U.S. oil drilling regulator ignored experts' red flags on environmental risks

Washington Post ^ | Tuesday, May 25, 2010 | Juliet Eilperin Washington Post Staff Writer

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The federal agency responsible for regulating U.S. offshore oil drilling repeatedly ignored warnings from government scientists about environmental risks in its push to approve energy exploration activities quickly, according to numerous documents and interviews.

Minerals Management Service officials, who can receive cash bonuses in the thousands of dollars based in large part on meeting federal deadlines for leasing offshore oil and gas exploration, frequently changed documents and bypassed legal requirements aimed at protecting the marine environment, the documents show.

This has dramatically weakened the scientific checks on offshore drilling that were established under landmark laws such as the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, say those who have worked with the MMS, which is part of the Interior Department.

"It's a war between the biologists and the engineers," said Thomas A. Campbell, who served as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's general counsel under President George H.W. Bush. "They just have a very different worldview, and sometimes the engineers simply don't listen to the biologists."

Interviews and documents show numerous examples in which senior officials discounted scientific data and advice -- even from scientists elsewhere in the federal government -- that would have impeded oil and gas companies drilling offshore.

Under the Bush and Obama administrations, red flags raised by scientists at NOAA and the Marine Mammal Commission have gone unheeded. Obama officials say they are taking steps to ensure that science guides drilling decisions; former agency officials say such questions are rarely as simple as they seem.

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I am not knowledgable...but I did stay at a Holiday Express overnight....LOL!

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Reply by Garry Denke on May 3, 2010 at 6:54pm

Found this on Face Book
Weight 8.4, Viscosity 42

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/7673223/Tony...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/03/deepwater-horizon...

Drums Elementary has completed study of 18 offshore oil well blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico for BP plc. Faculty and parents, the cause of all 18 oil well blowouts was gas cut (lightened / thinned) drilling mud. You see parents and faculty, when drilling through an oil bearing zone, the drilling mud often becomes gas cut lightened (mud weight reduced) and thinned (mud viscosity reduced). Defoamers are added to restore the drilling mud back to a safe, non-frothy, heavy weight and viscosity. But they do not work in extreme gas cut muds. The ONLY way to fix the problem is to circulate the oil well with NEW drilling mud, and dispose of the OLD gas cut mud (a costly process, its a toxic waste). BP plc, et al, in all 18 Gulf of Mexico oil well blowouts, Operators skipped that costly step. Schlumberger logged BP plc's blowout, Horizon ran production casing, and Halliburton pumped the cement, with frothy (like a head of beer) gas cut mud in the hole. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. AGAIN, it did not. BP Chief, next time, circulate NEW non-gas cut drilling mud. Defoamers fail in high concentrations of gas. Drums Elementary, Valley Chief, 1st Grade (6 year old)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mud_engineer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defoamer

Garry Denke

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Reply by Garry Denke on May 3, 2010 at 8:22pm

BP plc Gas Cut Drilling Mud weight: 8.4
BP plc Gas Cut Drilling Mud viscosity: 42

For God's sakes think about what you're discussing. Why focus on equipment that had nothing to do with it? No body is going to help us here and we have a job to do. I have been drilling holes in the earth for thirty-three (33) years. And one thing I know with good drilling mud a well will NOT blowout. The lost circulation during cementing theory is false that did NOT happen. Some cement was slowly moving into the zones sure which is why it did not set. But with good non-gas cut drilling mud in the hole it would have NOT blown out. Engineers for BP plc et al know these facts but have been silenced by management. In any case with my thirty-three (33) years in the business I still do not know everything. However one thing I do know is with a good honey-like drilling mud a well will NOT blowout. Gas, oil, and drilling mud blew out of the annulus NOT the inside so pipe integrity was maintained. The casings failed when the vessel sank not before however Cameron's blowout preventer DID fail. Well guys that's my two-cents worth just would like to see discussion about the light gas cut drilling mud. Thank you.

God bless the families of our 11 friends killed by BP plc's gross negligence.

