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Did the BP Oil Well Really Blow Out in February, Instead of April?
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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] said they were told it would take
21 days; according to him, it actually took six weeks.
With
the schedule slipping, Williams says a BP manager ordered a faster
pace.
"And he requested to the driller, 'Hey, let's bump it up.
Let's bump it up.' And what he was talking about there is he's
bumping up the rate of penetration. How fast the drill bit is going
down," Williams said.
Williams 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.
"We were informed of this during one of the safety meetings, that
somewhere in the neighborhood of $25 million was lost in bottom hole
assembly and 'mud.' And you always kind of knew that in the back of
your mind when they start throwing these big numbers around that there
was gonna be a push coming, you know? A push to pick up production
and pick up the pace," Williams said.
Asked if there was
pressure on the crew after this happened, Williams told Pelley,
"There's always pressure, but yes, the pressure was increased."
But
the trouble was just beginning: when drilling resumed, Williams says
there was an accident on the rig that has not been reported before. He
says, four weeks before the explosion, the rig's most vital piece of
safety equipment was damaged.
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 may have blown out in February, and never been properly repaired. If cracks in the well
were never fully 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.”
In other words, not only is it possible that the well casing has been
unstable since February, but BP apparently 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 the well actually started blowing out much earlier.
Note 1: These new facts also add to the
massive evidence that BP has been criminally
negligent.
Note 2: They also add to questions about potential insider trading.
Note 3: I am not saying that the well has been gushing oil since
February (although oil industry expert Matthew Simmons says
that the amount of oil leaking from the riser and blowout preventer
since April 20th does not account for the massive oil plumes observed in
the Gulf). What I am saying is that the well may have lost structural
integrity and stability as early as February.
»
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there's a difference?
What are they, synonyms; terms we can use interchangeably? OK, well, fuck his Britishness. And fuck that straight-faced clown who sounded like a bad imitation of Schwarzenegger's dad.
Where in the constitution does it say, "and then the thug-in-chief throws a hissy fit and extorts 20 billion from whomever is least popular this week?"
Who will it be next week, redheaded step children, gypsies, jews?
This is completely illegal, unconstitutional, and an outrage. BO should be impeached now. He is clearly off the reservation. This will end badly.
Anyone in the chain of command on this thing at BP should be fired and never allowed in a responsible position again, but that is a completely separate issue, and at the moment, none of Commie-Bama's damn business. Wake up sheeple. This is the real deal. We have a loose canon in the White House.
Yeah, you're right. The real problem with this leaking well is BHO and the clowns at BP are innocent victims (rolls eyes).
kaiserhoff
"Commie-Bama's"
What the fuck dude reviving HUAC?
You understand that 50 billion sits in an interest bearing account somewhere while all this wends it's way through the courts. Decades at the least. If anything it is a gift to the corporation.
Stop parroting Rush and think for yourself.
Let me be the first to junk you. I agree with the commie-bama bit but not the part that he's loose cannon. No-Not-Never. He's a puppet.
George Washington you are exposing your ignorance. Lost circulation & stuck bottom-hole assemblies are not that uncommon. Repeated squeezes contrary to the "professor" are not unusual either (in fact when one is necessary you can usually assume you may need another). All this is because drilling in these pressure regimes is a balancing act between controlling the well without fracturing the formation and losing circulation. These problems occur BEFORE running the casing string so they do not indicate the "well casing was unstable" in February. Finally - when a well "blows out" it BLOWS OUT - you can't hide that occurrence and continue operations.
All that said there is some meat here - IF bp was having significant gas kicks as described, and having lost circulation problems but still made the decisions described in the congressional letter: (1) significantly fewer centralizers in the face of contrary modeling (2) not circulating bottoms up to clean the wellbore before running casing (3) not running a cement bond log before displacing to seawater THEN some very dysfunctional decision making was going on. And yes I'd have to describe that series of decisions as criminally negligent.
.
