Posted on 04/30/2010 9:51:25 AM PDT by thackney
An oil-drilling procedure called cementing is coming under scrutiny as a possible cause of the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico that has led to one of the biggest oil spills in U.S. history, drilling experts said Thursday.
The process is supposed to prevent oil and natural gas from escaping by filling gaps between the outside of the well pipe and the inside of the hole bored into the ocean floor. Cement, pumped down the well from the drilling rig, is also used to plug wells after they have been abandoned or when drilling has finished but production hasn't begun.
In the case of the Deepwater Horizon, workers had finished pumping cement to fill the space between the pipe and the sides of the hole and had begun temporarily plugging the well with cement; it isn't known whether they had completed the plugging process before the blast.
Regulators have previously identified problems in the cementing process as a leading cause of well blowouts, in which oil and natural gas surge out of a well with explosive force. When cement develops cracks or doesn't set properly, oil and gas can escape, ultimately flowing out of control. The gas is highly combustible and prone to ignite, as it appears to have done aboard the Deepwater Horizon, which was leased by BP PLC, the British oil giant.
Concerns about the cementing process—and about whether rigs have enough safeguards to prevent blowouts—raise questions about whether the industry can safely drill in deep water and whether regulators are up to the task of monitoring them.
The scrutiny on cementing will focus attention on Halliburton Co., the oilfield-services firm that was handling the cementing process on the rig, which burned and sank last week.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
And now we have our energy equivalent of the Reichstag fire.
It was a dumb ass operator not monitoring the way he was supposed to.
I am sure we will get a lot of players in the blame game before it is all over.
OK...the MSM has invoked the evil “Halliburton”, so can the demands to have Dick Cheney frog marched out of his house in handcuffs be far behind??
“An oil-drilling procedure called cementing is coming under scrutiny as a possible cause of the explosion..”
I think that OBAMAISM is the cause, personally...no major problems until the Globulll warming cause starts to unravel and then this...
HOW CONVEEEEEEEEENIENT....
And so it begins, from nuckle-heads at the WSJ no less.
It’s Obummer’s fault for not having an oversight committee looking into the safety of Mines and oil wells.
If we have to have govt intruding into what we eat and taking our last cent to redistribute it to “friends of Obummer” then why didn’t they stop this “man-made disaster”?
Did the president go there to hold the hands of the family’s of the missing?
Where has he been?
Supposedly this was an exploratory well which explains why there has been no impact on the oil supply.
Of course, now with the maoist getting involved the prices will rise as he has cancelled any further exploration.
Next step he will nationalize the energy industry for ‘windfall profits’ that he caused by stopping exploring.
"That is a name I have not heard for a long, long time." [/ Ben Kenobi]
Blowout preventer information
http://oilgasglossary.com/blowout-preventer-operating-and-control-system.html
I like schlumberger’s site for this stuff.
http://www.glossary.oilfield.slb.com/Display.cfm?Term=blowout%20preventer
I believe we will find several things went wrong to get to the point we are now.
I believe this was drilled to be production, but it was not a well already in production.
We have had some short-term impact due to neighboring platforms shutdown and I suspect shipping is at least somewhat impacted.
And SWAT was sent in to deal with this other rigs? ????
“Spark in the center fuel tank.”
Link provided to me by another FReeper. We keep this a great sight for information.
Okay, let me put it this way. If this is a common thing, fires starting on rigs, most are taken care of, some are bigger, etc. Why would Obama’s first response to this be to send in a SWAT team? I mean, what is running around in that guys head to knee jerk with this reaction?
And let me add... even IF a bomb situation or sabotage was to happen. Who would be THE most likely suspects? Especially a day prior to Earth Day? Envirowackos, of course. So, in the end, this really should make the Left look like nutso moreso than Conservatives who really wouldn’t be blowing up rigs, right?
Develop better skimmers so we can get great yield off it coming up by itself, the way it's always done, for 10 forevers.
No matter how much it costs, it's bound to be cheaper that the gianormous massive effort now ramping up to clean up the oil as it spreads a million times larger than the original float up point.
How deep is the wellhead? Will all work have to be done via ROV?
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