Perhaps the first genuinely good news since 20 April. However, noting the many unknowns, I will contain my enthusiasm for the moment.

TFHG - As you may be aware, France has had such a law in place for a long time. I do not know about the rest of the EU - perhaps someone can help me on that.

The shutdown on campaigning gives the voter a well needed rest and time to compare notes about all that has been said and make decisions.

It is my belief that such a law will not be passed in the US. The powers that be love the opportunity to make last minute wild assed claims (Swift Boat anybody) about the opposition that can not be disproved, in time, before the balloting. This leaves the weak, the reactionary and the highly subjective persons with untrue impressions that can result in throwing the election based on the false information.

BTW making false claims during campaigning in France breaks Federal law with substantial penalties ensuing.

yea, saw that too.

What is:
1.09 P-
2.20 R+
1.09 P-
2.23 R+
...

all about?

Lastly, when operationms may resume. I am skipping the duration section.

C. Potential Lifting of Suspension

The suspension could be lifted earlier than November 30, 2010, if BOEM assures me that the safety, containment and response issues that have created the need for a suspension have been resolved, or if those three issues are addressed to a degree that can be determined upon further study to ensure an acceptable margin of safety. If the results of the various investigations reveal significant unexpected ri sks, however, my duties under OCSLA could require me to extend the duration of the suspensions. As noted above, I will continue to solicit and review information relevant to this matter, and I will remai.n open to potentially adjusting the suspension period based on additional information and analysis. In that regard, I direct you to conduct public meetings and outreach to gather additional information, on an expedited basis, on the primary issues that I have identified as raising the most significant ri sks regarding the resumption of
deepwater drilling. You will be focusing on the following:

a. Drilling and workplace safety requirements as outlined in the Safety Report and a timeJine for the implementation of such safety requirements and others that may be necessary to ensure safe drilling practices;

b. Well intervention and blowout containment techno logy and methodology designed to effectively address and expeditiously contain any blowouts that could occur;

c. A review of additional and necessary oil spill response plans for offshore drilling and production facilities, and an evaluation of industry capacity to address a worst case discharge scenario under 30 eFR part 254.

I further direct you to issue a report to me no later than October 31, 2010, that contains yo ur findings and recommendations as a result of your outreach efforts and any other in formation you have acquired in the interim. This information gathering will be critical to addressing the serious risks presented by oil and gas drilling activities in deepwater environments. This additional information potentially could provide the basis for identifying conditions for resumption of drilling activities if certain conditions are met, and/or the ident ification of any oil and gas drilling activities that might be allowed prior to the expiration of the suspensions based on the relative level of risk associated with those activities.

Here's the link to the full text version, thanks to Lotus:

http://www.doi.gov/deepwaterhorizon/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile...

I'm not an engineer. But the currents are weak down there, probably less than half a knot. A wild card could be a turbidity current coming down the slope. That would muddy things up for awhile but not likely to happen. Also, the BOP served as an anchor for the deepwater horizon while it drifted and finally sank (I don't think any of the firefighting ships had a line on the DWH to hold it in position). The marine riser was the anchor "chain" and it broke while the BOP stayed put. Therefore, I don't believe we need to worry about this new hunk of steel on top of it.

I am not a petroleum engineer but I hold a degree in architecture with more semesters of structural engineering than I care to have suffered. Looking at the new configurations of the well, I am curious why Leonhard Euler's iconic formula for the buckling of thin columns does not come into play. Even if all the weight of the new BOP and extend shaft of the flange spool assembly does not run afoul of Euler, then it still would seem that the addition of some guy wires or other stays would be a prudent addition to counter-act any lateral loads from currents or a nudge from an errant ROV. That's a lot of steel to be balancing atop a two-foot diameter drill pipe.

Also, I am curious why the engineers are comfortable with closing the new BOP for a stress test when there had been so many statements about fear of increased pressure on the original BOP and well casing.

It would seem that if BP can carry off much or most of the flow through new risers to various surface vessels, that would be less risky. (But I suppose that were a hurricane to force surface vessels to leave the site, we'd still be faced with the prospect of closing, or at least restricting, the flow.)

