BP needs some new spin doctors

[OkieJohn2]

OK, so I have been keeping an eye on the unfolding drama in the Gulf and really think that if BP is handling the spill like they are handling the PR part, boy I feel really sorry for all the people who live in the Gulf area.
First they say that cleanup could cost a billion dollars!!!, yet other sources peg it at $14 billion.
Then the CEO points out that its not really their fault, they outsourced it, but of course they will still do what they can to set things right.
Then they offer to hire all the now out of work fishermen to help with the cleanup, of course they have to sign a waiver to promise not to sue BP for damages, but when word of that leaks out they quickly back track.

[NM_Shooter]

I used to ride rigs and designed and installed controls / instrumentation for blow out preventers back in the early 90's.  I rode a rig into the Philippines similar to the one that just blew out... the 709.  I've got buddies in Houston still working this industry, and I'm trying to get an inside scoop. 

The mechanics are sort of like this... they have a 200+ ton chunk of steel hydraulic (blow out preventer) controls bolted to the top of the wellhead, and a thing called a riser tube attaches to the top of the BOP and to the bottom of the drill rig.  A tensioner pulls on the riser and keeps the rig pulling up on the wellhead as they drill through the middle of the riser.  I forget the amount of pressure on the riser, but I think it is in the range of 2M lbs.  We were drilling in 6000 feet of water back then.

When they drill, they use "mud" to seal the riser tube while they drill, the mud washes out the tailings but more importantly it keeps pressure on the hole to keep the gasses in check.  Sometimes during drilling they hit a pocket and the mud suddenly dumps down into the hole, much faster than they can pour mud in the top of the riser.  If this happens, the well can burp (with millions of pounds of pressure) and you need to keep that burp in check and contained, or it will literally blow all the drill stem back up the riser, along with flammable / poisonous gas.  You can go from "whoops" to dead in a handful of seconds.

Normally, you watch the mud column pressure and level, and if you see a fast change, they engage different levels of blow out control.  You can clamp down on the drill stem and seal the stem in place, or (if things are out of hand) you can engage the shear rams and literally chop the drill stem off and seal the hole. 

The part that I know little about (somebody chime in) is that at the end of the drilling, they push a concrete type seal down into the top of the well (through the drill stem I presume), seal the hole, evacuate the mud, then discharge exploding bolts which releases the BOP from the head.  They then retrieve the BOP and get off the well.

I heard that at some point, the concrete plug failed, and the well blew out.  I'm a little confused as to how this happened because the timing would have had to be darn near perfect.  If it had happened later, the BOP and riser would have been off the hole and the rig would probably not have been destroyed.  If it happened earlier, they could have caught the blowout and pinched it off with the BOP. 

I'm wondering if the BOP is still attached to the top of the well, or if it has been eroded and blown away.  If the latter, it will be 10X harder to get back under control. 

[peternap]

I used to ride rigs and designed and installed controls / instrumentation for blow out preventers back in the early 90's.  I rode a rig into the Philippines similar to the one that just blew out... the 709.  I've got buddies in Houston still working this industry, and I'm trying to get an inside scoop.  

The mechanics are sort of like this... they have a 200+ ton chunk of steel hydraulic (blow out preventer) controls bolted to the top of the wellhead, and a thing called a riser tube attaches to the top of the BOP and to the bottom of the drill rig.  A tensioner pulls on the riser and keeps the rig pulling up on the wellhead as they drill through the middle of the riser.  I forget the amount of pressure on the riser, but I think it is in the range of 2M lbs.  We were drilling in 6000 feet of water back then.

When they drill, they use "mud" to seal the riser tube while they drill, the mud washes out the tailings but more importantly it keeps pressure on the hole to keep the gasses in check.  Sometimes during drilling they hit a pocket and the mud suddenly dumps down into the hole, much faster than they can pour mud in the top of the riser.  If this happens, the well can burp (with millions of pounds of pressure) and you need to keep that burp in check and contained, or it will literally blow all the drill stem back up the riser, along with flammable / poisonous gas.  You can go from "whoops" to dead in a handful of seconds.

Normally, you watch the mud column pressure and level, and if you see a fast change, they engage different levels of blow out control.  You can clamp down on the drill stem and seal the stem in place, or (if things are out of hand) you can engage the shear rams and literally chop the drill stem off and seal the hole.  

The part that I know little about (somebody chime in) is that at the end of the drilling, they push a concrete type seal down into the top of the well (through the drill stem I presume), seal the hole, evacuate the mud, then discharge exploding bolts which releases the BOP from the head.  They then retrieve the BOP and get off the well.

