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Top Expert: There Were No Natural Seeps Within 3 Kilometers of Blown Out Well
University of California Berkeley engineering professor Robert Bea is
one of the world's top experts on oil drilling disasters. Bea is an expert in offshore
drilling and a high-level governmental
adviser concerning disasters. He is also a member
of the Deepwater Horizon Study Group.
As the Times-Picayune reported
yesterday:
Scientists have discovered four gas
"seeps" at or near BP's blown-out Macondo well since Saturday ...
***
Berkeley
engineering professor Bob Bea has very little confidence in what’s
been said publicly about the seeps.
He’s troubled that we’re just
now hearing about seeps three kilometers away, because a survey of
the seabed conducted before BP drilled its well didn’t indicate
anything like that.
“There was nothing that indicated the
presence of such a seep,” Bea said. “I wonder why we’re just now
finding that out?”
BP has yet to release other ROV video that Bea’s
study group requested more than a month ago about what may have been
shots.
3 kilometers equals 1.9
miles, less than the 2 mile distance for the furthest seep
discussed by the government to date.
I told
you that the "natural seep" argument was a red herring.
Update: The government is now claiming that the seep 2 miles
from the blowout is from another offshore oil facility.
Specifically, Thad Allen made that claim today.
As AP writes:
The federal government's oil spill chief says seepage detected two
miles from BP's oil cap is coming from another well.There are two
wells within two miles of BP's blowout, one that has been abandoned and
another that is not in production.
I have no idea whether or not this is true. If true, I do not
yet know whether the other offshore oil facility is part of the
Mississippi Canyon 252 (MC252) prospect or a neighboring prospect.
If part of MC 252, it could well have been a well which BP previously
abandoned. Specifically, 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] 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.
Here
is MC252 (where the blown out well is located) shown in comparison
with nearby sites:
And this is the definitive high-resolution
map showing block 252 in comparison with other prospects in the
Mississippi Canyon area and surrounding areas.
BP and the government must immediately specify whether the seep is
part of the abandoned BP well or another facility.
Remember that there are numerous
other seeps closer to the blown out well.
- advertisements -
Here is something to read about oil seeps, over on the California coast.
"Natural Oil Seep Study"
http://www.mms.gov/omm/pacific/enviro/submarine-oil-seep-study/submarine-seeps.htm
--several methods used including field 'sniffers' for methane and sonar for geological targeting of seeps
--attention to the differentiation of natural oil from seeps vs. platform oils; biodegradation of seep oil in the near subsurface formations offers good but not perfect clues to natural vs. platform origin
--approx. $2 million study completed in January 2010
119 pages of oil seep science. Nice.
Applying this to the GOM/BP context, highly unlikely that BP spent the time, money and multiple methods/sensor systems required to establish a definitive set of baseline (pre-accident) natural seep conditions near the wellhead.
Therefore difficult to impossible to establish any changes pre- to post-accident.
However, currently critical to establish actual seepage conditions and monitor for further changes as work progresses, and (you will not read this in the news) more or less permanent and quite invasive monitoring after work is completed. Imagine several million dollars per year of surveying, basically forever. I wonder, will this step be forgotten? Recall the thousands of abandoned, uninspected wells already in the Gulf....
"Therefore difficult to impossible to establish any changes pre- to post-accident."
Exactly.
The Gulf has many natural seeps. It's documented.
I have a few questions:
What counts as a seep? i.e. how much oil has to flow for it to count? 1/2 barrel a day? 50? 100?
How much oil or gas and gas is coming from these seeps?
How can it be determined if seeps are natural or not? Is there some kind of chemical signaure in the oil or gas they look at? How do they do this? The oil all comes from under the ground. What is different about BP oil?
How was the original survey conducted? The article quoted talks about seeps 3 kilometers away that didn't exist in the original survey. That sugests they surveyed an area at the very least 30Km2. How detailed was it? Did they use ROVs or some other means?
If I drill an oil well and it fucks up. what is the mechanism for that oil to come out of the seabed several kms away?
Why didn't the journalist that wrote this article, when given the opportunity to speak to 'one of the world's top experts' not ask even the most basic and obvious questions?
Why are most journalists so fucking bad at their job?
