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Well Integrity Test Has Now Started, But Oil Industry Experts Ask "What the Hell Are They Doing?"
Admiral Thad Allen just
announced that the well integrity test has gotten a green light.
For background on what this means, see this
and this.
The test has already started. You can watch live here.
As I noted yesterday, BP suspended the "top kill" operation for 16 hours - because, according to
numerous experts, it was creating more
damage to the well bore - without
even telling the media, local officials or the public that it
had even delayed the effort until long afterwards.
Similarly, it
took more than 5
hours for BP to publicly announce the delay of the well integrity
test after the decision to delay was made.
More importantly, oil
industry expert Rob Cavner - who has been right about virtually
everything so far, previously explaining
that there is damage in the oil well beneath the seafloor, and that BP
has to let the oil spill keep on gushing to avoid further damage to
the well bore until the well can be killed with relief wells
(subsequently confirmed
by BP) - now says that he is worried that the well integrity
test could further damage the well bore and could blow out the entire
well:ndustry expert
Rob Cavner - who has been right about virtually everything so far,
previously explaining
that there is damage in the oil well beneath the seafloor, and that BP
has to let the oil spill keep on gushing to avoid further damage to
the well bore until the well can be killed with relief wells
(subsequently confirmed
by BP) - now says that he is worried that the well integrity
test could further damage the well bore and could blow out the entire
well:
Recently-retired Shell Oil President John Hofmeister made a similar
point today:
I think the fundamental issue… is
there are serious concerns about the integrity of the casing that is
the well itself.
And that by putting the cap on and doing the
stress tests… that the integrity of the steel is insufficient to hold
the pressure of the well.
And if you lose the casing its game
over.
It’s like having a volcano on the bottom of the sea.
If
you lose the casing and oil starts coming up on the outside of the
casing you cant stop it.
There’s nothing you can do that would
stop it…other than implode the well.
There are many in the
industry that feel the casing must have been damaged because of the
power of that well, the pressure of that reservoir.
Hofmeister
stresses:
Let's not do the "stress tests" until we're
ready to go with the relief wells... Better have relief wells up and
operating before [you run any integrity tests].
And as Cavner points
out today, the government and BP are fooling around instead of killing off
this monster once and for all with the relief wells:
What?
Well integrity test? I've looked back through all of my notes,
blog entries, and reviewed BP's and the Unified Command's
communications. I've even done multiple internet searches, and found
the first mention of a "well integrity test" related to BP on this past
Sunday, July 11. Certainly I could have missed something, but I don't
recall even a single mention of what I consider to be probably the most
significant (and risky) operation BP has conducted since the much
hailed, and utterly failed, top kill procedure that kept the masses
enthralled during the Memorial Day weekend.
***
This
morning, we learned that, even thought the stack has now been set for 3
days, they actually haven't hooked up the two new valves. He also
announced that yesterday, they pulled all of the ships off site to run a
seismic survey, and, alarmingly, have stopped drilling the relief
well, which is now only 4 feet away laterally from the blowout well.
