Interesting oil industry article about the technical aspects of what’s going on with the busted BP well.
The Oil Drum
There’s lots more and it’s pretty scary stuff.
So Ripley was right.
Thanks (well,:eek:), astro. Everyone should read that link, it’s time to pull our head out of all sands.
I’m too heartsick to even be angry now, I’m sure that will come after the shock.
As a technical article, the linked post is laughable. Mostly bullshit, IMHO. The first tip-off is that the writer doesn’t even attempt to present any personal qualifications. The second is the frequent use of Random Caps. The third, and most important, is that the author doesn’t seem to be able to articulate the well structure very clearly, even though detailed information about the well geometry and casing configuration is in the public domain, and he seems to know little about the geologic setting of the well.
Nevertheless, there is a grain of truth in what the writer is, rather ineptly, trying to say. He seems to be saying that there there could be a fluid escape path behind the several casing strings in the hole. If this is the case, and if the fluid conduit outside the casing is open to a point above the base of the shallowest casing string currently installed, there is is some risk of the seabed fissuring around the wellbore, allowing unrestrained flow that, as the author says, simply could not be capped by any available technology.
The question is, is there evidence of leakage at seabed level from outside the wellhead and BOP structure itself? Well, the rest of the post seems to veer into conspiracy theory, and the listed estimates of the amount of fluid that could be released in such a scenario seem to assume that the entire field could vent via that single well, an assumption that is flat-out wrong, in several ways. The persons who added comments (before comments were disabled for that thread) seemed to be arguing whether any such evidence was viewable on the ROV feeds.
I have no more info on this than anyone else not directly involved in the control effort, but I will say that if the risk of seabed fissuring is significant, then it would be correct to not attempt to apply too much back pressure to the current flow. I would prefer, however, to see this explained by someone with clearer evidence of technical qualification than the author of the linked post.
I’m imagining the oil slick suddenly catching fire and acting like a giant rocket engine, driving the earth into the sun and extinguishing all life in fiery agony.
It’s worse than that?
Or maybe it’s just a few million gallons of hydrocarbons mingling with the quadrillions of gallons of hydrocarbons already present on the Earth. Yes, it’ll kill off some wildlife and have lasting effects for decades…but it shall pass. In three years, I bet all those beaches are open again, and the fishing industry will have recovered as much as it can in this overfished age. This isn’t the end of life as we know it. Move twenty miles inland and you’ll never see a single effect environmental effect from it, and even the economic ones shall pass.
You appear to be in the business, why are the relief wells so far away and drilled so deep?
They are not particularly far away, maybe as much as 1500 feet horizontal displacement. This gives some room to play with if the initial relief wellbore does not intercept the blown-out wellbore on the first try, which is a significant risk. If this occurs, they will plug the relief well with cement, back to about a thousand feet from the original terminating point, re-calculate the required trajectory, then try to intercept the wellbore via directional drilling again.
As far as depth goes, the relief well design is intended to intercept the original wellbore at a point just above the producing formation, which apparently is near well bottom. This, so far as I know, is more or less standard practice for this type of remediation, and is done because you want to set your cement plug (the actual kill mechanism) in as mechanically strong and non-porous a formation as possible. Presumably there is a relatively impermeable shale bed above the reservoir zone that provides a such a structural cap, and in essence is part of the reason there is a reservoir below it to begin with.
Meanwhile, regarding the OP, there is a rather more lucid discussion of possible wellbore failure issues elsewhere on the OD site, here. The linked post concentrates more on erosion of the damaged Deepwater Horizon BOP, which I believe to be a more significant issue in the short term than seafloor leakage around the wellhead.
I don’t mind answereing other technical questions if they are within my area of knowledge, but a) I’d rather not hijack this thread further; b) I’m going to be extremely busy (and traveling) over the next few days so may not be able get to questions right away.
El Kabong, feel free to ramble about anything related that you think is relevant. I’m sure I’m not the only person who wants every scrap of detail. What can you tell us about the drill that’s still in the well? are they going to have to extract it? Will they eventually pour cement into the original well at the BOP? I’m actually quite impressed with what is going on even if I do want to hang certain BP officials by their nads and sell pinata tickets.
I will be happy to bet a beer (or the price of a 6-pack) that you are dead wrong about this, although I pray to the Good Lord that I will lose the bet.
The devistation to the Gulf Coast fishing industry will be felt for decades, and there will be residual oil on once pristine beaches for many years to come.
The entirety of the spill is going to be worse than most of the current “worst case scenarios” floating around right now, and the oil will eventually effect many other countries besides the USA.
People in New Orleans (and throughout the region) will be talking about this spill for as long as they talk about Katrina or the Saints finally winning the Superbowl…
Ok, got to sign off after this but I’ll cover this one. The only readily-moveable component that was in the well at the time of the blowout was a length of drill pipe (with no drill bit attached, since such operations had concluded), running from surface to about 8600 feet below sea level (so about 3600 feet below seabed). So far as I know, the remaining part of the string, after the part above the BOP stack was cut off to allow for the current containment operation, remains suspended by the partially-closed BOP rams. It should not be necessary to remove this as the relief wells will intercept the wellbore much further down.
Chances are a cement plug will be set below wellhead level once the well has been killed via the relief wells, but that cannot take place until the flow has been stopped by cement injected via the relief wells.
Otherwise, continue to monitor the Oil Drum site for updates. My reservations about the OP’s link aside, they’ve been one of the best sources for accurate technical discussion about this event that I’ve seen.
Worse? That’s pure awesome!