As I've posted before - scientific studies have postulated about a million barrels a year seep from natural sources in the Gulf of Mexico (that is the central tendency of a high variance range not an exact number)
It should be possible to type oil/gas from Macondo and compare it to the natural seeps. They should not match. This requires capturing seep hydrocarbons in order to do the test (not as easy as you might think). Oil from a given reservoir will have a specific geochemical signature but the level of discrimination varies - it should be enough to determine this question. The methane should have quite distinct signal since the reservoir methane will be thermogenic and the natural seep methane will likely be biogenic (fair disclosure -I am not a geochemist).
I discussed this in a previous thread and GW quoted that in one of his. All offshore drilling requires high resolution seismic surveys to check of for a variety of hazards and map the condition of the seafloor. This is done over the entire block (9 sq miles) that is to be drilled. However any offset blocks that have ever had drilling or a POE filed will have had a survey.
There really isn't one - that's why most of the experienced oil field technical hands treat this question with disdain. It is not inconceivable, it just requires a lot of very specific special occurences to coincide. It would be much more likely that the leak would occur near the existing wellbore. The energy in the system is directed UP after all. This is also the reason that those same people has been so dismissive of the "there are leaks everywhere" claims - it is extremely difficult to postulate a system where that occurs.
I would concur completely with Cognitive Dissonance on the answer to that one.
"Why are most journalists so fucking bad at their job?"
Because most of them are repeaters, not reporters.
They are taught communication skills, not investigatory skills. Critical thinking often gets in the way of simple "effective" communication from their point of view because it complicates the issues. They see themselves as story tellers, not story discoverers. As the population is dumbed down, the "reporting" needs to be dumbed down, which feeds back into the dumbing down of the population. A positive feedback loop that is out of control.
I'd say the Geo Wash blog is a case study of this phenomenon in action.
BP! Black Plaguing pariah fungi, darkly infecting a way into modern history!! Same remedy! Rid the world of rats and flea biting operatives!!!!
For most of the rest of the world, the GOM is just that, a world away. A very what-me-worry kind of attitude even if informed of the possibilities.
Again and again Mr. Simmons seems prophetic.
It is a script. A nuke is a part of it.
It will be played (the card) between the bookmark dates of 6th and 9th August. Or thereabouts at any rate.
History rhyming, in our face.
Awesome!
ORI
http://aadivaahan.wordpress.com
My Tarot cards didn't come with a "underground nucular explosion under a large body of water" card in the deck. Where did you get yours?
Allen
24 more hours of pressure testing
static kill discussions on going and we'll know more in about 24 hours, no risks that we can't handle
sequence (if stat kill is is done)
run the casing for the relief well first, which will take about a week
do static kill
do the bottom kill
How much is BP paying you to post the details of the briefings?
LOL.
Keep it up bucko ... you're next on my list. I saw what you posted below about "natural seeps". That's what a shill would post.
Shill loves me, shill loves me not...LOL.
Hey...a Berkeley professor is quoted!...part of a round table discussion group or sumpin sounds like. Sittin around pulling on their chin whiskers staring up at the ceiling.
I can hardly wait for the "peer reviewed" findings. That should be swell reading.
Some fields of expertise are earthquakes, wind, current...that should come in handy when the sea floor collapses.
Hmmm...uh ohhh...worked for Bechtel. That was like the Haliburton back in the day. This doesn't look good. Looks like a double triple agent, a real mercenary type.
This casting of aspersions thingy could be quite profitable if one were so inclined.
Wonder where GG is ;-)
Cataloging his crickets last I heard.
Bechtel huh? Uh oh ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iN3zdpdgvY
"On December 1974 Congress passed Public Law 93-531 "The Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act". It authorized the partitioning of the Joint Use Area (JUA) and established the Navajo-Hopi
Indian Relocation Commission (NHIRC) which moved Navajo people from the reservation lands. Countless of the most traditionally and culturally intact Dineh (Navajo) people were forced to re-locate to cities like Shiprock and Tuba City."
Oh no.
Tell me a Berkeley professor was not associated with an outfit who participated in soft genocide. The ends justifing the means as it were. I wonder what his feelings were at the time? I wonder if he overlooked this past transgression in order to draw a paycheck?
"1981-1989: PMB Engineering - Bechtel Inc. (Vice President, Senior International Consultant)"
I guess not.
Now that my friend is cold blooded character assassination. Maybe GG can catalog this as how it's really done. Not with innuendo. Not some grey ghost. Cold hard facts.
