sorry, i lost track of the number of times "team" was used. this could be an all time record use of the term. sounds like the writings of a mid-manager with upper-manager aspirations.

Somewhere earlier, I read that someone accidentally pushed some button that caused the drill pipe to move and thus strip the annular, and chunks of rubber started flowing with the drilling fluid they were (prematurely) removing from the wellbore. The annular was DAMAGED, SHREDDED, CHUNKING OFF, and the mud logger reported this, even carried some of the shreds of rubber to show to someone, but the blowout was probably well on its way toward happening at that point. By the time the chain of command was consulted and the order was given to activate the BOP, it was too late -- WAY too late. The hydraulic system did not respond. The damaged BOP could not contain the gas/oil blowing out of the well.

So why wasn't the Company Man on the floor when this happened??

BP official apologetic for not sharing more info about 'top kill'

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/05/27/bp-official-apologetic-f...

==Until this point in the operation the volume of cement required to create an effective plug has not been seen as an issue==

That seems very hard to believe.

They must have a workplan, based on the analysis of the hydrolics in the system. The large outer leaks are there for everyone to see.

What is their plan for the cement?

They can't really "balance the well", so the plan must be to get close and pump enough cement so either on the way down or they way up it finally hardens and seals the works.

But before they committed to this, they must have done the very best analysis of how close they can balance and how much cement they will need based on the residual movement of the oil/mud boundary.

Right?

Redirect to newer post here: http://theoildrum.com/node/6518.

I am woundering why they dont freeze it off with N2, and remove the leaking riser and clean up top of the BOP ,install new Bop on top..then be able to bull head the kill mud down the hole and why not have 1 of two the rigs drilling relief wells, just shoot for the wellbore up higher and 1 shoot for the bottom....either 1 would releave the pressure off the well to kill it...

I wonder if they figured this out by looking at the deposits on the wrench the ROV was sticking into the outflow.

Folks here have been asking these very questions since they started pumping yesterday and probably before then.

They must have a *PLAN* to deal with this, right?

The fluid dynamics part of this is modelable with finite element analysis.

The well bore geometry is set and they probably don't know the reservoir pressure exactly. Pretty much all the rest is known or can be estimated within reasonable error. They can insert pressure probes and measure inside the BOP and at the riser holes.

They must have picked the mud density to be able to balance the reservoir pressure with some bias (I don't know if they prefer to have cement plug sink slowly or be expelled slowly). They must have calcualted the residual reate of cement sinking or expulsion. They must have calculated the amount of cement, time of cement pumping, etc., before they begun.

In other words they done their homework, right?

::exhales::

What does 'temporarily' mean?

BTW, did anyone else hear Prez O today? Sounds like he sort of understands the concept of peak oil and energy, and that we need to 'do something,' yet he does not know what to do about it. Of he doesn't want to commit. He needs to learn the definition of leadership.

Craig

Which is what the main point of the post was all about. It is not a problem with the mud supply, they have more than enough on the three boats and the pumps available. It is likely now that they have reached the point of pouring the plug and they don't have that same capability to supply the needed volume of cement at the flow rates required, if most of it is going to go out of the leaks. They may not have realized this until they went to start up the production line for the cement, and looked at the additional quantities that they now needed, relative to a conventional cement plug.

Thus the need to start blocking those holes.

I mentioned this possibility on the previous thread and was told I was being silly.

1. The reservoir will be tapped through other wells relieving the pressure.

2. Regardless of what happens here it is only a temporary fix because a relief well will be completed.

Two words: relief well.

The relief well is the real solution. Everything else, including the top kill, is just a stopgap to reduce the problem until the relief wells can be completed.

So the top kill doesn't need to last forever. Just until August (more or less).

(Maybe I should mention that it's not really a "relief well", it's a "kill well", and the purpose of the kill well is to get down below the bottom of the drill pipe and inject enough cement to plug the formation up but good.)

Doc -- As you probably guessed the rest of the mud went into the GOM.

And everyone: you can stop taking about BP pumping cement into the hole to plug the well. I know it's difficult for most to envision what's going on down there. But this isn't a simplification of the situation: you have a pipe sticking straight up the air and it's flowing 10 gallons per minute out the top. You stick a tube down the pipe and start pumping cement. Question: how long for the cement to harden? Answer: never. The cement is going to mix with the water and flow out the end of the pipe. Honest...I didn't dumb down this example. That's exactly what would happen if the pumped cmt down the blow out if it were still flowing. No one has ever set a cement plug into a flowing well in the history of the oil business. But you can shove a packer down a producing csg string and stop or at least slow a flow considerably. But can't shove a packer down this hole: can't get it through the BOP. And if you could there's drill pipe in the way.

Sorry to be such a downer but I thought BP might have come up with a clever idea they weren't talking about. So far I still haven't heard of it.

And now the big question is whether they have been making things worse as a result of erosion. The holes in the bent riser seem larger to me than they were several days ago. If that truly is the case, then I would think whatever gap/orifice exists in the BOP has suffered similar erosion - the amount obviously depending on the materials surrounding the gap.

That is why it was never going to work and why a top kill is also referred to as bullheading. Without a functioning BOP to impose artificial formation pressure(SIDPP/SICP - hydrostatic of kill fluid)and ability to bleed off expanding gas entrained in the well fluid. 1 bbl mud in, bleed off equivalent volume expanding gas out. BP's lips were always moving.

Thanks, guys. And, a few questions.

When they try to pump the mud down the hole, the upward flow is creating eddies and going around the mud, right? I mean, the problem seems to me to be that even if they pump in cement, the escaping oil and gas makes holes all around it. Or am I totally off?

