Yesterday, Joel Achenbach of the Washington Post published what I consider one of the most revealing stories of the entire BP odyssey since their Mississippi Canyon Block 252 well blew out on April 20th. My regular readers know that I have been critical of both BP and the government in their management of this catastrophe, and that I have been often baffled about some decisions that are made. There have been surprise, last minute decisions, such as the "well integrity test", and the unexplainable delays in the real solution here, the relief wells. The erratic decision making, lack of consistent direction, and unclear chain of command has confused the media and the public, and caused this story to drag on far longer than it should have. I believed then, and continue to believe, that if they had simply kept the first relief well working, this story would have been over a month ago. But it's not. The relief well, again, the only solution to killing the blowout well, has been delayed for the capping stack procedure, then the "well integrity test", the "static kill" and cement job, the "near ambient test, the "ambient test", now the fishing job to get drill pipe extracted before actually trying to change out the BOP, which I believe is unwise.
Each of these procedures, plus the ill fated "top kill" procedure in May, have been high risk, threatened the integrity of the well and could have easily caused severe damage allowing uncontrolled flow into the Gulf, making containment even more difficult than it already was. As you know, I have asked several times during all this bobbing and weaving, "What the hell are they doing?" I have believed from the first minute that these decisions were pushed by BP to avoid measurement of the flow from the well to minimize their liability. I believed their silence on key issues such as flow rate and causes were simply their lawyers trying to keep the veil pulled over these key details. With the lack of industry experience on the government side, I naturally assumed that BP was bullying the government into agreeing to these steps, but was always confused about why they were slowing down the relief well, which has never made any sense. Well, now we apparently have the answers to at least some of these questions.
It seems that Steve Chu, the Nobel Prizing-winning Secretary of Energy and his staff of advisors have been making these calls, exercising what I consider to be questionable risk management, and making decisions based on advice from those who, it appears, have little oil well crisis management experience. We know that the government and BP have formed an Odd Couple kind of marriage, one that was cemented after BP agreed on June 16 to pony up $20 billion for damages from its blowout. It was in the government's best interest, after all, to keep BP viable, and in the company's best interest to shift as much blame as possible to the government if something went wrong, so a mutually beneficial arrangement was formed. Since that time, the relationship between BP and government advisors has been a strange alliance, with retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen as the prime spokesman with the occasional appearances by company representatives to explain technical procedures. As you've heard from me before, often those explanations actually created more questions than they answered, and served to keep everyone confused.
Achenbach discovered that the real decision makers here have actually been Chu and his science team, which explains a lot. His primary advisors, Dr. Tom Hunter, Director of Sandia Labs, Dr. George Cooper, a retired professor from Berkeley, Dr. Richard Lawrence Garvey, a physicist, and Dr. Alexander Slocum, a mechanical engineering professor from MIT, are researchers or teachers, primarily in nuclear physics or mechanical engineering. None of the team has direct oil industry background. The DOE Deepwater Response website that names this team also says it has over 200 other advisors, but fails to list anyone who's actually done any work in oil and gas. Hopefully some have, but it's clear by some of the decisions being made that, if there are industry folks on the team, they haven't had much influence.
Since taking office, the Obama administration has done its best to distance itself from anyone who is tainted with the smell of oil including his own supporters. From very early on, Obama's team showed little interest in engaging the industry about the difficult issues of converting from a mostly hydrocarbon-based economy to one more diversified, and, based on the industry's track record and opposition to any improvement in carbon emissions, tax reform, or safety regulations, that's understandable; but to shut out all advice seems a bit extreme. The Obama team's contempt for the oil industry is palpable, and his picks for his cabinet and other advisors demonstrated that in spades. Indeed, even the commission he established to determine the causes of the blowout has not one member with any direct oil and gas experience, but instead consists of environmentalists and academics. Certainly, the commission should include these important voices in an inquiry of this nature, but to include no one with actual industry experience pre-ordains that the panel's conclusions will be condemned as biased. In fact that very criticism started days after the panel was named. The DOE website goes to great lengths to document its contributions to this crisis and touts a long list of accomplishments, essentially asserting that it was Chu's team that prevented BP from doing a lot of stupid things. That may be true, but the list seems a bit over-wrought.
The DOE takes credit for the containment systems designed, but never completed, and Chu says it was his idea to shut in the capping stack installed on July 13th and 14th rather than produce the well to containment. After the top kill failed, everyone, including me, was very concerned about well integrity, and assumed that, after the capping stack was set, BP would continue to safely produce the well to ships on the surface while rushing to complete the relief well; however, Chu said no. As Achenbach described Chu's recollection, he said,
"'No, I don't think so, there's another scenario,' The well, he said, might have integrity after all.' That opened the possibility, he said, for the 'integrity test.' They could close the well and see what happened."