I don't normally come to a conclusion until all known facts are in. What has been happening with GW's updates on BP & the oil spill is beyond the pail as far as I'm concerned. Hysterical observations proven wrong are overlooked for the sensational. Those who point out, correctly in my view, that it was hysterical hyperbole are called shills by the same people who run through ZH with their ass on fire screaming the end is nigh. Hearst made an empire off this nonsense. Yellow journalism.
Like I said to GW, integrity once lost is hard to regain. He would be wise to call out the bomb throwers for evidence of their assertions on his posts if he really wants perspective and truth.
Regards.
... integrity once lost is hard to regain.
I agree. But I'm also aware of the difference between content knowledge and process knowledge. Content knowledge you get out of a book. Process knowledge you only get by actually doing something and learning from the feedback. G.W. is learning by doing. And I think he is improving. He now asks questions of those who have demonstrated knowledge. I applaud that. Plus - he has been the catalyst for many to present their misconceptions and fears. These misconceptions and fears have been countered by math and science. I think the exchange has drawn out information that would not have come out otherwise. I think the process has helped to educate folks who maybe wouldn't have otherwise been educated. I think that is a good thing. And I think it wouldn't have happened without G.W.'s posts.
Credibility is an important issue. But I think G.W. is earning some of his back. But a journalist will always have to push the sensational in order to get people to buy the product. So I'm careful to not tie G.W.'s credibility too closely with his articles. I'm guessing that underneath it all he knows better. He's just being sensational to sell more newspapers.
Isn't that what everybody else is doing?
Good points all.
I find nothing wrong with the advocate system, in fact I enjoy it.
My problem is with GG not GW, who's approach is to inpugn integrity and thus win the argument.
Yeah - that impugn integrity thing really wins lots of arguments.
Perhaps I shouldn't have rushed my response.
I meant, of course, impugning ones integrity & character by baseless accusation's such as "how much are they paying you?" and calling someone a "shill" because they bring something other than what is being promoted as fact.
GG's accusations were unfounded and unsupported.
GG has still not answered whether he has monetary interests other than common stocks in any market on the planet. And I doubt he will...not that the SEC looks or cares about bygone threads on ZH anyways ;-)
I wasn't critquing your response. I was rolling my eyes. There are folks who operate as though impugning integrity wins the argument. As if.
The story is now all about static kill even as the ultimate solution (relief well(s)) that both government and BP have been touting from day one is just a few weeks away. A month ago it was the lower marine riser package and surface containment, ten days ago it was the capping stack installation with a view to improved surface containment, 6 days ago it was the 48 hour pressure test, Saturday it was still about the pressure test, Sunday it was about a depleted reservoir, Sunday was also about keeping the capping stack sealed, yesterday we learned a new term "static kill". Apologists and cranks alike leapt into action on Sunday in support of the depleted reservoir theory and in lockstep began doing the same Monday on static kill.
Few seem to be asking the obvious question:
If the relief wells are the ultimate solution and just about ready to go why not leave well enough alone and capture as much oil as possible until they are completed?
One possible off-the wall idea is that if the production vessels/platforms capable of capturing the stated 60-80K bpd are actually lined up and begin collecting oil:
a) the actual volume of the flow would be documented, or worse
b) the actual volume may exceed the maximum 'estimated' flow rate and the assembled production capacity, with oil continuing to be piped into the GOM. Unlikely, but then again, so was the rig fire and blowout.
There is no way BP will open this cap unless/until:
relief wells are complete and bottom kill in progress/finished
catastrophic (visible to naked eye) breakdown in well integrity
direct order from DHS/WH (and I am not even sure about this last one)
Which is not to say that any of the above except relief wells are inevitable or even likely.
We all have the tendency to make assumptions, especially when info comes from "official" sources. I have some questions.
1) How would these "seeps" 2 miles from the wild well have been detected in the first place? ROV visual? They can only see 25 to 30 feet. Sonar or seismic? Little bubbles can be detected with sonar or seismic? I honestly don't know how this is done so I would appreciate an answer from anyone.
2) Why would Allen or the WH even discuss "seeps" unless there was something to them? Why would Allen and the WH throw cold water on what seemed to be a capped and holding well by discussing "seeps"? Why would they risk loss of credibility either to them or BP by talking about something that wasn't real or at least something they were very worried about? Why take the political risk for no reason? There is still concern in the WH about seeps.
