
Diversity, which has been working with congressional investigators
probing the disaster. “It’s been a doomed voyage from the beginning.”
***
On Feb. 13, BP told the
minerals service it was trying to seal cracks in the well about 40 miles
(64 kilometers) off the Louisiana coast, drilling documents obtained by
Bloomberg show. Investigators
are still trying to determine whether the fissures played a role in the
disaster.
***
The company attempted a “cement
squeeze,” which involves pumping cement to seal the fissures, according
to a well activity report. Over the following week the company made
repeated attempts to plug cracks that were draining expensive drilling
fluid, known as “mud,” into the surrounding rocks.
BP used
three different substances to plug the holes before succeeding, the
documents show.
“Most of the time you do a squeeze and then
let it dry and you’re done,” said John Wang, an assistant professor of
petroleum and natural gas engineering at Penn State in University Park,
Pennsylvania. “It dries within a few hours.”
Repeated squeeze
attempts are unusual and may indicate rig workers are using the wrong
kind of cement, Wang said.In other words, the well
started losing integrity in February, and may have never been permanently stabilized.
If cracks in the well were never properly sealed, then the well may
have been unstable starting in February and continuing until the April
20 explosion. (There is substantial
evidence that there are cracks in the well now.)
Bloomberg
continues:In early March, BP told the minerals agency
the company was having trouble
maintaining control of surging natural gas, according to e-mails
released May 30 by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is
investigating the spill.
***
While gas surges are common in
oil drilling, companies have abandoned wells if they determine the risk
is too high.
***
On March 10, BP executive Scherie
Douglas e-mailed Frank Patton, the mineral service’s drilling engineer
for the New Orleans district, telling him: “We’re in the midst of a well control situation.”
The incident was a “showstopper,”
said Robert Bea, an engineering professor at the University of
California, Berkeley, who has consulted with the Interior Department on
offshore drilling safety. “They damn
near blew up the rig.”And the wives of oil
rig workers killed in the blast testified
that their husbands reported that the rig had problems controlling
well pressure weeks before
explosion.
In other words, not only is it possible that the well
casing was somewhat unstable for months
before the blow out, but BP may have ignored standard drilling
practices by failing to abandon the well when the natural gas began
surging too violently.
Sure, the rig didn't actually catch fire and
sink until April, but cracks in the well and dangerous natural gas
surges may mean that BP never fully had
control of the well.
I'm not the only one
asking such questions. It is worth re-reading the following passage
from the Bloomberg article quoted above:
On
Feb. 13, BP told the minerals service it was trying to seal cracks in
the well ... drilling documents obtained by Bloomberg show.
Investigators are still trying to determine whether the
fissures played a role in the disaster.
Damaged
Blowout Preventer
Whether or not BP had lost control of the
well earlier, it was confirmed yesterday that BP had damaged its key
piece of safety equipment - the blowout preventer - earlier, yet kept
drilling.
The Los Angeles Times reported
Monday:
BP officials knew about a
problem on a crucial well safety device at least three months before the
catastrophic April 20 explosion in the Gulf of Mexico but failed to
repair it, according to testimony Tuesday from the company's well
manager.
Ronald Sepulvado testified that he was
aware of a leak on a control pod atop the well's blowout preventer and
notified his supervisor in Houston about the problem, which Sepulvado
didn't consider crucial. The 450-ton hydraulic device, designed to
prevent gas or oil from blasting out of the drill hole, failed during
the disaster, which killed 11 men on the Deepwater Horizon rig and set
off the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.
Investigators said BP did not disclose the matter to
the appropriate federal agency and failed to suspend drilling operations
until the problem was resolved, as required by law.
The New York Times adds
the following details:
Federal
investigators said Tuesday at a panel that continuing to drill despite
problems related to the blowout preventer might have been a violation of
federal regulations that require a work stoppage if the equipment is
found not to work properly.
While the equipment report says the
device’s control panels were in fair condition, it also cites a range of
problems, including a leaking door seal, a diaphragm on the purge air
pump needing replacement and several error-response messages.The device’s annulars, which are large valves used to control wellbore
fluids, also encountered “extraordinary difficulties” surrounding their
maintenance, the report said.
And as I pointed
out in May:
Several weeks before the Gulf oil
explosion, a key piece of safety equipment - the blowout preventer - was
damaged.As the Times of London reports:
[Mike Williams, the chief electronics technician on
the Deepwater Horizon, and one of the last workers to leave the doomed
rig] claimed that the blowout preventer was then damaged when a crewman
accidentally moved a joystick, applying hundreds of thousands of pounds
of force. Pieces of rubber were found in the drilling fluid, which he
said implied damage to a crucial seal. But a supervisor declared the
find to be “not a big deal”, Mr Williams alleged.UC
Berkeley engineering professor Bob Bea told 60 Minutes that a damaged
blowout preventer not only may lead to a catastrophic accident like the
Gulf oil spill, but leads to inaccurate pressure readings, so that the
well operator doesn't know the real situation, and cannot keep the rig
safe.
There are many other
examples of criminal negligence by BP, Halliburton and Transocean as well. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.
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Like you, I tried to keep it real for a few weeks and discuss known facts and laws of nature. As a result, no one has refuted any facts I have posted but instead they have labeled me as a shill, an oilman, an engineer, and an as of yet undiagnosed mental patient. In so doing, they have taught me the finer points of argument. I show my gratitude by using my new found skills. I am just trying to fit in.
I admire your persistence but I wonder if your experience will be any different than mine. If you want to avoid being labeled a shill, you will clearly need to step up your abrasiveness and irreverence. Good luck to you.
I show my gratitude by using my new found skills.
I admire your sense of comedy.
