A long article, but a must-read

Read it last week, been depressed ever since.

Even in the face of Global Warming, and I'm an activist in this area, we still need ample supplies of both Oil and NG. Transportation runs on Oil and it could run on NG at about a 30% savings in CO2 output. But currently there is nothing on the horizon that truly supplants oil as the driving energy for transportation. Electric cars are a joke when you finally understand that we are charging the cars from the Grid which is horribly wasteful. Nationally, for every kilowatt that you use at the meter 3.2 kilowatts of input energy are consumed. What we need for Oil is simply safe harvest of the stores. I don't think that can be relegated to the industry to create and enforce.

For every kilowatt measured at the meter, 3.1 kilowatts of energy are consumed. The amount of CO2 generated by transportation is the same as the CO2 emitted in the generation of the domestic Electric supply. In the macro view we need to focus on CO2 emitted by electric power generation, then by fossil fuel consumption in the Residential, Commercial and Industrial sectors, and finally focus on converting personal transportation to low CO2 emission sources. Freight (trucks), Rail, boat and Air are I think consigned to Oil for a long long time.

edit: correct wording.

The "south" votes the "wrong" way doncha know? speaking of fantasy, this gov't puts out this op ed and the authors are so embarrassed they can't even sign it. Fantasy indeed. Comfy has no idea what's going on and neither does most of the rest of the country. The slicing and dicing has already begun, but the patient is still under anesthesia.

This administration is the first in my 63 yrs. that actually shows their disregard for the American people

Nah, BP, for example, most Americans were opposed to most of Reagan's policies and legislation, according to polls at the time. But most Americans liked Ronnie, so he got away with it. I would guess you didn't notice back then because you agreed with Reagan, and you are mad at Obama because you disagree --not because he's the first Pres. to go against public opinion. This Southerner thinks O is doing a pretty good job, even if he is a centrist.

I have lived in the South for most of my 63 years, and I think the health care bill was the right thing to do.

I like President Obama. And I sure wish he had tightened the screws at the MMS before the blow out. It would have saved me a ton of money.

I have homes in Houston and Dallas, and I try to stay out of the area as much as possible. It's getting increasingly difficult to deal with people who dislike President Obama, when I admire him so much.

I wonder if you are also familiar with how much oil leaks out the prop shaft of many power boats.

Just depends. 20 year two stroke outboard, lots of hydrocarbons. Modern four stroke inboard with exchanged cooling, virtually no hydrocarbons in the water.

Thank you. I like being called arrogant better then ignorant.

How much oil leaks out of prop shafts? I don't know, did someone say no oil leaked out of them then showed it leaking?

The leaks at the mudline have been steady and so has the leak at that pipe. It has nothing to do with the flushing or abandonment.

I have watched weeks worth of these videos and the operations performed. There are leaks at the mudline and there is a leak in that pipe.

Yes you are right, that was the poorly made point of my final paragraph.

BP quoted at least 6 inches for the thermal expansion in the flowing scenario, and I think you are spot on, its probably more like 10ft in all.

I think the point might be that the casing was stretched under its own weight, placing its length under tension, before it was cemented. If it was unstretched with the ends fixed and heated up due to hot oil passing through, the constrained expansion would create a compressive stress in the casing. The two tend to cancel out, the middle of the pipe moving up but the ends not moving. The middle moves up because the lower part has low tension, not having much weight hanging on it, so the heating, expanding it, dominates, whereas, for the upper part, the tension remains dominant though reduced, so the stretch there is less than for the cold pipe. I guess another way to look at it would be to think of what would happen if the casing, once cemented at the bottom, was released at the top. The top would disappear down the hole. Then you heat it up by passing hot oil through it, and it expands, and reappears. When the casing is hot, it is supported more from the bottom by compressive stresses, and when its cold, it's supported more from the top, by tension. If the casing was unstretched, constrained at the ends, and uniformly heated 200F, it would have a compressive stress of about 40ksi, well within the capacity of a low-grade steel, and possibly of much the same magnitude (but opposite sign) to the tensile stress intended for the casing hanging from the top. The shear stress between the casing and the concrete, and the concrete to the rock, would be of the order of a few psi, owing to the enormous interface area.

The reservoir temp was I believe 265F. Well head temp was 40F.