Since Dudley's letter to Adm. Allen last Friday laying out the relief
well timeline, they have made little progress and have only 34 more feet
to drill before they get to casing point for the last string of pipe. 34
feet, and they stopped. They're just sitting there circulating on
bottom at 17,840. Just sitting there. Wells claims that they are
doing that for "safety reasons" during the well integrity test. The
one they're not going to run for at least another 24 hours. What?I'm
sorry, but I have to ask, What the hell are they doing? We now
have an ability to capture all the oil and stop this massive pollution
of the Gulf (as well as measure it). We have great weather to get the
relief well completed. We already know, without the "well integrity
test", that they have severe damage to the BOP and other surface
equipment and casing. If that weren't true, the damn thing wouldn't
have blown out in the first place. We also know that between the
"capping stack" and the old BOP that there is a non-wellhead rated piece
of equipment, known
as the flex joint, along with the riser adapter,
that we've talked about before. This piece of equipment, that normally
sits above the BOP, is not rated to nearly those pressures
encountered by wellhead equipment. All of the other components in this
BOP are rated to at least 10,000 psi (new, off the shelf, and
undamaged); this piece is by far the weakest link in the chain,
especially since it took severe stresses as the rig sank and 5,000 feet
of riser torqued it as it sank. Yesterday, Adm. Allen announced they
were going to take the stack, including this flex joint, to as high as
9,000 psi for up to 48 hours. I have been unable to learn the model and
rating of the flex joint here, but Oil States advertises their LMRP
flex joints to be rated 600-6,000 psi, far below the 9,000 to which Adm
Allen said they would potentially go; even with the 2,200 psi of
hydrostatic pressure on the outside of the competent caused by it being
in 5,000 feet of water, it's still at least 1,000 psi differential
pressure over the rating of the component.Surely, I'm missing
something here, but all of this seems like reckless rope-a-dope in the
tradition of Muhammad Ali in his best rope-a-doping days. Either that,
or there are so many cooks in the kitchen that the pot is boiling over
while the chefs all stand around arguing about spices. Boxing and
cooking analogies aside, I don't think anyone is actually in charge, and
if anyone is, they are certainly not interested in giving any real
information.
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edit
Question for Augustus, gasmiinder, Rockford files or any other industry types:
What the &@! is going on here:
?
That's not just closing some valves...what is BP doing??
I can't tell much from that capture. However one feed yesterday evening showed what appeared to be leaks from the assembly on the Choke side of the cap. Again I am most assuredly NOT an expert on these operations but the flow was from portions of the assembly that appeared to me to be leaks. I have seen but not followed links that claim BP is now working to repair those leaks. If you're seeing major repair work that is likely what is going on.
That is what I believe I see. A leak where the choke line connects to the new top stack. they took it off and back topside, I believe. They were wresteling with it for quite a while.
BP says it has fixed the leak, and will re-start the test.
Ask "oil industry expert" Matt Simmons. He's always been there for you. A youtube video of CNN would be another option.
the coast guard should do an integrety test on BP
Let me repeat what I wrote on MW board almost two years ago:
"About me: Used to be a "Professional lamer".
About you: (this was written in late 2008) USA got deep long economic crisis. It will be like unavoidable slow sliding into the dark abyss, like Titanic.
You americans have your own "terrorists" in the highest economic circles, bearing degree in economics. You have been listening to false prophets for the decades: Alan Greenspan, Bill Gates, Oprah.
What is the reason of all this mess?
There are two main global problems of modern society:
(a) total oil idolatry (in economics and politics) and
(b) computer idolatry (in business and economics).
USA is a champion on both of them. This is the cause.
This is a court: God vs. USA."
And now, your moment of Zen from John Graham, president of BP Wind Energy:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/bp-no-plans-to-sell-alternative-energy-...
I know BP is a business, and as such its survival depends on cost-return calculations... but the irony here is quite rich....
PS: Would BP, or CNN or any other major news organization have re-printed/rebroadcast an erroneous segment or article IN ITS ENTIRETY, or would it have issued a 1-line/5-second correction? In response to a single reader's/viewer's complaint? That logic, solid foundation in fact, accuracy and coherence in expressed opinions should be questioned is one of the great things about ZH that we should all make an effort to uphold. http://www.zerohedge.com/article/well-integrity-test-failing is in my opinion a great example of why (regardless of the ultimate correctness of any given conclusion in his articles) GW has more credibility than those who claim expertise, yet respond with scorn and insults instead of information.
You seem to have an amazing ability to equate two entirely different problems to then present a nonsense conclusion.
Weather and wave action have a much different effect on a windmill sitting on some riprap than it does on something located several feet or more under the surface. You might compare the effect of a hurricane on a sailboat vs. a submarine.
I am not reaching any conclusion. Your conclusion is not nonsense? The drilling/production platforms are not subject to the effects of waves and weather?