Once, in the UP of Michigan, I swam in a stream that had been warmed by the local electric plant. It flowed into Lake Superior. As I swam, the upper level was warm... out a ways into the lake there was a layer about 1 foot deep that was warm, and when I moved it stirred the water and mixed the two levels. It did not take much to do that.

If there is an incoming stream that exactly matched in size the outgoing stream, it would create swirls of mixed water. Just like I visualize in the well, as the drill mud mixes with the uprising fluids.

Do you think there is any way to stop this thing other than the two relief wells?

What is the downside of the relief wells? How is old man Murphy going to screw them up?

Craig

Rockman -- not to nitpick, as UR analogy of (what my understanding is of) the situation is very good. I'd just make it that a firm connection of the fire hose to the hydrant can be made... it's just that the hydrant body is leaking at several locations :>)

Realistically

"It could be 24-48 hours before BP Plc can tell if its "top kill" operation to plug a blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico will succeed," a company spokesman said on Thursday

HOUSTON, May 27 (Reuters)

Extending the hydrant analogy, how will inserting the hose lower in the pipe feeding the hydrant have a different outcome from a hose flowing in closer to the top? In this case, what will be different about pouring in cement via a successfully cut relief well vs mud pushed in through the BOP? What will prevent the poured cement from flowing up the well and out the riser before it sets just as the mud entered via the BOP was doing?

Apparently relief wells have been successful in the past - what is the mechanism that allows them to work?

Again, thanks to Rockman and the other knowledgeable posters for bearing with us newbies who are trying to understand the complexities of the situation. We seem to have moved from oil drilling structural concepts to fluid mechanics today.

Good points.

I think there is another dimension to fluid viscosity as well, mentioned by knowledgeable in other threads.

If you ar trying to force the turbulent gas/oil mixture to back down of the BOP and back into the main pipe below, you want to use a "forcing" fluid of higher viscosity than the "target" fluid. Basically, you want to minimize the mixing of the two fluids at the interface. The approach works if you can maintain a reasonably well defined interface between the two fluids (ideally a surface, but could be a volume that is "thin" on the scale of the problem, probably a Reinolds number thing). If you don't and the two fluids mix continuously, you really can't maintain the local pressure differential that makes the whole thing move - you get a mess. That seems to be what we have.

I read here that the mud they use has "several" times the viscosity, but don't remember now if that was several times that of water or several times that of oil.

strictly a weight issue, though the viscosity of the fluid does need to be able to suspend the weight of the solids in a static condition, otherwise just precipitates out.
ppg x .052(pressure gradient cu. ft. air.@sealevel) x TVD=conversion of column of fluid to psi (diameter of column irrelevant)

Caveat I was a mud logger--not a mud engineer, and despite the seeming similarity of the titles, they are pretty different jobs. The mud logger tracks the mechanical parameters of the rig, how the pumps are working, where the top drive is etc; the lithology of the cuttings coming out of the hole, and any hydrocarbon content--either gas or oil. The mud engineer actually directs the making and maintaining of the drilling fluid, so things like weight per gallon, pH, filter cake layer, viscosity and gel point were the mud engineer's area.

Having said that, I talked to a lot of mud engineers, I recorded their mud reports and included them with my morning reports, and needed to understand the drilling fluid insofar as it affected what I saw with my gear. So here goes: Drilling mud is made to liquify with the application of shear stress (ie pumping) and gel in the absence of pumping. Precisely how much depends on the specifics of the hole in question. The plan is to have the mud gel when the pumps are off to prevent gas from rising through the column, and to prevent cuttings from sedimenting to the bottom.

If I understand your question, yes the rheology of the mud is very important. If they can get heavy enough mud to the well bottom to balance the bottom hole pressure, and then stop pumping, it SHOULD hold things more or less static. If it can't balance the pressure, the flow from the well will prevent the gelling and defeat the kill. I may be wrong here, does anybody with a more pure fluids background care to sound off?

It seems that they may not have been able to get the heavy mud to the bottom of the hole. I HOPE I am wrong about that. I REALLY hope I am wrong about that.

I'm not an expert, but even I can tell that the "experts" quoted in the article are *also* not experts. The giveaway is the ol' "just detonate a bumb down there" as the closing kicker. The floor of the gulf is soft fine mud. Imagine detonating a bomb in jello or pudding -- would that seal anything up?

The oil did come from the "little dinky hole" -- because it's flowing at almost unimaginable pressures. If you don't understand that, sure you may be looking for other sources -- but you're also surely not an "expert".

I would think that BP would know if the riser were still attached to the well head or not.

Simmons is nuttier than a fruitcake.

I've watched the interview with Simmons and Possi that these quotes were taken from. From what I was able to pick out of the conversation, they are making some VERY INTERESTING claims:

1. The riser is still attached to the Horizon and the oil we see coming out of the end of it is actually coming out of a tank somewhere on the sunken drill rig. I couldn't figure out where they thought the GAS may be coming from.

2. We've all seen the two main leaks from the riser (top of the BOP/riser kink and end of the riser) and there was the third leak at the end of the drill pipe before that was valved and shut off. These two clowns are claiming that the REAL leak from this well is somewhere about 6 or 7 miles away from where all those ships and ROVs are working. There was no explanation of how the oil might be traveling from the GPS coordinates where the Horizon was drilling to where they claim it is coming up from the sea floor.

