BP's Deepwater Oil Spill - Bubble, Bubble Oil and Trouble - and Open Thread 2

The Oil Drum ^ | July 20, 2010 - 4:55pm | Heading Out

[guitarplayer1953]

does the retired admiral have the mud logs? Does he know what was drilled through foot by foot to get to the 18,000 foot point and what effect it will have on that 18,000 feet with no casing wall? so all this conjecture is worthless with out the logs.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I am still working my way down...

[tanuki]

Thanks for being our beach sentinel. If it wasn’t for you, we’d be stuck with the MSM and NPR.

[Texas Fossil]

What do you know about drilling off-shore oil wells?

Your bio suggests no background there.

Contrary to the “Chicken Littles” the sky is not falling and the Gulf of Mexico is not sinking.

And probably the Sun will come up (to us) in the morning, unless God calls this game to an end before.

Have a good evening.

[UCANSEE2]

Nothing is impossible.

The sea floor has oil leaking from it all over the Gulf.

That is one of the reasons they drill for oil there.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Thanks,...I like doing this...getting into the details.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Thanks,...I like doing this...getting into the details.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

From:

thrasher on July 20, 2010 - 6:19pm

Kent Wells audio is up.

"Pressure is at 6834"

http://www.bp.com/genericarticle.do?categoryId=9033572&contentId=7063039

[UCANSEE2]

Oil and or natural gas leaks (red and yellow columns) mapped by Thomas Jefferson, and by Gordon Gunter (purple cylinders) along with CTD stations showing high fluorescence or possible oil and gas anomalies (brown, green and white spheres). The Deepwater Horizon well site is in background (red cylinder) and distribution of Bottom Following Reflectors is represented by orange lines.

NOAA has said that the leaks on the sea floor graphed in the 3D model above “appear to be pre-existing seeps that occur naturally and are unrelated to the spill” and have labeled leaks as such in the Thomas Jefferson report.

Below is the well control loss time-line, and some recent seismic imaging done at the area of the well-head , from Alexander Higgins' blog

Source: http://mentaljudo.blogspot.com/2010/07/whats-inside-doughnut.html

----------------------------------

How's that for a start?

[guitarplayer1953]

this well had over 10,000 psi 40% methane and no one have shown the mud logs of what they drilled through to get to the oil. Normal methane is around 5%. When you dill this deep and loose the casing and you had 10,000 natural psi with no pumping and now it is is what 6,500-7,000 psi where has that other 3,000 psi of oil and gas gone to? With out the logs we do not know how much rock sand and other natural formations they went through what happens when you force 3,000 psi of oil and gas into sand with not casing where does it end up? If that sand is lets say 2,000 feet down and we do not know how large of a pocket of sand it is where will it end up coming out? there is a lot of information that they are not telling us on this. they have not produced the mud logs and by law they must record them and they have not produced the black box off the rig either.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Subthread with a diagram on oil seeps:

James in SA on July 20, 2010 - 7:00pm

**************************************EXCERPT*************************************

TOD discussion of natural seeps from June 8th...
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6576

A natural seep occurs when the oil, which is normally trapped under a layer of rock in a reservoir, finds a pathway to the surface, generally relatively small (so that the oil doesn’t all gush out rapidly), with the oil slowly seeping upwards over the centuries.

[UCANSEE2]

there is a lot of information that they are not telling us on this.

Us?

Must just be you, because there are many of us have have been getting tons of information since the very beginning.

There are tons of threads, some started by ERNEST_AT_THE_BEACH, some by other posters who have dug deep into the volumes of material on this incident. Those threads contain valuable links to a plethora of information.

As far as the 'mud logs' go, pray tell me, what would you look for on them that would indicate a problem?

What would indicate a busted casing? What would indicate a minor leak, a major leak, no leak at all?

[UCANSEE2]

It would make more sense to be concerned about the leak that is about 90’ away from the BOP, instead of the one that is about 1.9 miles away.

It’s not that your concerns and questions aren’t valid. It’s that this has all been hashed over and no one knows for sure what will happen.

All the mud logs in the world won’t change that.

