BBC: Concrete 'to stem Java mud flow' ~~ An attempt to stop flow of Mud from deep underground ...

Interesting way to stop a zit on the face of Mother Nature...

They only set surface casing and then continued to drill through overpressured mud to 9k feet, where they hit a high-pressure, high temp aquifer. That rocketed steam up the open hole and mobilized what could yet be years worth of plasticized clay formation 1k m thick. The cavern being created has got to be huge and has already resulted in substantial surface subsidence, so much so that two rigs working on relief wells were withdrawn. It will just flow until the system collapses on itself and snufs itself out. This baby could gush for years and the price tag is already well over $1 billion in damage. I guess sacrificing the goats and chickens to the mud gods has had no effect.

I am shaking my fist at the mud gods, but at least my goats and chickens are safe!

Following is from an on-site Houston expert. Cursing and (most) pejoratives are edited to protect the innocent....) Hey Robert, here is a long reply for you.

This well was being drilled to the Kujung formation which is a large blanket carbonate reservoir that most of Indonesia's hydrocarbons produce from. In some places it is 700 meters thick, with very high permeability (Permeability is a measure of how well the pore throats are connected). The higher the perm, the more flowrate you can get out of a well for the same pressure drop.

The pore pressure, the pressure that the oil, gas and water is at in the reservoir, was 6700 psi or a specific gravity gradient = 1.67 (Water hydrostatic SG gradient would be 1 or at this depth of 9700 feet = 4200 psi). From this you can tell that the reservoir will flow with a 2500 psi differential with a water column. Now this finishes Pet E 101.

This well was drilled as an exploratory well to test the Kujung. The reservoir was quite a bit deeper than the seismic/geology thought. Anyway you will see discussion that they didn't set casing when they should. This isn't necessarily true. They drilled into the Kujung around 9700'. The plan was to come out of the hole w/ the drill bit, and run back in the hole with just the drill pipe and spot a cement plug on bottom to enable running casing. This was not a bad plan at all......more background.

The well was being drilled by a company called Lapindo. Lapindo is a subsidiary of EMP. EMP is owned by the Bakrie family. The patriarch is the 2nd richest guy in Indonesia, behind Suharto (former President/Dictator). He is also the current Minister of Public Welfare and funded the current President's campaign. They are all in bed together. Politics & Corruption run the country.

Anyway this well was operated by Lapindo and they owned 50% of the deal. Santos, an Australian Co owned 18%; and Medco, an Indonesian Co, owned 32%. Bakrie sister owned, or rather started, the drilling contractor to drill this well. Her again, another way to funnel money to the family. She/They got an old broke down rig out of China and manned it with some really inexperienced folks.

OK, back to the story. While they were pulling the bit out of the hole, rumor has it that all of the rig supervision went to town for the night. The wellbore must be kept full of the proper density fluid (we call mud) or the hydrostatic pressure drops to the point where the formation will feed in fluid.

I (reporting engineer, ed.) originally went over there to do an investigation (post mortem) on what happened. They had all of the data from the rig. While they were pulling the bit out of the hole, they didn’t keep the hole full and it began to flow. The let approximately 500 bbl (42 gal/bbl) of formation fluid into the wellbore. Now the fluid entering the wellbore weighs 8.4 pounds per gallon, and 14 pound per gallon fluid is needed to maintain the hydrostatic pressure. By allowing 500 bbl of 8.4 ppg the well was really screaming. By the time they woke up to shut the well in the wellbore pressure was high enough that it fractured the exposed rock just below the last casing string. This fracture found its way to surface, what we call a broach. At that time it was only flowing relatively very small rates.

What they should have done at this point was run the drill bit back to the bottom of the wellbore (9300’) and circulate 14# mud around. However, they took some bad advice from someone and pumped cement into the well in an attempted to stop the flow. This is a fatal mistake that happens often in our industry. Idiots are what keep my company in business. By cementing the well, they eliminated any chance of killing it with that wellbore.

At this point they should have begun drilling a relief well, but again bad advice told them to try and re-enter the original wellbore. Naturally they used a local snubbing company, and not up to Western standards. I am sure it was all due to corruption again and the kickbacks.

The broach was flowing about 100-200 thousand barrels per day by July. The original blowout started on May 29th. The wellbore eventually collapsed due to subsidence in late August. After 4 months they finally began drilling the relief wells. By now the broach is flowing over 1 million barrel of mud and water per day.

The reason the flow was increasing was the flowpath up thru the rock was getting larger and larger reducing the friction, thus increasing the flowrate. It pretty much stabilized at 1 million barrels a day. That is enough to fill a football field 100 feet high every day. Naturally the dirt/water that was coming out of the wellbore has to come from someplace, and the area begins subsiding. Our relief well location was experiencing 1.8 cm/day of subsidence and it was 1000 feet from the broach.