3) There is all this talk about "depletion" and cross communication between layers of sand at the bottom of the well, which we are told might be responsible for the lower pressure readings. So I guess I'm to believe that the brightest oil/gas minds in the world (which BP claims either are directly working on this wild well or have been borrowed/consulted from other oil companies) never thought in advance that the pressure might be lower because of depletion or whatever reason we want to give?
Considering how every single detail has been thoroughly studied and talked about during this entire process, endlessly discussed and engineered and cross checked, you mean to say that no one thought about depletion when they gave the 8-9000 PSI number as indicating a good well bore? No one? The politicians didn't pull that number out of their butts. It came from technical people at BP.
4) Are they just stalling until they have all the equipment ready on the surface that can handle the 80k bls per day they say they want to be able to handle?
5) How would the WH and Allen even know about additional seeps a few miles away from the well? Do they have their own equipment or are they entirely reliant upon BP and their ROVs and surface ships?
6) This is now the second time a major change in method has been sprung upon us. The full containment cap wasn't discussed until it was ready to go. Yet it took months to engineer and build. Now we are talking about static kill. If BP was going to try and fully cap the well, they must have already been talking about static kill long before Monday.
We have been repeatedly told that the relief well was the only acceptable low risk high probability kill method to be used and that until the relief well was ready, containment would be the route to follow. Why the changes unless conditions are changing? Did they stop drilling the relief well for a few days simply to listen to the wild well or did the relief well find problems that aren't being discussed.
What is going on? We are being accused of wild speculation but we're being feed select information here.
Its clear there is a lot of tension between two camps here regarding this issue. I would rather ferret out the truth than get sucked into a whose right/wrong.
To me, this is a very complicated engineering project. While an engineer by education and profession, I would be arrogant to think I could troll some forums/sites, watch the news, and know the inside scoop of what exactly is happening one mile below the surface of the gulf. Movies and books are coming and I am sure its going to be very interesting reading.
My purpose is primarily to educate myself with a focus on being able to sort the sh!t from the shinola. Debate is useful insofar as its educational/constructive.
I tend to bias towards the well is holding. Personally, I feel if there are seeps tied to Maconodo the pressures involved from the actual wellbore will quickly erode a channel becoming significant in volume. To me a middle ground seems impossible when you consider all the crap they had to do to cap this thing.
Folks need to realize there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen right now with regards to this disaster, so expect messages to be off target, muddled, or just plain contradictory. Its not malice, its chaos. Politicians are not engineers are not business leaders, so god have mercy on the poor souls with their vegetables stuck in this stone soup.
For those that desire to accuse me of being a BP shill, its much more simple that that. I would put put top level BP execs right next to the top level bank execs - swinging from lampposts. But the criminal actions of business leaders are not the issue right now. The issue right now is an engineering issue. Lets stop this well permanently. Then we can shift gears and get into @ss kicking mode. And I can assure you this voter is pissed off. I want blood.
With that back drop, I am reposting something from an older GW thread on the subject because I think its relavent regarding the pressure build up:
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/pressure-test-failing-stopping-short-ta...
I am including the content inline for your convenience.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
See this post by fdoleza over at TOD (www.TheOilDrum.com) for excellent perspective on one of the many factors at play with regarding the ramp in pressure:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6734#comment-678201
Cooter
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ fdoleza's post ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It's complicated. The "oil" is an oil and gas mixture. We use the term gas to refer to the molecules which show up as a gas phase when the well stream gets separated at the surface. In the well, under pressure, the gas is dissolved in the oil. As the fluids move up the hole, they heat the surroundings, and cool down (because there's heat transfer from the fluids to the steel casing and then to the surrounding rock).
There's a very interesting effect many people aren't aware of, when the gas dissolves in the oil, the oil swells. So the oil becomes less dense, less viscous. The swelling factor for this oil could be around say 2. his means one barrel of oil at the surface takes up two barrels at the bottom. And this means the oil down there has a very low density, lower than 50 % that of water.
So let's consider the problem, the oil has been flowing up the well, as it does so it loses pressure, it releases heat to the surroundings, and the gas comes out of solution (the oil "boils"). When it gets all the way to the top and they separate it, they report over 2000 feet of gas per barrel of oil at atmospheric conditions and 60 degrees F, the standard reference.
