Posted on 06/15/2010 10:29:42 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Tonight the President will talk to the nation about the oil disaster that has been going on in the Gulf of Mexico for over a month. That will likely be the news story of the night, followed by the answers to the five questions that lawmakers have of BP. By that time I will also be starting a daily visit to the National Hurricane Center to see if there are any signs of coming problems. All of which being said, now might be a good time to talk about erosion, how it is changing the Deepwater Horizon well conditions, and why precautions about the flow increasing are probably wise. And I am going to recap bits of an old Tech Talk, as I do so. (It’s partly why they are there.)
To begin with a simple point – fluid (oil and gas) will only move from one place to another if something is pushing it. (Newton’s first law). For the fluid in the reservoir under the Gulf, this force pushing the oil out is the difference in pressure between the oil in the rock, and the pressure in the well. The pressure of the oil in the rock is 12,000 psi. When the well was drilled the pressure of the mud that filled the well was over 13,000 psi and no oil moved into the well. Just before the disaster the fluid in the well was changed from mud to seawater. This lowered the pressure of the fluid in the well below that of the fluid in the rock, a differential pressure now existed, and where there was a passage through which the oil and gas could flow, and they did. The question has always been – how much?
(Excerpt) Read more at theoildrum.com ...
So this means the leak will be getting worse, not that BP is lying about the amount being lower than previously told, right?
Just a fan of the Beverly Hillbillies in my younger days remembering Jed Klampets oil well eruption and a grocery line reader of the National Enquirer.
I think you gave me two conclusions there....
I think even Jed did something to the ground.
He was shootin’ at some food.
The figures bandied about in the press are according to the USGS, so no, BP is not lying about the amount of oil being collected.
It amazes me that the media still holds to the idea that we are running out of oil. Here we are at day 58 and it still coming out of the ground at a VERY high rate. With no sign of letting up.
Read thru the comments at the Oil Drum...Carter gets good words from some posters.
Likely the cement in the defective plug in the wellbore is eroding, effecctively opening the choke downhole which was restricting the flow of oil to the surface. Estimating flow without any hard numbers is bad enough, but there is a very good chance the answer has been a moving target anyway. You have to know the right answer to lie about something, and I do not think BP, Obama, or anyone else has been able to give that answer because it has been changing as the well continues to flow.
From the first day, and at every press conference I saw, BP said their well output figure should not be relied on, and accurate figures would be coming from the flow rate group. They gave that disclaimer each time, and they pointed out each time that they weren’t factoring estimated flow into their efforts to stop it. I probably heard them say it 20 times in the first three weeks, and I didn’t see it reported once.
The funnny thing is, now that they’re getting figures they can supposedly use for planning, they keep getting trashed for relying on them because the changing figures do have an impact now that they’re actually able to produce the well.
In the Beverly Hillbillies, Jed Clampett shot and missed some critter he was hunting, but punched through the last crust of caprock with the bullet "...and up from the ground came a-bubbling crude...".
When CHOPS are not a dinner menu, but for heavy oil production
Might account for the oil production from the well increasing ...
Which perhaps would increase the possible erosion of the various parts of the BOP and wherever else the fluids find an obstruction.
I liked that show...LOL!
Wouldn’t it have been possible to use instrumentation to measure the actual flow?
Thanks for the link!
Even if you could get an accurate measurement today, the numbers would change from day to day as that plug erodes away, so even last week's measurement, were that possible, would be wrong this week.
Keep in mind that BP was designing methods to recover the produced oil early on, but they kept proving to have insufficient capacity for the job, and that makes sense.
No way they'd go to the expense of designing and fabricating a remedy that was knowingly insufficient when it would cost little more to make something to take care of all of the problem.
Especially when every barrel they can recover is one they won't have to pay for later in cleanup costs.
Me, too.
Time to shut down here....Nite!
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