Regular WUWT commenter Jimmy Haigh, a geologist by trade, sends along a PDF that is a compilation of on the scene photos taken right after the explosion and in the following two days. I’ve converted it to web format. These were taken by people on the scene during the rescue and firefighting operation. There’s also a narrative, done by a person “in the know”. You won’t find this at AP or Reuters.
You may have heard the news in the last week about the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig which caught fire, burned for two days, then sank in 5,000 ft of water in the Gulf of Mexico. There are still 11 men missing, and they are not expected to be found.
The rig belongs to Transocean, the world’s biggest offshore drilling contractor. The rig was originally contracted through the year 2013 to BP and was working on BP’s Macondo exploration well when the fire broke out. The rig costs about $500,000 per day to contract. The full drilling spread, with helicopters and support vessels and other services, will cost closer to $1,000,000 per day to operate in the course of drilling for oil and gas. The rig cost about $350,000,000 to build in 2001 and would cost at least double that to replace today.
The rig represents the cutting edge of drilling technology. It is a floating rig, capable of working in up to 10,000 ft water depth. The rig is not moored; It does not use anchors because it would be too costly and too heavy to suspend this mooring load from the floating structure. Rather, a triply-redundant computer system uses satellite positioning to control powerful thrusters that keep the rig on station within a few feet of its intended location, at all times. This is called Dynamic Positioning.
The rig had apparently just finished cementing steel casing in place at depths exceeding 18,000 ft. The next operation was to suspend the well so that the rig could move to its next drilling location, the idea being that a rig would return to this well later in order to complete the work necessary to bring the well into production.
It is thought that somehow formation fluids – oil /gas – got into the wellbore and were undetected until it was too late to take action. With a floating drilling rig setup, because it moves with the waves, currents, and winds, all of the main pressure control equipment sits on the seabed – the uppermost unmoving point in the well. This pressure control equipment – the Blowout Preventers, or ‘BOP’s” as they’re called, are controlled with redundant systems from the rig. In the event of a serious emergency, there are multiple Panic Buttons to hit, and even fail-safe Deadman systems that should be automatically engaged when something of this proportion breaks out. None of them were aparently activated, suggesting that the blowout was especially swift to escalate at the surface. The flames were visible up to about 35 miles away. Not the glow – the flames. They were 200 – 300 ft high.
All of this will be investigated and it will be some months before all of the particulars are known. For now, it is enough to say that this marvel of modern technology, which had been operating with an excellent safety record, has burned up and sunk taking souls with it.
The well still is apparently flowing oil, which is appearing at the surface as a slick. They have been working with remotely operated vehicles, or ROV’s which are essentially tethered miniature submarines with manipulator arms and other equipment that can perform work underwater while the operator sits on a vessel. These are what were used to explore the Titanic, among other things. Every floating rig has one on board and they are in constant use. In this case, they are deploying ROV’s from dedicated service vessels. They have been trying to close the well in using a specialized port on the BOP’s and a pumping arrangement on their ROV’s. They have been unsuccessful so far. Specialized pollution control vessels have been scrambled to start working the spill, skimming the oil up.
In the coming weeks they will move in at least one other rig to drill a fresh well that will intersect the blowing one at its pay zone. They will use technology that is capable of drilling from a floating rig, over 3 miles deep to an exact specific point in the earth – with a target radius of just a few feet plus or minus. Once they intersect their target, a heavy fluid will be pumped that exceeds the formation’s pressure, thus causing the flow to cease and rendering the well safe at last. It will take at least a couple of months to get this done, bringing all available technology to bear. It will be an ecological disaster if the well flows all of the while; Optimistically, it could bridge off downhole.
It’s a sad day when something like this happens to any rig, but even more so when it happens to something on the cutting edge of our capabilities.
The photos that follow show the progression of events over the 36 hours from catching fire to sinking.
First, what the rig looked like.
The drilling mast has toppled over here – they usually melt pretty fast when fire breaks out.
Support vessels using their fire fighting gear to cool the rig.
From about 10 miles away – dawn of Day 1
Support vessels using their fire fighting gear to cool the rig – note the list developing
About noon Day 1 – List is pronounced now
Early morning Day 2 – Note the hole burned through the aluminum helideck
Day 2, morning – settling quite low in the water now – fuel and oil slick forming
See also satellite images of the oil slick here
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To get an idea of the forces involved, the bottom of the ocean here, the gases would be at a pressure of about 160 atmospheres. However, the drill went into the ocean bottom for some distance, supposedly another 13000 feet. Now rock is 3 times as dense as water, so this additional pressure is equivelant to 1300 atmospheres.
