BP Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico

[cheesehead]

From 47 months ago:

"BP Says It Will Address Safety and Legal Problems"

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...54C0A9609C8B63

The top executives of BP, chastened by a string of safety, environmental and legal problems in their American operations, pledged yesterday to restore credibility by bringing in outside experts, being more transparent and investing more heavily in safety and maintenance.

. . .

Lord Browne, the chief executive of BP, and Robert A. Malone, the newly appointed chairman of BP America, said in a telephone interview that an oil spill in Alaska; an explosion last summer at the company's Texas City, Tex., refinery; and violations by BP traders in the propane business were unrelated but would have to be addressed.

''Texas City was a tragedy that we will remember forever,''

... or until http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6612703.stm -- whichever occurs first ...

Lord Browne said.

He added: ''We have to get the priorities right, and Job 1 is to get to these things that have happened, get them fixed and get them sorted out. We don't just sort them out on the surface, we get them fixed deeply."

Too bad other folks were too concerned with other things than safety ... like costs and off-duty personal lives.

. . .

And BP is establishing an advisory board of seven experts, four from outside the company, to review its safety situation.

Some of that committee's findings will be made public, Lord Browne said. ''We will make sure that things are transparent, to the level of relevance, salience and interest that is appropriate,'' he said. The company has previously made public the work of advisory committees in Indonesia and on a pipeline running from Baku, Azerbaijan, to Ceyhan, Turkey.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

In my response to alexhiggins732,

I meant:

It's possible to have both (misreporting and erosion) ... or both erosion above wellhead and casing damage below seabed ... or all three (misreporting + erosion + damage below seabed).

... or public cynicism leading to suspicions of misreporting when actually the flow rate really was increasing day-by-day, so that the rising trend of estimates was honest, plus an occasional reporting goof plus erosion plus casing damage ...

[cheesehead]

BTW, I agree with judge Feldman's striking down Obama's offshore drilling ban. I agree with all his reported reasoning that I've seen (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100623/...gulf_oil_spill).

Although I originally suspected that the water depth had something to do with the blowout and spill, and several things I've quoted have mentioned some relationship between water depth and risk, based on the evidence I've seen by now there seems to be no particular role played by the 5,000-foot depth (versus, say, 300-foot depth). It seems to me that all factors leading to the accident could just as well have occurred in shallow water as in deep.

Thus, it makes no sense to suspend deepwater drilling on the basis of the Deepwater Horizon accident.

- - -

However, the question of conflict of interest because of the judge's investments needs to be addressed, possibly with another judge appointed to review the matter.

[Zeta-Flux]

Although I originally suspected that the water depth had something to do with the blowout and spill, and several things I've quoted have mentioned some relationship between water depth and risk, based on the evidence I've seen by now there seems to be no particular role played by the 5,000-foot depth (versus, say, 300-foot depth).

Except that a pipe at 300 feet depth would be quite easier to fix.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by Zeta-Flux

Except that a pipe at 300 feet depth would be quite easier to fix.

How so, given all else the same (such as well depth below sea floor, and the numerous mistakes BP made)?

How would it be easier to fix the pipe if the wellhead were at 300-foot depth instead of 5,000-foot depth?

They can't just reach down, pull up the pipe, and slap a patch on it, in either case.

It's true that the pressure exerted by the upcoming oil would be less, by the weight of a 4,700-foot column of oil. But it's also true that the resisting pressure of the overlying seawater would be less, by the weight of a 4,700-foot column of seawater.

Guess what? A 4,700-foot column of oil weighs less than a 4,700-foot column of seawater.

The net effect would be that the net pressure of oil over the ambient pressure of seawater at the wellhead, and thus its velocity emerging from the well, would be greater in shallower water than where it is.

That would make it even harder to try to force something (like some sort of patch) down the inside of the pipe, or to put some plug on top of the pipe.

However, I'll grant that some tools that might be useful in the fix could be more practical as, say, 400-foot-tall rigid structures than as 5,100-foot-tall rigid structures. Also, there are probably more efficient ways of manipulating tools in 300-foot water than by using submersibles at 5,000-foot depth.

It's quite possible that I'm overlooking something.

[Zeta-Flux]

It's quite possible that I'm overlooking something.

Yup. ;-) You were getting close when you starting talking about tools on hand to deal with certain structures.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by Zeta-Flux

Yup. ;-) You were getting close when you starting talking about tools on hand to deal with certain structures.

So -- tell us what you mean.

[ewmayer]

Second well on the way to cap Deepwater Horizon: If you think threading a needle is difficult, imagine drilling into an 18-centimetre-wide cylinder 5500 metres below the sea floor.

To reach the damaged well, the engineers are using a system called Measurement While Drilling (MWD) – accelerometers and magnetometers attached to the drill bit monitor the movement and direction of the wellbore and transmit this information back to the surface.