Denoco Inc

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Reply by Garry Denke on May 4, 2010 at 7:23am

Mud Engineers Silence

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrostatic_pressure

David, by *light* gas cut drilling mud (the density weight) I mean *high* gas cut drilling mud (gas concentration). Sorry, clarification made here. The Chief of BP plc faces a grilling in Washington today. He will TRY to avoid discussing the frothy *light* Gas Cut Drilling Mud which was in the tanks, the riser, and the hole of Macondo well, Mississippi Canyon Block 25, while IT was being logged, casing run, set and cemented. BP plc's Attorneys (lawyers) have instructed Tony Hayward to shift the blame towards Contractors, especially *their* equipment. Congress will NOT be fooled by the BP Chief's antics, frothy *high* Gas Cut Drilling Mud, weight 8.4, viscosity 42, caused the blowout. All of the 18 blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico while cementing the same. Change out your drilling mud guys if the defoamer fails to knock the gas out of it. Thank you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drilling_mud

Garry W. Denke, Sr.
Weight 8.4, Viscosity 42
Denoco Inc. of Texas

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Reply by Tom Feehery on May 4, 2010 at 7:52am

GWD,
How do we know there was gas-cut mud in the hole? Earlier reports have Tidewater boat offloading mud when incident happened.

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Reply by Garry Denke on May 4, 2010 at 9:21am

By the Macondo well's drilling mud viscosity and the Macondo well's drilling mud weight. Tom you know the laws of physics do not cease to exist in this well (or the 18 others). We are all aware Tidewater, et al, offloads mud before any rig moves.

Hydrostatic pressure = weight of drilling fluid (the *true vertical depth*) acceleration of gravity (m/s^2). You know if the hydrostatic pressure is greater than or equal to formation pressure, the formation fluid will not flow into the wellbore.

Tom there is no mystery as to what happened... Again.

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Reply by Tom Feehery on May 4, 2010 at 9:52am

Gary, I understand the physics. What i want to know is Where did the information come from and is it factually correct? Some reports have the mud replaced by seawater when the incident took place. Who or what is the source of the information you describe?

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Reply by Garry Denke on May 4, 2010 at 11:07am

From the rig hands Tom, and our close friend (a BP plc engineer). Congress needs to grill this Tony Hayward to FESS-UP. We all just want to get back to leasing. And back to drilling safe wells of course. I have no ill-will against these folks. Let's all just fix this DADGUM problem. Change out the mud if need be (if the Defoamer fails). And let's all get back to drilling safely. The mud became dispersed in Gulf seawater I guess. After the Transocean Deepwater Horizon melted of course. There is NO mystery as to what happened. I am so sick of the media's ballyhoo. A *Mystery* my ... How about you, Tom?

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Reply by Curtis on May 4, 2010 at 11:14am

I apologize, But I am goingh to have to ask a stupid question-Please forgive me as i have never worked offshore.

From all accounts this well was cemented...now where I have drilled, when we finish a well and cement a liner...we displace the drilling mud with water....

If the well was cemented and the drilling mud was displaced at the time of the blowout...what difference would it make what condition the mud was in if it wasn't in the hole?

Please explain this as I am having a hard time following your logic...Thanks!

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Reply by Garry Denke on May 4, 2010 at 11:49am

Curtis, the Macondo wellbore was full of high gas cut drilling mud when we began the cement job, same fluid being in the mud pump, the circulating tanks, the riser and wellbore. Okay then we mixed the cement slurry, ran the rubber latch down plug, and chased it (displaced it) with water. So inside of the long string is the water, outside is the column is uncured cement, and above that is the annulus of high gas cut drilling mud (same as in the mud pump, the circulating tanks, and riser annulus). Not all of the high gas cut drilling mud was displaced, the remainder above the uncured cement in the annulus, same fluid which is above the cement. Do you understand, not all of the drilling mud is displaced to the surface, only a portion of it. Remember the Macondo well is an 18,000 foot well, Curtis, way too deep to *wrap* (oil talk for cementing an entire string).

http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2010/05/the-g...

Garry W. Denke, Sr.
Weight 8.4, Viscosity 42
Denoco Inc. of Texas

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Reply by Curtis on May 4, 2010 at 12:00pm

So, let me see if i understand you correctly... you are saying the gas cut mud was on the backside of the casing and above the cement? ( becase it was a liner it was not cemented to surface) and this gas cut mud allowed the cement to fail because of reduced Hydrostatic PSI above it?

