BP claims to have no idea many barrels are being released daily. How is that possible?

[Maru Kitteh]

BP Executive management is receiving real time info on the pressure and flow rate. They know the diameter of the pipe.

I'm no engineer, but I did take a couple math classes. It doesn't seem like it would be that much of a challenge to calculate.



Oh - and that engineer doing the consulting work for BP? Apparently he got a rather pointed phone call asking him to STFU with his twitter info.

http://twitter.com/jgrindal

[aquart]

1. They lie.

[Maru Kitteh]

3. I find myself feeling violently angry about this whole thing, and it's just getting worse.

[golddigger]

2. Oh, they fucking know.

[bdamomma]

4. that is BS they know.

[NNN0LHI]

5. How do they calculate the pressure with no cap in place?

[Maru Kitteh]

7. Excellent question.

They seem to have that info at hand somehow though.

[paparush]

24. Um..take the average max pressure in the last 60 days b4 the well blew and the avg

min pressure in the 60 days before the well blew and do some simple math that would give them some reasonable idea.

[Junkdrawer]

6. They better know or this Top Kill operation is useless.....

How can you overcome a pressure if you have no idea what that pressure is?

[readmoreoften]

10. Exactly. They have to push mud into the flow at a rate that overcomes the flow of oil.

So by definition they must know the rate of flow. They have to know. It's nonsense that they don't.

[TransitJohn]

15. No.

To kill a well you equilibrate pressure, not flow rate...they two are entirely disconnected from each other.

[Junkdrawer]

16. Flow = (P1 - P2)/Resistance. n/t

[TransitJohn]

19. Okay

so why is it measured in drilling in ECD? Look, I'm a wellsite geologist and sort of know what I'm talking about. The pressure of the mud going down needs to equilibrate or overbalance the formation pressure of the hydrocarbon fluid for the well to be killed. I hope the top kill works, but the kill through the relief well has a much better chance of success.

[MyNameGoesHere]

25. Ok so

The ECD is an important parameter in avoiding kicks and losses, particularly in wells that have a narrow window between the fracture gradient and pore-pressure gradient.


Tell us what that means, and how it comes into play here?

[TransitJohn]

27. It actually doesn't matter, unless they still want to put the well into production.

Blow out the formation I say.

On edit: And I said I'm a wellsite geo, not a pore pressure engineer. Those guys have awesome spreadsheets.

On second edit: Just had to go out to witness recovery of a core, and the answer you were fishing for occurred to me. It's because we need to infiltrate the formation and not overcome the rheology of the rock and fracture it. That would increase the amount of hydrocarbon fluid entering the wellbore.

[MyNameGoesHere]

36. Ok then next question

would a high yield directed charge close the leak? Say something on the 10 ton yield? We do have those.

[TransitJohn]

41. I think it'd depend on just how big the reservoir is, and the pressure it could exert

through any rubble/fracturing resultant. The estimates are that it's a huge, huge play....I wouldn't want to be involved in such a decision, I'm not bonded for that amount of liability.

[Statistical]

22. Exactly and they don't know the resistence.

To stop the flow they simply need to know P1.

Resistance is complex because the system is damaged, and the BOP is partially closed, the riser is crumpled, in parts the pipe is deformed to smaller than the original size. Thus flow rate will be less (how much less is debatable) that the theoretical max.

So BP may never know resistance and thus can't solve that equation. However to stop the flow of oil they simply need the mud to exert downward pressure > p1. If they know P1 they know what pressure is needed to stop the well.

[BelgianMadCow]

29. I think they have various techniques to estimate P1 and will have used them

but there are, as you point out, many uncertainties involved. The damage that is present in the equipment could obviously get worse by applying P2 for one.

The technique has been proven at surface wells - I don't really know how the depth of the leak influences the technique. Obviously, depth of the leak below the sea floor makes the needed P2 higher - but I imagine the surface wells and their failures had a certain depth as well.

www.theoildrum.com knowledgeable people (and I'm not one of them) say it's a tossup. The only thing I'm really afraid of, is unexpected consequences of failure - P2 going someplace unwanted.

I salute the people working down there - most of them have little more to do with BP corporate greed or our idiotic oil need than we do.

[TransitJohn]

30. It doesn't have to do with upward or downward pressure, it's all about

formation pressure. :hi:

[Statistical]

32. semantics.

the upward pressure of oil in the pipe is the same as the formation pressure.

[TransitJohn]

33. Science.

No, it's really quite different, actually.

[Statistical]

34. No it isn't. Science tells us that.

The pressure of oil pushing upward in the pipe is the same as pressure of miles of rock bearing down on oil formation.