More of the nonsense from the same source that knows nothing about GOM wells. Having a stuck drill string is a bad thing to have happen as it is costly. It happens because a larger piece of the formation comes up the outside of the drill string in the mud and gets the string in a bind so that it won't turn. they usually can wash it loose and up the hole. Not in this case. They had to drill a sidetrack, again not particularly rare.
Any time a well kicks it is a well control problem. That is the definition of a kick. If it is not solved it could blow up the rig. They are not rare and they are controlled. Wells are rarely abandonded because of kick. That decision is usually made because there is a lost circulation zone that they cannot get past.
Can we have more about that piece of rig debris near the BOP on the seafloor which is supposedly leaking 100,000 bls a day. That was the best yet.
Perhaps Geo Wash was cracked in February?
+1
the junk flaggers need a new AFDB. http://zapatopi.net/afdb/
The brave Junk Shot wankers cannot stand the truth.
+1 Lots of conspiracry theory mumbo-jumbo and too many maybes for this article to pass my smell test.
Not a thing is being done by BP without conspiracy. See my comment above.
My next door neighbor is a directional driller and has been in Colorado for the last month. He just got home and said the well he was drilling blew out and burned everything but the mobile home he was in. They were only using regular water for drilling fluid instead of drilling mud to hold the pressure. The company tried to blame him for the blowout.Why is not this blowout anywhere on any news station? He works for a Canadian driller that starts with a B.
Really? Just water? If true that would be dumber than dumb. In fact stupendously dumb. Always possible of course, but not too likely.
Who is is the "B"?
so what if it was a canadian drilling company. who are the dumb fucks making all the drilling decisions. wouldn't be americans would it. ZH is a site for people who can reason.
ZH is a site for people who can reason. So why are you here? I did not mention the word Canadian to be derogatory to Canadians as most drilling companies are multinational with multinational crews. Only to give interested readers some info if they want to dig without exposure to libel. So Take Your fucking flag off mate.
Not entirely, if the original post is an example.
Very interesting read, however, I suspect that nothing will ever come of it. My reasoning can be found in this passage:
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.
This means the Federal Government also knew that were problems at the well and did nothing to halt production. This doesn't absolve BP, of course, but there is no way the administration is going risk letting facts like that see the light of day when it's much safer politically to continue to kick BP around. Obama is already being excoriated in many circles for his handling of this whole situation (rightly or wrongly), and this inconvenient truth undermines the entire premise of the Obama campaign - that Barack, and by extension the federal goverment, is the only one that can solve all our problems.
Dont want to break your illusions but you are dismissing the current ambiance to the government.
An intervention of the federal government would have been perceived as an attempt to snuff private initiative with all kind of conspiracy theories kicking in like they didnt want off shore drilling, want to a price increase etc
Most people in the government are probably aware of that. That is why they wont speak about. Useless to speak when whatever you do, you are guilty.
On this present case,in the mind of many, the government is guilty. Not because of his actions, non actions but because they are the government.
The US is the most successful empire in the world history but most of its philosophical principles are failures. Big time failures.
A big +1 indeed!
Lots of effort seems to be going into understanding what was going on in the past. But I gotta ask: what the hell is the plan to end the flow of oil out of the sea floor? How much effort is being made to think through and deploy plans D, E, F, G, H, I and J (etc.)?
First we figure out who to blame.
Then we figure out what words we will use to describe it.
Next we manage perception.
And THEN we act.
I do believe you have answered your own question. The plan is 'what the hell is the plan.'
Carry on.
Two observations-
1) I, for one, this it's a damn shame to see all that wonderful oil go to waste.
2) BP clearly was drilling in the right place, they got that one thing right.
1) haste makes waste, yes?
2) pure speculation based on nothing but intuition, but methinks they hit a motherload.
+10 In fact, by some accounts, the hit was beginning to be considered of a significant size, as my be evidenced by the pressure (a major factor in the inability to top kill/junk) and volume of oil escaping the well under natural reservoir pressure. Further, there are signs that there is substantial erosion taking place, in part exacerbated by the pressure which is further consistent with the reported leaks in the seabed in not immediate proximity to the well head itself.
