Posted on 05/24/2010 7:56:01 PM PDT by mojitojoe
BP oil leak: Fallen Deepwater Horizon was tapping second largest oil deposit in the world
If there is a single aspect to the dangers of the BP oil leak, it lies in the question CEO Tony Hayward and other BP executives have been avoiding since the first drop of oil went rogue: How much oil is leaking?
The real answer is - more than anyone wants to admit, because the well holds enough oil to make Saudi Arabian drillers jealous.
The oil field the Deepwater Horizon had tapped is said to be the second largest deposit in the world. Viewzone.com reports, “The site covers an estimated 25,000 square miles, extending from the inlands of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Texas. “
The oil deposit is so large, it could produce 500,000 barrels of a day for more than a decade.
(Excerpt) Read more at examiner.com ...
from your article:
“One person who seems to know he is in charge of something is the mayor of Grand Isle, Louisiana who told the Coast Guard he didn’t want unsightly containment booms used around the beach because it would be “unsightly” for beach goers. Admiral Mary Landry said the Coast Guard has to respect the wishes of local leaders.”
That is total BS!! David Carmadelle and Billy Nungesser have been screaming for weeks that there isn’t enough boom!! I don’t know who wrote this article but that part I can gaurentee you is crap! I understand your fear of your beautiful Fla. beaches. but here in La. we are concerned for our very livelihoods. See post #76.
Now the Chinese will get it all, because our idiotic feral government will outlaw drilling in the region by US producers.
This is the most nonsense I have seen in a long, long time. Geez, take a freshman geology course and all of your questions will be answered...where the hell these reporters come up with this drivel is beyond me. For instance, if you have a garden hose of a certain size, it will not be able to produce beyond a certain limit—certainly not 500,000 BOPD. Use your common sense....
Uhhh, the nuke option is BAD. The oil is at 35000 psi. Fracturing the sea floor around and under the well could potentially release the entire reservoir in short order. It’s akin to using sticks of dynamite to ‘plug’ a leaking valve on a LNG tank.
Haven’t heard much about it lately, but my understanding was they were starting to drill 2 more holes at an angle that would join the first hole right above the oil deposit, theoretically diverting the oil before it could makes it way up the damaged pipe. But this was going to take a while, so they had to try to stop the leak until then.
flr
The problem with that is its not rock but sediment way down.
. . . . Off Topic.
The World’s SECOND LARGEST DEPOSIT????? If this is true, then why in the *%$\ do we not know about it??!!!!! The fact that that could be true against all we have been LEAD to believe is the true scandal here!! We have been enslaved thinking that we have to be dependent on foreign sources. Why??? THAT IS THE QUESTION THAT SHOULD BE ASKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'll go with the Rube Goldberg devices over the nuke.
Here's why:
The pressure of the formation fluid in the reservoir is estimated at roughly 15000 psi. What is to stop that from bubbling up around this glass disc over the wellhead?
Subsurface blowouts have occurred before, when the formation fluid leaves the old wellbore via a permeable lower pressure formation and makes its way to the surface. So even if you succeded in making a lens of fracture-less glass over the wellbore, there is no guarantee the oil would play by the rules.
The objective of the relief wells is to feed drilling fluid into the old wellbore at its base, forming a column of high density fluid in the old wellbore which will exert enough hydrostatic pressure to control and stop the flow of fluid from the formation. (Then it can be plugged by pumping in cement).
That drilling mud hydrostatic pressure is the same thing which contained the formation prior to the displacement of the riser with seawater, which dropped the hydrostatic pressure by roughly 2200 psi.
Thet's when the well got wild and the hands found out the well was not as shut in as everyone on the rig apparently thought.
It is a pretty simple calculation to come up with the right mud weight, and the directional drilling part is just a matter of time.
This will work, even if it takes another month or two.
The other stuff is a combination of damage control methods, both trying to intercept as much oil as possible before it gets away--up to 5000 bbl/day so far, and to disperse the rest so nature can take care of it.
In terms of magnitude, this is less then the Ixtoc 1 blowout in '79-'80, down in the Bay of Campeche, which took 10 months to bring under control, although I'll admit that production figures are speculative (there is no way to measure the actual escaping flow from the well).
If you nuke the well, and it still leaks, there isn't any way to control it.
(Not to mention setting off the biggest 'nobel spinner' in half a century.) Only a red tide could bring about a fish kill like that.
The conventional means of drilling a relief well work, if people will let them.
As an aside, it is a crying ashame none of the fire booms which were supposed to be in the gulf were there, or much more of this could have been contained and burned off before it ever got near an estuary.