3. Both Simmons and Possi have suggested that military high explosives are an (the?) appropriate solution to this problem. In fact, Simmons suggested that the navy should "drop a bomb down the bore". If we ignore the little problem involving getting any such bomb past the kinked-up riser and/or partially-actuated shear rams in the BOP AND the fact that the inner casing of the well is something less than 10" inner diameter - thus SEVERELY LIMITING the size of bomb that could be shoved down the bore, we are STILL left with the problem that any such explosion would introduce NUMEROUS new leak paths to either the surface or to new reservoirs higher in the geological strata.

From what I understand, Simmons may once have had some credibility in the field. As far as I'm concerned, on the basis of what I've seen him say in the last few days, he's now got about as much credibility as George W. Bush had when he was in the oval office.

Personally, I have MUCH more confidence in what I hear from Heading Out, ROCKMAN, Shelburn, or many other posters in this forum.

I'm not an expert, but in my judgment it is complete bunk.

For many years now I have had a good amount of respect for Matt and his collective body of work. Could someone who knows him or at least has met and talked to him tell me why during this event, he's coming off sounding like a nutter? Reason I ask is at least in the MSM this can put all the real work backed up with evidence he has done over the years on PO in jepordy. I know he has never exactly been mainstream but some of what he is saying is directly contradicting what we can see from the ROV's.

The technician, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters, said the problem was not seen as serious.

Really?

New York Times wrote:
A technician at the BP command center said that pumping of the fluid had to be stopped temporarily while engineers were revising their plans, and that the company hoped to resume pumping by midnight, if federal officials approved.

Stopping the pumping of mud would explain why the leaking stuff turned to a darker brown color last night but not why the LA Times proclaimed success in stopping the oil leak around 8:27 am PDT this morning.

BP really should have been honest with the chance of success here being 50%. I also wonder why they didn't drill a parallel well right away so they would eventually have the scary option of lighting off conventional explosive and collapsing the well hole. Now we'll probably have to wait for the first relief well, unless the plan on starting over with another 50,000 barrels of mud. This is not good news for the BOP. shakes head.....

Why not pump the mud in at a much higher rate?

no ..they can change weight of the mud on the fly .....oil based or water based means the delivery mechanism is oil based (diesel) or water ....oil based muds can be significantly strengthened with cross linking polymers to increased absolute viscosity which is the ability to suspend and deliver solids .....what matters here is the mud weight....barite is what is mixed in the mud to increase the mud weight .......

calculating mud weight for kill mud is a basic calculation and BP knows what the mud wight is ....what they have no control over is what direction the mud flows and how much .....same goes for the wellbore ....the idea is to force mud along the well but the mud is flowing into the rocks underground (losing fluid in formation) and so its not going where it needs to go to be effective....

now they cant simply keep increasing weight on the mud arbitrarily....csg and liner burst pressures.....formation pore pressure .....many things come into play ....but i think the biggest worry has to be the BOP stack itself and casing seats ....

Well, there is a press conference at 5:30 Eastern time.

Well they would probably announce a delay and explain to the media we are looking at our options....The problem is once they stopped pumping that mud the oil is going to come shooting back out again.

I also read on here today that Barry is calling a 6 month delay in deepwater drilling??? shakes head if the oil companies drill 2 relief wells in each location I see no reason why we can't start drilling again. The last thing we need here is another 3000 people out of work.

21" before being stretched and bent.

The original diameter of the riser was 20 inches or 22 inches. It is currently bent over in an approximately 90 degree angle and squished a little wider than its original diameter.

If the end is capped allowing the pressure to increase, the riser would probably spring several leaks along its length because it is damaged. Leaks in many locations would be harder to control than in two locations.

I don't know if that's really dispersant; to my eye the current feed doesn't look particularly different from the stills at the beginning of http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6515 which also have a stream on the right side of the riser. If they really stopped pumping mud, though, I'd guess we'll see black pretty soon.

haha... it's not over yet. bp guy is not in the best mood today.

How is doing this with the Relief Well any easier? After they intersect the well, and push mud again, it will also just go up the main well hole right? The well is flowing, I don't understand why it is any different trying to push against it at the top or the bottom. Same problem. Can someone explain how this is done exactly with the relief well?

BP guy says now that they have stopped pumping mud for some time now.
So if the feeds ARE live right now, all what we are seeing coming out right now must be oil/gas!!
Doesn't look good to me....

that's my read. I think they're going to try changes with the materials and the spec grav of the mud, and the pressure--all variables they can play with.

all that mud is probably gone right back out, yes.

you cannot start and stop a top kill on a flowing well......top kill on a flowing well is a one shot procedure......once the mud pumps stop, top kill is effectively over for a flowing well....so essentially what they will be doing if they start pumping again is top kill attempt No 2.....

i think BP engineers have given up ....this was a long shot anyways ...BP is just blathering and will soon announce that top kill has failed completely .....

It will be completely flushed out of the system. The top kill is an all or nothing proposition, you have to overcome the gas-oil flow up the bore hole.

As somebody mentioned before, using mercury and thousands of tons of it would overwhelm the gas-oil stream by the large density differential (i.e. it would not be blended completely by turbulent mixing in the BOP and borehole). But this is never going to be tried and at the end of the day the relief wells are the only solution.

I strongly suspect that was a misstatement, and that he meant that the oil had stopped flowing at that time.

I think he said "as of the start of this press conference". So probably a couple of hours ago.

They're talking about this 16 hours on CNN right now.

This really, really sucks.

The problem itself really sucks and now BP continues with this spin. My gosh.

I don't get them. Do they think they are "beyond whatever"..

Suttles is going to be on John King's show. (I think it's 6 EDT CNN)

Hopefully this 16 hour thing will get clarified.

