Drilling a Relief Well

[erpowers]

Should the government have forced BP to start drilling a relief well when the oil spill first occured? It seems it might have been better for the government to force BP to drill a relief well earlier in that if the other options failed (which most have) the process of drilling the relief well would have already started.

[Ruby the Liberal]

1. It is my understanding that it is a requirement in Canadian waters

for exploratory drills to have relief wells simultaneously drilled.

[SidDithers]

2. The relief well was started on May 2...nt

Sid

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

3. When the spill FIRST happened...

They were busy trying to extinguish a fire and rescue people.
The rig burned for two days before it sank.
It took them another day or so to get an ROV down there to even see if the well was leaking oil.

So it was three/four days before they even knew if there was a major leak, if any.

The obvious response at that point is to shut off the wellhead with the BOP.
Wiki says this action takes 24-36 hrs to attempt with ROVs at such a depth
BP engieers estimated it would take up to 6 attempts to close manually close the BOP.

So that's another eight/nine days before they figured out, "ok, we've got a serious problem".
total: ~11/12 days since the blow out??

I believe they began the first relief well drilling about 12-13 days after the initial blow out (May 2nd).
This involves mobilizing an entire drilling rig to the area and preparation.
They must have began mobilizing or planning relief drilling while they were still trying to cap the well.
IMO, that is fairly quick response to set up a drilling rig and start more drilling.

FYI, the first relief well drilling began 5 days before the "dome" was attempted, 9 days before the "top hat", and 12 days before the "insertion tube". The drilling was taking place BEFORE most plans failed.

[erpowers]

4. Did Not Know That

I did not know the relief well drilling had already started. My understanding from watching the news was that they would start the relief well drilling after all other options had failed.

[Statistical]

6. The relief well is the "ultimate backup"

what the media means is that if everything else fails they will fall back on the relief well.

Drilling started almost immediately.

Remember another rig to be put in place, sea floor complex built, and a mile of riser pipe lowered before they could drill the first inch.

Bad news is even starting immediately the first well won't be complete for 70 more days. :(

Relief well is reliable. It was used to stop the 3 largest platforms spills prior to this one, bad news is you simply can't drill a 5 mile shaft "fast".

[Statistical]

5. The process of drilling relief well did start right away

The drilling began 10 days after spill started.

It took about 10 days to get a rig into posistion and riser pipe lowered, and seafloor complex built.

Bad news is a relief well operation running 24/7 takes a long time. They need to drill 5 miles in this instance and that is going to take 100+ days (about 70 more).