[TransitJohn]

38. Minus the downward pressure of the hydrostatic head

minus the friction in both laminar and turbulent flow, etc, etc, etc. :crazy:

[Statistical]

39. Which hinder the oil and assist the mud.

Thanks for proving the point.

[TransitJohn]

42. Proving what point?

You've lost me. It's not upward and downward, it's the density of the mud while under pump pressure (ECD) we're concerned about equilibrating to formation pressure.

[Jokinomx]

8. they have good estimates...

they have the most rigs in the gulf...and any good engineer working in the industry would be able to give an pretty accurate number based on similar sized wells.

They just don't want to admit it...since it's such an ungodly large amount that it would cost them millions if not billions more in fines and clean up charges if they admit to knowing.

So, trust me they will deny any amount other than what they want to say... it's all about the money.

:toast:

[Maru Kitteh]

11. Yup. It's pretty obvious why BP would say the don't know. It's less obvious why

why every media outlet and every local, state and the federal government accepts it.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

9. Perhaps they need to spend a night at Holiday Inn Express?

F'n crooks. I know where I would like them to spend the rest of their nights...

[chill_wind]

12. "Wow, just got a scathing call from mgmt,

requesting I tone down my twitter info... "

Too bad they don't spend nearly as much time on safety planning and solutions as they do gagging people.

[Maru Kitteh]

18. Shoot the messenger.

BP is the rotting ass of humanity.

[gratuitous]

13. I understand they could be fined $4,300 per barrel squirted

So, if they can successfully deny knowledge, fuzz up the facts so that nobody else can possibly know, they might get away with some low-ball estimate and mitigate the whopping fine they'll have to pay. Gotta work better than the truth, which is probably so mind-bogglingly god-awful that BP is willing to take an apparently stupid chance like this.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

17. That's it in a nutshell.

Their financial liability is directly linked to the actual quantity proven to have spilled. So, they lie about the total attempting to reduce their losses.

[BelgianMadCow]

26. DING - liability = spill size + dead animals as it was with the Exxon Valdez

On spill size they play ignoramus (with a litlle help from friends) which is TOTALLY unbelievable - they actually came up with the 5000 barrels based on SURFACE oil analysis. Yo, check out dispersants and emulsions. Really...it kills me.

On the number of dead animals: the dispersed oil will mostly kill life below the surface, making it drop into the deep water where it's not seen. Keeping the oil in underwater plumes to some (would really like to know WHAT) degree keeps (a part of) the oil from surfacing and beaching, where the affected animails would increase liability and PR disaster.
Combine that with BP in charge of the cleanup and who gets to see what, it's very hard not to think they will do their best to cover up on land as well.

It is truly sickening.

[TransitJohn]

14. Because there's no flow meter installed.

Anybody giving a number is pulling it out of their ass.

[Statistical]

23. New regulation. All riser pipes must have flow meter installed.

:) I am only half kidding. It might be useful in the future.

[Maru Kitteh]

20. A special shout out to the BP testicle-sucking unreccers!

May you soon acquire a burning and poorly controlled case of the herps.

[chill_wind]

37. I rec'd earlier, but it was hopeless. Here's a kick.

eom

[Bonhomme Richard]

21. You know that if they stumbled upon a leak in the ocean floor...

like this it would take them about an hour to figure out how much money they could make.

[Catherina]

28. A laughable claim.

They know x. the size of the pipe, y. the length of the broken portion and z. the size of the opening. This is the stuff of High School physics tests.

It's kind of hard to believe no one at BP ever sat through a physics class.

[TransitJohn]

31. But there are hundreds of other variables.

Pore pressure, permeability of the formation that is releasing the hydrocarbon fluid, viscosity, all kinds of dynamic (not static) friction...it's the stuff of graduate engineering and physics.

[Junkdrawer]

35. And BP has computer models that do that. And they modeled the whole Top Kill...

process using computer models of the BOP/Damaged Riser configuration.

I guarantee it. Probably ran the whole scenario through several different versions of computational fluid dynamic programs. They build refineries - they have that software.

[TransitJohn]

40. Yes of course.

I'm sure they've got their top IT and programmers, geophysicists, and reservoir engineers on it. I was disputing that it was high school level physics. Do you know much about earth science modelling software? It's it's own whole special thing that has evolved over decades, and it's really fun.

[chill_wind]

43. Scientists with instrument tech offered. BP said NO.

BP has resisted entreaties from scientists that they be allowed to use sophisticated instruments at the ocean floor that would give a far more accurate picture of how much oil is really gushing from the well.

“The answer is no to that,” a BP spokesman, Tom Mueller, said on Saturday. “We’re not going to take any extra efforts now to calculate flow there at this point. It’s not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/us/16oil.html?ref=todayspaper