One less day's worth of oil polluting the Gulf till the relief wells work.

Alan

Only that more people are aware of the dire situation we're all in. Hopefully the response will increase.

Obviously there's about 15,000bb of toxic mud in the sea and many of the leaks have likely enlarged too.

I *think* Suttle said they've only pumped something around 15000 bbl of kill mud.

This has never been done before so far down in the water. How can you predict a 10% chance of it working?
We don't know, no one knows at this point if they are going to be able to slow down the flow of oil and gas to try something else or try to stop it using this method.
They haven't given up on the top kill yet.

The led gauge and the shot of the 2 round things surrounded with bolts. I've seen them look at those a number of times. One looks like it a pin sticking out. Maybe like a blown fuse.
Steve

Was wondering same thing. They had plugged something in, then twisted the knob, and then the timer started. Not sure what it's for. It started somewhere around 22:30 (or thereabouts).

I also appreciate Rockman's analogy.

What I don't understand - and asked about higher up in the thread - is how a relief well works. Assuming the establishment of a successful entry from the relief well to the problem well, the cement being poured in will have the same choice to make as yesterday's mud - go up the bore or down into the formation? Unless there is some way to put in a solid, as opposed to liquid, plug, it seems it would just shoot up along with the gas and oil. I'm obviously missing something.

Jessica, I wonder about it as well. I suspect that a crack team of social psychologists an semioticians spent the time formulating the government script and the corporate script to minimize the negative impact of killing Top Kill Stage 1 on the general public.

Mine, too, and if Admiral Thad Allen says one more time "I am confident I am getting the total truth from BP. I have "Tony's" (as in BP's CEO Tony Hayward) cell number in my pocket"...... I may throw something. I had a lot of respect for Admiral Allen prior to this, but from Louisiana, it looks like BP has Thad Allen in their pocket.

sorry, rant over

It just amazes me, that BP let all of us think, for the last 16 hours or so

Hmmm ... putting on my tinfoil hat, wonder who knew what was really going on and bought some BP stock or options early this morning and then sold in the afternoon. It closed up 7% today ... not bad interest rate for a few hours, even better leveraged through options.

(and I agree with the comments about Allen - he is either very gullible or doesn't want to disrupt his working relationship. Landry and Suttles are looking chummy too, although somewhat less so today. Stockholm syndrome setting in?)

Thank you, Jessica! I have been sitting here fuming - thinking that bp let us and the press think all day that we were seeing this "top kill" process. They've been saying "everything is going according to plan". But what is the plan? To me, the plan seems to be to pacify the public. So we keep having these "attempts" of one kind or another. And every attempt leads to a postponement and another and another. I disagree with the person who thinks there are a bunch of psychologists planning this. Indeed, their strategy of doling out information and raising hopes is only going to sow "mistrust" - and cynicism, and this is speaking as a psychologist myself.

I am very upset as day by day more and more oil gushes. And I do not want my attention or my concern betrayed by the withholding of crucial information. Speaking as a clinical psychologist, this strategy of withholding essential information is a mistake! It feeds irrational hopes. And it will end in irrational rage due to a sense of betrayal.

Anyone from bp who is reading this thread, pay attention! Because trying to mislead the public is a recipe for an enraged public! Give us the information - on a timely basis. And don't let people spend an entire night and work day believing progress is being made, only to find that we've been snookered!

Unfortunately, the US military and BP are already partners.Makes me wonder if they don't control everything.

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

US Military Fuel Contracts

April 06, 2010 -- "Air BP, Warrenville, Ill. is being awarded a maximum $124,754,182 fixed-price with economic price adjustment, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for aviation turbine fuel." [2]

16-Aug-2009 -- "BP West Coast Products (dba Arco) in La Palma, CA won a maximum $516.8 million fixed price with economic price adjustment, indefinite-delivery/ indefinite-quantity contract (SP0600-09-D-0512) for aviation fuel." [3]

August 24, 2008 -- "Air BP, Warrenville, Ill. is being awarded a maximum $12,446,821 fixed price with economic price adjustment contract for jet fuel."[4]

September 14, 2005 -- "BP West Coast Products LLC, La Palma, Calif., is being awarded a maximum $587,804,938 fixed price with economic price adjustment for JP8 Turbine Fuel and F-76 Fuel for Defense Energy Support Center. " [5]

They're killing time. They've killed over two weeks with this fantasy. Killed a week with the dome, then told us a top hat (operation sombrero, Ixtoc 1979), then the siphon.

Everything that could be executed in few days is strung out for a week or too. They're hoping they'll wake up one morning and the relief well will be finished and they can be done with those rude, ungrateful Amuurricans.

The BP blowout is similar to the Ixtoc 1 blowout, except of course for the huge difference in water depths:

http://home.versatel.nl/the_sims/rig/ixtoc1.htm

It took Pemex nine months to kill the blowout well with relief wells.

i dont think the concept of relief wells is clear to folks here....

when BP says a relief well ....they mean to intercept this wellbore with another well....then drill out the casing and enter this wellbore with the relief well.....now this is easier said than done ....and while directional drilling is quiet advanced .....there is no guarantee the first attempt will work ....thats why BP is drilling 2 wells incase the first one misses .....and each well takes 90 days to drill atleast .....last time it was tired it took four attempt to do it ....so its not like they drill a well and that just becomes a relief well...

this thing literally will take more precision than a US Ranger sniper ...

Redirect to newer post here: http://theoildrum.com/node/6518.

100% agree and I never thought I would think that about him. It appears to us, that he is standing shoulder to shoulder with BP at "headquarters".