When they shut the well in, the heating effect provided by the oil flowing up stops, and the column of oil begins to cool down as it loses heat to the surroundings (the gradient would be from say 270 degrees F at the bottom to 40 degrees F at the blow out preventer stack). So, as the oil cools down it begins to absorb a little bit of the gas - but some of this gas migrated to the top of the assembly, which means it won't be in close proximity to the oil and won't re-absorb because the molecules aren't able to move that fast.
Which means the column may end up with volatile slightly undersaturated oil at the bottom, oil that's even more undersaturated in the middle, and then saturated oil towards the top, with gas sitting on top.
And to complicate things, they will also have some oil movement within the reservoir - the lower sand is thicker than the uppper sand, is more likely to be more continuous, and it's more likely to be connected to an aquifer (which provides energy via water expansion as the pressure drops). So it's possible there's flow going on between the two at the wellbore. Even the little stringers of sand higher up the hole may be taking a little bit of oil right now.
This crossflow effect won't allow the reservoir pressure to stabilize, and depending on how much oil each of them produced, and their actual size and properties, it could go on for several months. But I would expect the effect would be very strong at first, and then it would slow down as the thinner oil sand begins to build pressure (because it has oil being injected into it by the lower sand). This effect can be derived from observartion of the pressures they are taking, but last night I did mention they need to model the temperature changes in the well to account for fluctuations in the column density profile. And this can be a bit of a hit and miss affair. On the other hand, they do have the brightest dudes in the industry available to them, so I'm sure they are doing exactly that.
The only thing I proposed and they didn't do, as far as I know, was to place the microphones in the relief wells to listen to the crossflow. I don't have a way to communicate with them, if I did I would get pretty insistent they think about it. And I bet there are people in that organization who proposed just that, but they may not have been heard. OR maybe they modeled the microphone set up and the rock muffles the sound. Or maybe they did run it and they're trying to figure out what the noise they pick up means?
I appreciate your feedback. I read www.theoildrum.comdaily and I have not seen specific answers to the questions I ask above. Thus the reason for my questions, most of which are not opinion questions. I do remember reading the "fdoleza" comment and the follow up.
The most important question I ask is why didn't BP or anyone else anticipate the "reservoir depletion" concept when considering where to place the high end of acceptable pressures?
Why would they start "high" and risk having to walk down to lower pressures? It's a reasonable question. No one thought about reservoir depletion?
Well Cog this issue has been discussed before but it is not sinking in - here's a less technical and very likely scenario for how it happened:
___________________________________________
Every technical person involved in the process anticipated the "reservoir depletion" concept. I can say this with certainty. They then had conversations with the "committee" where they tried to teach petroleum engineering to bureaucrats. After 5 minutes boredom set in and the bureaucrats said "aren't you competent to just give me a number?". The engineers said "well it certainly ought to be less than 9,500 psi and based on what we think the reservoir looks like, how far it extends and how thick it is including the water leg and it's geographic extent our models suggest it really ought to be more than 6,500 psi". The bureaucrats said "oh for Pete's sake - you can be more accurate than that" and the engineers said "well the mean of the resultant distribution from our models is 8,000 psi" and the bureaucrats said "GREAT now we have a number we can write down on our notes, if it's not 8,000 psi the wellbore is leaking, oh look, it's five pm, gotta run now. click ...dial tone" while the engineers were all shouting "no! -...but.....you don't.....wait....that's not!....................OH SHITTTTT!"
That is almost certainly how it happened.
Now - your other question was "No one thought about reservoir depletion?" and I said above that every engineer involved did so. Here is a short explanation of why that is - (and I will do my best not to sound too clear and rational as I'm told that is the mark of a shill).
When BP drilled into this reservoir it existed at a given pressure. That pressure is a function of the "pore pressure" in the surrounding rock and how high a column of hydrocarbons exists in the reservoir. The higher that column is the more pressure exists in the borehole because that column is displacing the water that would be there otherwise, that water "trying" to get back into that space adds pressure at the top of the reservoir. If the column gets too high the pressure will be so high that it cracks the shales above and the hydrocarbons leak out (this is the origin of my many rants about physically impossible pressure estimates).