It's a pleasure reading the informed and intelligent comments from TOD folk who know the technology. And I will appreciate anything that adds to my education on these issues.

Has anyone thought about how they are going to laterally restrain that new hunk of 4 tonne metal from swaying in the currents and tweaking the flange/prying the bolts at the existing BOP flange?

Yes, I think that the design team may have thought about this.

UPDATE: A mile of Kevlar rope plus floation bags near the surface could provide tons of vertically upward 'pull' if required. Haven't seen any sign or mention of anything like this (or any equivalent) so probably not needed.

I am confused why this is all of a sudden OK today, after they spent over a month telling us that high pressure in the BOP is bad and dangerous.
???

I was wondering the same thing. But nobody asked me, so I guess they are going to go ahead and try.

If no one else is willing to say it, I will. It's gross stupidity to close the well in if even for a few moments and impose well shut in pressure on the casing with the relief well option so close. So, what they are really saying is that previous statements about suspect condition of the casing during and after the top kill was all BS.

As of 10.30pm the well is still "leaking".

though it appears to the untrained eye to be less than before the new cap was installed.

I think the concern with the "junk shot" was that they had no control of it once the BOP was plugged with "junk". If there was a problem below the BOP they would be SOL.

With this new mini-BOP, they can reopen it if it's causing problems with the casing.

See the related comments at http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6718#comment-674539 for what I think is their concept (only my conjecture but it seems a reasonable interpretation).

They can test if the well's integrity is intact or compromised. If indeed compromised, they will open the rams, relieve the pressure and ultimately take the entire production topside, at least to the capacity of the topside processing/flaring. If the well can take the pressure, they can shut-in the well until the RW kills the well.

Not only might (perhaps a big "might") be able to shut-in the well, the test could provide information for the RW too.

From http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/deepwaterhorizon/7105359.html

The information, however, would better prepare workers to execute the imminent "bottom kill" operation in which a relief well will puncture the Macondo casing near the reservoir and pump in mud and cement to plug it permanently.

"Apparently, they believe the incremental benefit in knowledge of the well's condition for the kill operation is worth the near-term elevated risk of pressuring it up for several hours," Cogdell said.

Should the team find the casing is ruptured, Suttles said, the kill procedure will have to be modified, possibly using a different mud weight.

Occured to me also

Very interesting. This is when we need Lotus with a press pass asking succinct questions but they will never let her in the doors now with the double wicked eye.

PS. I actually though they were stalling for the RW in order to prevent full count on flow. I also know (along with everyone here) that fines are negotiated away.

The current generation of caps, including today's sealing cap, have all been required to include a means to measure the flow.

Asked this afternoon

I’m curious if you are successful in closing in the well, will you ever end up with a scientifically close estimate of how much oil has been flowing out this entire time?

Suttles replied, in part,

While we’re – while we’re actually flowing it through the cap assembly, we are taking measurements to help better define what the rate is. But I think absolutely everyone’s agreed that the number one priority here is to get this flow stopped and to get the spillage stopped. So we’ll gather as much data as we can but of course we want to minimize the amount of being spilled here. So we’ll close it in as quickly as we can.

Even with full containment, the secret of the leaking flow may be forever lost. Everything they do is changing the flow conditions. Suppose they back off on the full containment but still keep some back pressure with the new valve arrangement. This back pressure will reduce the total production. Production amount will not equal leak amount. Maybe the math guys can figure what it used to be?

The three-valve-stack "mini BOP" should give them absolute control. They can close the rams as slowly as they like, and reopen them it looks like the casing's gonna blow.

They can do it fast or slow, but the fracture event is likely very fast. Faster then their ability to control, and remember this flow has a lot of momentum and viscocity, it takes time for the pressure "knowledge" to travel down to where the possible fracture is occuring. If they are unlucky, they will see a sudden drop in pressure and they are done - they can open up the rams but it will be long, long seconds before the pressure is relieved to safe levels down below - plenty of time to rip a seal or to fracture a weakened pipe. Fracture propagation velocity in metals is very fast, once the critical crack size is reached. Once they see the pressure change up above, the dammage below is likely to have been already complete.

