Posted on 04/23/2010 12:50:45 AM PDT by KDD
A drilling rig that burned for more than a day before sinking Thursday has fouled Gulf of Mexico waters with a potentially major spill of crude oil, officials said. The collapse of the oil rig could disgorge up to 336,000 gallons of crude a day into waters about 40 miles off the Louisiana coast. U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry said the sunken rig, the Deepwater Horizon, increased the threat for environmental damage, which previously appeared minimal. With new challenges from the collapsed rig, a growing assemblage of cleanup crews began to work in the area, hoping to stop the oil before the spill were to reach the shore.
Meteorologists predicted a change in the Gulf's current today that would push the oil toward the Louisiana and Mississippi coastlines. But Landry said the spill isn't expected to reach the coast. “We have the ability to keep it offshore,” she said. BP, the oil company that leased the offshore rig, said it had mobilized four aircraft that can spread chemicals to break up the oil and 32 vessels that can recover more than 171,000 barrels of oil a day from the surface. BP officials also expected to have a million feet of boom in place to help contain the spill by today. “We have contingency plans in place to respond to any anticipated situation, and the full resources of BP are being mobilized to implement those plans,” said David Rainey, vice president of Gulf exploration for BP. Even then, federal and BP officials said it wasn't clear whether oil was flowing from the well after the platform sank because they didn't know what was happening underwater.
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
Actually, there is, and that's what happened to Union Cal in the Santa Barbara Channel blowout that soiled all those beaches -- the gas wormed its way up through channels of bad (prob. mud-contaminated) cement behind the casing, outside the casing. Came all the way to surface because of a bad primary cement job. That's one of the two contenders for what happened in Mississippi Canyon.
The other is gas-cut oil-base mud inside the casing -- and a bad cement job around the shoe, that allowed gas to get into the wellbore in the first place.
How many gallons of water in the Gulf of Mexico? Compare that number to the amount of oil they claim is being spilled into the gulf.
The second scenario, oil-base mud that got (undetected) gas-cut, was what got the Ixtoc well in the 70's. Perforaciones, the Mexican state drilling company, never saw it coming. Very little warning -- gas flashed at surface out of solution, well started to unload gas-cut mud, instant vapor cloud, kaboom. Burned up and sank the Chiles Drilling rig that was under contract to the Mexicans. Blew out violently for months -- Ixtoc being one of the big fields that are part of the giant Cantarell complex in the Bay of Campeche. What a loss of production.
Or about twice the rate of natural seeps around the North American continent.
Rig's dayrate was quoted on RigZone as half a million a day.
Still, makes you wonder how gas/oil got into the wellbore. Not sanitary.
Someone sent me a file today, text plus photos, you could see the rig breaking up in the immense heat before it sank.
People don’t realize that petroleum is an organic food for micro-organisms. Petroleum is formed from ancient plants growing via solar power. Oil is part of a grand eco-cycle, condensed and carbonized ancient biomass. Oil is not an evil toxic substance. It’s an organic fuel of organic origin. Dittos for coal.
I think it’s a legit accident until proven otherwise. Piper Alpha in 1988 pretty much showed how intrinsically risky these operations are.
Thanks again lentulusgracchus.
Based on your post, if sounds like a failed cementing job or failed casing.
Seen both occur, but in low pressure fields.
If they knew they were in high pressure area or working underbalanced, I would think they would be checking mud weight in and out.
When a well's being completed behind pipe, sometimes the drilling prognosis will call for cutting the mud weight or changing over to a completion fluid (heavy brine, usually calcium chloride or calcium bromide brine). So instead of, say, 15.0 ppg drilling mud, they may have had 13- or 14-ppg completion fluid in the wellbore, believing it to be isolated from formation pressures.
Also, a "hand" back on the bank said something about a packer suddenly coming loose -- packers are used to isolate one zone from another (usually to restrain bottom-hole pressures, or separate completion zones). If you're relying on a packer to keep your completion sanitary and it suddenly shakes loose for whatever reason, you've got a real headache.
I thought we talked in barrels gallons must sound better maybe they can figure out how many pints or wait table spoons.
