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Interesting bit of reading that helps us to understand the cause of the oil rig explosion and to get a sense of the difficulties in repairing it.
On Friday, April 30th 2010, an anonymous caller contacted the Mark Levin Show to clarify the events that preceded the Deepwater Horizon tragedy. Rigzone has transcribed this broadcast for your convenience. To hear the actual radio broadcast please visit www.MarkLevinShow.com.
Mark: Dallas Texas WBAP. Go right ahead, sir.
James: Just want to clear up a few things with the Petroleum Engineer, everything he said was correct. I was actually on the rig when it exploded and was at work.
Mark: Alright, let's slow down. Wait, hold on, slow down, so you were working on this rig when it exploded?
James: Yes sir.
Mark: OK, go ahead.
James: We had set the bottom cement plug for the inner casing string, which was the production liner for the well, and had set what's called a seal assembly on the top of the well. At that point, the BOP stack that he was talking about, the blow out preventer was tested. I don't know the results of that test; however, it must have passed because at that point they elected to displace the risers -- the marine riser from the vessel to the sea floor. They displaced the mud out of the riser preparing to unlatch from the well two days later and they displaced it with sea water. When they concluded the BOP stack test and the inner liner, they concluded everything was good.
Mark: Let me slow you down, let me slow you down. So they do all these tests to make sure the infrastructure can handle what's about to happen, right?
James: Correct, we're testing the negative pressure and positive pressure of the well, the casing and the actual marine riser.
Mark: OK, I'm with you. Go ahead...
To continue reading go to Rigzone.
H/T Business Insider
They make it sound so simple. Pray that this works. Somehow we've gone from damned near hopeless to not a big deal in less than twelve hours. Why do I find this so hard to believe?
"BP reported some glimmers of progress on Monday in its efforts to stem oil leaks from an undersea well off the Louisiana coast that have created what President Obama called a “potentially unprecedented environmental disaster.”
Bill Salvin, a company spokesman, said that crews had finished building a containment dome, a 4-story, 70-ton structure that the company plans to lower into place over one of the three leaks to catch the escaping oil and allow it to be pumped to the surface. The other two domes would be completed on Tuesday, Mr. Salvin said, and crews hoped to install all three domes by the weekend.
“That will essentially eliminate most of the issues you have with oil in the water,” he said."
New York Times
The cost of crude has been creeping up of late due mostly to demand in the Asian world. That and the much ballyhoo'd yet nearly nonexistent American economic recovery.
The owner of a gas station near my home told my brother yesterday that he is being told by his suppliers to expect regular gas to be in the $4.00 to $4.50 range by Fourth of July. Rumor? Crazy talk? I don't know. But, if he's right, the economy will stop. The ripple effect of high oil prices will cause the cost of everything to rise, not just the cost of gas. Diesel fuel is the blood that keeps the heart of our system pumping, moving goods from one end of the country to the other. And that doesn't even scratch the surface of how much oil we use as an ingredient in nearly everything we produce and use.
The local environmental damage of this oil spill in the Gulf may be the least part of the damage it does.
"Oil prices extended gains above $86 a barrel Monday as traders eyed whether a massive crude spill in the Gulf of Mexico would slow imports to the U.S.
By early afternoon in Europe, benchmark crude for June delivery was up 32 cents to $86.47 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose 98 cents to settle at $86.15 on Friday.
Some analysts expect the 30-mile (48-kilometer) oil slick caused by as much as 210,000 gallons (795,000 liters) of crude gushing into the Gulf each day could undermine imports to key Louisiana terminals, helping to lower crude inventories and boost prices.
U.S. authorities have said imports have not yet been affected.
"The potential disruption of oil tanker traffic in the Gulf of Mexico is already having an impact on oil prices." Goldman Sachs said in a report. "Traffic of oil service boats and oil tankers through the Gulf will likely be slowed."
Oil is near an 18-month high of $87, last touched in early April."
NPR
"Most people fail to comprehend the full implications of affordable energy on the world economy. Gasoline prices are the most visible symptom of the problem, but are far from the most important aspect of peak cheap oil. The global economy is dependent on cost-effective worldwide transportation of products. The United States in particular is extremely dependent on inexpensive goods imported from China and other Asian countries. A sudden dramatic rise in prices of all those goods would cripple an already-struggling economy. But the problem is much more far-reaching than that. Many of the things we take for granted would never be possible without abundant and relatively inexpensive energy. Skyscrapers and other large construction projects would not be economically viable without abundant energy to operate excavators, cranes, and construction tools. Many areas thought to have been unsuitable for habitation before the advent of modern air conditioning and refrigeration are now major population centers. Old fashioned supply chains involving warehouses and long-term stores of inventory have been entirely replaced with just-in-time delivery systems that are highly dependent on fast and reliable long-distance transportation. In the United States particularly, millions of people are dependent on employment 50 or more miles from their homes. Energy is a component cost of virtually all products. If energy costs were to increase dramatically, so would the cost of all other items. In short, the world simply cannot continue to function in the manner we associate with “modern times” unless energy continues to be available at affordable prices."