Dude, there are no other leaks.
They just allow the operators to steer the ROVs off to remote sea bed locations to stare at some cracks in the sea bed because they're doing a fish study. They're counting the number of fish that a procreating within the ROVs field of camera vision while the operator reads Playboy and j***s off.
Get with the program. There is only one leak. Fish studies is what it's all about.
((Mac, could you please get me a wet towel? John left a sticky joystick (sic) when his shift was over.))
By all accounts (see Oildrum and assorted industry publications) troubles were immense well (no pun intended) before the actual fire/explosion/sinking. Once again, another Conspiracy that's not a Theory.
I like to say that I investigate Conspiracy Fact. I will always assume there's a conspiracy until proven otherwise simply because conspiracy is a fact of life. Anyone who thinks otherwise is simply in denial.
Talk to any (honest) prosecuter at the state level or higher and they'll tell you the most common criminal charges brought against any and all "class" of people is "Conspiracy to ........." Or some such other language. But we are constantly told by governmental "officials" and corporate "officials" and the mainstream media that conspiracies just don't occur.
Assuming I'm not talking to a blatantly dishonest person, anyone who pushes this meme is always short on moral courage, long on denial of conspiracy.
CD, I can attest to that as well. (a former attorney) Any big criminal case almost always is a conspiracy between two or more people. "Accessory" is just another name for co-conspirator. They come in two flavors; "before the fact" and "after the fact." If they are both they are co-conspirators.
Botched crimes almost always result in "conspiracy to commit .... " charges. Take Alvin Greene for example. (the guy in SC who won the Democratic nomination for a US Senate seat without ever spending money campaigning) I can almost guarantee there is at least one unknown co-conspirator involved and I can tell you with almost complete certainty what party this person (or persons) belongs to.
Mel Gibson did the cause of conspiracy theorists a disservice by portraying them as paranoids, but conspiracies do in fact abound.
This statement and the entire logic of your healthy skepticism should be drilled into today's young people. I think one good side effect of the impending Depression will be to change the puppy dog submissiveness of Americans.
"Conspiracy" simply requires action by more than one person. The connotations of the term are negative, yes, so that one might define it as action by two or more persons to commit an act, usually offensive or illegal.
Given this definition, which is accepted by every court in the Anglo-American world, the ridicule heaped upon 'conspiracy theorists' is itself quite laughable. To wit, government does nary a thing without conspiracy.
And, for those requiring a reference:
http://www.cracked.com/article_15974_7-insane-conspiracies-that-actually-happened.html
And that's simply the tip of the iceberg. The transportation conspiracy that worked:
General Motors, Firestone and Sun Oil (later known as Sunoco) bribed and persuaded various politicians throughout America to dump all those street cars and trolleys in favor of buses and cars back in the '40s, '50s and early '60s.
A bunch of executives testified under oath during the Senate Select Committee investigation during the early '70s.
....and around LA metro the talk had always been about ARCO doing likewise for years. Scuttle light rail and build freeways. Even the old utility guys believe it , so it's probably true.
yeah, but no worries, those ARCO guys are a ethical bunch
And then there's the ever popular "conspiracy after the fact" (the cover up).
Shh, I was trying to keep that under wraps. Let's just keep it between you and me, OK? :>)
Article full of maybe, should have, could have, possibly...reads like it was written by a politican.
"Regulations are like spores of a fungus -- they settle anywhere and everywhere and create more spores." RR
And Goldman Sachs selling their enitre position.
How could GS possibly have that kind of insider information.(sarcasm off)
Yeah, it's impossible.
+100 Where there's smoke...
There's Goldman!!!
Goldman sold in the first quarter of 2010. Does anyone have a specific date?
Perhaps this may prove instructive GW?
Read more: http://technorati.com/business/article/goldman-brand-crashes-as-profits-surge/#ixzz0rDSajLd7