what some oil industry personnel think about the GOM disaster: [View All]

[amborin]

These are snippets from a blog by oil industry employees. Someone with a technical background may find the technical/engineering discussion interesting. It's obviously way over my head. After skimming through some blog posts by oil industry personnel, the impression one gets is that BP cuts corners, and put profits and speed over safety. What I take away from many of the comments is that BP can't be trusted to tell the truth. Nothing new there, obviously; it's been well-documented how BP "lies, obfuscates," and operates in a criminal manner.

So why is our government still trusting them?


snippets from an article and snippets of comments from oil industry personnel:

....The well had reached a depth of 13,293 ft below the sea floor. The final string of production casing from the wellhead at the sea floor to total depth had been put in the hole, and cemented in place on April 19, 2010.

....Only 51 barrels of cement were used according to the well plan. This was not sufficient to ensure a seal between the 7-inch production casing and the previously cemented 9 7/8-inch protection casing (Figure 2)."

....What can be addressed now is the larger issue that a flawed, risky well plan for the MC 252 well was approved by the MMS, and BP, Anadarko and Mitsui management. Similar or identical plans were undoubtedly approved and used by many operators on other wells drilled in the Gulf of Mexico. A plan that does not include enough cement to overlap the final and previous casing strings, and that does not require running a cement-bond log to ensure the integrity of the seal is a defective plan. The fact that there have not been blowouts on previous wells does not justify the approval and use of an unsafe plan.

This is not an unusually deep well nor was it drilled in exceptionally deep water compared to many other wells in the Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf drilling depth record was set earlier this year at more than 30,000 ft below the sea floor (The Oil Drum, January 18, 2010: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6135#more), and the current water-depth record of 10,011 ft was set in 2003 (http://www.deepwater.com/fw/main/Home-1.html).

don't have a tally but there have been many dozens of wells drilled in Deep Water GOM. AFAIK this is the first DW spill of any significance out. IMHO the statistics don't really mean anything in this circumstances. It's not a card game: conduct business properly and safely and the odds of such a development are very low. Conduct your business in a sloppy and unsound manner and such a problem is almost certain to occur eventually. the only question is the magnitude and loss of life. In my 35 years I've never seen even one accident of any sort that was a result of "bad luck". Almost 100% of the time it was human error: a poor plan or a poor execution of the plan.

I was on the second deepest well drilled in the GOM a few years ago. But depth (either water depth or drill depth) isn't really the defining issue with regards to risk or difficulty. I've drilled wells onshore shallower than 12,000' that were much riskier and difficult than the typical DW well. Actually safety efforts and protocols are much tighter on DW wells if for no other reason than their costs. Someone has $500,000 spent on an onshore well might cut corners. But when you have over $200 million spent on one well and could produce $1 billion over time, you can imagine folks would not only be more careful but also willing to spend a little more to keep it that way.

From my understanding they were rushing at the end, and took their eye off the ball. Maybe because every minute out there costs a lot of money. With that incentive, there is always a possibility that people will rush.

Safety is a cultural thing. It comes down to good habits and thoughtful people. If BP is going to screw up like this, perhaps they shouldn't be involved in such a potentially destructive activity.

Proving once again the old industry adage I was weaned on-- "cut corners all you want, but never downhole".

A multi-hundred million dollar project over a two stage cement job, bottomhole liner hanger, or worse yet maybe 10 hours WOC time. Talk about the failure of the BOP all you want, everything meaningful in this business comes from an understanding of what happens in the formation and at its face.

Ignoring it will bite you in the ass every time.

FF

PS that little grill dulf or something like that was really on to something about the casing collapse I think... don't assume it was HOWCO's seal assembly-- it was tested.

Project management is all about on time, on budget. Look at BP's compensation & bonus policies for the managers to see why this happenned. The managers who got promoted woud be the people who always came in on time, on budget (under is better).

What you have seen BP has seen or knows about. So to assert in its plan filed with MMS that it was unlikely, is in fact a lie is is not. If they lied then you can be double sure they are lying now. Trouble is that people begin to believe their own lies and cut corners because they have already determined that an accident is unlikely.