We are talking of a source pressure of about 1400 atmospheres, which of course will be dissipated in the pipeline flow resistance, but it is still enormous.
Thank you very much for this article! Definitely hard breaking news. Well done.
This calamity will prove to be the death of off shore drilling in the USA. I am personally horrified at the scale of this disaster. Heads must roll.
Great work Anthony as always. I would like to conribute in a positive way if at all positive.
My first 13 years of professional life was with a major oil company in the piepline sector. From the age of 6 before that I spent a lot of time fishing in the Louisiana Gulf waters. As odd as it may seem, there are some things the readers should know about what is actually happening now.
After the Valdez accident, a network was put inplace by federal act (as much as I hate to admit it) which created multiregional spill containment facilities all along the Gulf. All of these spill containment resources are on the job. They are providing on the sight containment which helps to reduce the spread of the oil and then as we have all heard (burn) what they collect and then go on to collect more spillage to burn again.
The next important fact to know is the oil which is leaking is a “”light”” crude which means it is high in light end hydrocarbons. Translation, much of what leaks evaportates in the atmosphere which in turn reduces crude at the surface.
Technology used today including “”microbial”” remediation is very effective in eating much of the crude. Boats, planes, and private hardware are being used to spread microbial fluids which are very effective in eating the crude.
Next, is the fact the Mississippi River is helping to keep the spill offshore. The longer the spill stays spread over large expanses, the more evaporates, the more is exposed for microbial remediation, the more is there for the containment crews to scoop up.
Your website is a venue to educate the public. Gods hand is on your site. This site allows people like me who can disseminate information to the public which otherwise may not surface. My hunch is that given all the resources in place, all the modern technolgy available to eat the spill that this episode will have minimal effect. I know this goes against the grain of conventional thinking but as things play out we may all find that in the end this may not turn out to be the disaster the news would make it all out to be.
May God Bless our State “Louisiana” and all it does for the energy and food resources for the U.S.
None of the failsafes engaged, most likely indicating the control line(s)/remotes to the sea floor were severed.
At that point, the Deadman should have engaged. Suggests explosion travelling down.
Obama’s first action was to deplay swat teams to adjacent rigs.
Add in H.S. and you have an implied threat from undisclosed sources. Could also be that the Admin. is doing something, even if it’s wrong.
No interviews of drilling crew says the lid is on tight.
So, we do not know what transpired out there.
Meantime, I hope somebody comes up with something ingenious to stem the flow, and quickly.
@ur momisugly Robert of Ottawa says:
May 1, 2010 at 3:26 pm
I’m aware of the political agenda’s at work in this kind of thing, and I totally agree with you. Hopefully, some sanity will return this coming Nov. and later on in 2012.
It´s amazing and sad at the same time, because of the people who died. Not for the environment which will blossom again, as M.Simon said. Go to any garden shop and you could buy “humic acid”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humic_acid (really a potassium humate), found in leonardite (a young coal) and it is used as a powerful fertilizer.
http://www.healthyhomemall.com/leonardite.asp
We are as organic and as “chemical” as that oil, yeah!, as that earth blood from a bleeding earth. So you, greens, shut up and mourn!…but not for that Gaia oy yours I don´t believe in, but for the workmen there, burnt, while working- a thing, I´m sure-you don´t know what it is….
Isn’t there any chemical that binds to oil and make it sink?
Thanks to all that have posted technical info above (incl. the pictures); I have now had a chance to listen to ‘James’ who was on-board the platform and called in to the Mark Levin show to explain some further technical details … taking-in ‘James’ technical details I think is well worth the time: there are two parts, listen-able here:
http://www.marklevinshow.com/Article.asp?id=1790422&spid=32364
.
.
I would just like to say that entries like this are why this blog absolutely rules.
Other things to ponder, If I remember correctly China will be drilling off Cuba if not already.
I heard the “new drilling” is actually the opening of a little space for drilling, but the closure of many other areas. So it’s actually a reduction which is being promoted as being an increase. I’m having trouble re-finding that description among the disaster and “new drilling” noise.