My increased appearance here corresponds to my wife and daughter being gone to visit wife's sister on the East Coast for two weeks. They will be back soon, and I will go back to more sporadic visits. My persistence stems from assuming that not every lurker reads every post. By saying basically the same thing on a number of posts, hopefully some lurkers will see it and be helped.
Saw a news article this morning that said it will take a few more days to finish the casing in the relief well, and then a week to bore into the main well. They want the casing finished before they attempt the static kill, in case a problem develops. I take that to mean they want to be ready to drill into the main well immediately with the relief well in case something gets out of hand with the static kill. Now the storm has made progress in this regard iffy. But whenever they can get back to work after the storm, it shouldn't be too long before we have proof one way or the other.
Unless it's all being faked.
@ RichardP - Thank you. I try to inject some comedy but I think most of it goes undetected. Like you, I shove off on a great adventure in a few days so I will unlikely be posting much in the future. GW et al will have free reign to make the unfortunate events in the Gulf as conspiratorial and mysterious as is necessary to attract new readers looking for confirmation of their darkest suspicions. Your sentence: "I take that to mean they want to be ready to drill into the main well immediately with the relief well in case something gets out of hand with the static kill." confuses me though. The way I understand it, the primary act of killing the well will occur via the relief well and the mud column supllied via static kill is predominantly for well control. In my mind, it has never been an "either or" but it has been that both will be used in conjunction in order to maintain the greatest control and to minimize any further leakage. If so, (and Gasmiinder and Assfire have agreed that I am visualizing this correctly, as does the Kent Wells tech brief) the relief well casing and cement shoe will be integral and necessary when breaching the original well bore as intended. Take care. Remember .... irreverence, abrasiveness. The journey of 1000 miles begins with one step.
Jim I am not certain but I suspect the static kill will precede the relief well pump. It is clear that the relief well will set the cement plug but the static kill allows allows better control of the current contents of the borehole as well as control of both casing and annulus simultaneously if both are open to the upper portions of the borehole. BOTH will occur and in certain situations you might kill first with static then spot a very heavy pill (much heavier mud only in a particular interval) in the lower portion. It will depend on some variables and I missed that shill briefing but I suspect it's most likely that the actual "kill" will be static first then relief.
Have fun on your adventure, I'm leaving in the am to go camping with my son until after the first of August - here's hoping the storm turns east as we'll be very wet otherwise (that would be great for the spill situation as well BTW). Looking forward to 10 days where internet access will be impossible.
gasmiinder said I suspect it's most likely that the actual "kill" will be static first then relief.
That is the sense conveyed in the newspaper article - with the exception that BP stated they wanted the casing finished in the relief well before they started the static kill. I speculated that this was probably so that if something goes wrong with the static kill, the relief well will be immediately ready to bore in and kill the well at the bottom. The article didn't state that, but I think it is a fair guess. And my desk sits at the intersection of North Robertson and Wilshire, which is where I have been since my post above. I don't know where Jim's desk is. If he is in the LA area, perhaps I should find out. We could exchange our posts and refine them before posting here.
When you drill a well removing the rock creates a zone around the wellbore where the stress field is altered. At the bottom of the relief well you have done this twice within the same 4 feet lateral distance. When you start the static the pressure in the borehole down at that depth will go up a lot. The concern is you could fracture that "altered" stress field area and cause problems in the relief well wellbore. If it is cased & cemented first then you can't lose any ground above that point, your progress is preserved no matter what happens.
Enjoy the camping trip. If able, show your son that water really does flow downhill, popularity be damned. Some fathers (BP Shills excepted) didn't take the time to explain it apparently.
Hey ya know you guys can just have this conversation in your office so that we don't have to listen to it, seeing how your desks are side by side!
Yes, Cognitive Dissonance and I missed them yesterday :)
Please, bring them back. I'm lonely and longing for some more verbal abuse. Jim had to chase me down in one of your financial threads GW. Oh the inhumanity of it all. :>)
edit: Did you see how Jim exposed himself....er...sorry, wrong word, outed himself as a self confessed troll on that thread?
Fact Check here for the conspiracy crowd:
Getting stuck: Differential sticking, mechanical sticking etc... This is also very common. I have been on many wells where we were stuck for days. The operation to get free is called 'freepointing' where they measure the stretch in the pipe and figure out where the sticking is occuring. From there explosives are used to back off the connection above so the drill pipe can be recovered. Very common - especially on EXPLORATION WELLS.
"Cracks" in the surrounding formation happen on almost EVERY SINGLE WELL ALWAYS. BP never lost control of the well. It's a very simple concept: You drill in a very porous rock, or a formation with lower pressure than the column of mud in the annuls, then you end up losing your drilling mud into the formation or "Fracturing" the rock. Mud weight is adjusted, mud properties are adjusted, drilling continues.
'Gas Surging' AKA taking a kick. Really has nothing to do with the lost circulation zones and cement squeezes. Gas comes from the reservoir - The cement was being pumped into cracks much higher up that are unrelated. You lose control of a well when the pressure below exceeds the hydrostatic pressure of the mud column. The onyl way I see these as related is if they were losing drilling mud and thus took a kick - But that is not the case AFAIK. The cement squeezes happened at completely different places in the well.
Also the title is misleading - You cannot drill ahead when you have 'lost control' of the well.
Thank you. I'm growing weary of the breathless hyperbole. Ixtoc dropped 3.3 million barrels in the Gulf over 10.5 months. Even if you believe Simmons 100,000 bbl per day number this spill isn't a whole lot bigger than that and nobody was talking about a dead GoM last year. As I've said previously, I don't mean to downplay this, but seriously, some of this garbage is way over the top.
GW - Amazing work you are doing. Keep up the good work. Soon we'll be calling you Deep Throat...
The Poisoning
It's the biggest environmental disaster in American history – and BP is making it worse
Rolling Stone July 21
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/183349