Posted on 05/25/2010 8:55:12 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
The next attempt to shut off the flow from the leaking BP well in the Gulf is still aimed to occur early Wednesday. The attempt will use the “top kill” method to try and kill the well. While I have described this in earlier posts, the Unified Command have put out a video animation of the process, and there was an earlier diagram. So I am going to use these, which are simplified explanations, with some additional comments and tie it in to more facts that came out of briefings today, to try and give a more detailed explanation. Here is the animation:
(scroll up for animation)
Before the process could begin, however, it was necessary to significantly modify the blow-out preventer (BOP) that sits on the top of the well. For those interested (its a bit like watching one of the operations on the space station) BP has assembled a short (5 minute) selection of the video footage of the various steps. When watching it, you should bear in mind that the ROV’s carrying out the different steps have to operate in a relatively crowded environment.
(Excerpt) Read more at theoildrum.com ...
Bless you.
“...The oil field the Deepwater Horizon had tapped is said to be the second largest deposit in the world. Viewzone.com reports, “The site covers an estimated 25,000 square miles, extending from the inlands of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Texas. “
The oil deposit is so large, it could produce 500,000 barrels of a day for more than a decade.
Part of the reason the well exploded is because the site also contains large deposits of natural gas.
Speculation as to why BP has tried to hide the amount of oil spilling may be two-fold. There are legal issues and lawsuits in the works. The less said by BP now, the better it may play out for them in the future. The other, more alarming aspect, is the event of total wellhead failure before relief wells are completed in August.
Considering the size of the deposit, if BP loses control of the flow completely, the scope of the disaster would be unfathomable.
..”
That was fascinating and very informative. I’m adding the link to this thread, for others:
Relief wells explained
The goal of a relief well, Milgram explained, is first to drill down to the same oil-bearing rock from which the leaking well is getting its oil. “The oil is under pressure,” said Milgram. “So you can’t get too near the original hole with the drill rig.”
Once the rig is in location, the long, difficult process of drilling can begin.
“In this case it’s kind of hard,” said Milgram. “You are drilling through mostly rock. It’s not going to be fast.”
When the same oil-bearing rock is eventually reached by the relief well drill rig, the sealing of the broken well can finally begin.
First, seawater is pumped into the rock through the relief well. If all goes according to plan, that water should make its way into the lower end of the leaking well, displacing oil. If that succeeds, the next step is to pump in a mineral mud, which follows the sea water up the broken well. Once that mud fills the well, concrete can be pumped into the relief well.
“If you get a tall tower of mud, and if you’re lucky, you’ll stop it,” said Milgram. “The next day you pump concrete and then the well is dead.”
The mud and concrete work by their by density and shear weight, which is enough to counter the highly pressurized oil moving up the well.
--if anyone out there has a reference to any wrap-up of the long term results of the Ixtoc leak in 1979 (went on for seven months, IIRC), I'd sure appreciate it---
One reason probably is that the prospect is said to be the second largest oil reservoir in the world
I posted the following to a different thread yesterday, and the first part at least is pertinent to your question. Instead of editing it, I am going to toss this whole block into this thread due to lack of time now....
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Over the last couple weeks I have spent a fair amount of time on the professional oil worker site - places that they discuss this in terms of data and terminology and calculations that you will not see in the Old Media, and over 99% of people would not have a prayer of understanding if they did see it.
With that background... here are a few things I would like to convey from my investigations pertinent to what you have said on this thread:
Russia has nuked several holes in situations like this. There has been something like one great success, several times it helped but didn’t work completely, and one time that the situation was greatly exacerbated, and rendered the well fully out of control until it eroded itself spent. Not a great option but it might work. My read is that it the option is not worth trying, especially in our political environment. Conventional explosives are not much better in this case since this find is so powerful.