Allen's a character. Two days ago he said the "spill" might approach the Exxon Valdez when it's over in August.

He told residents of Venice, La the oil washing up was as harmless as Noxzema.

Today he said he was going to check the lunch of the workers airlifted to the hospital to see if that was the cause.

Allen's a character. Two days ago he said the "spill" might approach the Exxon Valdez when it's over in August.

He told residents of Venice, La the oil washing up was as harmless as Noxzema.

Today he said he was going to check the lunch of the workers airlifted to the hospital to see if that was the cause.

Lawndart, what is your problem? 70% chance of success is 30% chance of failure. 30% chance things happen all the time. How can you tell from a single try what the chances are in general? Is it your nerves wearing thin? I can relate to that, but...

All things being equal, I think that it's reasonable to say that the added pressure from being at this depth can be considered a positive effect, that is, it's the "delta P" (pressure) that's important.

But the "positive" effect of the higher water column pressure is more than offset by the stupendous challenges of operating ROV's, etc. at this depth.

Hey - thanks for the explanation...that helps!

what the prof is talking about here .....mud cake ....he forgets that this is a flowing well.......mud cake is a hindrance to flow not an obstruction ....and the reservior pressure will not let mud cake form .....(an anlogy is the ksin factor of a producing well which is improved using acid jobs ..thats the cake hes talking about) .....what a goof ball professor .....this is a flowing well ....most models professors work on are in mud labs .....dynamic modeling of mud behavior beyond basics is impossible in a flowing well....not to account for the fact that the flow in the well is choke flow....means fluid is flowing at speeds higher than the speed of sound which introduces new dynamic behavior in flowing fluids that the flow right behind a slug of oil is pressure independent at the instantaneous moment .....these professors need to go look at fluid flow profiles in pipes again ...maybe go revisit book they have themselves written

I wonder why they don't try to pump seawater into the choke line? They should be able to pump more water flow than mud flow. At the same time, pump mud into the kill line. The water would begin to "freeze up" (hydrate) in the BOP, causing a restricted flow from the well, and giving the kill line mud flow an opportunity to drop into the hole. With luck, they might be able to freeze the BOP for awhile, long enough to get enough mud down the well bore to get more three phase pressure drop in the well bore. Once the pressure drop in the well bore increases, it will be easier to get mud down the hole, without the gas/oil surges pushing mud up out of the well.

It is worth a shot, even with a junk shot. Even if the BOP doesn't freeze up, the pressure drop across the BOP should increase dramatically with the higher flow rate. They might be able to pump enough water to double (or triple) the volumetric flow through the BOP, which would raise the pressure drop through the BOP considerably. This should really begin to restrict the oil/gas flow up the well.

The "Rock" is prominently featured.

Maybe someone in the MSM besides the Houston Chronicle will report the collapse in production in the main producing structure in BP's Thunder Horse complex.

BP--by failing publicly report the production data (except of course for the not easily accessible MMS data)--has so far been fairly successful in hiding one of the largest collapses in production I have ever seen from a large productive structure.

In many cases, these deepwater fields are not going to be nearly as good as expected.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6415
BP's Thunder Horse to Under-Perform in the Wake of the Deepwater Horizon Blowout

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/biz/7006307.html
In deep, and falling far short

when they do intercept the wellbore with the relief well....essentially they will do the same as what they are trying ot do ...except the will use the relief well to pump the concrete in (so the leverage the hydraulics in the relief well to plug this leaking well)
this physics of this interception literally will take more precision than a US Ranger sniper ...

Several years ago Shell was drill a 25000’ well in N Mississippi. They had about 14000’ of 95/8 and I am not sure about how much liner they had. They were about 22000 and took a kick. Got it closed in OK. Had 19lb mud. Had 2100 lbs at surface. Very little loss of mud when well kicked. Calculated bottom hole pressure was about 25000 lbs. Somewhere along had an underground Blow out. 9 5/8 had burst at about 4500ft. Oh high H2S content. Drilled directional well aim at 9and 5 at 13000’ My older brother was Tool Pusher on rig drilling relief well. When reached proper deapth calculation were they had gone 3ft to one sid They pulled back up went back down and bracketed it 1 ft the other way Drilled back down and bumped the 9 and 5 in the other well. They then drilled down alongside it for 200 ft. Slumberger ran Geophones down and Bro said you couls hear the gas whistling past. They then ran a direction perforation in and perforated the 9 5/8 string on the other well. I saw a picture of the Haliburton rig up. I dont know how many trucks abou 10 acres of them. They were going to pump cement at the rate of 48 bbls per mimute. The Engineers calculated that this rate of pumping would force the cement thru the perfs and go up and down. Let cement set. Ran geophones back in Silence of a dead well bore. This was in the 70s and I am sure they have even more accurate measuring tools than they did then. You can bet your house first born son and all future earnings that one thing BP and MMS knows is the exact location of the bottom of that well. The casing does not need to be milled thru just run a directional perf gun in and shoot it full of hole. No hill for a stepper.

Because of the high H2S Shell had contingcy plan to ecacuate the City of Jackson Ms

Exactly what I was thinking. Get water into the BOP and let the cold and pressure work for you, by forming hydrates in the BOP.

If they could inject small lightweight metal thermos capsules filled with liquid nitrogen that would break in the BOP, they might be able to freeze the BOP shut.

how do you get Liquid Nitrogen down a mile before it boits away? Ever see what a mile of see water does to styrofoam cups (aka insulation)?. No way to pipe it down from the surface, So you have to bring it down in a tank that can stand the pressure and have a sufficent insulation barrier to prevent it from boiling all away.Extreme cold temperatures could make the metal extremely brittle causing it to fracture making the problem much worse.

