Oil Containment Solution Randomizer

[johnsmith]

And I love how the right think they are so cute and degrading by referring to the president by his nickname[[Barry) he had while growing up.

Yeah, and "tea-baggers" is any more mature huh? Pathetic.

[ghettopalmetto]

Yeah, and "tea-baggers" is any more mature huh? Pathetic.

Oh, now you're suddenly indignant, are you?

You do recall that the Tea Party movement began by--wait for it--dumping pallets and pallets of TEA BAGS on the ground.

Or is your memory really that short?

[oladub]

Not at all Obama's fault? "the Administration exempted BP from doing an environmental impact statement and accepted dismissive accounts regarding the potential for spills.

The Interior Department under Secretary Ken Salazar exempted BP’s Gulf of Mexico drilling operation from a detailed environmental impact analysis last year. That decision was made by the Minerals Management Service." http://jonathanturley.org/2010/05/06...pact-statement/ So maybe it was a little bit Obama's fault unless you want to blame Salazar's decision on Bush.

It is too late for a cap. The pipe is ruptured somewhere down underground. Oil is pouring out of multiple holes because it is flowing laterally through rock strata. What remains of the pipe is being reamed by rocky debris shooting up the pipe. More holes will break through the ever weaker pipe as the flow becomes ever stonger. There is no way of stopping this with a cap. If we are lucky, the two wells being drilled to 13,000 feet will stop the flow in 3 months. More oil experts are saying that won't work. That leaves two possibilities. Drilling a whole bunch of wells to reliever the pressure and get the oil out of the ground so it isn't forced into the Gulf or nuking it. Nuking stands the risk of creating an oilcano. Take your choice.

Meanwhile 80% of the oil is in huge underwater multi-mile long plumes starting to head for the Atlantic. Only twenty percent can be captured with skimmers. Glad he is doing that anyway...finally. It is frustrating to know this catastrophe is occuring while the President is lobbying for his cap and trade taxation scheme. What is his legal authority, by the way, to set up an escrow account? Did he wind up a judge and get a court order? I'm not against such an account but he will need a lot more than $20B of he doesn't capture those oil plumes. Whose fault is secondary to preventing destruction. Yet, the President is still playing the community organizer lawyer and relying in third world technology, hand shoveling, to catch the oil that washes ashore. He is so irrelevent.

Oil Disaster Will Be End of Life As We Know It
http://johndotyjr.blogspot.com/2010/...ife-as-we.html
Gulf Oil Spill "Could Go on for Years and Years" ...
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.p...t=va&aid=19660

Expert suggests BP is hiding oiled animal carcasses
http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0615/exp...imal-carcasses/
Sea creatures flee spill, gather near shore
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37738626...er_in_the_gulf/

BP/Obama legacy

[Jimaz]

And they've still not revoked Obama's oil drilling permit! It's a conspiracy I tell ya!


Wait. What was the alternative again?

Attachment 6451

Drill Baby Drill!

[3WC]

Oladub, where did you get the idea the casing is ruptured below ground and "rocky debris" is flowing up through and reaming the casing? Also, any sources for the rest of the stuff in the third paragraph of your last post?

[oladub]

Oladub, where did you get the idea the casing is ruptured below ground and "rocky debris" is flowing up through and reaming the casing? Also, any sources for the rest of the stuff in the third paragraph of your last post?

The johndoty link touches on this. I have previously posted related articles. The best ongoing source of information seems to be http://www.theoildrum.com/ . All sorts of technical articles are funneled there. Some of the response lettert to articles there also contain good links but start by scanning down the Oildrum front page and you will find a couple of articles about flow. This guy also catches a lot of articles. http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/ including ABC News Confirms Underwater Oil Plumes In Gulf Oil Spill

Subsea oil plumes found 142 miles from rig

Matt Simmons explains the logic behind a small nuke and why he doesn't think the relief wells being drilled wont work. Others are more hopeful.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MARDF8F4P4

[mjs]

If those useless regulators haven't pulled BP's ability to operate or placed any of them in prison, they never will. BP is responsible for 97% of all egregious safety violations in the US Oil Industry in the last three years!!!!! Tony Hayward's testimony before Congress today should piss off any decent human anywhere in the world as he stone walled and repeatedly claimed BP's top priority has been safety. 42 dead, over 200 injured, and now hundreds of billions destroyed from a company that has officically been caught 760 times doing what is legally defined as an ""intentional disregard for the requirements of the [law], or showed plain indifference to employee safety and health."

