#1 A fair amount of this sounds reasonable. BOP clearly failed: perhaps 'bad luck' - happened to try to close the shear rams when some unusually strong part of the bottom hole assembly (for instance, but probaaly not, heavyweight drill pipe joint) was lined up with the rams; perhaps bad maintenance - maybe hydraulic leaks made the rams not powerful enough to shear the pipe string, maybe the battery pack was dead or damaged; perhaps bad procedure - maybe the pipe was moved during the BHP test and damaged the blind ram seals. If any of that is indeed true, the MMS might have waived normal requirements because the well was past the normal high risk points and almost ready to be temporarily abandoned.
The charge that records were falsified is probably not correct - more likely a test result was recorded on the rig and verbal report made or permission given, and of course those records were incinerated with the rig.
It does sound like the 'sealing procedure' was altered - that would have to be approved (probably verbally) by the MMS.
Trouble signs were seen earlier in the well, but did appear to have been controlled, and once the casing was run and cemented (as it was) would not have been relevant any more. It has been said that the cement tests were initially not conclusive, but follow-ups some hours later did indicate cement was set and sealing. Apparently the seal did not hold.
1) Cement seal tests were not entirely clean.
2) A second cement plug was not set before reducing mud weight - presumably with MMS permission.
3) The cement seal, probably at the 'shoe' - bottom of the casing - seems to have failed when the mud weight was reduced.
4) Gas entered the casing through the shoe from the discovered oil zone. As it rose it rapidly expanded and its rise accelerated until it hit the rig floor like a rocket, setting off critical alarms and responses.
5) The blind rams would have been activated, closing around the pipe string - but they may have been damaged during the tests a day or two earlier.
6) When they didn't stop the flow the shear rams would have been activated - but they may not have had enough hydraulic pressure, if there was a leak, or they may not have been strong enough to shear some heavyweight piece of the drill string.
7) The gas cloud ignited, and all possible control was lost, along with the 9 men on the drill floor and a couple of men working in the mud pits.
The claim of 70,000+ barrels per day of spill strikes me as highly unlikely - that might be the unconstrained potential flow, but it is far from unconstrained; it has to go down the pipe-rock annulus through incomplete cement, then up the casing, then through an incompletly closed BOP, then through leaks in the kinked riser. Under ideal conditions I seldom get anywhere near my theoretical unconstrained flow rate. In fact, if I tried, I would probably cause the formation to collapse at the completion and I would lose almost all flow (but my rocks are a lot shallower, and probably weaker.) Still, if one was desperate or a gambler, one might just blow the whole BOP off the well and let it go as close to unconstrained as possible and see if it would collapse itself (I wouldn't, the MMS wouldn't, and at least so far BP doesn't seem to want to try that.)
Virtually all oil and oil service companies are offering all possible assistance to BP on this - engineering staff, equipment, technical ideas, whatever. There are two relief wells being drilled - only need one, but a second is chasing the first in case something goes wrong with it. They are going to try a top kill shortly, but I'd be surprised if it works (it might reduce flow rates, which would at least help some.) The siphon seems to be helping and I would expect other similar operations to be tried.
Something on the order of 100,000 barrels of oil is probably floating around (a lot evaporated, a fair amount burned, and some sank to the bottom, but we only have vague guesses as to how much of each.) That's a lot, but the environment will recover from it - it's not that much different from what naturally leaks in a year, IIRC. If you've walked California beaches you have no doubt had to clean the tar off your feet - despite your suspicions it was almost certainly from natural seeps, not oil operations. It WILL be a painful time for fishermen and those who depend on seaside recreation for a living - but a bonanza for the lawyers. There will be lots of demands to shut down deepwater operations - look for serious lines at the pumps and $6+ gas of that happens. Deepwater production CANNOT be replaced by onshore and shallow water production - if it could, we would not be drilling wells costing a million dollars a DAY out in the deep water.
Enough. This is a tragic and nasty situation, but not an EVIL one. Lots of people share the blame. Everything anyone can think of is being done to 'fix' things. Nobody (except the lawyers) is going to 'win' in the end. |
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