The pressure calculation based on mud weight agrees with what I came up with based on early reports. It's certainly better than some of the wild and crazy guesses thrown about.
Just a few comments about some things in the post.
- 1. The "gas bubble" had to travel through eighteen thousand feet of casing in addition to the five thousand feet of riser. It was expanding all of the time which should have given adequate warning at the surface that something really bad was going to happen.
- 2. We don't know, and maybe will never know, what happened on the rig or subsea when someone finally decided to use the blowout preventers.
- 3. There is a lot of discussion about shear ram operation but that should be a "last resort" in any well control effort. There were pipe rams, variable bore rams and annular preventers in the stack which would be the first choice. Did they all fail?
- 4. Once the rig sunk the riser/drill pipe collapsed. All bets are off then as to whether anything on the BOP stack would still work.
Thanks.....
This system is so slow,...I think I will turn to other things....
I am sure John is working hard to get the weekend troubles behind us.