THIS IS THE IMPORTANT PART NOW - you can think of that pressure as the amount of "energy" in the reservoir. It is the only thing that can cause fluid to move in the reservoir. Some of that energy is in compression in the water below etc but the pressure you see at the top of the zone is a summation of all available energy in that reservoir. There is NO process which ADDS energy to the reservoir, it was static before BP drilled into it and the only way to ADD energy is to drill another well and pump additional energy into the system (this is often done to increase the amount of oil produced from old fields).
Okay - so you may have noticed that SOMETHING has been LIFTING oil & gas 13,000 feet to the seafloor and overcoming 2100 psi of fluid pressure there at quite a large rate for the last 80+ days. Please note this is not a perpetual motion machine - it required energy to do that. That energy came out of the reservoir. We have some concepts called the LAWS OF THERMODYNAMICS that apply to everyone and everything (except Matt Simmons whom you may know is an energy industry expert). These LAWS tell us that as the energy is used up the pressure in the reservoir declines.
Now for some petroleum engineering - you can imagine that in this PARTICULAR situation the perturbation to the energy state in the reservoir was quite violent and sudden as opposed to the very controlled fashion it usually occurs. This perturbation will propagate out through the reservoir in some fashion. How that propagation occurred is VERY UNCERTAIN, just a few of the variable that would come into play would be, how much pore space the rock contains, how connected those pores are, how far above the water level you are, how variable the pore space distribution is, what the shape of the connected sand body is, how thick the sand body is and how that thickness varies away from the single control point and there are in fact many others.
So BY DEFINITION the reservoir MUST HAVE BEEN DEPLETED. The UNCERTAINTY is in how much and how far and how much it will recover.
That is why I can tell you with a high degree of certainty that every petroleum engineer, down to those who finished their first year of college in the spring of 2010 and every petroleum geologist and geophysicist and most engineering techs and drilling supervisors and field foreman on the face of the earth - when they heard Admiral Allen say "well we had specific pressure levels we expected to see" had exactly the same thought at exactly that moment. That thought was "WHAT! HOW THE HELL DO THEY KNOW WHAT THE DEPLETION IS!"
Please observe and note my earnest attempts at snarkiness as I am told such attitudes are the mark of a "bona fide" ZH commentor.
CD, sorry to be tardy in my response. I may have been obtuse with the statement:
Gasmiinder is reinforcing exactly what I expected (based on my experience as an engineer). Upper level players (politicos or execs) tend to try to over simplify (or cant understand) the factors involved, yet they are in control of the "message". More importantly, in this case intelligent citizens are engaging in a way that has not been possible before, so "urban legend" style ideas stick because they sound plausible and the citizens in question dont have the basic fundamentals to screen out "impossible" but plausible sounding issues.
My WoW raid is kicking up, so I will try to get back to this tread ASAP... >.>
Cooter
Hey. It's the Age of Snark. Courtesy of the jokers from the Age of Aquarious. Those hippies have proven all of that post-Woodstock rhetoric was all bullshit. Whatever happened to "American Woman Stay Away From Me" and Reject the MAN?
The key to being snarky is be sure it's a teachable moment for someone. Outstanding response. You taught me a thing or two. I had a hunch that Simmons was just a self-interested blowhard.
Teachable moment? Gross.
Thank you for your completely hypothetical and subjective answer since you can't "know" what all the engineers were thinking, saying or doing. Now would you like to answer the 6 questions I ask above? I'm not challenging you to do so. It's a general request. I shall re-post them below.
1) How would these "seeps" 2 miles from the wild well have been detected in the first place? ROV visual? They can only see 25 to 30 feet. Sonar or seismic? Little bubbles can be detected with sonar or seismic? I honestly don't know how this is done so I would appreciate an answer from anyone.
2) Why would Allen or the WH even discuss "seeps" unless there was something to them? Why would Allen and the WH throw cold water on what seemed to be a capped and holding well by discussing "seeps"? Why would they risk loss of credibility either to them or BP by talking about something that wasn't real or at least something they were very worried about? Why take the political risk for no reason? There is still concern in the WH about seeps.
3) There is all this talk about "depletion" and cross communication between layers of sand at the bottom of the well, which we are told might be responsible for the lower pressure readings. So I guess I'm to believe that the brightest oil/gas minds in the world (which BP claims either are directly working on this wild well or have been borrowed/consulted from other oil companies) never thought in advance that the pressure might be lower because of depletion or whatever reason we want to give?
