What Went Wrong on the Deepwater Horizon?
[Guest post by DRJ]
Most of the stories on the BP oil spill have focused on the environmental aspects of the leaking oil, the government and company response to the spill, and the possibility the blowout preventer failed. But this Houston Chronicle article considers another aspect:
“On April 20, at 11 a.m., the day’s procedures were laid out at a crew meeting on the rig, according to Penton, and it wasn’t going to be an ordinary workday.
BP was temporarily abandoning the well. The Deepwater Horizon was being detached from the well to be moved to another location, as soon as the next day. And the well was being capped.
Experts say well-capping poses special hazards. One arose that day as crews were replacing the mud with seawater in pipes going from the ocean floor to the rig.
Deep gases exert astounding upward pressure on a well. “Drilling mud,” a heavy fluid used to lubricate the drill and bring up bits and pieces of rock, is used as the main line of defense against the upward pressure, or a disastrous eruption of gas.
The mud was being displaced so the riser could be detached from the rig and the wellhead, and the well could be capped with a final cement plug. But seawater is much lighter than mud. The pressure the riser was applying to the well would have lessened by as much as 38 percent, experts said.
That could prove significant.
Investigators likely will be considering whether the drill hole and the casing pipe were secured properly with cement a day earlier.
“The big question is how confident were they in the casing cementing job,” said Elmer “Bud” Danenberger, who recently retired as chief of offshore regulatory programs for the Minerals Management Service. “They shouldn’t have begun this (riser) operation until they were confident in that.
***
Directed by BP, Halliburton had cemented the well below the Deepwater Horizon 20 hours before the blowout, presumably enough time for the cement to properly set. Halliburton said in a written release that it had properly tested the effectiveness of the cement job, but it did not reveal those test results.Questions are being raised about those tests, and about everything from the nature of the fluid used to push down the plug to the chemistry of the cement itself.
Also at issue will be other plugs in the well. Halliburton said the final cement plug at the top of the well had not been installed because “operations had not yet reached the point” requiring it.
Penton said his client told him that the “seal assembly” — an important plug down in the well — had been set less than a half hour before the blowout.”
Meanwhile, hundreds of engineers and specialists from 160 companies have been in Houston for almost 2 weeks, working together to contain the spill. Hopefully they succeed soon, because an oceanographer believes the spill could reach as far as Miami and North Carolina’s barrier island.
— DRJ
i blame Obama.
this is all his fault.
redc1c4 (fb8750) — 5/5/2010 @ 12:29 amI don’t blame Obama, though I think it’s amusing how his behavior would have gotten Bush into a world of press attacks.
I hear a few advocating to detonate a nuke at the leak site, because that would cause a rearrangement of the area that would close the leak. Sounds like a great idea if the stories of Russians doing so several times are true.
Chances of Obama doing this: 0.0%
Dustin (b54cdc) — 5/5/2010 @ 1:09 amWhere were the fire booms ? That is supposed to be the first line of defense and the government had to borrow one from the company and is now scrambling to borrow others all over the world.
Mike K (2cf494) — 5/5/2010 @ 5:20 amSince BP is represented in Washington DC by John Posesta’s lobbing operation, The Podesta Group, it comes as no real surprise that the Obama dithered until his Administration could round up the usual suspects.
ropelight (858557) — 5/5/2010 @ 5:24 amThis is only going to enrich Bush and his buddies in the oil business …. somehow. How did he plan it? For a dumb guy, he makes Machiavelli look dumb … or something like that.
quasimodo (4af144) — 5/5/2010 @ 7:36 amHalliburton? Halliburton! Wait, where have I heard that name before? I knew this was Bush’s fault. And Cheney.
Good thing the 3am phone call was received and 100% effort was applied by this administration.
Crises averted – the system worked.
Corwin (ea9428) — 5/5/2010 @ 7:52 amWould have? Did. And for things every bit as much out of his control, and several things as a direct result of the Mayor and Governor’s actions.
Halliburton is the fallback position to blaming Buuuuuussssssshhhhhhh !
JD (959071) — 5/5/2010 @ 8:01 amGreetings:
I know nothing about the oil drilling business, so please take this question in that light. Why weren’t oil spill booms deployed around the drilling platform before this potentially risky project or, better yet, permanently? Barn door. Horse.
[note: fished from spam filter. –Stashiu]
11B40 (af0a80) — 5/5/2010 @ 10:21 amAmen, JD.
Dustin (b54cdc) — 5/5/2010 @ 10:44 am11B40,
I’m not either but since the mode of transportation is by boat, I think permanent booms would hamper the ability to get supplies and equipment to the rig and to evacuate people off the rig in the case of an emergency.
DRJ (d43dcd) — 5/5/2010 @ 11:09 amComment by ropelight — 5/5/2010 @ 5:24 am
Top recipient of BP-PAC money in a study encompassing contributions given over the last 20-years:
Barack Hussein Obama!
I, like JD, blame Bush, and Cheney, and Rush!
H/T- The EIB Network
AD - RtR/OS! (5b0773) — 5/5/2010 @ 11:12 amFrom today’s WaPo, by Juliet Eilperin
U.S. exempted BP’s Gulf of Mexico drilling from environmental impact study
“The Interior Department exempted BP’s calamitous Gulf of Mexico drilling operation from a detailed environmental impact analysis last year, according to government documents, after three reviews of the area concluded that a massive oil spill was unlikely.
The decision by the department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) to give BP’s lease at Deepwater Horizon a “categorical exclusion” from the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) on April 6, 2009 — and BP’s lobbying efforts just 11 days before the explosion to expand those exemptions — show that neither federal regulators nor the company anticipated an accident of the scale of the one unfolding in the gulf.”
ropelight (f3a99c) — 5/5/2010 @ 12:08 pmAccording to Glenn Beck today, the Obama Administration waived the requirement last spring that booms and fire booms be owned and prepositioned by the federal government under a decades old law that was passed after the Exxon Valdez spill. I would love to hear more detail about that executive order, but my guess is that the MSM will never look into the issue.
in_awe (44fed5) — 5/5/2010 @ 3:55 pmChances of Obama being stupid enough to explsde even a limited range nuke in the Gulf of Mexico: 0.0%. Chances of Dustin being that dumb: really, really, really big.
somesense (14c73f) — 5/6/2010 @ 8:15 pm