What in the hell does it take to get a company shut down or for executives that kill their own employees for profit sent to prison? As far as I'm concerned, start asking for federal incarceration for Hayward, the managers that demanded unsafe acts such as six centralizers while acknowledging that twenty-one were required, and even government regulators that did things such as completing complex safety investigations in under five minutes solely on the word of the industry's worst violator. Finally, forget that joke of a $20 billion liability fund and raise a $200 billion fund from seizing and selling BP's assets to their competitors. No job losses, just changes in ownership needed to protect the lives of American workers. Extreme behavior in extreme times calls for extreme responses.

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/bps-dismal-...ry?id=10763042
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10770...-grilling.html

[Papasito]

^
I guess that wouldnt be too extreme, considering the extreme mess they've made.

In the last five years, investigators found, BP has admitted to breaking U.S. environmental and safety laws and committing outright fraud. BP paid $373 million in fines to avoid prosecution.

BP's safety violations far outstrip its fellow oil companies. According to the Center for Public Integrity, in the last three years, BP refineries in Ohio and Texas have accounted for 97 percent of the "egregious, willful" violations handed out by the Occupational Safety and Health

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/bps-dismal-...ry?id=10763042

wow

[gdogslim]

BP wanted to skin oil off surface, Obama had the Coast Guard stop them and inspect their ship and find minor violations. Obama only points his finger and plays the blame game.
They Dutch wanted to send ships to skim oil 3 days after the leak, Obama did not let them.
The us government gave BP an award last year for their good work. Why was this?
Obama can only go on tv and give speeches and do photo ops. He is so far over his head he can only go back to his Acorn roots and blame and attack and vilify others and shakedown companies unconstitutionally, to spread around to his special interests.
The office of the president executive is to protect the US's interests, it's citizens, not take over companies like Hugo Chavez, although Obama wishes he could do it.

Never Let A Good Disaster Go To Waste

[Jimaz]

I read somewhere that the water pressure at that depth is a bit over 2100 psi. The oil must be at an even greater pressure since it's gushing out into the 2100 psi water.

[oladub]

gdogslim, The Coast Guard is administered by the Department of Homeland Security which may explain part of the unexplainable bureaucratic slowing down of the clean up process.

The Jones Act limits the usage of foreign ships by the US government. This is one of the explanations of why the US government has only accepted the help of two out of twenty-two offers of help from foreign governments the last I heard. Since the oil is in international waters, I don't know why some foreign countries don't show up anyway with clean up equipment if for no other reason than to protect themselves from oily fisheries and beaches.

At least one county and one state aren't waiting for help from Obama anymore. This is like what's happened in Arizona. States and communities are picking up the slack to protect themselves.

Tired on not getting help from the federal government, Okaloosa County FL county commissioners decided to disobey the federal government to protect themselves.

"Commission chairman Wayne Harris said he and his fellow commissioners made their unanimous decision knowing full well they could be prosecuted for it."

“We made the decision legislatively to break the laws if necessary. We will do whatever it takes to protect our county’s waterways and we’re prepared to go to jail to do it,” he said."

“We’ve played the game. We’re done playing the game,"
http://www.thedestinlog.com/news/pas...and-plans.html

Meanwhile "Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has told the National Guard that there's no time left to wait for BP, so they're taking matters into their own hands."
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/article/bp-...ry?id=10914348

Congress is also to blame. The ability to temporarily override the Jones Act and Homeland Security protocol rests with Congress. Congress should have promptly handed such legislation to the President so he wouldn't be looking so inept. Of course, President Obama never put any pressure on Congress to do so.

[3WC]

Oladub: Thank you for your reasoned reply.

I have absorbed a tremendous amount of information about this mess and have not heard that anyone involved thinks the downhole pipe is split. Coincidently, after we posted, a congressman asked Tony Hayward yesterday if the downhole pipe was split. Hayward staed there was no evidence whatsoever to suppot such a hypothosis; I believe him.

I rarely read theoildrum; it can be interesting, but it's a forum such as this and while many of the posts are from people who appear to know what they are talking about, many if not most are not. People post what they've read or heard and much gets lost in the translation.