The most likely scenario is that they cement the bottom of the well after the relief well is finished, then they can remove the entire BOP assembly and cap it off at the ocean floor.

If it continues to ‘leak’ from the seafloor, there is not much that can be done about it.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Link from the oil drum:

China rushes to keep oil from international waters

*************************************EXCERPT***************************************

By CARA ANNA (AP) – 3 hours ago

BEIJING — China rushed to keep an oil spill from reaching international waters, while an environmental group tried to assess if the country's largest reported spill was worse than has been disclosed.

Crude oil started pouring into the Yellow Sea off a busy northeastern port after a pipeline exploded late last week, sparking a massive 15-hour fire. The government says the slick has spread across a 70-square-mile (180-square-kilometer) stretch of ocean.

The cause of the blast was still not clear Wednesday. The pipeline is owned by China National Petroleum Corp., Asia's biggest oil and gas producer by volume.

Images of 100-foot-high (30-meter-high) flames shooting up near part of China's strategic oil reserves drew the immediate attention of President Hu Jintao and other top leaders. Now the challenge is cleaning up the greasy brown plume floating off the shores of Dalian, once named China's most livable city.

The environmental group, Greenpeace China, shot several photographs at the scene Tuesday before their team was forced to leave. They showed oil-slicked rocky beaches, a man covered in thick black sludge up to his cheekbones, and workers carrying a colleague covered in oil away from the scene.

[justa-hairyape]

Oil Drum thread gets better towards the bottom. I always read the comments bottom up.

[justa-hairyape]

I don’t trust the Oil Drum postings anymore.

There are multiple operations going on with the ships over the site. Seismic runs to map out the new seeps, construction on the next version of the collection riser (if needed), Relief Well drilling ship finishing RW 1, and they are waiting for final government approval on the next major line of attack. A Static Top Kill. That requires the Q4000 ship to pump mud down directly into the BOP/3 Ram Stack assembly. They may start that by the weekend. So a hurricane can cause all kinds of delay problems.

[justa-hairyape]

Great links. Sure do not like all those Well Control Events. Here is the text behind them from Alexander Higgins Blog.

1. February 17-23: BP reports cracks in well casing and leaking of hydrocarbons into the surrounding rock formation. It took BP 3 attempts to fill the cracks with cement before the well control event was brought under control.

2. March 2-5: BP reported another well control event that took 3 days to bring under control.

3. March 8-14: BP reported a well control event that took 7 days to get under control. A series of BP internal emails released by Congress showed.

          * The surrounding rock formation actually collapsed on the drill.
          * BP was then given special permission to cement the well at a shallower depth than normally required because the hole caved in on drilling equipment.
          * Another BP email released by congress showed that unnamed MMS official at 11 p.m. on March 11 gave the special permission to insert the cement plug about 750 feet above the bottom of the hole.

4. April 4-7: Well control event took 3 days to bring under control.

5. April 20: Well control event leading to explosion and collapse of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.

[justa-hairyape]

FYI - Oly Rov 1 just found an underwater plume. Has the basic physical shape of a smoke plume. Coming out of sea bed and then being bent by the water current. Depth 4992. Altimeter 13.4. Doing a sonar sweep North West of BOP. As it got closer the plume was more difficult to discern. Dang. Looks like a flipping tornado.

[gulfcoast6]

Right, we have the moss hanging from the trees here in on the coast, the last thing we need is hanging oil from the trees which a hurricane will do to us..

[justa-hairyape]

Got to run, but thought I would clarify the above observation. When I say it looked like a Tornado, I mean it was not spinning but had a long funnel shape. Basically a long smoke plume that decreased in size at its base. Had the over all look of a Tornado Funnel. What I think happened was Oly ROV 1 was doing its Sonar Survey, saw something, and went toward it to investigate. All of a sudden you could see something in the haze that was very unusual. From that point it looked like a more horizontal funnel going across the video. As it got closer the funnel went more vertical. Oly ROV 1 is right now in the base area and there is stuff down there that we have not normally seen. Looks like the base of the plume tornado area may contain multiple small white smokers.