And, as the weather is a factor… the wind forecast for the next two days is onshore winds.
http://www.weather.gov/forecasts/wfo/sectors/lixMarineDay.php#tabs (mouseover the “Winds” time cells)
The national weather map shows two Lows on the west side of the continent, so we can expect several days of air being sucked in from the Gulf. So the weather is not cooperating.
We recently had a similar incident off the north of Australia. While a second bore was successfully drilled to intercept the initial bore, the operation took over two months. Oil continued to leak throughout that period. Given the size of this current leak it would be unfortunate if containing the leak took this long.
I have had a very small amount of hands on experience with shaped charges, and I wonder if an attempt should be made to use explosives technology underwater in the well head area while intercept drilling is being attempted elsewhere. Explosives would be within the capabilities of ROVs to transport, position and activate. I have yet to see any actual images of the underwater situation, but would imagine a tangled mess.
Explosives, in particular shaped charges could help in a number of ways. One would be to use cutting charges with copper alloy slugs to cut tangled pipe away from the well head area. This could reduce the leaks to a single point and allow a containment dome to be employed. Secondly focused charges (without slugs) with lower brisance and suitable standoff may be able to pinch the remaining pipe to reduce the leak to more manageable rates.
Design and testing of such devices may take weeks, as current explosives technology is not designed to operate at such depths (currently around 200m). The charges would require evacuated casings strong enough for +1500m. Development may still be faster than the time taken to conduct intercept drilling.
Has anyone seen any images or video from the seabed?
Two points:
1.) The rig is toast, why try to put it out and then try to set the floating oil on fire?
2.) With oil at $85 barrel, I would think it would profitable to suck it off the surface. The stuff floats, just surround it with floats and suck it up. You could bring in over a quarter of a million dollars of oil a day.
MC says: “Technology used today including “”microbial”” remediation is very effective in eating much of the crude. Boats, planes, and private hardware are being used to spread microbial fluids which are very effective in eating the crude.
—-
REPLY: Right you are, MC! My grad-school microbiology professor at Univ. of Illinois in the 1980’s was Dr. Ananda Chakrabarty, who did this development work for GE and was awarded the first patent for a life-form. Turns out that the natural bacteria can do the job of bioremediation of oil just fine.
At the Exxon Valdez spill, remediation crews learned to spread nutrients (fertilizer for microbes if you will) onto oil-soaked rocks and other material, and this greatly speeded up the cleanup. The long-term impact of this spill will probably be low, but there will be an immediate and highly visible impact to many ecosystems. Nobody should be gloating about this, believe me! We all lose.
First attention must be on stopping the flow, and I appreciate all comments, especially by the friendly posters from the oil & gas industry! Your technical contributions are very welcome. Great site, great place for minds to meet.
I’m sorry to hear men died in this. That being said, all who have worked in the oil field understand there is always the possibility of an accident. It is not reasonable to expect a perfectly safe anything. It is right to continue to improve safety, but nothing in the oil business will ever be 100% safe.
The BOPs are probably mechanically damaged…..the surface casing that the BOPs are
mounted on is more than likely bent or ruptured at the ‘casing bowl’…or the main flange on top of the surface casing that the BOP stack is bolted to. There is a mile of riser pipe that connects the rig to the BOP stack…..for fluids to be flowing from this riser pipe, it would mean it is still attached. Normally if a rig develops some sort of catastrophic emergency, the BOPs are shut in & the riser is unlatched from BOP.
A listing & essentially sinking rig, still connected to BOPs will be catastrophic to structural integrity of BOP & surface casing attach point…as the weight of sinking & collapsing riser pipe imparts force onto BOP. Point being, even if BOP could function, there’s more than likely a structural failure that will leak regardless.
Good job, Anthony. Having worked on an exploration crew many years ago, my thoughts are with the families of the victims.
The article above is good coverage. There is a lot of false information around. Climate progress got their ‘story” from some city folks and had a long list of nonsensical claims. One for example was that it was a BP rig. It was a transocean rig and transocean lost 9 workers. I didn’t see mention of pressures but in the onshore pay zones we sometimes see 10,000 psi gas presures. This is nearly as dangerous as space thrave where you are buckled to a rocket motor which is like an ongoing exploosion. I hired my first oril field safety worker in 1981. The types of pals this administration is surrounded with is not in the leage of the technology of these companies. BP bought Amoco and Sohio. Amoco had a research center in Tulsa and it was so exotic, it was working on computors for artificial intelligence 25 years agobefore most universities. My grandads friend made a few hundred of the earlier jackup rigs before these tethered deeep water rigs developed. If anyone even starts to have casual thoughs about these dingers, the employees have a lot of safety training. The easy oil has been found. 80 years ago oil derricks or what are now drilling rigs were made out of wood.
