BP MC252 well gushing oil – environmental disaster video courtesy of British Petroleum
Later today, BP is expected to try to reduce the flow of oil from their MC252 well by pumping heavy drilling fluids into the pipe.
Throughout the extended top kill procedure – which may take up to two days to complete – very significant changes in the appearance of the flows at the seabed may be expected. These will not provide a reliable indicator of the overall progress, or success or failure, of the top kill operation as a whole. BP will report on the progress of the operation as appropriate and on its outcome when complete.
You can watch the procedure live on the BP web site:
click here for live video. This is what it looked like earlier this morning:
WUWT has some very smart readers. How would you close the pipe? Hopefully you can do better than this :
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Clamp a valve on the pipe… There is plenty of pipe to clamp to…. Once the valve is clamped on, turn the valves off and Voila…. They use clamps for mains water pipes… Should be able to do it with this.
well guys i worked for bp on nabors 146 in northern alberta it is the best company to work for ,i feel bad it happen to bp,but for the us i do not feel nothing ,our oil in canada was dirty oil to the us ,they painted us with that name,look at them now,the reason US said dirty oil because they found 1 dead duck in fort mac in alberta ,now with the mess they have they will have more than 1 dead duck, i hope US learns this ,everything bad you say about anybody,will come and bite in the as@s
Looks like maybe they did get some mud down the hole, and control may be at hand.
Over at the oil drum, someone posted a snippet of wsjonline that seemed to indicate heated words between the drilling boss and the ‘company man’ from BP, a few hours prior to disaster.
OK, here it is;
At a Coast Guard hearing in New Orleans, Doug Brown, chief rig mechanic aboard the platform, testified that the trouble began at a meeting hours before the blowout, with a “skirmish” between a BP official and rig workers who did not want to replace heavy drilling fluid in the well with saltwater.
The switch presumably would have allowed the company to remove the fluid and use it for another project, but the seawater would have provided less weight to counteract the surging pressure from the ocean depths.
Brown said the BP official, whom he identified only as the “company man,” overruled the drillers, declaring, “This is how it’s going to be.” Brown said the top Transocean official on the rig grumbled, “Well, I guess that’s what we have those pinchers for,” which he took to be a reference to devices on the blowout preventer, the five-story piece of equipment that can slam a well shut in an emergency.
From
http://blog.al.com/live/2010/05/bp_says_top_kill_procedure_on.html
RR
What would happen if they couple to it and pump at a higher PSI than what is coming out? For example: if it is blowing out at 2200 PSI, what would happen if they couple up to it and suck out the oil with 6000 PSI (not sure if that’s possible)?
Would it be like when you have a super-thick milkshake and a wimpy straw and you suck so hard the straw collapses (let your mind run wild with that analogy if you so choose – we need the levity)? Surely, if nothing else, it would cause seawater to come in the other cracks rather than oil coming out?
Natural Oil Seeps
20 to 25 tons per day off Santa Barbara
http://www.livescience.com/environment/090520-natural-oil-seeps.html
Here’s the same info from MMS. I guess they took some time off from dating oil industry execs and accepting gifts to write this:
http://www.mms.gov/omm/pacific/enviro/seeps1.htm
Here’s another attempt at determining rate of natural seepage:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090513130944.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090513130944.htm
Stick a tent on it. Make a plastic/canvas tube 20 metres across and 200 metres long with a balloon at the top. Add oil removal lines on the sides of the balloon at its widest point. At 200 metres above the sea floor the methane hydrates should not be a problem and they will accumulate above the pump-out lines. Just in case add a small electric UAV tethered to a power supply on the side of the tent/giant pipe. The UAV is inside the balloon. Why there wasn’t a UAV inside the hat structure they put on it beats me. Idiots I guess. Because its in the oil it will need the same sonar sensors as a PIG, a cleaning robot used in oil pipe lines. This cleaning robot would have a high pressure hot water hose to blast any goop clear of the pump-out lines. The pump-out lines pump down and out. Hydrates and tars float. Provision is added for a solvent input line.