I am now wondering how that list of no-no's is going that BP was supposed to have committed. Guess the cement job was good. Guess the "long string is bad" theory is no longer valid. Am I wrong in thinking the float went bad? I would really like to know more about the BOP.

Bruce T.,

Since you are unable or unwilling to share your insight as to why centralizers were not an issue in the Macondo well blowout--but insist on harping about it nevertheless, how about my relating a little story? After reading it you can point out to me the fictional parts of it.

To tell the story I'm going to extract parts of something I wrote as a sort of diary entry for Friday, September 17th. It was "What I learned from The Oil Drum after Bruce T. declared that politicians who used the words centralizer or gas flow potential should eat crow".

On second thought, though it's long, I'm going to include all of it, as it used gas flow potential to lead into centralizers.
________

Just when I was thinking of breaking my 120-day TOD habit due to diminishing return of technical information for time invested--there dawned Friday, September 17th.

Let me see if I got this right.

There was some politician who opined that the Macondo well had a high potential for gas flow? Perhaps with a gas flow potential factor (GFP) greater than 10, and that was categorized as severe? Not minor, not moderate, but severe? And that the whole gas flow potential thing relates to gas in a formation breaching a cement barrier before it's had time to achieve sufficient strength? And thus compromising the zonal isolation expected of the cement? Which is to say, breached cement might be equivalent to no cement?

Hmmm. Then that politician might have known that GFP is a strong function of the separation between the casing to be cemented and the hole it's installed in, and that the smaller the separation the greater the potential for a problem. Maybe he was so clever as to observe that after the hole is bored, and the casing is set, the maximum average separation is no longer a choice, it's fixed. And he might have seen that the separation can effectively be zero if the casing is in contact with the bore hole, or very close to it. And maybe he surmised that a small separation could present a flow restriction, and that such a restriction might interfere with clearing filter cake or placing cement. If so, that was pretty good--for a politician.

And then this politician learned about centralizers? I'll bet he was relieved by that. He may have been surprised that people who put pipes in holes for a living recognized the benefit of keeping those pipes at least somewhat centered in those holes before cementing--and maybe even more surprised that one of them invented those centralizer things in the first place. Apparently this politician thought these centralizers, used in sufficient quantity and in the right places, were a good thing--and may have let anyone who'd listen [I wasn't one of them, so I can't say for sure] know about it. Politicians do that sort of thing.

=== Digression from what I learned Friday ===

What next? Ah, yes, a half dozen centralizers were arrayed on the production casing, it was cemented, and the well blew out. Then the guessing, speculating, finger-pointing, and the "this is what happened" theorizing began. It went on for four months until BP issued its investigative report, then it reassembled and took off in altered directions. What about that cement job, eh? BP's best estimate to date is that the hydrocarbons involved in the explosion came from the M56A formation at 17,788 ft and traveled downward 516 ft to the casing shoe at 18,304 ft, then up through the cement in the casing. OK, so that's 516 ft through cement in the space between the casing and open hole, and then 189 ft through cement in the casing shoe track.

Now here's a question that should be answered before continuing: What is the meaning of "the annulus" when referring to the production casing? Well, I consider it to be the space bounded on the interior by the production casing itself and on the exterior, from bottom to top, by: the borehole from 18,304 ft to 17,168 ft MD; and from there a succession of liners, then the surface casing, and on to the casing hanger, about 13 ft above the mud line. So, the overall interval of "the annulus" is about 13,250 vertical feet.

=== Back to what I learned Friday ===

I learned that "the annulus" is not "the annulus", if it's inconvenient to a story. That is, the 516-foot flow path, through cement, or what should have been cement, from the M56A formation at 17,788 ft downward to the casing shoe at 18,304 ft was not through "the annulus". "The annulus" is only the space where hydrocarbons didn't flow.

And since hydrocarbons didn't flow where centralizers weren't placed, then centralizers couldn't have been an issue.

Had it been realized that the six centralizers used on the production casing were arrayed (assuming Brian Morel's suggestion was followed) only in the interval where flow is now believed to have occurred--17,788 ft down to the shoe--then I'd probably have also learned that the centralizers were the cause of the problem. It's just as well. I was approaching new information overload anyway.
________

The fiction? (The politician is a vehicle. What he may have known or not known is to be excluded from the fiction assessment.)

CV

Edited to add missing word

Yeah, pretty strange overall but Reed apparently had a plausible theory.