Considering how every single detail has been thoroughly studied and talked about during this entire process, endlessly discussed and engineered and cross checked, you mean to say that no one thought about depletion when they gave the 8-9000 PSI number as indicating a good well bore? No one? The politicians didn't pull that number out of their butts. It came from technical people at BP.
4) Are they just stalling until they have all the equipment ready on the surface that can handle the 80k bls per day they say they want to be able to handle?
5) How would the WH and Allen even know about additional seeps a few miles away from the well? Do they have their own equipment or are they entirely reliant upon BP and their ROVs and surface ships?
6) This is now the second time a major change in method has been sprung upon us. The full containment cap wasn't discussed until it was ready to go. Yet it took months to engineer and build. Now we are talking about static kill. If BP was going to try and fully cap the well, they must have already been talking about static kill long before Monday.
We have been repeatedly told that the relief well was the only acceptable low risk high probability kill method to be used and that until the relief well was ready, containment would be the route to follow. Why the changes unless conditions are changing? Did they stop drilling the relief well for a few days simply to listen to the wild well or did the relief well find problems that aren't being discussed.
What is going on? We are being accused of wild speculation but we're being feed select information here.
1) This is seek and you shall find as best I can tell. This whole area of the gulf (broadly speaking) has tons of oil/gas deposits and consequently seeps. If you look in a 1 to 2 mile radius, a radius that was very likely not surveyed prior to the drilling of the well, they are probably all over. Per my original post, the Maconodo well bore is almost 7k PSI. This is TWICE any sane pressure of a scuba tank. If there was, that channel would very quickly erode into a massive flow.
2) Again, per my original post, this is chaos at the message level. The egineers are providing facts to execs/politicos that need to dumb things down or simply misunderstand. This presents a very confused message. Politicians want to assuage fears. Execs want to appease share holders. Engineers want to fix problems. None of these goups have anything in common to some degree. This has to be a grain of salt with the media coverage.
3) This is why I reposted. I found it to be a very reasonable explanation for some of the pressure dynamics.
4) There better be a really damn good reason to open this thing back up, and presently I dont see it. Even if there was a seep, if its so minor we sit here in debate it, isnt this a HUGE improvement over the several days it would take to get the capture back online with this beast going all out?
5) I may have oversimplified/misunderstood 1, so 1 and 5 I kind of dump in the same bucket.
6) The game plan has changed on a regular basis this entire time. If you read up on the Ixtoc well back in 79/80, they had "operation sombrero". Sound familiar (thats spanish for top hat). The truth from the begining was that it was going to be 60 to 90 days to cap the well. Politicos would never accept that, thus we get this dog and pony show.
The bottom line is the pressures involved are so high that if there was a well bore issue it would be ground zero at the well. It is extremely unlikely that the pressure would run through some strata to a location miles away and bubble to the surface.
Regards,
Cooter
I think gasmiinder (is that a typo or intentional, BTW?) answered #3 pretty well. Insofar as positing conjecture about the unseen/unheard thoughts and actions of others -- your question kind of demands that.
As for being spoonfed select info -- well, yeah. That's the way it works. Though Thad Allen did say on an NPR show that he had no problem releasing the pressure values observed over time during the 'integrity test' to the general public. So I will be curious to see if we get to look at those (sometime before his autobiography hits the bookshelves, and we can look it up in the Appendix).
@ Cog Dis: In case you missed it, the relief well is still key to getting the well shut in permanently. It is in this thread #477992
Also, since when did you have an issue with "hypothetical" or "subjective"? This blog has been a target rich environment for both and yet this is the first time I see you mention it as though it was something bad.
It doesn't matter what's said in any thread. BP is quoted saying they're seriously considering another method called static kill. Why would they consider static kill if the relief well is the method they've repeatedly claimed for months was and is the best way to kill this well?
That's a reasonable question considering using the relief well to kill the wild well was repeated endlessly by BP and you as the only sure way of killing the well. Why use this other method when the only sure method is the relief well?
Why repeatedly ask the same dumbass question when it is in the FUCKING THREAD I just gave you?
I find it highly ironic that you bitch and moan about spoon fed information and the ignorance of "repeaters" and yet you won't go read a thread that will answer your question.
You're getting down right belligerent Jim. Those control issues are rearing their ugly head. Looks like it's meds for two.