The tent would be anchored to the sea bed with big concrete blocks. This giant pipe wont plug the hole but buys time. It also raises the option of adding a water exclusion collar to the bottom so this tent/ Giant pipe is eventually full of ‘clean’ oil eliminating the dewatering process with the oil. Also if your smart such a collar has an ‘airlock’ waterlock to allow UAV’s to go in and out.
Once this is all over make one tent/ giant pipe with a zipper down the side and store it and the USV’s for any new accident.
Eventually someone will discover that its cheaper to drill in the sea bed in a hydrogen filled dome with telepresence robots replacing the crew. Fully automated sea bed drilling rigs.
Note the fish that hanging around the gusher. Its in many of the footage. See CNN. Something likes oil and I bet this fish is getting fat eating whatever it is. Will someone get samples of the organisms that appear to have shown up for lunch. Clearly the oil isn’t immediately lethal to them.
Tim says:
BP is stating that the top kill procedure has a 70% chance of success. It’s that 30% that has me worried, the end result could be oil and methane gushing from several areas of the ocean floor instead of just one. There is speculation by a couple of independent engineers that the liner casing may be cracked or even disintegrated at some point below the seabed.
Setting up that blowout webcam has got to be one of the worst P.R. decisions ever! ;->
Heading Out, The Oil Drum
It seems to be coming under control. http://tinyurl.com/2ue2ycr
But the quote from Adm Allen is confusing: “Allen said one ship that was pumping fluid into the well has run out of the fluid, or “mud,” and that a second ship is on the way.”
They had three ships full of mud out there totaling about 100,000 bbls.
Everyone is missing the big takeaway here: the oil spill is NOT the enormous catastrophe everyone thought it would be.
This is the silver lining in the entire affair. People are learning that oil spills do indeed happen naturally, and are absorbed naturally. And unlike with the Exxon Valdez (where all coverage was via an agenda-driven media), people are seeing first hand that after a full month of this large oil flow, the actual measurable damage to people and our economy is FAR FAR SMALLER than had been predicted (and still is) by the media.
The other silver lining is that people realize that the government cannot do anything except nag and pester and punish. The government cannot fix this problem – it lacks the knowhow. The message is getting out that government does not have solutions for all problems. This problem (and most offshore oil that feeds our economy) may have been caused by the free market – but that is where the solution is coming from as well.
BP appears to have had some success in stopping this leak:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-oil-spill-top-kill-20100528,0,5782115.story
You know, watching the live ROV feed gives me the feeling that this procedure is like building a ship in a bottle, one-handed, using chopsticks and watching your progress with a pair of binoculars held backwards!
Amazing how they can do this! Hope it works, early signs are encouraging.
The oil that has washed up on shore is so limited that I began wondering if the dispersant has been under estimated. It seems obvious that the first oil ashore is from the earliest spill and is unlikely to have been immediately treated with dispersant. Nor has the amount of oil onshore increased significantly, if the press reports are representative. East of the delta, that early spill is still on the move, but it must be getting thinner as it spreads over a larger area and, for whatever reason, we have not heard any reports of oil ashore in Mississippi or Alabama.
This story is far from over. Probably the most important thing the feds can do now, other than help Louisiana clean the Delta, is conduct a thorough post-mortem on damage patterns and mitigation techniques. Marshes are the most decried damage, but frankly, they seem so impenetrable that failing strong southerly winds it doesn’t appear that the oil can penetrate very far. Someone should be in there now trying to understand the net effect of tides and currents.
The so-called plumes of underwater oil and dispersant will be a critical part of the investigation. Unfortunately, they will likely be the least understood and therefore the most politicized.
Ruhroh says:
May 27, 2010 at 12:12 am
“Looks like maybe they did get some mud down the hole, and control may be at hand.