See what happened? That's like saying, "Let's take a car and drive it into a wall at 80 miles an hour to see what happens." Some, mostly industry outsiders, have said "you can't argue with success", and that shutting in the well worked. Maybe, but my answer to that assertion is, but, was that good risk management? Most experienced people would say no, it was the more risky alternative. I would liken this decision, again using a car analogy, like driving from Houston to Dallas without your seatbelt on and not having a wreck or getting killed. Was it successful? Yes. Was it poor risk management? Absolutely. It's the same with this decision, it may have worked, but carried serious risks that were not mitigated. After the stack was set was when we found out that it was inadequately designed only able to produce all the flow from the well or to shut it in completely. We were told that the well must either be shut in or flowing into the Gulf. This stack, designed and engineered for 2 months before installation, could not contain part of the flow and produce the rest to whatever capacity was available at the surface, another factor that never made much sense.
Much of what has gone on this last month has been confusing to every industry insider I've talked to. Delaying the relief well, especially with John Wright, the best relief well driller on the planet, in charge, is unconscionable. Had Wright been left alone, this would have been over weeks ago, in my view. And safely. With the revelation of the US government's active management of this crisis, much of my confusion is now cleared up. The reasons for all the course changing, halting press briefings, the completely opaque and lukewarm "technical briefings" are now explained. It looks like BP has been happy to take the backseat to the government. The reasons are simple; BP was off the hook from the moment the government actually took over, and would be more than happy to point the finger at the government if the whole thing blew up.
The only way to assure this well is dead is the relief well. Since the BP/US government team has now blinded themselves from being able to see what's going on with all this business from the top of the well, it is now most assuredly so. Now their attempt to fish the drill pipe, which is likely held in place by collapsed casing, the casing hanger, or the BOP (maybe all three), is ill advised and risky. Likewise, pulling the BOP stack right now is risky. Their concern for components on the stack is about 5 weeks too late after already putting far more pressure on it than for which it was designed, something I don't believe BP made clear to Chu's team when they decided to shut it in. The static kill/cement job made killing this well harder, putting into question the weaknesses of the very BOP stack components we pointed to over a month ago.
Now they're in a jam, but at least I now understand why. Come on, relief well.
I'm interested in watching un-biased science and Public-vested experts work to resolve the Gulf catastrophe. It's the first time in my lifetime that scientists NOT working for business are in charge of the entire project.
I think it's illogical to assume that Dr. Chu is not gathering information and expert advice from all expert quarters. That's what scientists do when given free reign. It is only when the outcomes are profit-driven that scientific results are narrow, manipulated, and incomplete.
Science has suffered from inadequate federal funding or bridled purpose (military application) for generations in our country. This is an opportunity to see what scientific process/problem resolution without constraint has to offer.
The dog I had in this show (a recoverable Gulf) is in a coma. I'm glad Bob is involved and knowledgeably critical. It spurs those in charge to excel.
I'm not that big of jerk...that last post was intended for ioinkthere4iham. And, ham, I'm impressed by your brain function.
I appreciate your intelligent post and for the stakeholders I'm sure it's very thought-provoking, but frankly, for me, I don't really care.
I don't like seafood, I drive a fuel-efficient car, I don't cook, the lights at home are always off, and as long as I'm breathing I'm good.
The sad fact is though that 'some' people are willing to kill (but not die) to perpetuate their lifestyle. Our society requires a major overhaul to get past an economic system that hinges on natural resources with humans at the bottom of the pyramidal hierarchy. It will happen.
This has been a very thought provoking thread and not just at the level "why has it taken so damn long to kill the well." Bob's question "was this good risk management" is central to understanding the Mississippi Canyon Block 252 disaster and how deep water drilling should be practiced in future. I like the seat belt analogy, but it's incomplete because it only explicitly considers risk. Informed risk management inherently means balancing expected risks against anticipated rewards. Risk reward ratios are not a "one size fits all" metric - where you stand on specific risk management decisions really does depend on where you sit.
BP balanced the prospect of extraordinary future profits (years in the future) against extraordinary potential liability - but fully aware their resources (political and cash) would allow them to substantially discount payouts below any actual damage they might inflict. Expected reward exceeded expected risk, so they opted for drill baby drill. Seems insane to many people in hindsight, but it made perfect profit driven sense. It will probably make sense in future unless substantial political, regulatory and economic reforms alter the Big Oil calculus.