And the as I mentioned, the situation is merely one BP is dealing with -- it is far more profitable to produce oil than it is to produce wind energy. Fact of life, market forces, govt. policies, realities of the attributes of the energy sources in question. But they are calling wind-farms unfeasible due to the 'high-risk' nature of the wind turbines in water, yet do not think to say 'it's too risky' to conduct deepwater drilling operations and oil production in the manner they do. This was not a serious indictment of anything, merely a suggestion that the phrasing and timing of such a statement might be a bit tone-deaf.
Well, I'm no expert either, but it appears to my untrained eye oil industry hacks have hijacked this thread.
the best info on Macondo is @ The Oil Drum.
The issue with the new riser package is how to kill the well from the bottom. The problem revolves around mud weights and the overpressure required to keep the oil/gas flow from diluting the mud and making the kill impossible.
The relief well will produce a column of heavy mud from the ocean surface to the bottom of the Relief Well. If the mud is too heavy the formation will frac and mud will be lost into the rock rather than filling the Wild Well. If the mud isn't heavy enough the oil/gas flow will simply push it out of the BOP. This is because there isn't a riser from the WW to the ocean surface, there is only the weight of the water @ 5,000' on the wild well.
The riser assembly must be able to exert some pressure on the well head so as to equalize both the WW and RW; the equivalent of 5,000 feet of heavy mud on a riser pipe.
I suspect the riser assembly is broken well under the sea floor where the riser pipe sections are coupled together. This is an obvious weak point since all casing sections regardless of diameter are 40' in length and are set at the bottom level of the BOP. Now, the weight of the BOP (450 tons), the casing cement (??) and the new riser package (+100t) is holding the casings together. Putting the full pressure on the wellhead might simply blow the whole topside package out and over onto the Gulf floor leaving an open hole many feet under the mudline. The well might be unkillable at that point.
That was all a very nicely done summary of the technical issues with the kill well until the last paragraph. Once you got into your suspicions it all went off track. If the liner string is compromised it is likely at the lowest shoe. IF so this complicates the kill operation for exactly the reasons you describe above (it opens rock with a lower frac gradient to the pressure exerted by the mud column - this makes it tough to get the pressures you need to kill the well without losing mud into the formation).
The casing strings (3) below the BOP are nested within one another and cemented in place back to the surface. IF the 'casing' is compromised it is very likely to be in the drill liners that hang from the third of those nested casing strings. The BOP is not going to fall over and leave an open hole in the seafloor. FYI - the "riser" is the pipe that runs from the top of the BOP to the surface.
- "full pressure on the wellhead might simply blow the whole topside package out and over onto the Gulf floor"
yes, that could happen.
I'm not up on the latest, but here's some persuasive speculation, which time is bearing true:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6593#comment-648967
And a summary here...http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/06/worst-already-true-BP-well-no...
Essentially all efforts demonstrate we may in fact be living (or dying) into the worst case scenario. As quoted above, a "volcano of oil". Man v. Nature never ends well for Man.
One of the most instructive things for me in this GW @ ZH writing about the spill has been the obvious placement of shills or shall we say information dissemination experts on various web-sites.
Not realized how deep the fear of open discussion lives in the hearts of the PTB.
Like clockwork, out of the woodwork, bashing any "doomers" down.
Are you guys well-paid? "Well" paid! Hah! The irony.
Keep gushing!
ORI
http://aadivaahan.wordpress.com
Nowhere here do I see mention of the statement I read elsewhere that they are trying to get a seismic baseline so that, after things start to happen, they can have another tool to see what's going on under the seafloor. I've used the same sort of analysis to diagnose machinery faults. Rumor has it that Navy sonar guys know a lot about this, but even my old cube-mate, who was one such on a boomer in his earlier incarnation, wouldn't tell me a thing except yeah, we listened. Acoustic anaylsis can tell you a lot, if you know what you you should not be hearing. To get that far, you need a baseline. Which is why they stopped everything that makes noise around the well area. Do a search for Fast Fourier Transform. The tool is easy to use, but understanding how the math works will give you aq headache,
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/july122010/gulf-nighmare-ta.php
Why would anyone believe Salem News?
Why would anyone believe Washington's Blog....which happens to be one of the sources for the article. LOL!