There are two relief wells in progress, one spudded on the 4th, one on the 17th. One is already past 8000 ft, headed for 18000 (the target depth to intercept the old wellbore). The deeper part takes longer, and despite pressure on them to hurry, I doubt any corners will be cut.
Nope. August before they are done drilling them, they are drilling now.
I have little doubt they left themselves some slack in the time estimate, too, in case they had problems drilling the wells. (Lots of noncritical things can go wrong which cause delays that do not endanger anything, if they are fixed at the time).
>>”The oil field the Deepwater Horizon had tapped is said to be the second largest deposit in the world. Viewzone.com reports, “The site covers an estimated 25,000 square miles, extending from the inlands of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Texas.””
This is great! If true, it means that many wells (albeit very deep wells) can be drilled into this formation in shallow water, and even on land.
If it's as large as all that (and I've heard other info that indicates it's not that large), then BP was insane to drill anywhere near the structural apex. That's because, when column heights are extraordinary, the pressure gradient at the top of the reservoir becomes a real problem to control. It's a question of hydraulics.
On the other hand, the fact that they controlled the reservoir pressures using relatively mild mud weights (up to 14.4 pounds per gallon) argues that the reservoir is not extraordinarily large, but only that it is blowing down at an extraordinarily high rate.
Davey Crockett device drilled in under a few hundred feet of rock just might seal it off.
But...
You know the buck stops with man primarily concerned with the political. He is weighing things with him as the priority. Stopping this leak with a nuke might be worse than letting it just go on (in his twisted calculus).
The Sovs tried a nuclear frac job in the 1960's. They had a very tight reservoir with a lot of oil-in-place (OOIP in oilpatchspeak, "original oil in place": an actual technical term that means something), but perms were too low to allow it to flow. So they thought that massive-frac techniques might pay off, and someone dreamed up a nuclear frac job as a way to do the whole field at once.
You're right, it didn't perform. The fractures opened in the target reservoir (above where the nuke was set off), but then they closed right back up again, tight -- no proppant. (In a massive-frac job, sand or grit, sometimes special sinters of extra-hard material, are injected into the fractures while the pumps are running, to act as a "proppant", ie. keep the fractures from closing.)
OTOH they should be able to do something with it after the unwanted side effect -- radiological contamination -- cools down in about 4000 years.
Terminology: the article uses a number of inappropriate terms. Herewith a glossary:
Overburden: Everything above the reservoir, up to the mudline.
Mudline: What it looks like. An important measuring datum, however. In this case, it's 5000' below permanent datum, which is always "mean sea level" (MSL).
Seal: Whatever formation above the reservoir, or faulted formation adjacent to the formation on the sides, or porosity barrier, is actually keeping the oil in the reservoir from migrating to surface and escaping in the first place. Oil, being lighter than formation waters, tends to be buoyant and to come to surface (MSL).
Reservoir: The geological body (usu. sand, can be limestone, sometimes shale) containing hydrocarbons.
Geopressure: Pressure in a rock body higher than what would be predicted by hydrostatic pressure gradient: part of the weight of the overburden is being borne by the pore fluids, pressurizing them. The "Macondo" reservoir is moderately geopressured.
Borehole: The actual hole made by the drill bit.
Casing: The steel lining inserted into the borehole.
Annulus: The gap between the casing and the borehole wall, or (also) the gap between one string of casing and another, subsequent string of smaller diameter run inside the earlier string(s).
Liner: A string of casing run to keep the hole open at depth, but not tied all the way back to surface (BP had three strings of liner in their well: an unusual design, and possibly part of the reason it got away from them).
Tieback string: A string of casing run expressly to stab into a liner, and convert it into a full, fully tied-back string of casing to surface.
Production string: The last string of casing run, through which the operator intends to make his well by hanging strings of production tubulars inside it.
Tubing: Small-diameter pipe of no structural strength (almost like wet spaghetti, compared to casing) used for flowing product to surface, or to the wellhead in a subsea completion.
get the tin foil hats out, but considering BP’s cozy relationship with BHO, maybe they’re using this “crisis” together....and all this public bickering and posing is a show.
Now we know why zero is doing nothing. He can rid us of an extremely valuable resource while destroying the entire southern economy.
That’s why zero is doing nothing. LA, TX, AL, MS, & FL - all red states, plus he wipes out a huge resource at the same time.
You're right, LucyT - that is the question...
Congress is trying to pass a bill to triple the fed gasoline tax from 8 cents a gallon for the cleanup. It’s part of another bill, story on Drudge.
Quote: “The oil industry says such a high cap would make it difficult, if not impossible, to insure oil rigs.”
Bingo! There’s the rat objective right there. Rahm Emmanuel: “Never let a crisis go to waste.”
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