BP Prepares Complex "Top Kill" Bid To Plug Well 365
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by
timothy
from the switch-to-healthier-olive-oil dept.
from the switch-to-healthier-olive-oil dept.
shmG excerpts from the International Business Times: "Government and BP officials are hopeful after extensive preparations, but are not guaranteeing that a complex attempt early this week to cap an uncontrolled underwater oil spill from a well in the Gulf of Mexico will be successful. The so-called 'top kill' procedure that oil major BP is tentatively scheduled to attempt on Tuesday involves plugging up the well by pumping thick 'drilling mud' and cement into it. While it had been attempted on above-ground wells, it has never been tried at the depths involved with this spill, nearly 5,000 feet below the surface."
Oil Spill?? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:will they pay ? (Score:5, Informative)
As they should....
Re:Dubble Bubble (Score:4, Informative)
Actually the blowout preventer does exactly that. When it has not been swapped out for a test fixture and damaged (known at the time) known leaking hydraulic fluid.
The bad cement job was also known to be bad before they replaced the drill mud with salt water.
There were so many things done wrong. All of them had to be bad for this to happen. B.P. knew these were all wrong and went ahead anyway.
They belong in prison and sued out of existence.
Re:Dubble Bubble (Score:4, Informative)
It didn't fail on it's own though. An employee broke it and BP senior execs didn't think it was important enough to delay further to fix it.
Re:Oil Spill?? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:It's simple really (Score:5, Informative)
Re:And how would you do that? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Dubble Bubble (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7129225.ece
"According to a survivor’s account... blowout preventer...was punctured in the weeks before the blast but nothing was done to fix it.
"a crewman accidentally nudged a joystick, which sent 15ft of the oil pipe through the closed device"
"Mr Williams added that a crewman “discovered chunks of rubber in the drilling fluid”. He thought that it was important enough to bring them into the driller shack. “I recall asking the supervisor if this was out of the ordinary. And he says, ‘Oh, it’s no big deal’
"two control pods that operate the blowout preventer had lost some of its function weeks before the explosion, and the batteries on the device were weak. With the schedule slipping, Mr Williams said that a BP manager ordered a quicker pace. The faster drilling had caused the bottom of the well to split open, swallowing tools. “There’s always pressure [on the crew], but yes, the pressure was increased,” he said. "
Re:And how would you do that? (Score:5, Informative)
So what do you do? Pretty much what they did - cotinue and hope for the best.
Wrong. You stop drilling and eat the $10 million you've dropped on the well so far. If that's not acceptable to you, don't drill off my damn coast.
Re:It's simple really (Score:5, Informative)
Real explosives don't need ambient oxygen. Internal break down of (usually Nitrogen) bonds releases the energy, not rapid oxidation. A few exotic chemistrys exist, such as getting a normally inert noble gas to combine with a reactive gas (i.e. Xenon Trifloride) to store similar levels of energy, but mostly it's Nitrogen. C-4 isn't really the name of an explosive, but Composition 4 is about 90% RDX, which is the high explosive part (also called cyclonite). The other 9 to 10 % is the plasticizer that makes it putty like. No, C-4 does not require outside Oxygen, although it's probably not the stuff to use here. I'm sure the US Navy has some data on what explosives stay safe under very high seawater pressures and still react quickly, hopefully someone will ask them as needed.
Re:And how would you do that? (Score:5, Informative)
So what do you do? Pretty much what they did - cotinue and hope for the best.
Umm, I have to say I work on all surface stacks, but if I was the company man in charge - and yes that is my current job for another major (... okay, fine, company person) - we'd shut the pipe rams, bleed the pressure above them, and fix the annular. Changing out an annular preventer on a surface stack is a relatively routine procedure. Close the pipe rams, bleed the pressure off, unbolt the top, remove the annular, cut a new one in half to go around the pipe, replace it, retighten the bolts, retest, and get on with it. I find it hard to believe that they don't have a way to replace the annular with an ROV. The blowout preventer is not a singular piece of equipment. The annular, the pipe rams, and the blinds can all be functioned and replaced separately. If your blinds are messed up, you have to get more complicated and start setting plugs, but anything above that you should be able to change fairly easily.
Re:Are there any submariners here? (Score:3, Informative)
2500 feet is only halfway there.
The Navy has no experience in oil drilling.
A side note, the engineering officer on the boat I was on (USS Kamehameha SSBN 642) went to be the CO (IIRC) on the NR-1 back around 1992.
Didn't know they decommissioned her. Too bad. I don't think they have anything "better" now. That one was unique.
Re:And how would you do that? (Score:2, Informative)
Apparently 'test well' is the wrong description (this is me being sloppy, I have seen such language in other forums and didn't verify it), but they were in the process of capping it off so that they could move the rig:
The cause of the explosion is not yet known, although Transocean executive Adrian Rose said production casing was being run and cemented at the time. The well had been drilled to a depth of 18,000 feet.
Once the cementing was done, it was due to be tested for integrity and a cement plug set to abandon the well for later completion as a subsea producer.
From:
http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/article212769.ece [upstreamonline.com]
I think as much as anything, I said "They were trying their hardest to stop drilling" in reference to them wanting to move their expensive machine and you read it as a reference to them being concerned about the integrity of the undersea structure (which I did not mean to imply, but they would have had to do the "production casing was being run and cemented at the time" stuff in order to shut down the well, regardless of the reason behind the shut down, which is what I meant.).
Re:Are there any submariners here? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Let's wish them luck (Score:2, Informative)
the reason top kill is only being used now is because it took longer to implement. BP moved in order of swiftness to fix and safety, not cost.
Re:It's simple really (Score:1, Informative)
Rock? Sediment? It starts out as sediment, and grades with depth to increasingly lithified (i.e. cemented) rock due to pressure and the effects of fluids depositing minerals. It's not a sharp boundary and individual layers can vary considerably in their physical properties. Many of the Gulf of Mexico oil reservoirs are sandstone that is often quite poorly cemented, especially in areas of high fluid pressure as is the case here (the high fluid pressure suppresses the normal compaction process). On top of that sometimes there are gas hydrates cementing the sediment together in the upper part of the well (before it gets too hot for them to form), which is fine until you melt them, at which point your relatively consolidated sediment becomes the consistency of soup ... and your blowout preventer sinks into it ... and the drill string twists and breaks -- trust me, it's a bad thing.
PS: the people suggesting explosives are the solution, let alone nukes, are being foolish. You stand as much chance of knocking off the blowout preventer and rupturing half the drill string (== subsurface blowout that eventually reaches the surface at goodness knows how many new spots -- without a well head to try to cap). You might think it's bad now. Its nothing compared to that situation.
Here's why the Top Kill may not work (Score:5, Informative)