Lost me somewhere around " Edgar Cayce ", Snake, sorry.

Oh, c'mon, that's silly. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and all that. The guy isn't proposing Cayce's prophecies as any kind of validation. There's plenty of science, valid or otherwise, in the post. If you don't find the science convincing, say why.

I've been to Cannes twice, stayed at the Carlton. Et vous?

Yes silence on the facts is a bit suspicious, but Wright has no particular duty to be the one to keep the public informed.

It seems inconceivable that they cemented the well without getting the facts. What are they going to say if compelled to testify. Are they going to say they simply forgot to verify that there was no communication with the reservoir?

If the DD3 were to fill its kill line with light oil then close the well in with the BOP and open the kill line that would drop the hydrostatic pressure in the well by about 2 ppg. That might be enough to see if the reservoir would push back.

I don't think anyone will find it easy to help you with your theory of annular flow unless you state what your evidence is.

_____________________________________________________________________________

I invite you to read what I wrote. 7 barrels of base oil preceded the cement that went into the well. That 7 barrels of oil should have been sitting in the annulus about where the relief well intersected. That is it would be if the annulus had the same content it had before the blowout.

And yes if they perforated the production casing then you have a different set of facts then what has been reported and also different from what BP was permitted to do. As far as I know the DD2 has not yet figured out where the 3000' of drill string went yet. So there are a lot of holes in what you believe is the story.

There is no evidence that they perforated the casing and brought the contents to the surface. But if they did, and what they found is mud - What would that prove? The mud in the annulus could have been put there in August when they bullheaded 1000's of barrel of mud down well.

I don't need any help with the theory I proposed. It is your theory that is in need of help. Your theory is speculation. And it doesn't fit the facts. But we all know the facts are very few and that is in itself the most revealing fact.

We know this - Your theory exonerates BP. If in fact the annulus was not in communication with the reservoir and if in fact the contents of the annulus were the same as they were on April 20 before the well flowed, then wouldn't it make sense for BP to take the time and effort to establish those facts to everyone's satisfaction? Establishing that the nitrified cement that was supposed to isolate the annulus did not fail would clear BP from a good bit of the wrong-doing they are accused of.

Given that the data you think exists but hasn't been made available is favorable to BP you would think they would go to great lengths to put it out to the public. What makes this most suspicious is that if your speculation is correct you have to wonder why BP isn't shouting the news from the roof tops.

Without the perf there is also the risk the pumped cement from the dd3 went somewhere else- there was I think a reasonable open hole section at the time.

17,300 design TOC minus 17,168 liner end = 132' open hole, with the 100' or so open hole section of the relief well less than 5' away.

Can anyone opine if it's reasonable to try to force cement into that situation without having provided a flow outlet by perforating the production casing higher up?

Frank

Many Associated Press writers are themselves robots.

You know, I've wondered about that for years . . .

Well, Higgins knows where the missing oil is. It's on the beach at Wildwood, New Jersey. He has a photo.

Tin Foil, then you should oppose the agricultural subsidies and mandates the government uses for corn based ethanol. They're highway robbery.

Look at the signs on the pumps. They will tell you what the taxes are on the gasoline you use. Any taxes levied on production are finally paid by the consumer, who else. the difference is that the consumer does not know what they are and can blame the oil companies for the higher prices, rather than the pols who are enjoying spending the money.

When the offshore oil is produced there is first a royalty paid to the state or Fed govts. Then the companies get a chance to recover costs, including any ccontinuing property tax levies. After that there are income taxes on any profits remaining. Those holes are not tax avoidance schemes.

Does the President think that by charging the companies that the companies will not try to leave the US tax structure all together.

Not just companies, but anyone who can afford to do so, have been doing that already for a looong time. Little people like us don't get to play, though.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/tax/

Full show isn't on the Frontline site, but may be online somewhere else, if you know where to look.

I support agricultural subsidies as insurance against crop failures. If we are growing more than we need - there is less chance of famine if disaster strikes.

It is better to have food you don't need than it is to need food you don't have.

Fresh - one definition is newly arrived

Does this sound better: A fresh deposit of non-fresh oil has appeared in the marshlands.

Do you think the oil in the pictures isn't doing any damage to the environment since its a few months old? Or do you really believe in some conspiracy theory of people dumping previously collected oil back into the environment?

