Crews fear oil rig will spill 336,000 gallons a day

HOUSTON CHRONICLE ^ | April 22, 2010, 9:58PM | MATTHEW TRESAUGUE

[tommix2]

Yeah, the explosion may have killed the driller instantly
There is no electronic fail safe that I know of.

[Justa]

"The timing is very suspicious."

Let's keep things in perspective:

Real world first.

Politics second.

[HiTech RedNeck]

This is not your grandfather’s America.

[central_va]

More windmills......

[autumnraine]

Oh this is gonna help the “Drill here drill now” campaign. We can assure the skeptics that offshore drilling is perfectly safe while they swim in slime this summer.

[KDD]

Nuclear.

[Biggirl]

Maybe enviro wacko radicals?

[central_va]

I was being sarcastic.

[central_va]

Probably some whales did it......

[SkyPilot]

Crews fear oil rig will spill 336,000 gallons a day

They should convert to wind power then.

[RWB Patriot]

Of course none of the RATs are going to notice the fact it took a decade for another oil spill to happen. We’re going to go back to the “scared of our own shadows” days where an oil spill is just waiting to happen every second.

[Iron Munro]

I wonder how many radical Greenies were in the area the day this occured.

I’m sure Obama has the FBI right on top of it.

[tommix2]

Gas blowout could have been so sudden,driller could not catch it quickly enough. Then something had to ignite the gas. No smoking on drill floor. motors should be explosion proof. A tiny bubble of gas size of grain o rice deep in well expands to cubic foot at atmospheric pressure.

[KDD]

Update.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g5gnWbqZ9SqBHvSYqJeE2AT5KebwD9F8LKQ80

[tommix2]

This was not sabotage. No way saboteurs could pull this off

[lentulusgracchus]

I've been on some pretty big rigs, but this one had a displacement approaching that of an aircraft carrier. It was a 2001, Korean-built, top-of-the-line dynamic-positioning semisubmersible barge rig (catamaran pontoon design). You're talking about a half-billion dollars' worth of rig.

Specs page (need recent-edition browser):

http://rigzone.com/data/rig_detail.asp?rig_id=153

Links to current stories on the page.

[tommix2]

Thank you

[lentulusgracchus]

I disagree strongly, based on 21 years in the industry.

It would be insane, nobody in the industry would ever do such a thing.

[ronnie raygun]

Is anyone saying who or what caused this to happen? Question coinsedence. Sounds fishy don't it? Like Goldman Sachs visiting the Whitehouse several times before they were accused.

[lentulusgracchus]

Concur. Conversations with former co-workers suggests two things.

Well had been cased off and they were waiting for cement to cure before suspending the well and moving off.

Failure was sudden and catastrophic -- sudden explosion and fire 10 pm Tuesday night. Full details pending.

Cement obviously failed and allowed gas into wellbore.

This was an oil prospect not natural gas, but pay zone was below 18,200' (beaucoup deep) and pressured. If oil-based mud were in use, gas could have dissolved imperceptibly in the drilling-mud column (no warning volume-gain in pits as gas displaces drilling fluid), and come to surface w/o warning. This happened in the big Ixtoc blowout in 1978/9. Sneaky, fast-breaking, very deadly.

Alternatively, gas came to surface behind casing, evolving off oil reservoir and escaping to surface around failed cement job w/o observation until last minute. Kaboom.

Rams couldn't be closed (blowout preventers). Don't have the full story on that. With casing run, a new wellhead and BOP stack should have been in place.

Many available ignition sources: generators, light switches.

Rig also had 700,000 gallons of diesel fuel aboard.