Muddy pulses

The system sends these messages by creating pulses in the flow of mud that is constantly pumped in and out of the borehole to clear away the rock cuttings, says Ken Arnold, who runs KACI, an oil industry consultancy in Houston, Texas.

The pulses are created by briefly closing and opening valves in the drill pipe to restrict the flow of mud – the resulting pressure fluctuations can be detected by sensors and interpreted by computers on the surface. "They provide the information needed to plot to within 10 feet of where the bit is the whole time," he says.

Once close to their target, the engineers can home in on Deepwater Horizon by detecting fluctuations in Earth's magnetic field caused by the caisson – the steel and concrete foundation that surrounds the original well.

Once the drill reaches the leaking well, puncturing a hole in the casing and inserting the 18-centimetre cylinder will be tough, and may take a few attempts, says Arnold.

My Comment: Fascinating stuff...

[alexhiggins732]

Originally Posted by cheesehead

... or public cynicism leading to suspicions of misreporting when actually the flow rate really was increasing day-by-day, so that the rising trend of estimates was honest, plus an occasional reporting goof plus erosion plus casing damage ...

Thanks for your response.


The article referenced suggests that a doubling of the increase in diameter holes in the riser kink from 0.5 to 0.7 to the size of 1 to 1.5 inches would increase the flow from 17,000 barrels per day to 25,000 barrels per day.

I have problems following that logic being that at the end of the pipe was an opening 19 5/8" wide.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by alexhiggins732

I have problems following that logic being that at the end of the pipe was an opening 19 5/8" wide.

Have you ever bent a soda straw (not the type designed to bend at an accordion section) and noticed that although the hole in each end remained wide open, at the kink the deformed sides of the straw flattened and came together? Have you then tried to drink through that straw while it was kinked?

In a pipe of varying cross-section, what limits the flow is the smallest cross-section, not the largest cross-section.

Everything that came out of that 19 5/8" opening at the end first had to pass through a kink with a much smaller cross-section. That's why the flow increased after BP cut off the kinked part.

[ewmayer]

It's not just oil ... The natural gas industry is busily creating its own environmental nightmares, as this Vanity Fair piece describes:

A Colossal Fracking Mess:The dirty truth behind the new natural gas.

Early on a spring morning in the town of Damascus, in northeastern Pennsylvania, the fog on the Delaware River rises to form a mist that hangs above the tree-covered hills on either side. A buzzard swoops in from the northern hills to join a flock ensconced in an evergreen on the river’s southern bank.

Stretching some 400 miles, the Delaware is one of the cleanest free-flowing rivers in the United States, home to some of the best fly-fishing in the country. More than 15 million people, including residents of New York City and Philadelphia, get their water from its pristine watershed. To regard its unspoiled beauty on a spring morning, you might be led to believe that the river is safely off limits from the destructive effects of industrialization. Unfortunately, you’d be mistaken. The Delaware is now the most endangered river in the country, according to the conservation group American Rivers.

That’s because large swaths of land—private and public—in the watershed have been leased to energy companies eager to drill for natural gas here using a controversial, poorly understood technique called hydraulic fracturing. “Fracking,” as it’s colloquially known, involves injecting millions of gallons of water, sand, and chemicals, many of them toxic, into the earth at high pressures to break up rock formations and release natural gas trapped inside. Sixty miles west of Damascus, the town of Dimock, population 1,400, makes all too clear the dangers posed by hydraulic fracturing. You don’t need to drive around Dimock long to notice how the rolling hills and farmland of this Appalachian town are scarred by barren, square-shaped clearings, jagged, newly constructed roads with 18-wheelers driving up and down them, and colorful freight containers labeled “residual waste.” Although there is a moratorium on drilling new wells for the time being, you can still see the occasional active drill site, manned by figures in hazmat suits and surrounded by klieg lights, trailers, and pits of toxic wastewater, the derricks towering over barns, horses, and cows in their shadows.

The real shock that Dimock has undergone, however, is in the aquifer that residents rely on for their fresh water. Dimock is now known as the place where, over the past two years, people’s water started turning brown and making them sick, one woman’s water well spontaneously combusted, and horses and pets mysteriously began to lose their hair.

My Comment: Anyone familiar with the environmental problems posed by mining tailing waste dumps could tell you what as bad idea hydraulic fracturing is ... by shattering rock formations you drastically accelerate the natural leaching process - along with the natural gas, you get a stew of stuff that is really nasty at the elevated concentrations resulting from the fracturing process.

Cute Battlestar Galactica reference, though.

And - Guess which company originally developed the process? Gimme an H ... gimme an A ... gimme an L ... "I'm afraid I can't do that, Mr. Cheney"