I was on Countdown tonight, with guest host Lawrence O'Donnell, talking about the growing rift between the US government and BP as they try to manage the risk of the blowout well getting worse during the "well integrity test". Have a look:
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Perhaps this weekend BP will begin the sealing the Well. Bumbling Thad Allen and the idiot Salazar will have failed to stop BP from taking billions in fines from the pockets of the USA which desperately need money. This duo will make claims that flowrate can now be calculated with accuracy by not opening the flow to the collection vessels. BPs lawyers will trash that number in a few minutes with the assistance of a bribed judge in Houston.
The President is probably unaware of what is happening as his staff keeps him in a cocoon of academic discussion and reflection. If anyone asks him about the flowrate issue he will simply express confidence in Allen and Salazar as he moves back to the big picture of transforming the country.
The Republicans will support BP but they will also condemn the President for giving away billions to BP. With the low information level of the poorly educated citizens it is easy to play both ends of the issues spectrum.
This is yet another example of the President not being able to manage events properly. The big picture and long range goals are fine but the grimy day-to-day life of this country can quickly generate issues that transcend the future. The President leaves that area to his very politically oriented staff. We saw that extremely political staff react in the Shirley Sherrod case.
Obama's Gulf War –
A Pig In A Poke
How much does BP's pig weigh?
We've all seen the pig that they're trying to sell us,
But have they convinced us as to what the pig "weighs."
From the start all we've gotten is British baloney
Promulgated by more of Lord Browne's popinjays.
In the beginning they told us one thousand
Barrels per day, which a few of us bought.
But skeptics screamed and it went to five thousand,
Which to many others didn't seem like a lot.
So why were they drilling if that's all their getting?
Then suddenly they were collecting much more,
And with their new cap could get sixty thousand
Unless more begins seeping around the well bore.
Their goal's to keep testing it ad infinitum.
Collecting more oil would give their game away.
How many stratagems must they come up with
Till Barton reminds us how little some British pigs weigh?
Bob Carlson
www.politicalboondoggles.com
7/19/10
To 'BP Hopes to Keep Gulf Well Closed'
To 'Estimated Oil Flow Rates From the 'Macondo' Well'
To 'BP "Test" - Gush, Baby, Gush as We Wait, Baby, Wait'
To 'Joe Barton Apology-Fest Continues'
To 'British Petroleum Incompetence'
Bob. Before the blowout,it was reported that the well was balanced using 14.0 pounds per US gallon mud. This would imply that the formation pressure was around 13,300 psi. BP report to your Congress showed the formation pressure was around 12,000 psi. With the BOP stack (all three bits of it), at the 5000 ft sea floor now isolated from the seawater head; the pressure at the BOP stack would be around 8400 psi if the well was tight and the porosity of the formation average. This assuming the well is full of 7.1 pound per US gallon crude. BP are saying it was at 6800 psi, a few hours back. I am a power engineer not a oil engineer. Am I talking standard bloggers nonsense here?
Bob, do you know already the ISBN number of your book about this world event? :-) I'm queuing here already.
Keep up the good work of educating. Do not let them continue to not ask the correct questions. The press has become pussies unless it is Ms. Lohan type news, unbelievable.
We appreciate your efforts, I know it is your time in the sun which is a good thing to have happen in a person's lifetime.
You are shinning.
Why don't they pipe the oil to the surface, use exactly what production capacity they had before, and just burn the excess? That would lower the pressure in the wellhead to the same 4400 psi it was maintaining for months, avoid any further release at the wellhead, and (assuming this is really what BP wants) avoid any measurement of the excess oil.
I posed this question on The Oil Drum, and got only superficial answers - too dangerous to burn the oil, etc. How long would it take to build some floating flares that could be hooked up at a safe distance? See http://groups.google.com/group/stop_blowout for a simple design that can be made from readily available parts. Even if all they did was dump the oil on a burning barge, that would be better than releasing it at the bottom.
"Neil Kitson | July 20, 2010 1:25 AM | Reply
You know, Bob is becoming my favourite guy: a literate, iconoclastic, truth-seeking, public-spirited oil and gas engineer. That puts him in a minority of, oh, 1."
I agree!!!
Eljefe has made a big difference with his insights and knowledge. Clear concise
articulate.
I'm seeing a lot of plausible reasons why the decision makers ought to be very wary of the "static kill."
A short essay about "Everything That Can Go Wrong With the SK," from a respected and trusted source could be very important just now. I think we all know who to nominate.
No hyperbole, no sky is falling - just a sober reflection of significant engineering risk mechanisms that only an insider is likely to think of...and be able to back up. Maybe a short mention of things that look worrisome but probably aren't (like 1.8 mile seeps?)
This blog has a LOT of influence. News people need to know what questions to ask. So do the Thad Allens, and the folks that advise them. I'm not sure anything but money can sway most of the political class, but there are some exceptions and sometimes people surprise us and do the right thing.
I get the sense BP is going to ram something down our throat that everybody else may profoundly regret. The people minding the store seem a bit too uncertain and maybe just a bit too tired to resist the drumbeat. Everybody wants a quick resolution to this crisis with no more oil in the water. That instinct may serve us very, very badly.
I really doubt it. The DP is stuck in the BOP and is last known to be hanging at 8367, 3300 feet below the sea floor. The blowout is outside the production casing, so, if the production casing has any integrity at all, the mud will not go down the backside between the production and intermediate casings. If they go slow enough, they could build hydrostatic and kill it. That is, if the BOP doesn't fail.
The presence of the drill string worries me as far as the "static kill" option.
Do you think the mud will see circulatory flow when it is injected?
You covered a lot of ground and really clarified the big issues - #1 being that We The People own this well. BP has played a classic "bait and switch" with the cap, and has played it brilliantly. You mentioned calculating cumulative oil flow from the continuous string of pressure readings BP has been taking (and not sharing). Do the models require a baseline capture of all free flowing oil to make a credible estimate (tight confidence intervals) of cumulative oil release to the Gulf? What about work arounds? BP has in the past made much about its advanced technology to sense fluid flow in pipes. Hard to believe it wasn't applied to this project. Perhaps a supoena and some forensic data recovery on a hard drive is the next best move for the Admiral.
You know, Bob is becoming my favourite guy: a literate, iconoclastic, truth-seeking, public-spirited oil and gas engineer. That puts him in a minority of, oh, 1.
One item that I haven't heard you (Bob), unless I missed it, has been the interaction of drilling the relief well with either the well flowing or the well being shut in. It would seam to me that you would want the pressure down-hole to be lower when they intercept the well casing and then they could shut in the well again to assist the plugging of the well if that will help as they have said. Bob, thank you very much for our input and clarity through all of this. Your knowledge is extremely helpful in understanding both the problem, the solution, and then the smoke screens that BP launches on a continuous basis.
If the reports I have heard are correct, I don't see how the cap will continue to hold. Everything from underspecced parts to casing and rock failures are stacked against it. All of this leads me, a layperson who reads the news and watches MSNBC and CNN, to believe that the bottom kill won't work, either.
Bob, the only solution that this armchair engineer/geologist finds sensible is to open the well to production until the pressure drops enough to make a kill practical.
Thanks much for helping me to understand drilling offshore as I never would have before April 20.
May the souls of the 11 men who died in the rig fire be at peaceful rest and may their families find justice and comfort.
And may everyone hurt by BP's calamitous exercise in revisiting the industrial speedup and cutting corners so proficiently be made as whole as possible as of last month.