Notice the pictured oil was found in the back bays behind Barataria Bay. It does look like fairly fresh crude. Seems questionable that it came from Macando. There's a lot of wells, pipelines, and barge traffic in the area.

It would be helpful to have more information--who took the pictures, when, and where.

I always suspected that was why you wanted a thousand bbls of Macondo oil... ;)

TFHG thanks, I am sure it has happened many times before. Nice to have some confirmation of the practice of blaming the dead man.

.

He's probably got plans for them, too.

I wonder when "OilWorld" will go into production?

Geoff-f, previous discussions about the rigs leaving were more complete, I suggest you search for them upper left. Bottom line, the rigs (ships) are tremendously expensive to MOVE therefore moving them is not done lightly. Once gone, they are likely not coming back. That was the crux of the moratorium discussions and it is exactly correct if you understand the dynamics of the industry. The majority of the crew do NOT travel with the rigs, they are hired locally. Also, given the terrorist attacks on rig workers in say, Nigeria how interested would YOU be in going there for about $80K per year?

As for peak oil, it isn't oil per se, but PRODUCTION of oil that is peaking. Given the lag time between exploration and full scale field production, cutting off the seed corn (exploration) has long range and far reaching effects. This government is ignorant of those effects.

geof - The last rig I saw mobilized from Africa to Brazil cost Devon $33 million for just the move alone. If a company is really desparite that might pay for such a move to drill just one or two wells. Otherwise rigs tend to stay on contract in a region for years.

There's a "humm" but you can't hear it.

Oh for heaven's sakes. Let's run that power from the secret underground nuke plants into the grid, and then we won't even need the oil! :--/

We are talking about hydrocarbon plumes at a depth of 1000-1300 m, so there is no diurnal cycle in the dissolved oxygen levels. There is also no likelihood of rapid replenishment, should large areas be depleted of DO2. The deep water contains "fossil" oxygen from long ago when the deep Gulf water was, so they say, near Anarctica. Does anyone know the basis for that claim? I sure don't.

As far as establishing the bacterial colonies, one factor is that the Gulf is pre-seeded with species that eat hydrocarbons, owing to numerous HC seeps on the sea floor.

devilsadvocate,
The reports are downloadable for $15 each unless one has a subscription. I agree it's kind of distressing these informative reports are not freely available. I've been slowly absorbing reports but since they are way over my head, it will take awhile.

Hazen Report:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;science.1195979v2?max...
Valentine Report:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;science.1196830v1?max...

From Hazen report:
-plume at 1099m-1219m up to 10km from wellhead
-plume was dispersed
-oxygen saturation averaged 59% in plume, 67% outside plume
-extractable HC 9.21 ug/L
-volatile aromatic HC 139 ug/L
-orthophosphate, ammonia-N, nitrate-N concentrations same both inside and outside plume

The report contains a link to a wiki. Off the wiki, I found a Chromatogram for MC252 wellhead oil. Why can't they just give the percentages? Can someone explain how to use the Pk#, FID RT (min), ID table with accompanying graph.

Oh, and I've read the 1.4 ml/L metric is the definition for a dead zone in marine waters.

Great stuff Quantum,

Got some great views with a small scope from a dark sky site during my vac 2 weeks ago, 4 moons and distinct banding.

You can clearly see the moons with binocs, well worth a shot.

You can also match up the configuration you see with this little gadget here :

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/objects/javascript/3307071.html#

Mashing the +10 mins button gives a good idea of how fast the positions change.

lotus,
Here's good news for online reposting of articles although the lawsuit is still progressing:
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/sep/20/righthaven-judge-review-jour...

A judge ruled a valid defense was to say the article publisher provides an "implied license" for the online posting of the article.

I was just kidding, Lotus.

The supporting material displayed by PhyloTech is already freely available online, and I wouldn't help youtube enforce a copyright if they tortured me with Katy Perry videos.

The Hazen team includes the developers of the PhyloChip, Gary Andersen and Todd DeSantis.

It's at least 1/2 PR:

Monday, Zukunft flew to Morgan City to inspect the NOAA research vessel, Ocean Veritas.
It's one of about a dozen ships now fanning out from the well site in the Gulf of Mexico, looking for oil hidden on the sea bottom and in the water column.