A better way is a two part epoxy that instantly hardens when the two parts are combined. However I don't know if the crude oil and methane would screw up the epoxy chemistry or if it can work in the extreme cold (mile under sea water is below freezing).

I recall overhearing on TV that they have another option instead of the mud, that has the consistence of chewing gum.

however see my post below from a bombshell from matt simmons. Matt believes there is fractured blow out about 5 or 6 miles away from BOP that is leaking 120,000 bpd (barrels not gallons!)

Why not call Scottie and ask for an anti-gravity pack and a transporter. What next a mini black hole ha! Then a two part epoxy maybe a billion pounds of JB weld ha! Why not the Dutch boy finger in the hole? Please, please don't think these guys are stupid. This could very well be the greatest engineering challenge of our lifetime.

Pumping started again according to CNN........personally, I am now certain they are all lying on a very large level.

The produced oil & gas almost certainly has sand entrained with it, and that has made things worse. High pressure mud also not so good.

Alan

I also am not an oil industry expert either, computer programmer FWIW, but I've been reading this forum a lot in the last few days.

Why would it matter if the 4 holes at on riser kink above the BOP got bigger (due to the top kill attempt(s)), if most of the oil was leaking 600 or so feet away from the snapped part of the riser anyway. Just trying to figure that out not disputing anything.

Well, you may be a newbie, but unfortunately, you've hit the nail on the head.

It is likely that the topkill mud shot DID increase the size of the relevant orifices in the BOP and the riser kink. It is also, inarguably, true that - to the extent that these orifices were opened up - the flow through them will increase (assuming that the inlet pressure remains the same)

Yep and only release the info after close of business.

Did BP have a plan? Does the Pope do you know what in the woods? Of course they had a plan. A few days back, Rockman told us all about it. Make as much money as you can. Don’t like the rules? Simply change them by owning that part of the government that sets the rules. It’s called capitalism. It’s a great system, for people like BP and Rockman.
Have you noticed that Rockman is a Palin cheerleader? Drill Rocky, Drill! Oh Yeah Baby!!!

If the flow is uncontrolled (no choke), yes there is hope for a further reduction in formation pressure. But if the flow has been choked down to anywhere close to what a Petroleum Engineer would recommend for a production well, then there is likely no realistic hope.

This wild well was set up for production later, which reduces, but does not eliminate entirely, that the well would collapse on itself (bridging over). It depends just what path the oil is taking up from the formation.

Some straws to grasp, but I am in mourning for what is to come ;-(

Alan

One thing that should happen is that the flow rate would decline as the reservoir is depleted. But it may be a heck of a big reservoir, with water drive and compaction drive, and so the decline may not be much.

I'd suggest that BP have already partitioned their US business to protect the rest and as a prelude to disposal. They aren't likely to get a fair hearing, no matter what - too many politician and reporters looking to make capital off wild stories. They also aren't likely to win any new opportunities in the US for the next five years (no politician would risk it), and with the mature state of the US market past that is doubtful; so their best bet is to minimise the downside and get as far away as possible.

Transparency in the current climate will just give vested interests something to fashion into a stick and beat them with it.

I'd expect to see BP selling off US interests, to China or a Sovereign Wealth Fund, within a short time.

that has been brought up more than once on this page. in short: it's rubbish.

Sometimes I wish Matt Simmons would keep his mouth shut. He wrote an important book and is obviously a smart guy but he spouts off too much. It undermines his message I think.

This was commented on with considerable derision upthread.

I listened to that twice. I don't think he was saying the LEAK was 5 or 6 miles away. He was saying that there is a plume 5 or 6 miles away that he thinks is coming from the somewhere at the end of the 1 mile of pipe. Thus the leak would be only 1 mile or less away. In other words he is saying the pipe did not shear off and there is a leak we are not being shown.

I don't know enough to weigh in but I knew the leak couldn't be 5 or 6 miles away so I listened again. I am quite sure it is the plume that he describes as that distance away and the leak as coming from the farther away than BP is saying.

This is the link I listened to at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDGAoU1H2gM&feature=youtu.be from May 26. I believe that there was an earlier phone interview that was not good and hard to hear and perhaps then what he was saying got misreported.

I reckon that's kind of what they tried here:
http://www.bp.com/genericarticle.do?categoryId=9033657&contentId=7062142

Short answer: 13,000 psi reservoir pressure.

The Admiral's statement this morning makes absolutely no sense versus NPR's update of what Suttles was saying. If they stopped pumping mud at midnight, elsewhere reported to be 2:00 AM, and there was still mud venting the holes in the bent over riser, then talking about concrete at the start of business this morning was crazy.

My Q goes here: Why didn't they use the most dense mud in this Solar-system at first attempt?
( all in all I have troubles with this top-kill idea in the first place)... the junk-shot idea on the other hand I really like- sounds plausible- to me at least.

Look upthread a couple (few?) posts to one by DeeperCheaper. He describes what I THINK is happening here. From what I've read in this forum, I'm convinced that there is a leak path in one (or more) of the annuli in the casing assembly. This leak path is allowing reservoir fluid (oil/gas mixture) to come up around the mud column in the well bore and make its way into the well bore somewhere near/at the wellhead.

Because this reservoir fluid is at high pressure, but not below much of a column of the mud, the only way to push back against it is to crank up the pressure in the BOP/wellhead area. Unfortunately, this section of the well has undergone some pretty serious strain in the collapse of the riser and has also been sand-blasted for a little over a month now, so nobody's ENTIRELY sure just how much pressure they can apply without bursting something.