Chris Martenson
"Today, as the oil from an enormous spill in the Gulf of Mexico creeps toward the shores of the southern U.S., the administration is having its doubts about the new policy. David Axelrod, senior adviser to Obama, told “Good Morning America” today that there’s a moratorium on the expansion until the recent spill can be controlled and investigated.
“No additional drilling has been authorized and none will until we find out what happened here,” he said."
Washington Independent
I suppose the next week or so will tell the tale. The primary hope of controlling the flow of oil in the short term rests on lowering a concrete containment dome over the main hole that will allow the oil to be captured and pumped to the surface. Before that is done a couple smaller leaks need to be fixed.
And all of this needs to happen at 5000 feet below the surface in oily, pitch black water using remote controlled vehicles, while at the same time dealing with seven foot seas on the surface; and hoping the casing in the hole doesn't completely collapse, causing a gusher with no possibility of control, potentially flooding the worlds oceans with oil and causing massive damage up the East coast of America.
The beginning of hurricane season in the Gulf is less than a month away. And guess what:
AccuWeather.com Hurricane Center meteorologists, led by Chief Long-Range Meteorologist and Hurricane Forecaster Joe Bastardi, are calling for a much more active 2010 season with above-normal threats on the U.S. coastline.
"This year has the chance to be an extreme season," said Bastardi. "It is certainly much more like 2008 than 2009 as far as the overall threat to the United States' East and Gulf coasts."
Bastardi is forecasting seven landfalls. Five will be hurricanes, and two or three of the hurricanes will be major landfalls for the U.S.
He is calling for 16 to 18 tropical storms in total, 15 of which would be in the western Atlantic or Gulf of Mexico, and therefore a threat to land.
In a typical season, there are about 11 named storms, of which two to three impact the coast of the United States."
Accuweather
This would make a great edge of your seat page turner, something Tom Clancy could write. A potential disaster of Biblical proportions requiring the best and brightest minds and the latest technology to have even a slight chance of solving it.
Unfortunately, it's all too real.
"BP is trying to cap one of three leaks at a mile-deep well spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico in a bid to make it easier to shut down the gusher off the Louisiana coast.
Coast Guard spokesman Brandon Blackwell said the company did a "clean cut" overnight on the location in a pipe that is leaking the smallest amount of oil.
BP spokesman Steve Rinehart said an underwater robot was being used in an attempt to put a sleeve and valve over the leak. So far, he said, the effort had not yet proved successful.
Federal officials have said they hoped closing off two of the smaller leaks may make it easier to place a single concrete-and-steel container over the wreck to capture all the leaking oil."
Yahoo
THE Gulf of Mexico oil spill may be growing five times faster than previously estimated and is in danger of accelerating out of control, it was claimed yesterday.
Experts said satellite data indicated the oil was gushing from BP’s sunken Deepwater Horizon rig at 25,000 barrels a day. Previous estimates had put the leak at 5,000 barrels a day.
Professor Ian MacDonald, an ocean specialist at Florida State University, said the new estimate suggested the leak had already spread 9m gallons of heavy crude oil across the Gulf. This compares with 11m that leaked from the Exxon Valdez tanker when it hit a reef off Alaska in 1989.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said deteriorating conditions on the sea bed may result in an even greater flow of 50,000 barrels a day, sufficient to produce one of America’s worst ecological disasters.
Experts and officials said their greatest fear was that a disintegration of pipes close to the rig could produce an “unchecked gusher” that would ravage America’s southern coastline.
...BP has calculated that it might take up to three months to sink a new well that could cut off the flow of the Deepwater Horizon’s oil.
The worst oil spill affecting US waters was caused by a 1979 blowout aboard the Ixtoc, a Mexican rig that discharged at least 130m gallons, 600 miles south of the Texas coast. It took nine months to plug the leak."
Times
"BP PLC (BP.) chairman Lamar McKay told ABC's "This Week" that he can't say when the well a mile beneath the sea might be plugged. But he said he believes a dome that could be placed over the well is expected to be deployed in six to eight days.
...Crews have had little success stemming the flow from the ruptured well on the sea floor off Louisiana or removing oil from the surface by skimming it, burning it or dispersing it with chemicals. The churning slick of dense, rust-colored oil is now roughly the size of Puerto Rico.
Adding to the gloomy outlook were warnings from experts that an uncontrolled gusher could create a nightmare scenario if the Gulf Stream current carries it toward the Atlantic.
...The oil slick over the water's surface appeared to triple in size over the past two days, which could indicate an increase in the rate oil is pouring from the well, according to one analysis of images collected from satellites and reviewed by the University of Miami. While it's hard to judge the volume of oil by satellite because of depth, images do indicate growth, experts said.
"The spill and the spreading is getting so much faster and expanding much quicker than they estimated," said Hans Graber, executive director of the university's Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing.
...Oil industry experts and officials are reluctant to describe what, exactly, a worst-case scenario would look like. But if the oil gets into the Gulf Stream and carries it to the beaches of Florida - and potentially loops around the state's southern tip and up the eastern seaboard - several experts said it stands to be an environmental and economic disaster of epic proportions.
"It will be on the East Coast of Florida in almost no time," Graber said. "I don't think we can prevent that. It's more of a question of when rather than if."
AP News
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