Over at the oil drum, someone posted a snippet of wsjonline that seemed to indicate heated words between the drilling boss and the ‘company man’ from BP, a few hours prior to disaster. ..”
I worked in the oil field in the 70s, took a few drilling jobs but mostly liked working in the derrick on day shifts (tours). This doesn’t surprise me, there was often conflict between the drilling co and oil co, and if true the BP guy and BP should be held criminally liable as well as taking the cost of the cleanup and damage. It would have been insane to insist on salt water to replace mud before final plug, especially if they got missing fluid and pressure kicks just before. If true though it’s a mystery why the pusher (drilling boss) or driller on duty would not have at least woke everyone up and been on alert. But perhaps it happened too fast to have it occur to them, with so much going on at the time on the floor.
I see nothing in the news to indicate that they have or can even determine whether they have pushed mud down the hole. It’s been 24 hours, and it may be that the mud is simply holding down hole pressure at the bop and the mud going in is also what is going out. That would be equivalent to “temporarily stopping the leak”. The real test will be after pumping some cement, they shut off the pumps. I can just see all the college boys penciling figures around, but till the bop is closed or another put on top it will not be a permanent solution. What I just don’t understand is why they haven’t already done just that.
DCC –
sorry i didn’t include any links. i’d found them when i first saw the offer of assistance and was also surprised. don’t think i’m misunderstanding the following. btw there’s lots more info online:
Bahregansar was Iran’s first offshore oilfield and went on stream in 1961, with a depth of 9,000 ft…
Nowruz, discovered in 1966 at a depth of 8,200 ft, went on stream in 1976 with reserves estimated at about 900m barrels of 21 deg….
Hendijan, discovered in 1968 at a depth of 11,000 ft, went on stream in the 1970s with reserves reported at 300m barrels of 23[degree sign] oil…..
http://www.allbusiness.com/mining/oil-gas-extraction-crude-petroleum-natural/167953-1.html
I doubt that they could install a secondary BOP. They can’t get a good flange connection that would hold the pressure required. Difficult to attach such a large, heavy structure. The existing BOP may have top damage. Lots of unknowns = lots of risk.
If they cut off that riser with nothing downhole to hold back the oil, they are faced with smoothing flanges and attaching a LMRP under pressure. If they can’t securely attach, they could have a worse problem with a completely uncontrolled oil flow. As it is, the bending of the riser is at least holding back some >0% of the oil from escaping.
If they truly have 100% mud flowing out now, the math has changed. They can safely cutoff the riser with no risk of oil release and attach the LMRP to capture 100% of whatever comes out. If they can’t successfully attach, they pump mud for 60 days to keep the oil underground until the relief wells arrive to properly kill the well. It’ll be an expensive, brute force method, but at least it keeps the oil out of the ocean.
Just heard that they are “pausing” to “evaluate” progress. Probably going to pressure down and see what happens. If they got enough mud in the hole, pressure will drop to zero (or whatever’s ambient down there) and the well is considered ‘under control.’ If mud comes out, downhole pressure is still to high and more mud is needed. If oil comes out, there is no mud downhole and we’re exactly where we were 48 hours ago, except we have more information.
@ur momisugly pat said: “don’t think i’m misunderstanding the following. … Bahregansar was Iran’s first offshore oilfield and went on stream in 1961, with a depth of 9,000 ft…”
Those are Persian Gulf wells. Yes, you are misunderstanding it. Those are total depths of the wells as measured from the surface of the ground or bottom of the water. We were discussing drilling wells in 5,000′ of water, not their total depths. Iran has zero experience in deep water because the Persian Gulf is everywhere less than 300 feet deep, well within the limits of a properly-equipped professional diver.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-oil-spill-top-kill-20100528,0,5782115.story
Glenn:
“I see nothing in the news to indicate that they have or can even determine whether they have pushed mud down the hole. It’s been 24 hours, and it may be that the mud is simply holding down hole pressure at the bop and the mud going in is also what is going out. ”
I’m having the same problem. It looks like the leaks are now spewing mud instead of oil. That tells me that the pressure being applied inside the BOP by the incoming mud is as great or greater that the well pressure. They are claiming that the pressure has dropped. That would seem to indicate that some of the mud is also going down the well hole. And that the weight of the mud on top of the oil is what is responsible for the pressure drop. But as long as the leaks are spewing mud, the well pressure is still winning. Unless they continue to pump in mud indefinitely, or unless the weight of the mud on the oil reduces the pressure to zero, this isn’t going to work. The part that I don’t understand is the junction point where mud meets oil. Why don’t they just flow around each other at that point.