Seems like a very high risk to take, a couple of weeks before relief wells are operational.

Perhaps the Deepwater Horizon Gung Ho company man is back from leave and now in charge, seeing he's familiar with the well. and looking for his lost early completion bonus.

It would be a major risk if they closed the well in and then had to abandon both it and the relief wells, due to hurricanes arriving before completion.

Maybe they just want to squeeze the egg slowly and slightly while listening and watching, and will cease once they have suitable data, or the moment they suspect damage is imminent. I think I'd be walking very carefully on egg shells whilst closing the rams and lines.

Perhaps careful sensing will also locate possible flow-paths?. I assume they want to accumulate some flow versus back-pressure data, so they can apply sufficient and timely back pressure when they commence the bottom kill.

You raise reasonable points.
What is troublesome to me, (and perhaps others) is that there is no information about the state of this well, which was drilled with minimal specs and then abused by an unprecedented disaster. It may be robust still or it may be hanging by a thread. To stress it for anything other than a matter of extreme urgency seems to be tempting fate. So why do it?

Why with the cap on tonight, are they letting it flow and starting the pressure test tomorrow?

- Maybe the team needs some sleep & food?

- Perhaps they need daylight to monitor say gas/oil reaching the surface from a breached pipe?

- Perhaps they need time to run tests on the seals, electronics, sensors, communications links of the newly installed systems?

In case it blows, and gas vents out at full blast, surface evacuation and rescue efforts will be easier in daylight, quite simply.

Though with the distance to the surface, and without a riser connected (is that correct?), the impact of venting gas on the surface should not be as serious as it was when DWH got lit up.

The crews manning these ROVs have evolved into the most skilled crews in this field in the history of deep well salvage. It's like watching Mozart and Beethoven now ... I hope that when this is over we will get to meet these deep sea Sully Sullenbergers.

I am a brandnew poster but long time reader of TOD. My Wife is a Geological engineer in Canada and I have a Masters in Physics with a short stint as a drillers helper, That is my only experience with DWD. That said, I have been wondering about BP's apperant unwillingness, up until now, to attempt to kill the well with a simple valve.

I've dealt with the math and the hydrodynamics as presented by the more knowedgeble posters but still have wondered why that simple flange with it's simple bolts couldn't have been undone and capped 2 months ago. Believe me, I've read and have wholey digested the previous posts on this matter and my perceptions have changed very little. There is something wrong with this picture. The well flow has not changed very much since they cut the riser(The visual apperance of it might have, due to the placement of the cap), but, My observations gell with earlier observations of flow volume.

This is, in my understanding, a Large resevoir, if not, A Very Large resevoir with at least 15 years @ 500000 BOPD give or take.

My question is this. Why wait till now to mate the flange?

Before a response is postulated, I simply don't buy the "Technology isn't/wasn't ready" excuse, Commercially avaliable vehicles are rated to 10000 feet and beyond for much less than you'd think.

deadman,
It took years (decades?) to sort out the contract issues surrounding the Destin Dome leases - the government offered and leased the tracts, the discovery well was drilled, but then between them Feds and Florida refused to allow the discovery (gas) to be produced. Eventually the lease bonus and I think part of the drilling cost was refunded to the oil companies and the lease was cancelled. That was just ONE set of leases! To do the whole GoM might employ all our lawyers for the rest of the century.

Makes sense. Laughable the way they fobbed off responsibility to Chu.

Like others, I'm wondering if they think they can cap the well entirely now, then why they didn't do it earlier.

I suspect it's simply a case of the capping stack not being a part that one can buy "off the shelf". If so, designing, manufacturing, assembling, testing, shipping and deploying such a contraption within the space of a mere few weeks is IMHO very impressive.