When the wellbore pressure is 13k psig, what would you do with the 3 billion barrels of oil that would escape? Bigger hole more flow ha!

The methane hydrates were a problem when the tried to put the large containment vessel over it. If the flow were completely controllable, then yes, a larger hole and more heat might reduce hydrate formation.

But the problem at this time is uncontrolled flow and hydrates are not a factor.

The holes we see on the video are unfortunately continually getting larger on their own by erosion - fluid plus sand coming through every hole at very high rates.

simmons is basically saying exactly that, except, he wants a huge hole, essentially to collapse the seabed to equalize the pressure.

i don't think he is saying that this is a good choice. i think he is saying that given the circumstances, it is the least bad choice.

if you accept that this is as bad as simmons and pozzi say (i sure do) then you have to discard the notion that the kill wells will work (they won't, because the cement job is bad, and as noted elsewhere on this thread, will not allow the mud to provide sufficient downforce).

simmons has an excellent reputation. many here have been attacking him as a lunatic, but, i haven't seen anyone attack his information.

where is the oil coming from to form these plumes? as he said, it's obviously not coming out of the riser pipe.

he must know something we don't, why else risk his reputation and deal with all the hateslinging here? my bet is he has good satellite images which are not yet public.

That would be Matt Simmons; there are a number of comments on his statements, mostly to the point that it is extremely doubtful that he is correct. I would say he is just making noise in response to all the media exposure. He comes across like a nutcase... I think he went over the top or something.

He posits that the oil we see pouring out of the riser is somehow coming from the platform, and that the riser and platform floated 5 or 6 miles from where the hole was drilled. Never mind the geo-sat fix on it... and never mind that there is no way the rig could contain either that sort of pressure or quantity of oil and gas!

NO. It is bad enough as it stands. There is almost certainly no second leak 6 miles away!

Barking mad is what I say!

Craig

48" tube sucking into a super tanker that has centrifuges ?

why not ??

No machine with that much suction ? at those depths / lift ??

It looks as though BP is streaming two videos out to the world, but only one is directly accessible from their website. By just going up one number from 97892 to 97893, you'll get another view of the BOP valves. This additional stream seems to be the one that NPR has been carrying which just recently went back to the same video of the leaking riser pipes.

I checked a few other numbers nearby, but it looks like one more is all we get.

ROV1

http://mfile.akamai.com/97892/live/reflector:46245.asx?bkup=46262

ROV2 (Somtimes)
http://mfile.akamai.com/97893/live/reflector:46245.asx?bkup=46262

Still, would be nice to see more since it's obvious there has to be more feeds than just two.

It looks as though BP is streaming two videos out to the world, but only one is directly accessible from their website. By just going up one number from 97892 to 97893, you'll get another view of the BOP valves. This additional stream seems to be the one that NPR has been carrying which just recently went back to the same video of the leaking riser pipes.

I checked a few other numbers nearby, but it looks like one more is all we get.

ROV1

http://mfile.akamai.com/97892/live/reflector:46245.asx?bkup=46262

ROV2 (Somtimes)
http://mfile.akamai.com/97893/live/reflector:46245.asx?bkup=46262

Still, would be nice to see more since it's obvious there has to be more feeds than just two.

It sounds like he is taking responsibility. Success or failure this is what I would expect from a leader.

If they are good engineers and scientists then they are going to attempt several different things starting with the least risky and try to learn something from each try. No need to rush and make things worse.

Why the sarcasm?

After today, I hope and pray that the Louisanian shrimpers and fishermen can corner some BP executives in a dark alley soon.

The most prominent symptoms of a psychopath is antisocial behaviour, having no conscience, being highly manipulative, being a fluent and convincing liar and being superficially charming. Psychopaths are thrill seekers who view others as fodder for exploitation.

Bill Nye, The Science Guy, explains why he thinks BP temporarily suspended efforts to cap the oil leak (since BP is going to keep it a secret):

CNN Video

Bush would have fixed it perfectly by now. He is white.

Sorry, I had to laugh. People may think these guys are stupid but, come on a screen ha! If a 100 ton concrete dome was blown off ha!

I think some here are missjudging the probable BP plan. Initial drilling fluid pumping was probably as much about testing the internal structure of the damaged BOP as it was about anything else. Engineers likely took the pressure readings and developed a model of the BOP to develop the next steps. Next pumping was likely to introduce minimal lost circulation material at increasingly higher flow rates to determine if the internal dynamics of the BOP or other drill string or annulus structural failers were present. The junk shot, apparently now occurring is likely based on these findings. My guess is that if they have moved straight to the actual junk shot, they have determined the BOP damage is the biggest problem and will attempt several relatively low pressure junk shots of different materials followed by drilling fluid at increasing pressure to test the effectiveness, followed by additional junk shots. While it would have been nice for initial testing and subsequent lost circulation pumping to show that a full top kill could be accomplished in a single step...that was always a long shot.

If you look at the well diagram posted here:

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6493

You will see that the 'foundation' is 1,000' of 36" pipe and 2,000' of 26 or 28" pipe sleeved within. The bottom is mud - you can't set a 'foundation' on it because it would just sink.

I have a couple of related questions - how is the BOP latched on to the wellhead? and how is it released when it's time to move?

How do they get the well started in the soft bottom? That 36" pipe must be deployed along with the drill somehow...

They pumped 15k bbls of mud downhole in 10 hours according to Suttles and forced the flow down the wellbore they believe. So they leaked out some mud, but some actually started filling up the wellbore, only to start flowing back up with the oil/gas when they stopped pumping. I don't see how that affects the leak rate. We don't know when the last of the mud leaked out.