Gulf Coast Shrimpers, had they been given the luxury of informed consent, would probably have seen the risk/reward ratio as much lower: slightly reduced commercial and consumer fuel costs (again, in the future, not now)and a more vibrant local economy etc, against the risk of losing their livelihoods for years, or maybe forever. Individual shrimpers would certainly have disagreed among themselves, but their collective response would likely have been more like drill maybe drill, & carefully please.
On any given subject, there are approx. 300 million competing risk:reward ratios in the US, but US citizens and their elected reps have now been forced to evaluate the rewards and risks of deep water drilling with respect to a very squishy concept known as "The National Interest." Most of us can only hope our future drilling policy fairly balances the interests of the many and ordinary against those of the few and powerful.
By most reasonable accounts, the Age of Petroleum is ending, and our power hungry nation is going to have to use less energy per person and get it from different sources. Given this assumption, I frame the National reward:risk question as follows. Will future deep water drilling make the conversion to an alternative fuels economy occur more quickly, more cheaply, throw fewer people under the bus AND result in a better Post Oil standard of living than if we chose not to drill in deep water? A bit too simplistic, but it's a start.
like your synopsis, eljefe, and wonder what we still don't know about how decisions were made.
also wonder what the pressure build-ups looked like with relevant times that were released in a sanitized version to us, but might have had clues about why the process would work.
had no idea these guys were just winging it until we saw the fubar of installing wrongly-rated equipment; since then it seems everything had just been on idle with the relief well, and it's down-right unbelievable they want to switch out BOPs.
hopefully Chu is at least getting back-channel advice from somewhere else in the industry we don't know about.
I hate to see what I consider the 'real' judges of right and wrong in America criticized. Nevertheless, (I read the article) Nobel Prize winner Chu and his gang might have erred on the side of science instead of relying on the more reliable side of experience. Despite, that this particular scenario is apparently unprecedented.
I like that idea...
The defining words: Risk Management! There is death hidden in those two words.
Bob, I think you are taking more from the Washington Post article than is really there and trusting the Washington Post more than is wise.
Despite the WP article I think in fact your original surmises are closer to the truth.
I keep reading that you think the relief well (not sure why its not plural, because i thought there were 2 relief wells) is the final solution. Yet I see BP keep delaying the relief well, as if they know that its not the final solution. Now if everything you say is correct about all these attempts to kill the well from the "top" being risky. And probably doing all kinds of damage to the well. Then perhaps the relief well is not going to work, and BP knows that??? Just a guess.
And maybe they keep delaying it because they want this story to be off the radar map, and then wait for the right moment to announce that the relief well is being stopped all together. Perhaps on a Friday before a long holiday weekend...when nobody is paying attention. So they are just waiting for the right moment, when the media focus is on some other disaster. Who knows?? All I know is that i would not trust one thing BP tells us...nothing!
Well said. Now that we have made a mess, it's time to call in the experts who understand what has happened and what should be done going forward. Another expensive lessons learned.
Obama's Gulf War –
"Juggling Blowout Preventers"
(Saving rental bucks on Relief Well 2)
Why's BP acceding to Steven Chu's
Demands for a dangerous juggling act?
Remember how many relief wells they said
They'd drill? Like perhaps two, as a matter of fact.
Well, drilling has stopped while they fish for the drill pipe
Steve suspects is attached to the old BOP.
Multi-ton blowout preventers are bitches
To move, even when not clung to by blowout debris.
So which are they moving? The first one that failed them,
So Allen can figure out who was to blame.
How anxious is BP to turn the thing over?
You think they'd prefer a dragged out guessing game?
And where in the world could they find a replacement
That they could afford, that costs minimum bucks?
Maybe the one on RW2?
Not making do with what they've got sucks.
Why worriy that BP is going to need two?
At the rate they are going? A Chinaman's chance –
If Chu holds them up till Obama leaves office,
Having read Mitch's mind on delays in advance.
Bob Carlson
www.politicalboondoggles.com
On Twitter @PBoondoggles
8/22/10
To 'Fishing On the BP Well:
So, All This Was the Government's Idea?'
To "Admiral Allen said that once the new preventer —
which was used by the rig drilling a backup relief well —
was installed..."
To 'Well to Be Sealed After Labor Day'
To 'After one-on-one with Obama,
McConnell vows to slow White House agenda'
To 'Mitch 'Just Say No' McConnell'
To 'BP Incompetence'
Isn't it common sense to go to the people who are top specialists in that area to solve a problem and listen to them?
