Posted on 06/21/2010 12:13:05 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
WASHINGTON — The bipartisan commission named by President Obama in May to study the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the future of American offshore drilling will hold its first formal meeting in mid-July at the earliest, most likely delaying the delivery of its final report into next year, a co-chairman of the panel said in an interview.
The co-chairman, William K. Reilly, who served as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under the first President Bush, also said it was unlikely that the panel would recommend the lifting of the six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling before it completes its report. Such a move would require profound changes in industry practice and government oversight that cannot be done that quickly, Mr. Reilly said in his first extensive remarks on the commission’s work.
The oil industry, its supporters in Congress and Gulf Coast officials have called for swiftly lifting the moratorium, saying the ban was causing severe economic hardship and that drilling could resume safely under tighter interim rules. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and some other administration officials had given the industry hope that the ban would be lifted as soon as new regulations were in place.
But Mr. Reilly said that ending the moratorium would require that the industry adopt safer drilling techniques and that the government regulatory agencies, particularly the Minerals Management Service, a part of the Interior Department, be markedly strengthened.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
fyi
The list, ping
Reilly and the rest of the panel know little about offshore energy development. Why should the future of offshore development be put in their hands? It looks like the Sierra Club will now control offshore energy development.
Interesting article, since “the panel experts” admit they never recommended the drilling ban in the first place
This past weekend in the weekly GOP address, Sen. Roger Wicker talked about the oil spill and how it shouldn’t be used as a reason to push a national energy tax, cap-and-trade scheme:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWbsyXBt0OY
Sean Hackbarth
Senate Republican Conference
I’ve said before and I’ll say it again....without a containment plan for an unisolable oil leak at a well head on the sea floor, oil companies should not be allowed to drill one inch.
Maybe a moratorium isn’t the best solution now, but there needs to be pressure put on the industry to come up with a solution for this.
Nice presentation...
The moratorium is unjustified and is, surprise, political. Duh.
While the industry could stand some reminders as a result of the BP caused disaster it is not inherently unsafe. Tanker operations have spilled far more oil in the past than the drilling industry.
To punish the entire industry because of this disaster is nothing but subversive opportunism.
Why not ask BP and this administration a few questions like:
1) Why have you not added a capping stack with provision for pipeline tie-ins or at least chokes to diminish the oil flow?
2) How will you make provision for the potentially substantial time that oil collection and relief well drilling will not take place because of the hurricane season?
3) Why has there been no discussion of a more permanent capture of the oil such as tying into the Shell Nakika pipeline system? It can be done.
4) How are you going to accomplish killing what is now a dual gradient well requiring 16+ ppg mud from a single gradient well that loses returns with ca 14.0 ppg mud?
The root cause of this disaster is not in the industry but is instead within BP. It is not the widgets that failed but the people who were in control of the widgets. BP violated many standard operating practices and are guilty of negligence in operation.
For example:
TWO BARRIERS to flow must be in place all the time. For drilling ahead we have a standby tested mechanical barrier (BOP) and kill weight mud. For all other operations one barrier can be mechanical and one kill weight fluid. NEVER remove one barrier without adding a replacement barrier first.
1. Any oil base mud of any kind just loves gas of any kind. It will soak it up like a sponge and just like a bottle of soda pop, when it reaches the bubble point of around 1500 psi lets the gas rip. The first foot is liberated, the pressure goes down on the next foot and that gas is liberated and so on. Cascading, explosive decompression and unloading of the hole. Everybody knows this, should expect it an make provision for it.
2. Gas should never enter the marine riser. Marine risers are not pressure containment systems. Never let it happen and if it does do not hesitate to divert the well. A spill will be a lot easier to explain than a riser blowout. Any other action is probably foolish. If you work for an operator who thinks messing around with gas in the marine riser is OK, go somewhere else.
3. The test ram is the only BOP element that will hold high pressure from above. All others will leak beginning at about 300 psi. Just keep this in mind. If you don’t you will get confusing information and start making up reasons for it.
4. Never do a differential pressure test on any path that is not well control or production pressure rated.
5. If you ever mix less than about 500 sacks or so of cement and expect it to do much good give serious consideration to a ribbon blender. If you don’t have a ribbon blender plan on losing some cement volume until the tub or turbine mixer get lined out and some more volume for contamination on top of the plug
6. If you are setting a cement plug and it is less than 500’ long, think about it some more and add volume
7. Always do all you can to circulate bottoms up when casing gets to bottom before cementing, otherwise you never know where bottoms up will be or if it has gas in it waiting to bubble up. If you are losing returns while circulating or cementing expect gas on the annulus until you know different.
8. If the floats don’t hold on a production string cement job give very, very serious consideration to running a bridge plug on top of it. A blowout through the shoe can happen. If you surge back think about what may be coming back through the floats, you may not like it.
9. Long strings give problems if friction pressure is too high to lift cement. Liners and tiebacks take longer but provide many more chances to gain integrity of zone isolation on a production zone. Make sure you have enough cement to cover the zone so stuff won’t come up the annulus.
10. Long strings of casing need to be stable and resistant to buckling loads. If you aren’t familiar with the casing stability equation of Messrs. Garcia and Chesney you need to look it up yourself and use it.
11. Lock down seal assemblies before you rely on them as a pressure barrier either in anger or in testing.
12. When you finish a cement job look at the lift and see if it looks like the cement went where you wanted it to go. You put your eyes on this. If this is any doubt about where the cement went a temp log or CBL is next.
13. If you permanently plug a well make sure it is plugged well and you never have to deal with it again. Plugs should mostly be from formation to the center of the well and across shoes, water zones and liner tops most of the time. If you TA, one plug should be deep enough to have enough kill weight mud on top of it while drilling the plug to kill the well. This is true when using drillable bridge plugs as well. If you don’t have enough hydrostatic or pipe weight on top of a bridge plug when you drill it make sure you have a way to hold the pipe down if the plug moves up when you cut the top slips and that you are prepared for a kick or drill it out with well control equipment closed or snubbing equipment in place. This is one of the many areas where you can pay now or pay later.
14. Make sure you and your rig crew know how to detect kicks and how to shut the well in. The guys on the floor should never have any doubt about their authority to make the decision to shut the well in. If you want to make exception to this rule YOU the supervising authority on the rig need to stay on the rig floor to make the decisions. Make sure there is a station bill for well control and that all of the crew know what they are supposed to do and where they are supposed to be in a well control event. You can always open the well when the time comes but you may not ever be able to put the genie back in the bottle when it gets out.
15. If you have shear rams know what they can cut and seal on. Make dang sure you know.
16. Make sure the hands visually confirm the rams close when stump testing. Don’t count on fluid counts.
17. Any dedicated safety system that is vital to the safety of the operation that is not working as intended has an expiration date of RIGHT NOW. Stop and fix it.
18. Make sure you know what is in the BOP stack and how it is spaced out.
19. If you don’t have isolated dedicated dead man accumulator bottles you should. They should have enough fluid capacity to shear the pipe and close the blinds and execute a disconnect.
This stuff is from Ned’s First Reader on deep water drilling.
I've read enough at the Oil Drum that I actually understand some of this....just some of it.
See #13.
There are so many cockeyed stories here and elsewhere...for Example see this thread:
Wolf Blitzer: “Billion potential barrels of oil” under BP well; “Could really explode” expert says
I’ve tried reasonable channels, refused interviews, given BP a chance to do something right and now I’m just FED UP. So I’m letting rip.
See #13....
It’s critically important that we determine right away what went wrong, so let’s appoint a commission of people who have no oil experience and they can meet sometime next month to get started, and take a year to finish.
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