@Glenn Skankey. I think they didn’t go for the second BOP immediately because of the risks involved. They would have to cut off the riser and drill stem that’s in the BOP in preparation for making a proper seat for the new BOP. That frees up the drill stem to do what it wants to do and risks loosing total control of the well. I think they took the safest approach which was to attack the flow with least risk of compromising the BOP and the surface casing.
So why did it take so long to get started on top kill? Well, the BOP was faulty and had to be repaired by ROVs. The BOP control unit had to be brought to the surface for repair and reconfiguration before it could control the choke and kill valves. There were logistical details, like ordering up 100,000 bbls of mud. And I hope they spent a lot of time looking at and planning for problem scenarios. The top kill was not guaranteed to work. In addition, there was a lot of emphasis on mitigation, so they first tried to put a catchment dome over the leak. We still aren’t privy to everything they were doing in the lead up to top kill.
Suttles of BP was still very guarded in his assessment of progress this morning. It’s not under control until the cement dries. BP learned early on that optimism has no traction with the media. Remember their first estimate of 1000 bbls/day? They they upped it to NOAA’s estimate of 5000 bd. They were beaten unmercifully for that number despite the fact that it wasn’t their number. No wonder they took the tack of “it doesn’t matter.” It really didn’t matter; they had to assume the worst in their planning. It wasn’t until a few days ago that they got any reliable readings of pressure from the BOP sensors. Current estimates are 20,000 bd or less.
While I am grumbling about the media, I have one more complaint. They are continuously saying it was the worst spill (disaster) in US history. But I have yet to see an analysis of what that means on a global scale. There was one far worse in the GoM (Ixtoc I) and the top two tanker spills (together) exceeded even that number. So much for the media keeping us informed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_spill#Largest_oil_spills
DCC says:
May 27, 2010 at 4:07 pm
“@Glenn Skankey. I think they didn’t go for the second BOP immediately because of the risks involved. They would have to cut off the riser and drill stem that’s in the BOP in preparation for making a proper seat for the new BOP. That frees up the drill stem to do what it wants to do and risks loosing total control of the well. ”
I’d let the string blow out if it would. But the rams do have some purchase on the pipe.
There are risks with pumping mud and junk thru the bop as well. And as far as cementing, remember that there is still a string of some length in the hole, and apparently not being accessed. If it were (or even not) it could rupture at any time, at any place.
I don’t see the wait. The manifold was likely damaged, but a line could have been brought down within days to manually try the rams, and put a valve on top. Flanges are built to withstand the force, the seabed appears a fairly stable environment, and even were it unsuccessful there may be no difference, still a hole on top of the bop instead of at the end of the riser, which has holes in it and could bust at any time.
I could be wrong of course, have little experience and none under the ocean. But they had 24 hours, the first attempt has failed and the flow continues. It looks like they are monitoring leaks and probably hoping and watching to see if the rams will budge. I just don’t see this as positive steps to a permanent solution. Drilling and what’s happening downhole is likely still an art as much as science, and I can’t help but think that the old timers would agree with me. Cut it off and cap it quick. Had they done this three weeks ago the spill might have totaled much less than it is today, and tomorrow, and….
Top Kill is on again, and the leakage at the riser is turning to all grey drilling mud.
Looking good.