Would they go, and listen to a foot doctor for a head injury?
Are they still thinking that they will fish the drill pipe, even though that is risky and not recommended by the professionals?
Go John Wright!! Sorry that you and others are battling every step, that you know that is needed.
If the casing is collapsed will the relief well work?
Isn't there any technology that is similar to an MRI, so they can see what is happening to the inside?
If the relief well doesn't work, will it be nuked? Are there other types of bombs that can be used with the same effect?
Thank you.
It seems to me that if they had commenced the fishing job before the blowout, the blowout may not have occurred and if it had, the BOP would have had a chance to work, which it didn't with two strings of drill pipe in the rams path.
It would also seem more logical to have opened the well's flow to the surface and killed the well with the relief well, letting the well draw the cement into the wellbore, annulus and casing, filling all of the voids with cement, resulting in the pressure at the wellhead being zero. Then they could unflange the BOP and pull the BOP and drill pipe out of the dead hole.
My take on this entire control effort has always been that BP began fabricating the proper capping stack to connect to the the annular/riser package almost immediately. That stack would have accomplished full containment had a riser package been included and or full shut in, as it ultimately did. It would have taken at least two months to get the stack built, the diverter system and the mass of plumbing built for the manifolds and subsequent kill proceedures in place and ready to go in the best of circumstances. BP capped the well as fast as it could be capped given the complexity of the enginneering and the fact that it was in 5200 feet of water. Some of the stuff BP tried waiting on the stack to be built failed, thats the nature of the blowout control business. While all that was going on the interim containment efforts were hugely successful. If there were delays in the ultimate outcome, shutting the well in, it has complicated enough without government intervention dictated by public outrage, streaming videos and never ending speculation and mistrust directed at the industry as a whole by the media.
Now that we are beginning to find out the extent to which the government has been in control all along the "partnership" between BP and government, that everyone demanded, was deceptive to the American public, unnecessary risks were taken, and BP is content, likely at the rate of 20 million dollars a day, to let the government call the shots. Good grief. Nuke it, kill it, cap it, disperse it we don't want it on the beach, shut it in, hurry, no wait a minute, lets think about this a minute, better open it back up, the pressure's too great, lets see how much its making so we know what to fine 'em; the oil is gone, no its back, the same day the shrimping season opens four different studies come out saying not to eat Gulf seafood...it never ends.
I might ask if would be time to recant some of the criticism directed at BP for their decisions regarding the blowout response, but I know what the answer would be.
You may have been correct all along as to why the relief well was stalled, weather aside, and you are absolutely correct that it is ludicrous that no industry related engineers with specific blowout response sit on the DOE panel. The public would have whined about it, and cried foul, and would have made no difference anyway. The well isn't still making a mess and thats a good start to cleaning the real mess up.
I reckon when the BOP finally gets lifted onto a workboat deck it will be immediately arrested and handcuffed to the rail, then we'll by golly get some real answers.
Thank you. I appreciate your efforts in educating the public as to the complexity of this blowout and corresponding response.
do you have a comment on dr bea's statement that 'the geology is fractured'?
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/08/top-oil-expert-geology-is-fractured-bp.html
what is your best guess for the psi at the reservoir level?
was the '500 barrels of cement' statement accurate? given continuing leaks at the bop, how is it that bp can claim success with the cement plug?
apologies for asking so many questions, and thanks for helping us understand what is happening in the gulf.
Bob, The Achenbach article and your response were quite a read and certainly give a fresh perspective. Still the Post's report is at best, a second hand account pieced together from interviews of witnesses with their own agendas, who are very likely recounting personal memories of their limited role in a complicated, chaotic and fast moving event. Simply put, individuals are unreliable witnesses. I firmly believe it's impossible approach a definitive narrative of who decided what and why until a fact finding commission gets supoena power. Until this hypothetical commission has time to study, reflect, and publish. I wouldn't discard your original hypothesis that BP called the shots with government acting in the capacity of "The Beard". Everything you have previously written still makes a compelling case that critical decisions about how to contain the oil were made by BP with the intent to hide evidence and thereby reduce liability.
No. There was no "debris". Another result of an inexperienced person briefing (Adm Allen). It was merely fill from pieces of the wall of the open hole falling to the bottom. Happens EVERY TIME you trip pipe and especially after you've shut down for a storm. Inconsequential. Irrelevant.
isn't the simplest explanation for the relief well delays that their success is no longer assured?
most of the delaying action commenced just after they found debris in the well.