"So we can provide the public consistency in reporting, transparency in data to assure that the waters, verify the safety of the waters and most important the safety of the seafood," said Zukunft.

I thought the stuff about inland areas was interesting given the earlier post and the discussion about the photos of fresh/stale/new/old oil.

Everybody knows BP "hid the oil," so it must be "lurking" somewhere "hidden." And when we find it, that will prove the government was lying when they "claimed that 75% of the oil was gone from the Gulf." Sigh.

I guess notions of sedimented residues don't make very good headline fodder.

Oh, lord, that's hilarious. I wonder what the Japanese equivalent of the French accent is.

I should still think MPHG would be easier to translate than the Spam skit. Not just the language, but the cultural gulf--it seems huge to me, but obviously it can't be as great as I think it is. Seems it's me who's provincial!

an imperious Panda Bear will choose for us

Little children and others prone to nightmares should not be permitted to see this. I'm just glad I watched it this morning after I woke up rather than before I went to sleep last night.

Lotus, I'm not going away, the regular BP DH forum is going away, or did I misinterpret HO's lead post?

Lizzy, that version was Bruce's last song when he closed JazzFest 2006, eight months after the storm. He explained that he wanted to do something special for our Katrina-battered city, and eventually found the original lyrics to "The Saints" in a 19th century hymnbook.

After your vacation and new house will be fine

"The personal and psychological side of the 24/7 work for five exhausting months, I would say was more challenging than the technical for most everyone involved."

Seems he's splitting with his wife too. It's a whole 'nother side to the story, what happened in the domestic lives of the folks who were deeply involved in all this. I doubt Wright's was the only household that felt the strain. Man, I hope a really good writer--or several--takes on the task of exploring the personal experiences of those who had the responsibility to fix it.

... and whether the feedback has any real influence on the final rule.

Here's another upcoming event.

“Origins of a miracle to save Gulf sea life”

The birth of a movement

Gulf Water safety Corexit is still in use trying to hide the oil underwater in the water and wildlife. Oilspill isn’t gone Seafood isn’t safe Rally

Crexit needs to EXIT

“I decided if I wanted a miracle to save our coast, I’d join forces with 1,000,000 Strong Against Offshore Drilling And work to make it happen Lemonade 4 Wildlife is born. Now The Kids And I are Working Miracles!!!

Oilspill isn’t gone Seafood isn’t safe

Join us at Rally Shrimp Festival Weekend in Gulf Shores Alabama on [removed, don't want to help these people out].

Come join us for our Health Forum Saturday evening in Orange Beach , Al. after our final Rally in Gulf Shores . Forum is where we’ll have our speakers explaining more in depth the health effects of the oilspill and Corexit 9527A.

Can anyone suggest how or who could help them get permits?

Looks like we’re gonna run into some serious permit issues so …

We’ve decided all of us will wear our own White T-shirt decorated with whatever message you want the world to hear about the safety of our waters , sand and seafood here along the Gulf Coast.We only ask that you keep it clean as we don’t want to offend only inform. We’ll be walking through the Shrimp Festival passing out flyers and posting them on cars....

We will be in Gulfport Ms. Oct 1,2,and 3 for the Deep South Racing Association World Championship Outboard Drag Races. Come on over.

Hope the weather is good and everybody has fun and some folks make some money. TFHG, if you are happy, I am happy for you!

You HAVE FUN! Matter of fact, I am going to clink to that!

CLINK!

Whew, glad it wasn't worse, but best wishes to the Veracruzanos and Cabo. (Wow, the ol' one-two, huh? Is that headed your way too?)

..but uranium, OTOH: http://www.radonmine.com/pdf/rtimage.pdf

Two shutdowns for stormy weather.

I wondered about that too. Might they have had to go ashore for conferences?

You got to admit though, that will undoubtedly be one extremely well paid shill!

I sure would like to see a list of the submissions .

You must have missed the link provided by Heading Out at the top of this page to the Sunday morning Allen press release.

"... BP has successfully completed the relief well by intersecting and cementing the well nearly 18,000 feet below the surface ... confirmed by the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management ..."

Further down:

"The cement pressure test on the DDIII relief well was completed at 5:54 a.m. CDT.

"The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement has confirmed that the cementing operation on the Macondo well was successful, that the well has been permanently sealed with cement plugs, and that pressure tests verify the integrity of the plugs."