Alaska_geo: Given the decline rates seen on most ultra-deep-water wells - at lower production rates than Macondo, and the frequent need to supplement with pressure support, I would be surprised if the formation pressure had NOT dropped significantly by now. Of course I am also surprised that a reservoir subjected to such abuse hasn't collapsed or sanded up either - my reservoirs often have trouble surviving even kid-glove treatment with sand control.

+100

I agree. Reducing the flow rate in a controlled way wouldn't be simply a PR exercise or an attempt to run up the stock price. Even if the primary motivation for what they're doing is to keep the fines down, reducing it certainly would be a benefit in important other ways.

They have absolutely nothing to lose by gradually raising the back pressure to see what happens as they are ultimately going to need a higher pressure on the wellhead to contain the mud from the relief well. The hydrostatic pressure on the casing will be less when filled with escaping oil than when it is filled with mud. So check it out and cross another worry off the government overseers' worry list. This whole process has been governed by the most timid regulator from the start. For example, instead of screwing around with Leak 3 at the end of the riser, they could have cut off the riser at Leak 2. The big kink was still there to limit the flow! But NO, the guiding principal of the day was "First do no harm", but as was said above "you've got to squeeze some lemons to make lemonade".

That's the problem with putting a Nobel Prize winning physicist in charge and expecting to get Richard Feynmann. People tend to forget that Feynmann's thoughts were only included in the Challenger Commission Report as Appendix F http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/docs/rogers-commission... after he threatened to resign from the commission and subsequent to his o-ring in ice demonstration. This whole administraion is based on using appeals to authority, men & women in fancy uniforms (and Harvard degrees), exactly the kinds of guys Richard Feynmann's father, the uniform salesman, warned him about.

Meta,
Yes agree. Add to what you said the pressure of knowing the whole world is watching and you cannot risk any action which makes things worse.

It is easy to forget that what is happening today was started weeks ago in paralell with the relief wells. The relief wells appear to have gone ok so far, and maybe this effort is less relevant than if they were behind schedule, but irrespective of the pressure tests and closing the well in, we seem very close to collecting most if not all of the oil with this new set up.

If it could have been done quicker I would guess BP have more reason than us voyeurs to have done it.

+1

Spot on.

Well, I'm a mechanical engineer with more than thirty years experience and I have many of the same questions as some of the non-engineer types here.

I've been involved in large & small projects with large & small teams -- including a brief stint with Shell Oil for an ultra-deep water dual gradient drilling project and about three years with anti-pollution safety systems. I understand about pressure on projects that get lots of attention. And, I also know that "nothing's easy".

Taking the ramifications of such endeavors into consideration, the reasoning behind many decisions over the past months still need better explanation.

No, but could make things alot more complicated!

If we imagine containment failure near or above the mudline, for example casing or BOP failure, the relief well could still establish the required column of mud to counter the pressure from the reservoir.

However, if the casing were to fail further down the well profile resulting in the reservoir flowing into a rock strata incapable of resisting the shut in well pressure, the blowout might then end up finding other routes into the sea and the "oil out of cracks in the seabed" scenario could come true.

This latter scenario could possibly still be controlled by the relief well, but the problem might be having enough mud to do so - once the we're flowing into a formation that required column of mud becomes complicated to achieve and the balance of pressures is very delicate. But there are other ways of bridging the flow in such a situation - as long as the relief well is in place I consider that they would find a way to kill the blowout.

Assuming the flow is both up the DP and the annulus between the 9 7/8" and 16" casing as some have speculated, where are the 'weak-links' when the well is shut-in? Does the 16" casing have enough burst strength for the pressures that it will be subjected to? Do the "burst discs" in the 16" casing enter into this now?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts.

Most oil is produced along with salt water, and is often biodegraded and/or emulsified. It is routine practice to break the emulsion, separate the oil from gas, water, & sand, and sell the oil (even biodegraded oil) to the refineries. So yes, 'your' oil would have utility, though the costs of the logistics handling it in small and irregular batches may exceed the value (depending on the countercost of whatever 'deal' you can strike with the politicians about landfill disposal.)