That's startibg to make some sense...I just get confused when you talk of gas cut mud inside the casing...in my mind the cement is pumped-a ball dropped-then displaced with KCL or some other fliud...let me know If I am starting to understand
Thanks

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Reply by Thomas G. Cherry on May 4, 2010 at 7:53am

Garry,

Thank you for your explanations. I am just a retired engineer, who was a Environmental and Safety Director, and has a thirst for knowledge. Can you explain, to the novice, how the cementing blowout, caused by the improper mud, resulted in the blowout and why and/or how the BOPS was supposed to work...and what, in your opinion, prevented it from working. Now a lawyer or a reporter lurking....just trying to understand the process. Thanks,

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Reply by Garry Denke on May 4, 2010 at 9:45am

See our last post above, Thomas, you know the formula. Everybody does.

Hydrostatic pressure = weight of drilling fluid (the *true vertical depth*) acceleration of gravity (m/s^2). So if the hydrostatic pressure is greater than or equal to formation pressure, the formation fluid(s) will not flow into the wellbore. Macondo's frothy high gas cut drilling mud caused the blowout.

http://www.c-a-m.com/content/products/product_detail.cfm?pid=2886
http://www.c-a-m.com/content/products/product_detail.cfm?pid=2912

You are a good man. All they need to do is question the drilling mud.

- imho the saltwater (corrosive) makes the bop(s) disfunctional -

▶ Reply to This

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Reply by Randi on May 3, 2010 at 9:25pm

Just curious....how do we know the BOPs failed? They worked during positive & negative tests...just today the Annular worked...how do we know they failed? How do we know they were even functioned? Thanks...I ask this as a legitimate question.

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Reply by Alan Fortune on May 3, 2010 at 9:46pm

Because someone said they did.
ALL BOP pressure tests are recorded on the IADC daily report and many other locations.
ALL BOP function tests are recorded on the IADC daily report and many other locations.
These reports are electronically forwarded daily, so records are available, (to authorised parties).
ALL PT's of seal assemblies are recorded. The cement unit would have been used for this testing, using digital and possibly 'live' linked equipment.

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Reply by Garry Denke on May 4, 2010 at 10:12am

Randi - "Just curious....how do we know the BOPs failed? They worked during positive & negative tests...just today the Annular worked...how do we know they failed? How do we know they were even functioned? Thanks...I ask this as a legitimate question."

Because the close-off valves will not turn. They are frozen (corroded) imho Randi.

http://www.gim.bnl.gov/misc/envtest/dlcal/corrosion.html

Garry W. Denke, Sr.
Weight 8.4, Viscosity 42
Denoco Inc. of Texas

[PA Engineer]

Thanks for the response.

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Reply by Garry Denke on May 4, 2010 at 6:06pm

Mud Engineers Silence
*16ppg+ mud weight*

http://drillingclub.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=viewprofile&...

Alvis via Burenye - "This well had been giving some problems all the way down and was a big discovery. Big pressure, *16ppg+ mud weight*. They ran a long string of 7" production casing - not a liner, the confusion arising from the fact that all casing strings on a floating rig are run on drill pipe and hung off on the wellhead on the sea floor, like a "liner". They cemented this casing with lightweight cement containing nitrogen because they were having lost circulation in between the well kicking all the way down. The calculations and the execution of this kind of a cement job are complex, in order that you neither let the well flow from too little hydrostatic pressure nor break it down and lose the fluid and cement from too much hydrostatic. But you gotta believe BP had 8 or 10 of their best double and triple checking everything. On the outside of the top joint of casing is a seal assembly - "packoff" - that sets inside the subsea wellhead and seals. This was set and tested to 10,000 psi, OK. This was the end of the well until testing was to begin at a later time, so a temporary "bridge plug" was run in on drill pipe to set somewhere near the top of the well below 5,000 ft. This is the second barrier, you always have to have 2, and the casing was the first one. It is not know if this was actually set or not. At the same time they took the 16+ ppg mud out of the riser and replaced it with sea water so that they could pull the riser, lay it down, and move off. When they did this, they of course took away hydrostatic on the well. But this was OK, normal, since the well was plugged both on the inside with the casing and on the outside with the tested packoff. But something turned loose all of a sudden, and the conventional wisdom would be the packoff on the outside of the casing. Gas and oil rushed up the riser; there was little wind, and a gas cloud got all over the rig. When the main inductions of the engines got a whiff, they ran away and exploded. Blew them right off the rig. This set everything on fire. A similar explosion in the mud pit / mud pump room blew the mud pumps overboard. Another in the mud sack storage room, sited most unfortunately right next to the living quarters, took out all the interior walls where everyone was hanging out having - I am not making this up - a party to celebrate 7 years of accident free work on this rig. 7 BP bigwigs were there visiting from town. In this sense they were lucky that the only ones lost were the 9 rig crew on the rig floor and 2 mud engineers down on the pits."