BP has some of the greatest minds working on this. Certainly there are others who would be useful, too. However, many are not really able to help - but NOT only because BP is too proud to utilize them, but because of the dumb litigious environment ... it opens BP up to more lawsuits and crazy claims for so many reasons it makes your head spin. BP surely would love to have all the great ideas, and they have even set up a way that they can be reached by other experts who have suggestions. (I know of one engineer contacted for further thoughts, so it isn’t just a ruse.) But you know as well as you are breathing that there are a whole bunch of people just looking for a way - a scummy way - to benefit from BPs misfortune, so they have to be careful of who they do business with and how they do it. Not all who claim they “want to help” are honest, if you catch my drift, and instead all they are really trying to do is to find more ways to sink BP for their own self aggrandizement. There are also a whole lot of people who have an overinflated view of their mental prowess in situations like this, and have the ability to waste days and days of experts’ time on wild goose chases and other ways of tossing time down into a rabbit hole. People who are not capable of thinking in terms of ten-thousand pounds of pressure per square inch, working remotely two miles under the surface of the earth, and with mathematical facility need not apply. I do not believe ONE single congressman or politician has the ability to even comprehend the real situation. That includes being skeptical about the Science Adviser to Obama. As a physicist he should be able to but this really requires engineering prowess.
That said, BP is doing the best they can with some of the greatest experts in the world, in a situation that is in some ways, but not all, unprecedented. They have worked tirelessly on this. I bet that none of their people have been playing golf or giving speeches to college classes for pay, unlike many of the politicians, government dildos, and opportunists who are constantly in the news.
They have already manage to reduce the release substantially. In addition the dispersents have done a great job. This is very unlikely to be even ten percent as large a spill as Ixtoc I (1979, also Golf of Mexico), which really didn’t affect the GOM very badly in retrospect. Most people don’t know about it at all, in fact.
They have brainstormed many things, and tried a couple even though they didn’t have confidence they would work - ask your friends if they were amazed that putting a funnel to capture the oil coming out didn’t work because of the formation of methyl hydrides! BP tried it but anticipated that might be the outcome, and warned people in advance because they DO have the experts working this situation!
Right now they are working on several things - including trying to place a concrete “stopper” in the pipe ten thousand feet beneath the ocean floor. Ask Obama how he would try something like that! Two days from now they will try to inject fluid to “topkill” the well - that will require injecting high density slurry at pressures on the order of 15,000 PSI. The pumps they will use are on order of the power the engines that drive destroyers through the waves at 40 knots- a tad greater than the water pump in your car, or in fact the pumps used by the water plant in your town. Still they know this might not work - the liner of the well may not be in the condition they hope for.
BP is also drilling a hole many thousands of feet below the ocean floor (itself 5000 ft deep) designed to intercept the existing well, with intention to then drill a hole into the well liner (about one-inch thick metal) around 8,000 feet below the ocean floor, and then inject a material to plug the well. IF they are able to do this, it is pretty likely to work, eg, plug the well. It takes a while to get that drilling done - months...
If all this fails, eventually the sandy blasting oil will erode the oil formation and collapse it, and the oil flow will stop. Though such a result would not be unprecedented, it would be tragically wasteful for this formation to be lost. Though this particular well will never be a “production” well, it would be tragic if this rich formation were not exploited.
Oh - one more thing - somehow people seem to have the belief that wells haven’t gotten out of control before. That is completely false. I believe the figure I have seen is that something like 800 wells have had some type of at least minor blowout in the last 30 or so years. Very few have been American. This is one of the deepest, and it IS one of the worst, but the result of this discovery is likely to be a much greater amount of oil from it eventually.
BP is doing as well as they can as rapidly as they can to correct this. If we didn’t have such ligigious culture they might even be able to do it better and faster.
If you want someone to blame: I suggest that you lay into the Congress and President who failed to carry out the 1994 plans which were developed and approved to have burning booms available for use in JUST this situation, and it appears even have transferred them to Brazil or other countries to protect their coasts.