(His Houston oil recovery/fire-fighting company) came onto the project Sept 1st, and by now the federal government had taken oversight of the project. In other words, they would make all decisions, but would not pay any monies. Around 500 acres had been flooded and 11,000 people had lost their homes by then. After 1 month into the project, our project leader was fired because he stood up to Team National who was overseeing the project. It was almost an anti-Western sentiment. The Indonesians do not have the experience or know how to fix the problem, but they do not like having to have Westerners () there to help.

The relief well operation was continually halted due to lack of funds. It was a total disaster in terms of leadership once the original team leader was fired.

More goodies…..adjacent to the original blowout is a road called Jalan Tol, which is like I-10 for the area. An next to the road is a 28” gas transmission line. The 1st nite I was there I was told of the pipeline, and I told all of the government heads that the line should be shut down and moved because of possible subsidence. We didn’t have a measurement at that time, but it always happens when you have a surface broach. The company that owned the pipeline said that Lapindo should pay for it, and Lapindo said the pipeline company should pay for it…….so on Thanksgiving Eve (Nov 22), the pipeline ruptured and killed 13 people. Fortunately the military officials had closed the freeway because the berm wall containing the mud had started moving, then the pipeline ruptured. The 13 folks killed were either military or dirt works construction people, no civilians were killed.

Anyway, we were in the course of drilling a relief well when all money was suspended. This caused a work halt. The relief well eventually collapsed due to subsidence. Attached is a graph showing a timeline of the wells progress (or egress). (graph didn't transfer, ed.)As you can see we were shut down more than we were working. If this had been run like an oil company we would have killed the blowout by early December.

We were going to need two relief wells to kill the well. We wanted to get the pipe set deep on the 1st relief well, then move the rig farther away to an area where the subsidence wasn’t as high, and drill the final relief well.

The well is still flowing as hard as ever. The drilling rig is gone. We are back in Houston. The longer this continues, the lower the probability to ever kill the well.

Relief wells are the only industry accepted way of killing a well that has broached the surface. As a matter of fact, I am drilling one now in East Texas about 2 hours from Houston. Lapindo and the rest of the (government bureaucrats, ed.) there should all be in jail. An additional 4000 people have now lost their homes and this will only continue. What a (screaming) shame.

Our company is at the point of telling the media the gravity of the situation. When I was there, only the European media was interested in this disaster. I was real surprised that none of the US media ever came over to see. A guy w/ AP made a cameo appearance, but that was it.

By the way, the concrete balls they plan on dropping will only make it worse. It will make the flow divert to somewhere else. They are so stupid it is even hard to describe. The head of Team National is a guy named Basuki. He supposedly has a PhD, but is an absolute (edited).

I probably wore you out with all of this. But that is the update.

You can use my company name in your web site. Maybe it will do some good. This well will flow for a very very long time (years). It was caused by man and is NOT a natural disaster like Lapindo is trying to make it out to be.

They still owe us about $100,000 and we will probably never see that.

Thanks for editing and reposting.

Bump

Yikes! Thanks.

WOW!!

Even I am not this stupid and thackney has questioned my intelligence for years!

There is no cure for "Allah's Revenge." This what they get for drinking infidel water after the tsunami.

I thought you would find this interesting.

Awesome post, robt!

Man... thanks for the pings and for the editing ....Robert...

I think a small 1-2kt nuclear charge would work if detonated nearby at about 2,000' depth.

Hmmmm.

Huge Underground "Ocean" Found Beneath Asia

If they tap into that we will all drown.,....

Thanks for the ping...

Relief wells after the initial series of screwups wpuld be the only option. Maybe they can get enough around the original bore and frac the Kujung with a frac fluid which will nail the formation up, reducing pressure to the area of the original wellbore. I have seen a bad frac wreck an otherwise good well, why not turn that around and use the same principle to damage the formation on purpose?

It would take a lot of wells, money, and time. Good luck with that.

Red Adair's guys used iron and lead balls, if I remember correctly, a couple of decades ago to help bottle up a nasty blowout in the Bay of Campeche, but it seems to me they had relief wells working it from the other direction as well, and iirc, there was casing in the hole.

I don't see them stopping this at the cavern, only getting outside of that area and stopping the formation from feeding the thing at depth.

Otherwise, it would be a real good time to find a commercial use for the mud...if nothing else, it might help fund trying to put a lid on it.

Wow. Thanks for reposting that. Dealing with corrupt 3rd worlders has to be an exasperating experience.