BP plc Gas Cut Drilling Mud weight: 8.4
BP plc Gas Cut Drilling Mud viscosity: 42

http://energytopic.nationaljournal.com/2010/05/bp-officials-to-test...

Closed Door Meetings
*16ppg+ mud weight*

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I have been following this dialogue about the gas cut mud....first I have heard of it....KNOW anything about what they are discussing?

[PA Engineer]

Gas, oil, and drilling mud blew out of the annulus NOT the inside so pipe integrity was maintained. The casings failed when the vessel sank not before however Cameron's blowout preventer DID fail.

Oh. Oh. Oh. This is very bad.

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Reply by Jim Daly on May 5, 2010 at 10:29am

Interesting read (both the article and the comments). Lots of unknowns but it sounds to me like 7"? production casing had been run and landed in the well head at +/-5000ft, cemented in place, the hanger seal set and tested and the well displaced from the seabed to surface with seawater, with an associated loss of hydrostatic at the well head of +/-2000psi as compared with having 16ppg mud in the riser. It also sounds as though the BOP was tested, although if the well was about to be suspended and the BOP pulled this may not be right. So was the pipe in the hole the casing running string or a string run with suspension plug to be set in the 7" to allow removal of the BOP with two isolation plugs in place? Suspect the latter in the light of the fact that the seal test is supposed to have been completed some 20hrs earlier.

By definition this was an HPHT well and one which had been drilled in conditions necessarily balancing losses against gains, not uncommon on such wells, but potentially very problematic if allowed to get out of control, especially if procedures are not fully adhered to.

As has been said if 16ppg mud was in use at 18,000ft then bottom hole pressures are in the order of 15000psi, allowing for a gas gradient of 0.1psi/ft that would give a wellhead pressure of (say) 13,700psi (high, but within the working spec of the BOP).

Assuming catastrophic failure of the casing did not occur, it is difficult to understand the flow path from surface to the production zone but there is undoubtedly such a flow path and one that is relatively unrestricted (to allow 5000bbl/day flow rate), the casing was probably only cemented up into the previous casing shoe, itself probably set just into a pressure ramp section above the pay zone. It therefore seems likely that the wellhead seal may not have been properly activated and in spite of being tested still allowed flow from the annulus outside the 7" casing when the hydrostatic pressure was reduced by displacement of mud from the marine riser with seawater.

But this is all JUST SPECULATION!! Perhaps it was not a casing string, perhaps it was a liner. Perhaps significant changes had taken place while running the casing that had resulted in high gas concentrations in the mud behind the casing during cementation. Were there losses or gains during the running procedure, how closely were they monitored, how much was the well circulated prior to starting the cementation, what levels of gas had been experience during drilling, tripping and casing operations etc. etc.?

Although oil is now obviously flowing, it is likely the initial problem related to gas, probably dissolved into what was most likely oil based mud, this would probably not have broken out until reaching 2-3000ft, i.e. well up into the riser, and would have done so very dramatically, by which I mean there would have been a very sudden break out of dissolved gas and rapid increase in gas volume with resultant rapid evacuation of fluid from the riser above the gas. Such an evacuation would of course be accompanied with a significant reduction in hydrostatic pressure down the well.

The planned displacement of some 1750bbls of mud from the riser, especially if not closely monitored for gains/losses could easily have taken place while allowing unidentified influx of gas dissolved in mud from behind the 7" casing, but would have required a flow path (Casing burst or collapse, seal failure, liner lap seal failure or indeed cement track back pressure valve failure (unlikely).

Whatever the reality of it all we all need to know and understand what happened as soon as possible.