I heard that at some point, the concrete plug failed, and the well blew out.  I'm a little confused as to how this happened because the timing would have had to be darn near perfect.  If it had happened later, the BOP and riser would have been off the hole and the rig would probably not have been destroyed.  If it happened earlier, they could have caught the blowout and pinched it off with the BOP.  

I'm wondering if the BOP is still attached to the top of the well, or if it has been eroded and blown away.  If the latter, it will be 10X harder to get back under control.  

That's the most intelligent post I've read anywhere about this mess.
Thanks Shooter

[muldoon]

if anyone is interested in the details of the event, they should keep an eye on this thread on another forum. 

http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/showthread.php?t=882208

There are a couple dozen roughnecks posting there, at first it was alot of speculation from expereicned rig workers and lately has gotten some first hand reports from the people on the derrick floor.  Even a link to a fisherman who was tied off to the rig when the first pressure jolt blew saltwater up the riser. 

Here is his story :

http://www.mudinmyblood.net/forum/showthread.php?t=6104


Mark Levin interviewed someone involved as well under an assumed name.  His story matches every shred of evidence and seems quite real to me.

http://www.marklevinshow.com/Article.asp?id=1790422&spid=32364


--
finally, my own experience with this event has been exhausting.  But there are some fantastic stories from it.  I have never seen anything get done at BP as fast as things are getting done right now.  Projects that take years are getting greelighted and done in days.  My interaction with AT&T to get upgrades for the Mobile, AL office was just incredible - who knew AT&T could actually work that fast.  I got a txt today on my phone at 4:45 from a friend of mine at drillquip, it had the parts for the cap loaded on 18wheelers leaving the yard on its way down i10.  I was at the atsme crawfish boil on sunday, I think half the damn city is working on project sombrero or involved in the GoM relief effort..  I even know a retired fireman from Texas City that was just asked to head up a team on the AL coast.  They wanted him to pee test within 2 hours of the phone call and leave tomorrow. 

The event is a disaster, seeing the hard working people come together to deal with this has been awe inspiring. 
--

[muldoon]

Then the CEO points out that its not really their fault, they outsourced it, but of course they will still do what they can to set things right.

I am not a fan of outsourcing.  But some facts may be relevant here.

The rig is owned by transocean.  BP leases the mineral rights of the rig.  Anadarko oil also has 25% of the rights on this rig. 
Of the 126 people on the rig when the explosion, only 6 were BP people.  To my knowledge not a single BP person was on the floor when this happened, it was Haliburton folks drilling the well and mudding it in.  The valve that did not seal was made by Cameron.  The 5-10 minutes after the explosion and before the fire not a single person closed that valve. 

BP is claiming responsibility, and they should. But, it's not like BP was out there being sloppy and neglectful and caused this. 

I'm wondering if the BOP is still attached to the top of the well, or if it has been eroded and blown away.  If the latter, it will be 10X harder to get back under control. 

Well, theres two BOP's.  one at the sea floor and one at the base of the rig.  between them is 5000 feet of ocean.  The one at the top or base of the rig is sitting on the seafloor.  The riser is still attached and is arc'd in a 1500 feet crushed and crimped manner.  The riser is leaking at multiple places.  The BOP at the bottom cannot be activated.  I do not know the technical explanation and if I tried to explain what I heard I would get it wrong.  There is a huge amount of sand, coupled with the 20,000 psi involved that sand is literally eating away at the riser (like a sandblaster).  It is not clear if the BOP from the seafloor was flat destroyed in the initail pressure pop, or it was damaged after but it looks like it is completely not an option right now. 

[NM_Shooter]

The radio interview is a great link.  It gave me chills to listen to it.  The pirate4x4 forum has some great posts in it as well... I'd really like to see the records of the BOP controls. 

When I heard about this, I talked to a buddy of mine who I used to work with to see whose controls were on the well head.  He and I both worked for Syntron Exploration, then Tri-Tech, then finally Hydril doing controls.  I did the EE HW design and he did SW.  I was terrified that it was Hydril controls.  I'm sure that since it has been 20 years that all of our stuff has been revised, but I was still concerned anyway.  We literally would spend weeks looking at small systems trying to remove all single points of failure. 

Our BOP systems were dual redundant, and were called "blue" and "yellow" for the two sides of the redundancy. 

