Posted on 06/17/2010 3:47:13 AM PDT by jackietree
CNN’s first mention of concerns about the structural integrity of BP’s blown-out well occurred on the June 16 edition of the Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, during an interview with a member of the government’s Flow Rate Technical Group, Professor Steven Wereley.
Blitzer described a conversation he had with an expert who said, “They’re still really concerned about the structural base of this whole operation.” “This thing could really explode,” added Blitzer, “And they’re sitting, what, on — on a billion potential barrels of oil.”
Wereley responded, “I’ve heard concerns about the structural integrity of the well.” More precisely, the structural concerns were if “the casing of the well is — is faulty at some point.”
SNIP
(Excerpt) Read more at floridaoilspilllaw.com ...
Academia is filled with less than credible folks...Professor Steven Wereley seems out of that same mold.
Who was he...and who regarded him highly...Blitzer....?
Excellent statement.
Keep raising the numbers, the herd isn't ready to jump into the abyss yet!
Some reality for the reality challenged.
The rocks and sediments on top of the producing reservoir have held the oil down there in place right up until the reservoir was drilled into.
Then, the drilling mud (replacing the pressure exerted by the rocks) in the hole held the reservoir fluid (oil and gas) in place until the cement plug was pumped in, which was supposed to do that job.
The cement plug failed, but the people who should have noticed that the plug was faulty apparently didn't, or their suprevisors ignored that, and they pumped off some of the drilling mud which was (still) holding the fluids in the reservoir, despite the bad cement plug.
That let the reservoir produce oil and gas to surface.
Unfortunately, before that could be controlled, the rig burned up and sank.
One of the tools used to bring that under control did not function in time to stop that: For some reason, either a previous state of repair, not enough time to actuate it, or damage which occurred when the rig sank, the BOP could not be actuated, even later by ROV.
Attempts to pump fluid in from the top, against the stream of oil and expanding gas coming up the wellbore, failed.
Now the way to put the lid back on, and shut the well in remains the relief wells, which can restore that column of heav(ier) drilling mud to shut the formation in. That does not require casing, just an inlet deep in the hole. Cement will seal against rock as well as steel (maybe even better), so a plug can be set which will plug the well.
As for an explosion, you need a couple of things to have one: fuel, which there is in abundance, and either oxygen or an oxidizer, which is absent, or there would not have been any oil down there in the first place.
I suppose our Governmental Panel of Experts could take a different route and stuff a nuke (no oxygen required) down there somewhere so we can a have big explosion and a really lasting disaster, but I'd hope they have better sense. Pray for their wisdom.
INDEED.
I may have influenced a Jr High friend to move from Jacksonville to MT.
He should be OK there . . . unless . . . Yellowstone . . .
So,
are you carping at such stories from qualified professionals in the field . . . including qualified academics as well as qualified field tested dirty handed geologists et al
as also a qualified professional . . .
or just as a very unqualified carping very narrowly rigid biased layman?
Most oilmen hate being misquoted in the press, so we really hate talking to morons.
Evidently your discrimmination skills have been trashed or were nonexistent to begin with.
There’s a
DIFFERENCE
between
an unwarranted increase in craziness on the website
vs
a very warranted range of perspectives and reports
of a RAPIDLY INCREASING LEVEL OF CRAZINESS IN THE WORLD.
BTW, HINT,
The WORLD
IS
GETTING
CRAZIER!
MOST FREEPERS REALIZE THAT.
MOST FREEPERS REALIZED THAT, AT LEAST, WHEN OTHUGA WAS SWORN IN AS PRESIDENT.
Have you been playing Rip Van Winkle?
Watch the newspaper ads. Maybe Sam’s Club will have a special on clues.
SHEESH.
wonder what happens when lightning strikes it, wonder if it’ll burn for years
The drilling mud was holding it until they displaced the riser. That reduced the hydrostatic pressure of the fluid column on the producing formation, something the plug was supposed to maintain.
By accounts, the well was flowing during the displacement, and when the pumps on the rig were shut down, indicating the plug had lost integrity. Pumping the drilling mud back in, raising the weight of the drilling mud would ahve brought the well under control again.
The equation is different now, the drilling mud will have to be placed in the wellbore through a relief well (deep in the original wellbore to displace the lighter oil and gas, and to get the needed hydrostatic pressure), but the solution is pretty much the same. There is a good chance that most of, if not all of the cement plug has been scoured away by now by the abrasive action of fine sand in the oil coming uphole--which accounts for the increasing flow from the well as that constriction wears away.
A new plug will have to be pumped in to plug the well.
Think about it. BP agrees to settle when they dont have too. They re thinking striking a deal now will put a cap on their losses.
BP got strongarmed by the DC branch of the Obamob. The 20 Billion will likely be siphoned off, for the most part, and BP will get stuck with the tab for the rest.
No. Salt is sodium chloride (mineral name Halite), Basalt is a mafic igneous rock, volcanic in origin. Two very different things, especially considering one is soluable in water.
plus, like Zero’s big expert, he doesn’t have a Nobel prize in something, like Zero
You can bury it, but what then? Anything you can dump on it will leave pore spaces in the pile, and the oil will continue to escape through those pore spaces--just like it is doing in the formation it is coming out of.
Nice idea, but it doesn't solve the problem.
Well that would be American, Commie Socialists can't have any hint of entrepreneurial know-how, after all that's big gubmints area of expertise
Oh, I don't know. I think the government folks can be "entrepreneurial"....the only problem is that in their case, the "entrepreneurialism" is how to expand the size of government, and their own salaries. In those areas, they seem to be pretty darned creative.
In Mexico.....The accident in the city dump opened a gap of about one kilometer long and six meters deep
We need someone “for the small people” to actively demand to know, what in the H is going on? Ask even, is this a deliberate act of terrorism to destroy us
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