I did read the thread, once when it was posted and a second time when you re-posted it just above. I'm not asking you for your speculation nor assfire's. I'm asking why BP is saying these things. You and others keep pointing to facts. Can you direct me to a link where BP answers these questions since the only person or entity who can answer for BP is BP?
I'm asking for facts as either BP or some other "official" presents them. Assfire says static kill is safer. BP has not said this. BP has consistently said the relief well is the best method to kill the well. They were saying so by the end of the first week. They have never said anything about static kill until recently. Where does BP say that static kill is best or safest or that it is now better than the relief well? There is no doubt I might have missed it and I'm asking a general question.
If you understand English and if you really had read the thread I referenced, you would understand that BP will still use the relief well to kill the well.
Nope, assfire said the static kill would be used to kill the well. The relief well would be used to plug the well just above the formation.
"Well will be killed with this method (it is safer to kill it), but plugged by the relief well which is intersecting right above the formation."
It's a question of semantics that your extreme anal-retentive episodic behavior syndrome has left you woefully unable to cope with.
The well will be controlled by the mud column.
The well will be killed by injecting cement at or near the bottom of the bore via the relief well. The relief well is still the primary causal agent of killing the well.
I'm sorry that you struggle so much with your anal-retentive compulsion disorder, but I will have the nurse bring your meds in soon deary <heavy condecension intended>.
If I'm reading the transcript from todays BP briefing correctly, in response to a reporters question on page 4, Kent says that static kill and bottom kill will be used together, pending approval, rather than static kill from the top, then plug from the bottom.
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/incident_response/STAGING/local_assets/downloads_pdfs/BP_technical_audio_07202010.pdf
From the 7-19-2010 BP briefing.
I feel better now that I have the official explanation.
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/incident_response/STAGING/local_assets/downloads_pdfs/BP_technical_audio_07192010.pdf
You know, if you are a BP shill, you have taken it to a whole new level. You're good .... damn good.
Well Played!
Now get the fuck out, SHILL!
:slow_clap.gif:
Please elaborate on the "control issues". I would like to know more about your diagnosis, or is it just a pyscho babble red herring that you sprinkle out in order to feel superior? I only ask because it is the third time I have seen you use it in as many days.
http://www.helium.com/knowledge/335297-how-verbal-abuse-relates-to-control-issues
http://www.drphil.com/articles/article/69
http://www.goodtherapy.org/therapy-for-control-issues.html
http://www.psychologyinfo.com/problems/impulse_control.html
Sighhh, I am not your research department.
But I can't resist:
#1 was discussed in a previous thread and copied by GW into one of his posts and is also reiterated in a reply to Monkey something or other below, try reading those.
#2 AA & the WH would discuss seeps because they've been echoing around the chamber for 80+ days due to morons like Matt Simmons. They exist. I did not say there was not "something to them"; someone else may have but I did not. You can note the aforementioned comment below where I say they are very unlikely to be due to wellbore leakage - I do NOT say they CANNOT be.
#3 While the initial "conversation" noted above was indeed speculative I believe it is exactly the type of thing that happened and is the answer to your questions of where the idea that 8000 psi was a magical point derived. As for the rest of your question if you would read the fucking post that you are replying to you would find a very clear, basic science based explanation of why the assumptions in your #3 are full of shit.
#4 I wouldn't have a clue.
#5 I wouldn't have a clue. I'd like to THINK that AA & the WH might have access to some assets of their own. Many might possess sonar. But who the hell am I to answer that question.
#6 Christ on a crutch I cannot for the life of me figure out why commentors continue to complain that different things are attempted. It's a fucking disaster. It wasn't planned. They're figuring it out as they go along. I'd guess you could think of some answers but these aren't technical question either so I'll move along.
Not numbered - who the hell told you the relief well was the ONLY acceptable low risk high probability kill method to be used? I never saw that. I've tried to tell people many times that "the relief wells are the answer" and I've also tried to tell people many times that "in a disaster you try whatever might work as long as it doesn't increase the risk"
You are certainly being fed select information - it might be that informing you is NO ONE'S PRIORITY.
Getting a little cranky there gas. No one forced you to answer the questions other than your obsessive need to "make people think" (and I'm quoting you from a few days ago) which says a lot about your personal control issues.
Time for your meds darling. The nurse will be right in.