As above.
From what I’ve read it seems that while BP have overall control of the well, Haliburton are far more responsible on a practical level than BP.
Why is the US (apparently) blaming BP and not Haliburton (or that other company that they had contracted out to)?
Because Haliburton was following BP’s instructions. Haliburton even advised BP that some of the procedures were not wise, even if technically acceptable.
My understanding was that Haliburton fucked the work up; BP’s plans, while not ideal, would have worked if they hadn’t.
I heard on one of the news programs that witnesses said that an argument between a Halliburton expert and the BP expert on a key issue broke out shortly before the defining moment. BP got its way and the decision led to the blowup. I don’t have a cite for this, but haven’t tried to find one. Most of my news comes from MSNBC and ABC.
The Wall Street Journal’s investigative report seems to be currently considered the most complete and informative overview of what went wrong. An excerpt:
**Halliburton, the cementing contractor, advised BP to install numerous devices to make sure the pipe was centered in the well before pumping cement, according to Halliburton documents, provided to congressional investigators and seen by the Journal. Otherwise, the cement might develop small channels that gas could squeeze through.
In an April 18 report to BP, Halliburton warned that if BP didn’t use more centering devices, the well would likely have “a SEVERE gas flow problem.” Still, BP decided to install fewer of the devices than Halliburton recommended—six instead of 21.
BP said it’s still investigating how cementing was done. Halliburton said that it followed BP’s instructions, and that while some “were not consistent with industry best practices,” they were “within acceptable industry standards.”**
No mention of Haliburton screwing up the job, unless screwing up is defined as following orders when one has misgivings.
Of course, this is an excellent illustration of the problems iwth “contracting out”. You (large multi-national) put your reputation in the hands of someone else and their hiring/procedures policies. You don’t have to pay big wages, pensions and benefits; when job A is over, your hired company lays off its employees and you save big bucks.
Plus, your own supervising managers - if you don’t have any real field workers of their own, where do they come from? Usually, Bob from Accounting or HR is tired of that paperwork and gets assigned to manage the big rig guys even though he knows absolutely nothing about it. What’s the big deal about centering a pipe - it still looks the same when it comes out.
Mix it all up, and you have a bunch of inepts running a job where the main company on the site is in it for a short term big profit and nobody in the field cares about the long term because they have no committment or job security. And of course, if there’s a technical computer problem, call Bombay.
Welcome to 21st Century America.
I think a large part of it is electioneering.
The answer seems to be that it is a much more complex problem than most of the above allows for.
Haliburton were only responsible for the cement job done to seal the well. There is good reason to suppose that the cement failed and led to the blowout. But this is but one part of a long chain of technical and oversight failures that all lined up to allow the blowout.
As has been observed in other forums, cement jobs fail all the time. That is the nature of the technology. Most times they are OK, but no one believes that they are always perfect. There are too many difficult to control unknowns involved. That is why they are tested. And this one was tested. And appeared to be OK.
The number of centering rings is also an open question. Commentry has been that it is typical to negotiate on the number. Haliburton didn’t “demand” - they suggested. They also agreed that 6 would be “adequate.” It also seems that the number of rings had nothing to do with the failure anyway. But we probably won’t know that for some time. Haliburton didn’t say the cement seal would fail if fewer were used. They also went ahead with the work knowing the number of rings used. If the Haliburton engineers knew the number used, and believed that it was dangerously inadequate, but proceeded anyway, they violated a core ethical precept of the profession. The reality is that they believed it was OK. Testifying after that fact that they advised 21 but only 6 were used is likely an attempt to shift any focus of inquiry away from them.
But in the end, cement jobs fail all the time. The drilling is supposed to be run in a manner so that they can cope safely with such failures. Mostly by testing and watching carefully. They did test. It seemed to pass. What went wrong can probably be sheeted home to a failure to watch the proceedings carefully enough. They went to the next stage - displaced the mud from the well (which is also a prefectly reasonable thing to do - so long as you are happy that the cement seal is good) and failed to notice the warning signs that the seal had failed. That was the point that things came badly unstuck.
Like most accidents you need more than one thing to go wrong. This accident needed about four in a row. And it got them.
The sobering question. How many other wells have had three of the four go wrong? The answer seems to be rather a few.
Focus is on BP because they carry the legal responsibility. I also suppect that part of the focus is because they are an easy target for the media. But they leased the rig, and contracted for the work, and did this with with the clear knowledge that they own the responsibility.
Who has more money?
I agree with those saying that it’s because BP were ultimately the ones in charge, and so they’re the ones who ultimately take responsibility. I can’t imagine Obama and the Democrats would have much of a problem “electioneering” against Halliburton if they were the ones carrying that responsibility.
The centering devices mentioned only keep the casing or tubing centered in the well bore or the previous casing while the casing or tubing is sealed off at the bottom of that particular string. They make sure an equal amount of cement flows around the outside of the casing (in this case, tubing is for production), securing the bottom end of the casing string to the formation.
But a plug of cement is also supposed to be left in the inside of the casing, to be drilled out after the cement has set. The cement is injected through the casing and allowed to flow out the bottom of the casing back up into the void between the casing and the formation, and water or mud is pumped down on top of the cement in an amount calculated to still leave a slug of cement in the bottom of the casing.