If we go to a Dr. for major surgery we would like to know his track record for that surgery. We know an accident can happen no matter how carefully the Dr. is vetted, a knife slip perhaps, but we want a Surgeon who is declared competent by the AMA, follows accepted procedures, doesn't cut corners to get to the next surgery, and has a record of success with the surgery. Time to hang up BP's shingle. If they were a Dr. they would have lost their licences to operate after the TX refinery fire. Who of us would want a surgeon to operate on us who has been convicted of a felony in relation to a previous surgery.

BP contracted Schlumberger (SLB) to run the Cement Bond Log (CBL) test that was the final test on the plug that was skipped. The people testifying have been very coy about mentioning this, and you'll see why.

SLB is an extremely highly regarded (and incredibly expensive) service company. They place a high standard on safety and train their workers to shut down unsafe operations.

SLB gets out to the Deepwater Horizon to run the CBL, and they find the well still kicking heavily, which it should not be that late in the operation. SLB orders the "company man" (BP's man on the scene that runs the operation) to dump kill fluid down the well and shut-in the well. The company man refuses. SLB in the very next sentence asks for a helo to take all SLB personel back to shore. The company man says there are no more helo's scheduled for the rest of the week (translation: you're here to do a job, now do it). SLB gets on the horn to shore, calls SLB's corporate HQ, and gets a helo flown out there at SLB's expense and takes all SLB personel to shore.

6 hours later, the platform explodes.

Pick your jaw up off the floor now. No CBL was run after the pressure tests because the contractor high-tailed it out of there. If this story is true, the company man (who survived) should go to jail for 11 counts of negligent homicide.

I've also seen the use of anecdotal evidence that other wells do not produce as much oil as this one might. That might be true, but it needs to be remembered that those wells did not blow up. So, while useful to know, its not that convincing, as its still unknown has much an anomaly this well was.

Finally, it would not be that difficult to get good measurements for the leaks. It would not take that much effort to place a velocity measuring device, mag meter, doppler, or whatever that was self contained with it own power and data recorder. It could be placed and retrieved whenever the ROV comes to the surface, or put one on each leak and leave it there till the leak is stopped.

BP would have to be forced into collecting this information as again its asking them to commit corporate suicide. If BP doesn't agree with a flow rate value it would not be that difficult for them to take their own measurements. They have not done so, nor shown any inclination to do so.

BP and the task force - how ever their chain of command is set up - allowed a clearly low-ball estimate of the leak rate circulate in the media until it became clearly untenable. During this period the leak rate was steadily increasing, and BP knew that it was, but they said nothing about this fact. When the video was released it became possible for those on the other side of the fence to make a new estimate that also circulated in the media. Two wrongs do not make a right, however the consequence of hiding or obscuring pertinent information from the public has led to an entirely predictable consequence. I predict that the end result will be that reasonable estimates WILL be publicly released for the leak rate over time that account for the gas fraction and the condition of the riser.

I expect that estimate to be closer to what was discussed in this forum.

The information is important for understanding the consequence of this mess - and that includes monitoring the sub-surface movement of the oil and how much and what portion reaches the surface - in order to better understand, characterize and deal with what ever environmental consequences there turn out to be, to plan for the future, and to stop unwarranted speculation in the media (to the degree possible) replacing it with improved understanding of the consequences of our societal choices.

I am not very optimistic in BP being able to solve this in 2-3 more months of drilling. Hurricane season is approaching. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see this effort taking the rest of this year. In which case, the gulf states are in serious trouble. I live in Mobile and can see the very real possibility of desperate times ahead for those of us here.

I hope BP (or anyone else) can pull some rabbit out of the hat to solve this. Quite frankly I don't give a rip who is at fault, how numbers and solutions are derived and arrived at, none of that is important right now. Doing whatever it takes to solve this problem is what counts.

I'm just not sure BP has the horse-power to do so.

To the extent Obama takes control of the process, to that extent he owns the result.

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

along with a Good technical discussion of the blowout here