Excellent summary, thank you
And correct that obama and many of his “advisors” probably don’t know how to change the oil in a car much less appreciate the real people working nonstop on this problem
The cause is simply that BP is doing cutting edge work, and errors were made as well as miscalculations and some poor decisions while they were wrapping up the initial drilling of this well. It is called being human to those of us who understand the fallen nature of man and the tremendously strenuous environment that BP was operating in (look at my post above).
It is called stupid, corrupt, criminal, and other such things by those who do not.... especially by those people who have absolutely no idea what they are talking about.
The fact is that BP seems to have discovered and drilled into an incredibly rich oil formation that is under an enormous pressure - I have seen figures as high as one hundred TONS per square inch of pressure... (though I do question those figures) This is a very unusual formation for certain, though. Gas “burped” out of the formation (as is typical) and for whatever multiple reasons overcame the safety devices that were in place that are meant to control such burps. The gas ignited (of course) and wasted the drilling platform, Deepwater Horizon. Some errors in procedure and design are now clearly apparent, but I am not convinced that anyone (other than those who are always trying to forestall technology and impose super-overkill on safety) believed BP was doing something dangerous or wrong.
The fact is, this is part of the process of discovery and exploration. I saw the situation described by one oil engineer as similar to the space shuttle losses, and I believe the analogies are very apt. People can go back to burning manure and wood and living in mud huts, or move on to higher expectations. I choose the latter.
probably the best answer I’ve seen is from the same site:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6493
mainly: not enough concrete on a crucial portion (read all the way through the comments at the bottom of the piece for the whole explanation—they’re really good.)
Thanks for the addition.
So the actual hole down to the oil is only 7 inches across? That is a TINY hole. I can’t imagine the pressure that oil is under to spill so much so quickly.
Whoever mentioned the Ixtoc spill, thanks a lot! I feel much better now. I don’t even remember that one, and I was in college then.
Thank you.
I have seen so much BS about BP being incompetent and criminal in this I am getting very angry at the politicians and other exploiters. I understand that many are really scared about this situation, and I don’t blame them (my level of fear comes at a far different level than a few dead birds and fishing areas) but all I am seeing right now is people trying to exploit for litigation, personal power, or so we can go back to the ‘wonderful’ primal living conditions of the 1500s.
This may well be the greatest - largest and richest - oil formation in the world that BP has discovered and is trying to bring into development. I have seen figures that it may be 25,000 square miles in extent, and that it may yield as much as a HALF MILLION BARRELS of oil per day!!!! It seems the analyses I have been able to glean that this is “light” oil too, which is the most valuable type, and it seems also to be quite low sulphur to boot.
Yes - this is a horrible situation, but this is one of those things that we have to deal with and move on. I don’t know if BP is “the best” to be dealing with it, but I do know that they are ONE of the best in terms of expertise.
I sure am a lot happier that THEY were drilling there rather that Chavez and Venezuela’s Citgo!
I really believe that the “liability” and “intellectual property” situation has rendered this much much worse in terms of BP’s flexibility in gaining assistance - the truly best minds and concepts. I think they are doing their best, though, and pretty darned well. Much of that is simply because too many are interested in personal power and politics, and that angers me FAR more than this continued leak.
I am also angry about the politicians giving Brazil and other foreign operation the booms that were SUPPOSED to be available to protect America... possibly due to Soros’ influence.
Well....we gonna have that working for us....why is BP trying to minimize this as a small Field?
Got some sources that say this is the second largest in the world?
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If you want someone to blame: I suggest that you lay into the Congress and President who failed to carry out the 1994 plans which were developed and approved to have burning booms available for use in JUST this situation, and it appears even have transferred them to Brazil or other countries to protect their coasts.
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Needs further exploration......
It was on Free Republic this morning or quite recent. I was surprised to see such a revelation
It made me think that the reason for allowing it to go forward ( and to allegedly waive some requirements)was to justify the Rats who said “Search where you have permits before whining for more”).
There is more than the water near the well that is murky
U.S. oil drilling regulator ignored experts' red flags on environmental risks
See link at post #5...then go to the very last page (Last night it was number 18 of the Blog )
Thanks,...found it .
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