Why are you here....go read Yahoo news or better yet the New York Times or CNBC!
Okay
Cut the hysterics.
My uninformed guess is that the relief wells are going to intercept the well bore and penetrate it AT AN ACUTE angle. They are 4 feet away from the bore but have a 70 feet to drill. Once intercepted they will continue down the old well bore and produce from this well later. I haven't read this but they must have cased the relief well to the proximity of its current location. Once the relief well relieves the pressure at the BOP the relief well will suck oil and flare. Simultaneously when this has been accomplished they will pump cement from the BOP down untill the pressure at the relief well entry rises enough to kill the well and the the relief well will pumy cement untill all the structural failures in the original well are filled. Book Ends. BP will then have that well producing within months. Don't sell the Hummer.
Whats the latest action in BP shares.
the relief wells will be used to pump massive amount of heavily weighted fluid (and then in time cement) in an effort to stop the flow. The relief wells attempt to penetrate the casing of the vertical well to gain access to the blowing out well. The closest relief well might simply be waiting for the other relief well to catch up. Two relief wells are being drilled because the reservoirs might have sufficient energy that two streams of fluids might be required to kill it. Then, once killed, everything will be cemented up and in all likelihood all three wellbores will be abandoned. Certainly the one that is blowing out will be.
All three wells converge at one location, producing this well bore will reduce the formation pressure and if allowed they will of course produce it.
Just out of curiousity, how do you presume they will produce this well in the longer term - like over the next 15 years which is the life of these type wells? Do you think they will keep an FPSO there indefinitely for one well that is probably not in a developmentally ideal location? Don't you think they might do a real development with other wells planned and a real reservoir strategy. Think about it next time. The relief wells are to kill the well and that is it.
But I do not think BP would waste all that money drilling holes so that none of them would bring a return on investment. I
you are underestimating the complexity of producing safely oil from this depth. This is a 10+ billion dollar developments with 7-10 year lead time. In shallow water, you can just drill a well and find a way to hook it up to existing production. In deep water, it is just not that easy. It is a ton of money to waste, but it is indeed wasted.
YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY CORRECT - that is an uninformed guess.........
Well at least he was honest.
Is this a joke?
no matter about the casing integrity problems at surface, the well can still be killed by the relief wells as these two are not mutually exclusive. With no relief wells, the loss of casing integrity at surface and subsequent breach would be uncontrollable, catastrophic and doomsday scenario.
Everytime something happens with this leak the negative spinners come out in full force hypothesizing this or that all pointing towards Armageddon in the GoM. Either they cap it or they cannot. Either they bottom kill it or they cannot.
But I find it interesting that although no one knows until the operation is complete there is no shortfall of so-called experts willing to opine that it will fail. But, I guess that is what attracts readers.
man, has it ever occurred to you that maybe these experts are "opining" because the stuff BP is doing doesn't make a lot of sense? Maybe these aren't "negative spinners" but people who don't have their eyes slammed shut with ignorant-pro-business-at all-costs-drill-baby-drill-cuz-like-I'm-happy-being-ignorant propaganda?
this is as bad as I recall (but maybe it's the perspective)
just a few minutes ago
http://i29.tinypic.com/2u608c1.jpg
from http://www.deepwaterbp.com SKANDI ROV 1
Salinger;
That does look bad but it's hard to tell where it is viewing - they can no longer inject dispersant in the top cap, the label suggest that is what it is recording and you may be seeing a bit farther "up" the plume than we are used to seeing. The SKANDI ROV2 is showing a wider view from farther back. That feed looks like you would expect at this point in the test, it appears they have choked it back to one side.
BP live feed from Skandi ROV 1
BP live feed from Skandi ROV 2
GW, there's another interesting view in the ROVs from this site http://www.wkrg.com/gulf_oil_spill/spill_cams/ - much less laggy on my PC than the BP site anyway. Check out ROV "Max35461" which is zeroing in on a presure gauge that's only showing 700 psi right now. It'll be interesting to see how that ramps up as they proceed with the testing....