The concreted bore hole was the first thing I thought of, especially as the rig was about to move on to another site. It’s always tempting to lay down the concrete too fast, to save time. If the prior concrete hasn’t set hard enough, the scene is set for a cascading failure which would indeed block the safety mechanisms.
Mark Levin is a talk show host. He was a lawyer in the EPA and has interrogated Carol Browner.
This tape is posted several places including above.
The city slicker politicians have no clue what is going on. The industry if focusing on the priorities. Safety and clean up. The eco people are focussing on destroying an industry they both hate and do not understand.
These are very brave men. They go into harms way and work very hard. we also have soldiers that take risks. Border patrol men are in harms way but look out for our country. Since R.G Letearneau built the first jack up rig for GHW Bush and partners till now, it has been much safer as an industry than Tonight, saturday night out on the town in D.C., detroit or chicago.
1–BP successfully fought
to block the inclusion on all its USA oil rigs of a device called an acoustic switch—commonly COMMONLY used in other oil-producing nations—that sends impulses through the water that can trigger an underwater valve to shut down the well in the event of a blowback. BP found the costs of these units, about $500,000, excessive.
None of the experts posting on this site seems remotely interested in mentioning that switch.
http://iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/article/223908
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/may2010/orig-m01.shtml
2-
Since Halliburton has a monopoly on the cement plug market, and no one else can get down there to see what they did,
Halliburton has an incentive to screw up most of its cement plugs to insure future
repair contracts.
3-The cheapest fastest way to plug that hole is to
set a 20 kiloton nuke on that hole–
that would plug it–
all this other crap being bandied about is only to
make a lot of self-entitled
over priced overpaid work for the
overrated rig and oil field service companies
and experts and crews being paid
more exorbitant amounts to fix
a problem they created with their expertise
in the first instance–and to save the well originally drilled
for screw up BP(which has insurance and a prostrate obama to pay up)
–at the cost of
at least 3 months pollution–
just nuke it and drill another hole.
And tell Russia we have begun disposing of
our nuke weapons under some
sort of non-proliferation treaty
(pick one).
baddabing
Jim (May 1, 2010 at 4:21 pm)
Thanks for this. In the interview the guy explains exactly what happened.
http://www.marklevinshow.com/Article.asp?id=1790422&spid=32364
To rbateman
I’m sure they deployed SWOT teams not SWAT (although I have seen many media centers call it SWAT). The agencies deploying make SWOT more likely-Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats. Its what one would expect after a such an accident.
Mike Odin says:
May 1, 2010 at 6:27 pm
1–BP successfully fought
to block the inclusion on all its USA oil rigs of a device called an acoustic switch—commonly COMMONLY used in other oil-producing nations—that sends impulses through the water that can trigger an underwater valve to shut down the well in the event of a blowback. BP found the costs of these units, about $500,000, excessive.
None of the experts posting on this site seems remotely interested in mentioning that switch.
———–
REPLY: I am an expert in the oil and gas industry, working on produced water disposal and production of xanthan gum drilling muds using biotechnology.
I posted this at 11:04 am today, this article contains a detailed discussion of the acoustic switch you mentioned:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704423504575212031417936798.html?mod=rss_Today‘s_Most_Popular
Considering that the blow-out prevention (BOP) valve is resisting all attempts at closure (remote vehicles are trying very hard to actuate the mechanism on-hand), it appears that something may have damaged this control system, rendering the existence of the acoustic switch moot. We won’t know until they make more progress.
I’m encouraged by the “box” design that BP is working on, this might capture the oil and turn off the ecological spill. The remainder of their work on this will take months.
To Mike Odin….
I hope you are joking about the nuke. Try to figure out why.
The acoustic shutoff would not have made any difference. The BOP failed. It is designed to fail safe, ie when signal is lost it activates so there is no advantage to another switch.
Thank you everybody with firsthand industry experience who commented on this. Much better than listening to some reporter way out of their depth…or worse yet some posturing pol.
Anthony in a sane world you would receive a Pulitzer prize.
Monty