The Oil Drum is a widely respected website that focuses exclusively on the international oil industry and energy issues. Earlier this week a reader and industry insider sent this article posted on The Oil Drum. The article suggests that the well bore structure may be compromised “down hole.” If this is true, it turns this very serious situation into an absolute nightmare.
Dave wrote in with this:
I work in the oil exploration business – and I don’t scare easily when it comes to the rumors that circulate re: the Deepwater Horizon incident – but this article is downright horrific.
I can’t comment about how accurate it might be – the guy paints a fairly plausible picture – but it is something right out of a science-fiction horror movie – nobody (not even the author) wants to talk about what might really be needed here to stop this runaway well – and that might be a nuclear device detonation downhole to seal the wellbore.
Meanwhile, Obama golfs, vacations, and sings with Paul McCartney –
I don’t know if either BP or the government is telling the public just how bad this might become – possibly for fear of starting some sort of panic – and Obama is clueless – and so, for that matter is Salazar — I went to college with this guy – and he is totally an affirmative action baby, a complete idiot — now elevated to a position way, way, way, way beyond his competency level.
Here is that article from The Oil Drum:
OK let’s get real about the GOM oil flow. There doesn’t really seem to be much info on TOD that furthers more complete understanding of what’s really happening in the GOM.
As you have probably seen and maybe feel yourselves, there are several things that do not appear to make sense regarding the actions of attack against the well. Don’t feel bad, there is much that doesn’t make sense even to professionals unless you take into account some important variables that we are not being told about. There seems to me to be a reluctance to face what cannot be termed anything less than grim circumstances in my opinion. There certainly is a reluctance to inform us regular people and all we have really gotten is a few dots here and there…First of all…set aside all your thoughts of plugging the well and stopping it from blowing out oil using any method from the top down. Plugs, big valves to just shut it off, pinching the pipe closed, installing a new bop or lmrp, shooting any epoxy in it, top kills with mud etc etc etc….forget that, it won’t be happening..it’s done and over. In fact actually opening up the well at the subsea source and allowing it to gush more is not only exactly what has happened, it was probably necessary, or so they think anyway.
So you have to ask WHY? Why make it worse?…there really can only be one answer and that answer does not bode well for all of us. It’s really an inescapable conclusion at this point, unless you want to believe that every Oil and Gas professional involved suddenly just forgot everything they know or woke up one morning and drank a few big cups of stupid and got assigned to directing the response to this catastrophe. Nothing makes sense unless you take this into account, but after you do…you will see the “sense” behind what has happened and what is happening. That conclusion is this:
The well bore structure is compromised “Down hole”.That is something which is a “Worst nightmare” conclusion to reach. While many have been saying this for some time as with any complex disaster of this proportion many have “said” a lot of things with no real sound reasons or evidence for jumping to such conclusions, well this time it appears that they may have jumped into the right place…
TOP KILL – FAILS:
This was probably our best and only chance to kill this well from the top down. This “kill mud” is a tried and true method of killing wells and usually has a very good chance of success. The depth of this well presented some logistical challenges, but it really should not of presented any functional obstructions. The pumping capacity was there and it would have worked, should have worked, but it didn’t.It didn’t work, but it did create evidence of what is really happening. First of all the method used in this particular top kill made no sense, did not follow the standard operating procedure used to kill many other wells and in fact for the most part was completely contrary to the procedure which would have given it any real chance of working.
When a well is “Killed” using this method heavy drill fluid “Mud” is pumped at high volume and pressure into a leaking well. The leaks are “behind” the point of access where the mud is fired in, in this case the “choke and Kill lines” which are at the very bottom of the BOP (Blow Out Preventer) The heavy fluid gathers in the “behind” portion of the leaking well assembly, while some will leak out, it very quickly overtakes the flow of oil and only the heavier mud will leak out. Once that “solid” flow of mud is established at the leak “behind” the well, the mud pumps increase pressure and begin to overtake the pressure of the oil deposit. The mud is established in a solid column that is driven downward by the now stronger pumps. The heavy mud will create a solid column that is so heavy that the oil deposit can no longer push it up, shut off the pumps…the well is killed…it can no longer flow.
Usually this will happen fairly quickly, in fact for it to work at all…it must happen quickly. There is no “trickle some mud in” because that is not how a top kill works. The flowing oil will just flush out the trickle and a solid column will never be established. Yet what we were told was “It will take days to know whether it
worked”….”Top kill might take 48 hours to complete”…the only way it could take days is if BP intended to do some “test fires” to test integrity of the entire system. The actual “kill” can only take hours by nature because it must happen fairly rapidly. It also increases strain on the “behind” portion and in this instance we all know that what remained was fragile at best.Early that afternoon we saw a massive flow burst out of the riser “plume” area. This was the first test fire of high pressure mud injection. Later on same day we saw a greatly increased flow out of the kink leaks, this was mostly mud at that time as the kill mud is tanish color due to the high amount of Barite which is added to it to weight it and Barite is a white powder.
We later learned the pumping was shut down at midnight, we weren’t told about that until almost 16 hours later, but by then…I’m sure BP had learned the worst. The mud they were pumping in was not only leaking out the “behind” leaks…it was leaking out of someplace forward…and since they were not even near being able to pump mud into the deposit itself, because the well would be dead long before…and the oil was still coming up, there could only be one conclusion…the wells casings were ruptured and it was leaking down hole…
There’s more at The Oil Drum.
Let’s hope and pray this is not the case.