Most of our work was on the Discoverer 534 drill ship, but we spent a lot of time on the Sedco 709.  When we were working on these, the old control systems (the electronics) were crazy old.  Literally racks of wire wrap boards.  We updated a lot of the electronics, and built a monitoring card that would eavesdrop on the communication packets.  We had an industrial computer that could log and playback all of the steps that were operated, as well as all the pressure, temperature, voltage, position data too... sort of like a black box on a plane. 

We'd fly into New Orleans the night before to stage, stay up most of the night on Bourbon Street, then drive down to Venice to catch a helicopter ride out to the rig.  Venice is a lot nicer sounding than it is.  Still don't want to hear about it covered in crude.  We'd fly out to the deep water. 

I once got held "hostage" for a week or so.  We had some pressure transducers that were failing and keeping the rig from operating.  I extracted the transducers of the BOP and was going to fly back with them to do post mortems, when I was told that I had to stay on the rig until the problem was solved.  I joking said I was going to call the coast guard, and was told that I was in international water and the coast guard didn't care :-).  So I spent a week in my rack and the galley until the guys back home figured out the problem, sent me new transducers, and I got paroled.

There are a lot of organizations represented on a rig, and the top of the food chain is usually occupied by the toolpusher and company man.  I can't remember the exact dynamics, but I think the company man represented the well, and the toolpusher was in charge of the drilling crew.  Then there were a whole lot of folks like me who basically just got in the way doing support stuff. 

I had a status of NEP... Non Essential Personnel.  That was fine by me.  That meant that if the crap hit the fan my job was to go get in the life boat. 

Here's a link to Hydril Pressure Controls.  I didn't know that they are now owned by GE.

http://www.hydril.com/pressureControl/BOP/BOP.php

[bayview]

   I guessing the American people will end up paying for the cleanup one way or the other . . .    Fuel prices have jumped a dime at service stations here in N. Dallas area today.  (5/5/2010)

/

[IronRanger]

"VIDEO: Hiding the Truth: White House Allowed BP to Keep Video of Gushing Pipe from Public for Three Weeks"

The White House allowed BP to hide its video feed of a gushing oil pipe in the Gulf of Mexico from the public for three weeks, all the while that same video played live in the White House Situation Room, ABC reports.

This startling revelation comes just as Obama prepares to get really angry in public about the spill – just in time to cover up his administration's collusion with BP to hide the true extent of the massive disaster in the Gulf.

Brian Ross and John Soloman of the Center for Public Integrity discussed ABC's quest to obtain the video of the oil pipe and revealed that the White House consented to the release of a 30 second clip of the pipe.

"At the end of the day, the White House finally acquiesced to the 30 second piece because they understood the political and media pressure," said CPI's John Soloman. "Why not sooner? It's been going on for three weeks. People have seen this internally within government almost every day. Why can't the American people see it?"

The release of even the 30 second video clip showing the oil spewing uninhibited into the ocean immediately led outside observers to conclude the disaster was far worse than the 210,000 gallon estimate of the NOAA and Coast Guard. One scientist predicted to NPR that the rate is more in the range of almost 3 million gallons a day based on an analysis of the video released by BP.

The revelation that the White House and BP kept the true extent of the oil disaster from the public coincides nicely with last night's news that Obama plans to get "angry" in front of the White House press corps tomorrow about BP's role in the disaster and its clean up. Don't be fooled, though. The evidence is mounting that the White House is working in concert with industry to hide the truth about the extent and cause of the spill.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=WHI20100516&articleId=19195

[glenn kangiser]

I disagree with the amount of oil flowing through the pipe on these reports.

They have a 21 inch pipe - I assume a conductor pipe.  I also read somewhere it was a 12 inch pipe so maybe that is the well casing that would be inside the conductor.  In either case it is a large pipe.

When I was drilling - on land based water wells we would develop the wells at 3 to 4000 gallons per minute through a 12 inch pump discharge at velocities that appeared to be similar to what the video of the broken pipe shows.  At the pressure they are talking about it would seem it was near the high velocity but for rough figures lets use 3000 gallons per minute.  180,000 gallons per hour.

I put the flow at 4,320,000 gallons per day although it is interspersed with natural gas, so assume 1/2 gas leaving 2 million gallons per day of oil being spread through the gulf.

How about some tasty BP gulf shrimp smothered in oil.  

Here is something closer to my estimate

http://climateprogress.org/2010/05/01/oilpocalypse-now-wsj-reports-bp-oil-disaster-may-be-leaking-at-rate-of-1-million-gallons-a-day/

I see in that article BP guessed 5000 barrels per day - sure ----- let's not alarm anybody and get them mad at us......

[kenhill]

won't have to boil now, just light and they self-BBQ....