It's really sad to see you continuing your uninformed FUD.

Frank

Here's an excerpt from an abstract on PCB vs. PAH bioaccumulation:

Sediment and marine biota comprising several species of tidal flat and coastal organisms were analyzed for polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) including non- and mono-ortho coplanar congeners and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) to examine bioaccumulation profiles and toxic potencies of these contaminants. Concentrations of PCBs in tidal flat organisms ranged from 3.6 ng/g (wet wt) in clams to 68 ng/g (wet wt) in omnivore tidal flatfishes, a discernible trend reflecting concentrations and trophic levels. In contrast, PAHs concentrations were the highest in lower trophic organisms, such as crabs and lugworms from tidal flat, whereas those in coastal fishes, squid, and finless porpoises were less than detection limit. Greater bioaccumulation of PAHs was found in lugworms and crabs, which might be due to their direct ingestion of sediment particulates absorbed with PAHs. --Nakata 2003

Both classes of pollutants are carcinogenic, and some PAHs are also highly mutagenic. Both are fat-soluble rather than significantly water soluble, except the lightest PAHs are fairly to slightly water-soluble. Both are taken up into the food chain mainly as adsorbed to other particles. PCBs are synthetic and massively resistant to biodegradation. (Escambia Bay is still substantially polluted from a spill 50 years ago.) PAHs are somewhat resistant, but will eventually be broken down by bacteria or metabolized by some of the creatures that swallow them.

As the excerpt says, PAHs accumulate in sediments and benthic invertebrates, including oysters and mussels as well as the worms and crabs mentioned. Crustaceans and some other invertebrates have some ability to metabolize and excrete PAH. Vertebrates such as finfish metabolize PAH effectively, so there's not much concern about them. Crabs, shrimp, and oysters need to be monitored for signs of PAH accumulation. PAH doesn't seem to accumulate in muscle tissue such as white crabmeat or scallops. I would avoid eating the orange fat in crabs--most people skip that anyway.

But notice in the abstract the more virulent kind of bioaccumulation observed with PCBs, where the chemical load multiplies as you go up the food chain to flounder. This is what happened with DDT and its metabolites.

Corrections welcomed.

Rman, I'll be hanging around TOD for sure, I just wanted to gauge the interest in keeping a regular focus on the oil patch and the science related to it.

I started out on WKRG's site until they shut it off. I went over to doomers for about a month until I saw a link to TOD and remembered coming over here on my second rodeo with solar panels looking to find a deal on photovoltaic cells about 5 yrs ago. I tried every user name that I could have used, but came up empty. I know I got hooked up with a steal, good enough that each panel only cost me around 110.00. And that's about 100.00 too much. You can see I'm a skeptic when it comes to solar. Only because of the peak sun here in KY.in the winter. God, don't get me started.They need to put the donation button back up cause this is a friendly place. Smart too. I'm still reading my bookmarks on drilling and will all winter. Kinda still learning how to walk on one leg and the contraption, so I've got a lot of time to read and maybe solder some arrays, if I can find another tree hugger. Amazing.

Edit: Should have said I couldn't remember my original user name from back then, but I have made a couple of donations for the deal I got back then and any help that might come my way again.

I just hope it takes awhile before it's finally P & A'ed

Ain't that the truth, ob! We do seem to have been TA'd though. Or sent to bed wifout our suppers er sumpin . . .

Apparently editing permissions are needed to cut off and start threads. Given that, invoking the 400 post guideline makes cutoff and new thread decisions easy. I don't see why this can't stay an open thread for tech talk, following the DWH aftermath, energy related topics, etc. given some self-discipline.

I don't see anyone offering to write the top-of-thread posts that would feed our eclectic gang.

Is it necessary to have top-of-thread posts? Folks come up with many new topics mid-thread all the time; it's not as if we have to have a top-of-thread post to find things to talk about.

I'd go to Drumbeat, but the peak oil doomers around here are so depressing. I come away from there with the hope that I'll die before the gas runs out. They make it seem so hopeful.

Suo Gan.

The "signs that it may be hidden in large marine mammals" apparently consists of this:

"We really don't know much about the effect of the oil spill in cetaceans, because the effects are likely to be long term," said marine mammal expert Martin Mendez of the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

after which the article goes on to say that they haven't sampled dead specimens yet.