My SWAG after further reading is the block fell. This explains the thud heard first, the damage to the BOP and the release of gas.
Item, I saw the drilling reports from Scout Check and 1) they had trouble with, and had to stop and perform repairs to, their BOP stack last October. Then, of course, 2) the BOP stack failed to operate properly when they got into trouble, and 3) it still refuses to function.
They had a rig changeout in November after a hurricane damaged the rig, and summoned the Transocean "Deepwater Horizon" to the location at that time.
They were in the hole, presumably open-ended, when they lost the well. They have oil coming through the drillpipe, AND they have oil leaking from the riser, so they have oil in the DP and outside it. They also have oil coming from the BOP stack, which means it is getting out of the riser and casing strings at the wellhead. It may even be coming up outside the casing, down at depth where they had the bad cement job -- an underground blowout. If so, they'll see charged zones that were wet before when they log the section again. I've personally seen that before.
So the oil could have got into the wellhead by way of an undergound blowout behind pipe, in the annulus, and then got into the casing string through the liner lap at one of their two or three liner shoes -- they may not have done a good job of cementing their liners in place. That is strongly suggested by their lost-circulation event at eventual TD and close reading of the drilling report -- they were communicated behind pipe, ie. compromised, even before the well came in on them.
Or the oil may be getting into the 7" tieback string (they ran a full string of 9-7/8" x 7" casing at TD) at the shoe. The failed cement job we heard about at TD may have been caused by oil and gas already entering the wellbore and contaminating the cement.
Or all of the above.
In any case, several people are "DONE" ....... 11 men dead and a horribly expensive, productive well and drilling rig lost. Company man, his night relief man, both toolpushers, the cementing contractor's man, the mud engineer, the drilling manager at BP and his project engineer, the "unit" leader (a middle manager), and the E&P manager (probably a VP and company officer) -- and the people on the rig floor and in the derrick are probably dead, burned alive.
Major, huge cluster____. Biggest one in 30 years in the Gulf, and the biggest worldwide since Piper Alpha, IMNSHO bigger even than that big Indian eight-pile platform that burned a few years ago on the Bombay High. The CEO of BP could go over this one. After the Texas refinery FUBAR, he was going to rectify rectum-probing Johnnie "Dick" Browne's shabby ways and clean up the company, remember? Oops. The rule about "attaboys" works even at the CEO level.
And last but not least, the implication of all of the above is that a very large drilling rig was operating for months in an unsafe manner, its managers driven by financial considerations rather than safety, and the the Coast Guard District and the Minerals Management Service local managers failed to take action to bird-dog the "Deepwater Horizon" especially after the BOP failure last October, to ensure that the rig was being operated in a safe, professional, and businesslike manner. Those 11 dead men go on the MMS and Coasties' books as well, and there will now be internal reviews at both those agencies; and the MMS Director could go, over a clusterbomb this big. The President has been embarrassed in midstride while moving against his political base, opening up more E&P activity in the teeth of the ideological oil-hating 'Rat vermin (think of them as lice on a rat), and so the MMS Director is dogmeat at best, dead meat most likely. Warm, fuzzy, and loyal George W. Bush would have put his arm around her, but not the Chicago Boys. Bye, honey. Thanks for your months of service.
My SWAG is based on Halliburton saying the cement was set and tested, the rig hand awaking to a thud, and not the scream of a blowout, and the fact the BOP didn’t close for the rig controls or the ROV. I was thinking of what could have happened that was unexpected and could cause the well to go out of control.
From Rig Zone:
Halliburton had completed the cementing of the final production casing string in accordance with the well design approximately 20 hours prior to the incident. The cement slurry design was consistent with that utilized in other similar applications. In accordance with accepted industry practice approved by our customers, tests demonstrating the integrity of the production casing string were completed.
I have been awakened by a blow out, which make me think a jet engine was being tested ten feet from my trailer. On one well, they were circulating preparing to trip, when the block fell, I would say it thudded and shook the ground, lucky that no one was on the rig floor.
This is the first I have heard of oil coming for the BOP stack.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.