If the cement job is perfect, then the casing is secured in the formation and the bottom is sufficiently plugged off. Now you can drill out through the cement plug with a smaller bore drill string and be able to control the pressure of the hydrostatic head of the weight of drilling fluid needed to control the formation pressure. Too much mud weight can fracture the formation, causing loss of circulation, so successively smaller bores and casings are used.
But if the cement job fails to seal the bottom of the casing off, then you lose all control. The BOP, of course, is supposed to be the last line of defense, but it’s only tied to the previous, larger casing run. If the cement on the smaller, inner casing string fails and passes the formation pressure onto the next larger casing, that casing is going to be put under strain that it possibly can’t withstand. If it fails, you end up with what’s basically a raw hole in the ground with no pipe/BOP/anything to tie on to.
This happened to a producing gas well in Texas back in the '80s. The small production tubing failed and passed the pressure on to the larger intermediate casing that wasn’t designed to withstand the pressures. It blew production “christmas tree” off the top of the well, and blew about 15,000 feet of tubing and 15,000 feet of intermediate casing out of the ground. The tried to tie onto the wellhead, but that was only attached to the surface casing - large casing only designed to get the drilling operation past the surface water table, maybe 3000 feet - and it couldn’t withstand the pressure.
The surface casing separated a few hundred feet below the surface, leaving a raw hole in the ground spewing high pressure gas. A hole about a mile across and a few hundred feet deep was dug in an attempt to reacquire the surface casing.
The blow out was eventually stopped by a combination of a large dead weight (a huge string of BOPs, control valves, etc.) and a relief well.
It took 16 months, on dry land, to get that well under control, and it was only gas, no oil. Lieu remembers this one, we’ve mentioned it here before.
If they lose the casing to formation cement seal on the well in the Gulf, it’ll be a lot worse situation than they have now.
Duke of Rat, you’ve both a remarkable memory and a fine ability to explain a complex process. Yes, I visited that blowout site up in the Panhandle probably around 1979 or '80 right when a huge number of Halliburton (two "ll"s, folks) cementing trucks assembled in the bottom of that massive man-made hole to attempt to shut it in. I believe even that concentrated first attempt failed and required additional preparation and resources. I thought I remembered a directional well was in progress on that one too. It would be interesting to know the relevant importance it ended up playing.
Believe it or not I have the framed picture of that massive hole with the spewing gas visible hundreds of feet up and past the surface on the wall right in front of me right now, just above my computer screen. A number of co-workers have come in to view it lately, what with what’s going on in the Gulf. When these things go, the scale of operations to bring them back in is indeed staggering.
What would Red Adair do in this situation? He was an expert in these matters and always seemed to come up with a solution. Anybody?
I see at least three BP stations every day and am reminded of them; I don’t notice anything around here with a Haliburton sign out front.
Red Adair sold his company in 1993 when he retired. Long story short, the company that eventually owned Red Adair’s company, was last sold to Halliburton, eleven days before the current BP oil disaster.
So Halliburton already owned Adair’s own company before the disaster and even they can’t fix the problem now, let alone when Adair owned the company.
This,
If you watched the 60 minutes interview with one of the platform workers he discussed a pissing match between BP and the rig manager. This is consistent with the WSJ report. BP ignored multiple problems and took shortcuts that caused the accident.
And when an incident occurs …
I too so that program and was “surprised” that the American “EXPERT” on accidents (he had investigated the Space shuttle disaster and many Rig accidents) who was to investigate this disaster when asked who was to blame for the Gulf blow out said BP.
Now this does not sound like the sort of statement that the leading “EXPERT” in accident investigation should make BEFORE and inquiry had even begun.
“In an April 18 report to BP, Halliburton warned that if BP didn’t use more centering devices, the well would likely have “a SEVERE gas flow problem.” Still, BP decided to install fewer of the devices than Halliburton recommended—six instead of 21.”
I wonder who was selling the centering devices? Halliburton by any chance ?
A “centering device” is by its rightful name called a Primary Cementation Stabilizer. It’s essentially a cylinder that slips over the pipe and, due to the fact it’s ‘bowed’ in its middle, it keeps the pipe centered within the drilled hole. What that does is insure that when cement is pumped all the way down through the pipe and back up between the pipe exterior and the formation, that there will be an even and continuous thickness and volume, a ‘seal’ to prevent gas or oil from migrating out. Without the “centering device” the pipe may be leaning against the side of the hole for large distances, no cement is deposited there and both gas and fluids have a clear avenue to escape to areas not designed to hold them in check. These Primary Cementation Stabilizers are not expensive to purchase. Their cost in Halliburton’s well cement plan is relatively minuscule by most any critique. The reason BP decided to omit them was because they do require some amount of time to install and, on an offshore rig that costs 3/4 of a million dollars a day to lease, time is money… big, big money.
BP was looking to hurry the completion of a well already way over budget and cut corners in several key operational steps that compromised the integrity and, thus, the safety of the effort. They inexplicably did so on a reservoir already deemed potentially lethal enough to have been called a “nightmare.” Their culpability in the disaster is beyond question.