Great clip! I'm laughing, but then again I'm not...

I'M pretty sure the problem is if they just closed off the pipe, it would burst farther down. Remember, you have a pipe with three miles of oil moving up at a fast clip. That inertia would probably burst everything. If it was as simple as jamming a cork in tight enough I'm sure they would have tried that.

I noticed what may be new leak in live feed just now.......the leak at the farthest right now has flow coming from below it. They are panning there now to look at it....its also flowing very black.

I talked to a Chem Prof. friend of mine a couple weeks ago to see if there was a mix of monomers that could be injected and quickly cross-link. A ring opening metathesis polymerization injected similar to reaction injection molding where too-quick crosslinking is a problem.

Unfortunately he didn't know what kind of polymer could achieve structural integrity in the time between injection at the bottom of the BOP and flow to the topmost obstruction in the BOP that could clog up. If there was a way to move the injection point down (perhaps mix it in with the mud?) so that by the time it got to the obstruction it would be solid enough to hold and not just get squished out like pudding.

He suggested the name of a guy at Cal Tech that would be the best guy to talk to, he already works with BP on other things so I'm sure they've talked to him.

I wonder if anyone has set up a test lab with these kinds of temp./pressure/hydrocarbon/flow/BOP materials conditions so they can try some of this out ahead of time?

Molten metal sounds interesting if you can get it to the bottom- wasn't the junk shot material being injected out of a manifold that is down on the ocean floor near the BOP so it doesn't have to travel a mile? And having the ability to move the fluid back and forth would be helpful- although I guess the oil pressure can help with that...

I've seen this discussed, its not that simple. The whole pipe system has been so badly stressed/damaged that the changes pressure would just shatter it, and or the oil would leak out from the sides farther down in the rock.

There is nothing in Suttle's press conference that indicates the Top Kill was a failure. If Top Kill failed last night, they would not be doing this again. They got enough of what they wanted last night - to make adjustments and go for more.

The relief wells will finish before you get any production wells in.

Looking for more holes I think.....I saw a new flow at the lower right, and then they started zooming in on the holes....

Seeing your post gives me some hope that we can deal with this disaster and that the ocean can recover. However, I'm sure we are all praying that it can be done much more quickly than IXTOC.

Isn't this what they just spent the last month trying to do, and apparently gave up?

I believe this BOP had two of the rubber annulii - redundant. I had wondered about the hydraulic pressure to close them bleeding off. I would think that the guts are pretty much junk by now with the drill string bent over at the top and the leak erosion and then the mud pumping. They worked a long time initially trying to get the rams to operate. I am sure they would have tried this and exhausted all possibilities before trying the first mud flow.

You are looking at the wellhead - the kinked riser is attached to the BOP sitting on the wellhead. The 'other' leak is at the end of the riser pipe - the end that used to be attached to the drilling rig. That is where they were capturing oil with the RIT.

T. Boone Pickens just said on CNN these attempts won't work. Said the relief wells were the only shot.

Right or wrong at least someone with influence is trying to warn people so they can prepare.

You are right on the button, EL. Lets not forget its Memorial Day Weekend..people are getting ready to kick off the summer. And we won't have to go to the nearest movie complex to see this Summer's biggest blockbuster flick, because it's going to be unfolding right before our eyes. Hurricane season is predicted to be very active this year. We won't be needing 3D glasses to see this disaster movie!!

Big deal. Most of the material is flowing down the inside to the end of the riser and coming out there, where they jammed in that insertion-thingy.

You can capture the stream with vlc (videolan), then play it back and fullscreen + pause + screenshot...
I did the same with "mplayer -dumpstream", see the posted bit above.

If they started pumping again, that could be part of the reason for the appearance of higher pressure or more volume.

snagit v 10 will capture the feed w/ it's all-in-one feature.

I've taken a couple of screenshots - in order they are
5/26/10- 9:40 pm (CDT)

5/27/10 6am (CDT)

5/27/10 12pm (CDT)

and, 5/27/10 8:38pm (CDT)

[alt + print screen] will copy the current window onto you clipboard. You might not get the best quality but you will have something you can crop and save with Picture Manager

I think the sheen of oil (that can be seen from space) is probably less of an issue than the slightly heavier hydrocarbons drifting more slowly upwards and go under booms and into the estuaries. The problem is more 3d than a typical surface spill. Alot of oil will be cleaned up, but I have a suspicion that an even greater (much greater) amount will have to wait on the hydrocarbon eating bugs (read: bacteria) to dispose of it. That's not to discount the surface efforts, but theres no feasible way of getting the oil at all the levels.

Plumes.

Over 5000 feet of vertical, there's a lot of horizontal current movement. Even different layers of water at different depths will go off in different directions.

The best way to deal with this is at source.

Hi: thanks everyone for the interesting info. I think this may have been discussed a little up earlier, but I wonder: what is inside the riser pipe at the top of the BOP (the one with five leaks now, or is it six?) Is it the drill pipe? Could the mud be coming up the annulus on the side, for example, and the oil/gas mixture out the center (or vice versa)? Could there be a pressure differential between the two? I ask because there was mention of an obstruction in the well--maybe it is a partially activated ram, but I wonder if the well pipe itself was distorted when the well blew. So it could be open as well to the surrounding strata, at some point down the shaft. All that mud they are losing--wasn't there some mention of shallow gas formations? This is not my field of expertise, obviously.

Gail, HO or Prof. Goose probably should just start a continuation post and lock the comments in this thread. We can blockquote tocontinue discussions if need be.