This one's nice..

http://www.physorg.com/

Take with a grain of salt since it's apparently been written by a legal advocate, but here's a link for people who were unfamiliar: http://www.offshoreinjuries.com/blog/1268/transocean-withheld-internal-r...

The incident occurred at the Sedco 711 location in the North Sea. At that well, Transocean made a decision to displace the mud with seawater and had a blowout. This was the same thing that happened on the Deepwater Horizon prior to the explosion that destroyed it along with 11 lives

And here's a description by the WSJ:

The memo was prompted by a frightening spectacle on another Transocean drilling rig two days before Christmas the previous year. Workers aboard the drilling rig Sedco 711, operating in Britain's North Sea, heard a loud noise and looked up to see dark liquid shooting out of the well and spraying across the deck.

As the rig's drillers tried to bring the well under control, co-workers scrambled to lifeboats and prepared to evacuate, according to internal Transocean documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Explosive gas began to surround the rig.

Workers managed to regain control of the well before the gas ignited, and no one was injured. Environmental damage was minimal—just three barrels of heavy drilling fluid spilled overboard.

But executives from Transocean, the Swiss-based contractor that owned the rig, were sufficiently concerned by the near miss that they held conference calls with managers aboard the company's fleet of nearly 150 rigs to discuss the lessons from the incident and issued two operations advisory memos.

The bottom line: Workers on the North Sea rig put too much faith in tests that showed the well was secure and stopped watching for signs of trouble.

Also: beeg ol' RUH-ROH from TO's law firm.

It was written March 5 but issued officially fifteen days before the blowout. It's plausible it didn't make its way through. Or that it was ignored. But it's also plausible that the opposite is true.

Anyway, thanks for the appreciation.

I wouldn't have expected the TPs and drillers to get something like this but I would expect the OIM should have been made aware and he should have made sure it was carried down the line. Now, I don't know if the oil rigs use that system but, from other industries, that is what I would be expecting.

NAOM

OK…here’s another very biased view of mine. The first thing a new floor hand learns is to look up when you step onto the drill floor. On the floor injury/death almost always come from above. Even if one never worked on a rig but observed it for a few hours they would develop that same instinct. The second thing every hand learns is that all blow out are proceeded by a well kick. In other words the mud flows out of the hole. But mud is always flowing out of the hole when the mud pumps are running. So it looks like it’s kicking when it isn’t. So the first thought is always going to be: are the pumps running? They all learn very quickly that the answer to that question is either all is OK or you might be about to die.

No hand needs a memo from the home office to know that watching for well flow is what will keeps them alive. That and not stepping on to the floor when a 40,000 # hunk of metal is being lowered very quickly. The floor hands might not have understood anything about a neg test but that isn’t important: they don’t judge such matters. The tool pusher and driller would be very aware of how critical confidence in the neg test is especially when displacing the well to an underbalanced state. Again, they don’t need to see a memo warning them. They would not have risen to those position if they didn’t understand this matter with absolute certainty.

There are many technical aspects (centralizers, N2 cmt, csg design, etc) that can be debated ad nausea. But being diligent and watching for a kick isn’t one of them IMHO. It is the first line of defense on a rig. And every hand knows it including the cook.

BP may have developed the insane plan, but Transocean accepted it and carried it out.

Hafle and Harrell. But the finger will be pointed at user error on the rig, and first-hand witnesses who are dead can't testify.

This document isn't about rig operations alone - it specifically talks about developing a well completion schedule. And goes on to list a set of requirements for that schedule.

This is home territory for me.

A few days ago we drifted past software engineering - it was interesting to note how all the physical type engineers had no idea what software engineering is, and thought it was about writing programs. When I used to lecture software engineering my introductory lecture had a pair of slides - the first was "the last few years we have taught you all about writing code, and designing algorithms, and gave you the impression that this was what software engineering was all about" The next slide said "We lied." "It isn't. It is about managing complexity and risk in very brittle engineering systems, systems that involve large numbers of people in complex interacting tasks that may involve irreconcilable constraints and requirements that change as the project proceeds."

Requirements analysis, and the mechanisms by which quality assurance of the end to end process is managed is core to us. Looking at the documents that flow about in the oil patch, and the processes involved in their creation and the manner in which they are enacted leaves me seriously troubled. Even a small simple software engineering project would not proceed successfully with such poor process.