Because I'm in the business, I faithfully read the Oil & Gas Journal, Offshore Magazine, World Oil Magazine, "EXPLORER," the Journal of the American Institute of Petroleum Geology, and several others. These have very detailed reports on the BP situation, most of which go way beyond the popular press in scope and detail. Yet, from time to time there are conflicting accounts of what went wrong, the status of the plugging process etc. Nowhere has there been speculation that the downhole casing is split.

Even though BP cut many corners, it did circulate cement to surface [[behind the casing) and pressure tested it so even though they did not complete the process by running a cement bond log, there should be no way for the casing to have split.

Simmons is a [[rich) gadfly, as frequently wrong as he is right on his predictions, mostly about the price of crude. People are wasting their breath talking aboubt "nuking" the well as Simmons suggests may be a solution. I remember well in the 60s [[when I was starting out in the business) when the USSR claimed to have used nuclear devices to stop blowouts. Most people at the time though it was a ruse which enabled them to conduct nuclear testing which would have otherwise been prohibited. [[I've seen the films of the various attempts and admit that they look authentic.) There were even in the '60s ways to control blowouts way short of nuking them.

I am aware of the use of one nuclear device in the U.S. in the 60s. It was a joint effort by Apache Oil & Gas and the government to use a small nuclear device to fracture a very tight sandstone formation containing large amounts of gas, which wouldn't flow to the wellhead because of a lack of sufficient porosity and permeability. The test was at 23,000 feet as I recall, in NM. It failed and instead of fracturing the rock creating pathways for the gas to flow it created a large cavern lined with melted sand which had turnd to glass.

If it were feasible to control the blowout by a nuclear blast it would take the government 10 years to approve it [[fat chance of approval), and years to manufacture the device, drill an insertion well etc. Will never happen. The gas pressure in the well will dissipate long before then and the water pressure will prevent the flow of gas from the well. Then, they can go in a plug it conventionally.

[oladub]

3WC, Thanks for the reply. Please post some of what you have from your sources that isn't making it into the news. I wasn't aware of Apache's nuke experiment. I've long respected Raymond Plank's acumen. I recently read that Apache consumated the purchase of a billion $ of off shore Gulf assets since BP's problem.

I don't know a split from a fracture but here is an article making references to below water fractures of the pipe. I'm not knowledgable enough or well enough connected to determine the accuracy of this but her is a related article.
Guest Post: BP Official Admits to Damage BENEATH THE SEA FLOOR
"there is growing evidence that BP’s oil well – technically called the “well casing� or “well bore� – has suffered damage beneath the level of the sea floor."

[3WC]

Oladub: I only have time for a brief reply but will expand my comments over the weekend if I can. I do want to quickly comment on the quote in your post where the poster referred to ",,,,,,BP's oil well, technically called 'well casing' or 'well bore'..."

Technically, that's nonsense. A well bore and well casing are totally different; they are not synonomus. The well bore is the hole drilled through layers of rock strata from the surface [[or ocean bottom) to total depth. Casing is the pipe lowered through the well bore to the bottom - called a casing string. Sometimes there are more than one casing strings, each to a different depth, into which smaller diameter casing is lowered to a greater depth. The final string, from the surface to total depth, is called the "long string." The well bore and the well casing are entirely different things. BP appears to have used only one string of casing, very unusual in a 13,000 foot well; not much info as far as I know.

The casing is then cemented. Each casing string is cemented separately when installed. Cement is forced down through tubing to total depth and forced up the backside [[behind the casing, between the outside of the casing and the well bore.)

It may be a small point but the quote in your post is typical of many comments by people who appear to, but do not, understand what they are talking about.

In the old days, wells were generally drilled to the top of the productive formation and then cased. Then, a smaller bit was used to drill through the productive oil zone. Sometimes the wells blew out. Most times it was necessary to frac the well to create a pathway for the oil and gas to flow to the well bore. That was done by lowering nitroglycerine to the bottom and exploding it. That's called an open hole completion. I produce many such wells, drilled in the '30s. [[Now, hydraulic fracturing is used.)

More later if you're interested.

[ggores]

In the old days, wells were generally drilled to the top of the productive formation and then cased. Then, a smaller bit was used to drill through the productive oil zone. Sometimes the wells blew out. Most times it was necessary to frac the well to create a pathway for the oil and gas to flow to the well bore. That was done by lowering nitroglycerine to the bottom and exploding it. That's called an open hole completion. I produce many such wells, drilled in the '30s. [[Now, hydraulic fracturing is used.)

