Scott....Good points. I'm not even pointing any finger at why the rig exploded and caught on fire.....I'm speaking of the aftermath. The ability to shut off the flow after the explosion/fire/sinking.

I'm speaking as a total amateur here. I know the sea, to a certain extent---but not the workings of oil rigs. But part of me keeps nagging 'shut it off, shut it off, shut it off'......and the answer to that it 'well boys....maybe in a month or 2 we can stop the flow of oil into the Gulf'........

 

My offshore oil experience was on a production platform. Production wells have only two automated safety devices. A Surface Safety Valve and a Subsurface Safety Valve, in addition to the manual shutoffs in the well bay. Any ESD (Emergency Shutdown) will trip these valves closed, shutdown all the rotating equipment, gas turbine generators and start the emergency diesel generator and fire pump. ESD's can be initated manually from stations throughout the platform. An ESD can also be automatically activated by a high level combustible gas alarm, high level Hydrogen Sulfide alarm or a fire alarm. So in the worst case scenario the only thing you have to worry about is finding your way to your Watercraft emergency escape boat.

During drilling operations a well has four well control safety devices. I'm fairly certain that the surface BOP (the bag) is automaticaly activated as well as the subsea pipe rams. But I'm not sure if the shear rams and blind rams are activated automaticaly or manually. Because you wouldn't want to shear off your drill pipe every time you got a gas alarm in the mud pit. So pure speculation here, but perhaps those responsible for activating the shear rams are those 11 missing, presumed dead. In a catasrophic event like this, the drill crew would be the last ones to abandon platform. Once the platform caught fire and lost power the stabilizing thrusters became disabled allowing the platform to bob like a cork tethered to the wellhead by the drill string. This may have damaged the rams so now the subsea ROV's are unable to operate them. Once again, pure speculation here.

Once the platform sank it probably broke the drill string. So either the drill string fell in the hole or the pipe rams are clamping the broken stub in place. If that were so, they could probably clamp a new wellhead on the drill pipe stub and shut it off. That they are not considering this probably means that the pipe fell into the hole or blew out of it.

The planned shutoff scenario seems to be to get as close as safely possible with another drill platform and drill into the same zone as the leaking well. This will take time because it will have to be drilled and have the casing cemented at several places. Just like Deepwater Horizon was doing during the well blowout. Once the zone is drilled into, they will pump heavy weighted mud into it like crazy until they "kill" the well. Once that happens, both wells will probably be plugged and abandoned. Abandoned does not mean they just walk away from it. It means that all junk is removed from the hole, all surface strings are cut and recovered, cement is downsqueezed out the production liner, the casing is perforated and cement downsqueezed to seal the annulus. The well bore is filled with mud and every casing shoe is plug cemented 100' or more above and below each casing shoe. The surface string is cemented at least 500' to surface and is cut off below surface and covered.

My drilling experience was onshore Plug and Abandonment Operations. I worked for Big Oil and our group did over 400 P&A's in Southern California in 1990. I wrote many of the abandonment programs submitted to the DOG and had the privilage to supervise some of the abandonment rig operations.

 

Can you be more specific?

j/k

 

LOL! Yes, another one of my more lucid moments evaporates into the either!

 

Where did you get that number Fox news?

 

Scott, thanks for sharing.
Very informative post.

 

My bad, they made a WHOPPING 6.73% in Dec last year. Look at the profit margin of Exxon Mobile for the last few years:
Exxon Mobil Profit Margin (XOM)

Now back to our show.

Scott, I had no idea you were so experienced at this sort of thing. The things you learn on the internet....

 

Steve, you have to read the corporate bylaws to understand pricing of petroleum fuels. It's a long list, but by reading only the first item you will get the idea. Here is an example:

Item 1a. Should a crow land on a fencepost, raise retail prices $0.01 per gallon.

You get the idea.....

 

I fear you are correct, Bruce. This is GNAC, so I can't go into specifics....But...ummmm.....er......ahem....... Let's just say the cloud-readers will 'speculate' based on what they think that certain....ummm.....aaah......individuals with certain powers over policy will do in reaction to this disaster.........

 

"These are not the droids you are looking for."

 

Slick Steve.....................Real slick.

 

I've seen mentioned here a couple times that it is understood that the explosion itself is an accident, but they have no clue as to how to clean it all up. Scott has more experiance with the actual operation of the rig and why it possibly cannot be as simple as screwing another wellhead onto the casing. My company deals with environmental services, although I am not directly involved with this at this time, I may be in the near future, so I pay attention to the happenings 75 miles east of me. The plain and simple answer to the statement that they don't know what they are doing is plain and simple. They have no practice, or experience with a spill of this magnitude. Spill 1000 bbls in the water and that will be cleaned up with a quickness. The materials and manpower are readily available to handle a spill that size. Spill 5000 bbls a day and counting and that complicates things a bit. Especially when your leak cannot be fixed immediately. All wells drilled are under extreme pressure, and blowouts happen from time to time, the BOP failing and this disaster happening sort of took everyone by surprise, and yes, again, this dosent happen everyday, just because they can't snap their fingers and "poof be gone" the spill isn't cleaned up dosent mean they aren't trying to make it happen. No one wants this mess cleaned up more than BP.

 

I hate having to dance around my articulation of the situation......

Welcome to GNAC!!!

 

You must really give the lawyers a stomach ache in court!!!

 

According to the news on the radio this morning, BP is planning to send a barge down there and try to reclaim the surface oil. That's the smartest thing to do. But my question is this. Once the petroleum on the surface has been mopped up, will there be any hazardous by product left behind?