This TO document is a set of overarching requirements for the design of the completion schedule. In implementation I would expect that any schedule written would go through a formal process whereby these requirements were not just met, but seen to be met, via a review process that includes external engineers. We are talking a major step in the completion of a 100 million dollar project. This isn't a great deal different to the responsibility inherent in a launch readiness review for a rocket launch, or the handover checks made on a medium sized airliner. A 737 costs less than a deepwater well. Could you imagine the customer accepting a 737 based upon an unreviewed ad-hoc set of checks written by a single engineer? Yet similar money is at risk, and as Piper Alpha showed, similar numbers of lives.

The other issue, I have is the lack of process involving the requirements themselves. We don't know if they were propagated to the rig, or more importantly propagated to BP. BP wrote the schedule, not TO. This harks back to my earlier questions about the cement job schedule, that was part of the completion schedule. Clearly BP took advice from Halliburton about the required steps, and incorporated them in the schedule. The coman then proceeded to ignore some of the schedule. There was clearly no process to provide any checks on such overriding, and no formal documentation of any schedule changes. Now here we have TO, the rig owner, providing clear requirements to its own view of operations, requirements that should have been communicated to BP as mandatory components of the completion schedule as written by BP. Clearly there is a tragedy in the timing of these requirements, but what I don't see is any formal mechanism to ensure that BP follow any TO requirements, and worse, if the BP coman is able to override the written schedule, the implication is that the BP coman could override these new TO requirements. And still, the rig workers would appear to normally go along with such changes.

What bothers me is that it would appear that this is SOP, not just with BP, but across the industry. The danger is that we are in exactly the erosion of safety situation that has caused other large sale and bad accidents. Just because there has not been a massive accident on this scale before, does not mean that the current process is safe. Indeed, this whole thing begins to look more and more like the Space Shuttle losses. The accident in the North Sea has an uncanny similarity to the ET foam losses. The Columbia took off with a known safety flag against the foam. It was expected by the NASA managers that this would be fixed eventually, but not enough of concern that they stopped flying. Here we have evidence of a potential serious accident, internal paperwork requiring change, but no red flag that said, "get these changes out now, do not allow further well completions to proceed until we know that these requirements form part of the schedule."

My deep suspicion about the root cause of the accident is a mixture of complacency, money driven haste, and worst of all, an unnatural barrier to good engineering process caused by the fragmentation of responsibility across the many contractors involved. BP eventually is the operator, and must take responsibility, but the individual contractors must also take responsibility that their recommendations are correctly interpreted, and where safety is involved, take a clear unyielding line.

One wonders is anyone inside TO saw the BP schedule? If so, was there a process for TO to sign off on it? If there was, would these new requirements have been seen as part of that sign off? If not, why not? Indeed, all around, why not?

OK, rant over.

It went into the Well Control Handbook. WSJ, "But executives from Transocean ... issued two operations advisory memos." At least one of these memos supposedly went out to the crew on DWH April 14, but NYT wrote on August 16 "it is not clear whether those policy changes reached the Deepwater Horizon crew before that rig exploded." What's in the other memo? Did it go to DWH also? Did it apply only to completion? NYT also wrote

A separate Transocean presentation, which was provided to rig workers after the incident, cited a “lack of clear” procedures for controlling well pressure, “weakness in planning” the job’s risk assessment and an absence of data about conditions in the well.

M - Welcome to the club. Even in the oil patch you see some miscommunication about this aspect. You drill a successfull well and everyone is excited because you're "going to complete it". So you "run pipe on it" (you run your production csg). But that isn't "completing the well" in the minds of many. Completing a well typically means moving back on with a smaller workover, running a CBL, sqz cmt if needed, run packers and tubing in the hole and then perforate. Then you test the well. If all goes OK then you set your permanent production equipment, oil/water tanks and lay any NG lines that might be needed. So you start with a drilling well and then progress to a well running csg that will be completed eventually. Then you'll have a well being completed which will, in a month or 6 become a producing well.

The BP well was drilled and production csg run. It was not "completed" but the drilling phase was completed. In a year or 2 BP would have moved back onto the well an affected a "completion". Then maybe in another year or two they might put it on production.

Actually, Rockman, so did they. Big error terms. Big enough for the Columbia study and the feds' estimate to overlap.