More later if you're interested.

Thank you for the recent sane commentary. This is an ugly situation, and, not to be a fearmonger, but I think this thing will become very, very, scary, in months to come, and will bring to light many, ummm, fascinating insights.

But maybe not. All I can say is that when it rains, I really don't want petroleum to wash off my arms in the morning.

high flow - low pressure {as registered on an atmospheric gauge}, slow flow = extremely high pressure registered on an atmospheirc gauge. Pepto Bismo might be a sloution.

But I will digress, and turn the dictation back over to some more expertised minds.

Fucking mess it is. That's all I know.

[mjs]

3WC, glad to hear we have someone that reads the industry journals. Between BP testimony, competitor testimony, Anadarko allegations, the information revealed by a showboating Congress owning over a million dollars in BP stock, and getting probably too much of my news on this from CNBC's Closing Bell, I'm not sure what to trust.

Despite being shown during the hearings a trade journal article stating that blowout preventers aren't perfect, a BP executive report where they were able to find 260 ways to make the blowout preventers fail, and a letter to BP from the manufacturer that modifying the blowout preventers as they were modified on this rig could make them fail, BP's Tony Hayward kept parroting that "the industry has considered blowout preventers to be the ultimate fail safe for thirty years". Does it seem to you that there was a widespread industry belief that blowout preventers were fail safe and fool proof?

Are blowout preventers supposed to be the final line of defense to be used only after everything that should never fail has failed or are they to be expected to be routinely activated? Have any idea on how often things deteriorate bad enough that they are utilized? Listening to Hayward, hearing that BP had numerous prior violations, hearing that numerous employee safety concerns were ignored and were often the basis for firing, and the mentality that one level of safety redundancy was adequate at a facility grossly devaiting from industry standards reminds be of Union Carbide in Bhopal. There they killed at least 3800, exposed half a million to toxic fumes, and left environmental damage still present 25 years later. At least there, some people served time and the company that felt they had no moral obligations to society were dissolved into their competitors.

Finally, what do you think of the six-month moratorium on deep water drilling? Do you feel it might be more beneficial to the safety of Americans and the industry as a whole if that moratorium were replaced with a moratorium on all the BP operated facilities in the US until it could be established that the facilities could pass OSHA and EPA inspections without any substantial violations? That sounds to me more like a boot on BP's throat than a fund for a pittance of the damages and a Presidential apology to the Brits. Seems to me that BP is trying to make its mess an industry-wide problem even though it seems BP disregard for the rules and recommended practices is in no way representative of the rest of the oil and gas industry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster

[Detroitej72]

Not at all Obama's fault?

Well, it seems good old Tony was far too busy this past weekend to worry about such trivial matters as an oil spill. And yet I'm sure there will be cons here defending this arrogant criminal: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...ogance-success

[oladub]

Well, it seems good old Tony was far too busy this past weekend to worry about such trivial matters as an oil spill. And yet I'm sure there will be cons here defending this arrogant criminal: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...ogance-success

BP Chief goes to yacht race...while President Obama golfs.

By Amy L. Geiger-Hemmer
June 21, 2010 9:55 a.m.
Funny how the mainstream media is choosing to ignore the fact that yes, while BP CEO Tony Hayward did indeed visit a yacht race over the weekend, President Barry Obama was hitting the links...all while oil continued to spew into the Gulf of Mexico...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37798557/ns/disaster_in_the_gulf/?ns=disaster_in_the_gulf?GT1=43001

Those are reasons why Gov. Bobby Jindal and others are having to pick up the slack. The Telegraph is now reporting that the flow is up to 100,000 barrels a day but not to worry. president Obama has just set up a seven person commission to figure out what went wrong and he actually included one person with any science or engineering background.

[Papasito]

[Flanders]

[Jimaz]

Nyuk nyuk nyuk


Total duration 16 minutes:

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[Papasito]

BP Chief goes to yacht race...while President Obama golfs.

it will be a cold day in hell before either of their hands get dirty. neither one of them really give a crap. Nobody has to be responsible for themselves anymore.

[Bigb23]

Some guy on Jay Leno's show last night was touting Alpaca hair to clean up the oil spill.
Now all we need is 300 million alpacas to shear - and right quick !