See Jim_Rockford's reply to my previous comment as well as my follow up the reply. That guage you are seeing is not telling you what you think it is telling you. The readings you see there are sent to the surface and converted to the actual pressure readings. The ROV feed will not be showing you what the actual pressure was during the tests.
This is what Chu asked them to do. while they stop drilling the kill well. He's OBammie's Nobel Prize winning decision maker on this project. OBammie is in charge, he told you dat.
This article by Heading Out on www.theoildrum.com is a good summary of what to expect when and as they shut down the well to test pressure. Well worth the 10 minute read.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6729
+1
As I said the other day, more substance, less drama over on theoildrum.com. It's a shame GW won't spend that 10 minutes a day ...
You don't believe he makes all of this up by himself, do you. It takes hours reading Wayne Madsen Reports and Before it is News to come up with the nonsnese. the news of red methane swallowing cincinnati just is not reported and Geo Wash wants to make sure there is no cover up. what is a monkey to do to make Matt Simmons happy?
right, the weekly standard is more your fair I guess, or is it still T.V. Guide?
Aug, a couple of questions, do you think there are large areas of subsurface dissolved methane and oil droplets i.e. miles in breadth and hundreds of feet in thickness?
What was your initial guess (if you had one) of the outflow from the leak and did you change your thinking as this thing progressed?
When do you think they will be able to successfully complete the relief wells?
Do you think the casing has been compromised? If so does it matter?
thanks
You're just bitter about your fig trees. And it shows.
F*** the figs. I want to know if I can get BP to pay for a Canadian fishing trip. How scared to I have to pretend to be. Would two visits to the Dr. get me qualified?
Jimmy, the drum is pretty good particularly their main articles. Their contributors are all over the map with a lot of wacko HuffPo types, a few conspiratorial types who don't last long there before being beaten to a pulp and a core group of grizzled veterans of the O/G industry. Problem I have is I keep thinking back to the 5000 bbl/d shtick, no such thing as gas plumes meme, the casement is intact spiel etc. Put another way, the drum is pretty much an oil wonks appendix to Unified Command's briefings, BP's tech updates and the press releases from deepwaterhorizonresponse.com
That is not a criticism of the drum but they are pretty narrow (as in party line) in their focus and to be honest, George has been out in front of this more than they (not that he has been perfect or has not made some incorrect calls). I am pretty sure they don't have an agenda (other than being global warming alarmists) but I am not so sure that is the case with a large group of their contributors, many of whom appear to be apologists for the industry and the political class that is managing the operation.
Before this blowout happened, The Oil Drum was almost entirely populated by the AGW and Peak Oil believers who reinforced each other by telling themselves that getting hit in the head with a hammer was a good thing.
The web hits and population increased after the blowout as a few of the regulars have some knowledge and they DO do a good job of collecting information. The nuke the well types still show up but they quickly cancel those accounts. the people suggesting that the battleship with a large brass screw attached with JB Weld should be used have been deleted. The methane cloud people have been deleted. The Matt Simmons acolytes are gone. As are those who have suggested that swimming in the GoM with the Corexit dispersent will cause skin to fall off. They have filtered the absolute nonsense and taken the money that they donated to keep their site alive.
You can be sure that if you question the theme of Global Warming or Peak Oil you will not be able to post for long. However, on the technical issues of well integrety and general information on Deep Water Drilling with pressures and formation problems they have made some worthwhile presentations. Certainly much better than the Geo Wash presentations copied from Before it is News or Godlikeproductions.
AGAIN- This will end without a huge calamity by the end of August.
That being said, many of my deepwater engineer neighbors here in Houston are taking six month stints everywhere from NewFoundland to Brazil.
The workers won't be transferred.
That's right - the guy who's in office because he can convince the "little man" he'll "take care" of him is doing it again.
The economic devastation on the nation will be deeper and longer lasting from this moratorium than from the spill. The 6-figure technical guys will be retained & transferred. The workers will be laid off, and all the boats and service hands will be laid off, and all the people who do business with those workers will go broke. But that's okay because Barry is DOING SOMETHING in between golf outings and fundraisers.