Posted on 06/19/2010 10:08:15 AM PDT by worst-case scenario
This is a guest post by William Semple. Mr. Semple is a drilling engineer and independent drilling consultant with 37 years of experience in the oil and gas industry. He worked for 16 years with a major oil company and has 24 years of experience as a drilling supervisor.
Mississippi Canyon 252 Macondo Well 24th April 2010 at approximately 21:49 hrs
I have summarized the information to try and keep it to the salient facts. The following information is from reliable sources. Most is public record and the remainder is from confidential reviews carried out by other major oil companies. I have interpreted the reports and made some conclusions with caveats where necessary. As such, these are only opinions and no inference of blame can be inferred as a result of these statements.
More detail will emerge when further investigations take place, especially with regard to the last few hours leading up to the explosion. However, I am confident the fundamentals are identified in this article and, most importantly, the crucial lessons learned so none of us repeat the same mistakes.
Much is being made of the water depth as a factor in this disaster. However, many of the mistakes made would have been equally serious in shallow-water drilling or even on land, and lessons learned apply to almost all drilling operations.
(Excerpt) Read more at theoildrum.com ...
I’m skeptical by nature. I ask stupid questions, knowing full well that there is no such thing. There is no ‘official’ timeline. I’m still skeptical. :)
That’s amazing. I think the same thing happened to by baby daughter last night. She had a huge blowout and containment failure.
But did you get your question answered ?
There are wells under much higher pressure ...on land...in Oklahoma in the Anadarko Basin.
Tried but failed. It simply doesn’t sit right. Guess I need to upgrade my tinfoil hat. Bastards are screwing with my head again. ;)
Now that is very intersting,....hadn’t seen that before.
Hope you weren’t holding her. Nothing like holding a vomiting baby with simultaneous diaper blowout to really give you insight into the force of bodily functions.
Perfect!
that bomb that exploded did noy help a whole lot /s
Measured pressures inside the reservoir were between 10 and 13,000 psi. This may sound "absolutely incredible", but I can assure you that it is not. The chemical mfg. that I once worked for had several processes that ran at 20,000 psi 24/7/365.
The 100,000 psi number that keeps getting tossed around is garbage.
Garbage. Since they actually MEASURED the reservoir pressure at 13,000 psi, the equipment used HAD to have been able to withstand that.
Oil ping
Inside pressure from 4400 +/- psi with 16.8# mud to 2200 psi full of eeawater, to nearly zero if displaced by expanding gas. The crimp in the riser was likely caused by the rig sinking and the riser falling over, but it is possible to have as much as a couple of thousand psi differential pressure from the outside to the inside, depnding on how much liquid the gas displaced.
I'm not sure of the collapse strength of the riser, so I can't say if that was a serious factor compared to the sinking rig, or even just its own weight pulling it over and bending it.
How do you figure that the EPA caused this blow-out, and not BP? BP wasn’t even following the fraudulent applications that it had filed with MMS.
On that rig, the BP management was in charge and gave the instructions as to how to proceed. They didn’t listen to anybdoy - not the engineers, not their partners, and *certainly* not the EPA.
I can understand hating the EPA, but don’t let your hatred blind you to facts.
Sleeves versus inserting smaller into larger and cementing: how about instead of cementing, use a sleeve with one pipe’s diameter on one end and the other pipe’s diameter on the other end. That would assume the sleeve is better.
Regardless, thanks for the information. Hopefully the truth will come out as time goes on.
Was the well that blew out under higher pressure than the drillers realized? Certainly the oil companies know the huge cost of a major release of oil. You’d think they would be very cautious.
Here’s another informative link on underwater oil drilling:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/210333-straight-talk-on-the-bp-oil-spill?source=email’';
Drunk, at the time of the Exxon Valdez grounding, was .04 BAC for a ship's Captain--half of the limit for driving a car. From there right up to puking in the scuppers, of course, but a couple glasses of wine at dinner, or two beers will be enough to be over for most folks.
I don't recall Cpt. Hazelwood's BAC, nor how much time had passed, so it is tough to say how much he actually had in his system at the time of the accident. The third mate, iirc, had the helm, and should have been capable of avoiding a problem, but the Captain has the responsibility.
Try the garden hose analogy. Squeezing a hose flowing under high pressure doesn't really restrict much flow, it only increases the velocity.
Cutting/snipping the pipe for a more secure mechanical coupling had a higher probability of success. It didn't work well, but crimping it tighter wouldn't have worked well at all, and ran the risk of severing the pipe.
It comes down to risk vs profit. Obviously there was more than enough profit motive to risk the deep water well. They are now having to deal with that decision and it will have to bite into their profits.
Its funny though the oil companies must pay up when their risky investments go south yet the auto and finance industries get a pass. That can still be chalked up to the “wacky environmentalists” in fostering the idea that oil companies are somehow evil.
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