[THS] Did BP Start Losing Containment of the Oil Well in February?

[The Harder Stuff in news and commentary]

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/

Did BP Start Losing Containment of the Oil Well in February?


The Deepwater Horizon blew up on April 20th, and sank a couple of days later. BP
has been criticized for failing to report on the seriousness of the blow out for several
weeks.

However, as a whistleblower previously told 60 Minutes, there was an accident at the
rig a month or more prior to the April 20th explosion:

    [Mike Williams, the chief electronics technician on the Deepwater Horizon, and one
of the last workers to leave the doomed rig] said they were told it would take 21
days; according to him, it actually took six weeks.

    With the schedule slipping, Williams says a BP manager ordered a faster pace.

    "And he requested to the driller, 'Hey, let's bump it up. Let's bump it up.' And
what he was talking about there is he's bumping up the rate of penetration. How fast
the drill bit is going down," Williams said.

    Williams says going faster caused the bottom of the well to split open, swallowing
tools and that drilling fluid called "mud."

    "We actually got stuck. And we got stuck so bad we had to send tools down into
the drill pipe and sever the pipe," Williams explained.

    That well was abandoned and Deepwater Horizon had to drill a new route to the
oil. It cost BP more than two weeks and millions of dollars.

    "We were informed of this during one of the safety meetings, that somewhere in
the neighborhood of $25 million was lost in bottom hole assembly and 'mud.' And you
always kind of knew that in the back of your mind when they start throwing these big
numbers around that there was gonna be a push coming, you know? A push to pick
up production and pick up the pace," Williams said.

    Asked if there was pressure on the crew after this happened, Williams told Pelley,
"There's always pressure, but yes, the pressure was increased."

    But the trouble was just beginning: when drilling resumed, Williams says there
was an accident on the rig that has not been reported before. He says, four weeks
before the explosion, the rig's most vital piece of safety equipment was damaged.

As Bloomberg reports today, problems at the well actually started in February:

    BP Plc was struggling to seal cracks in its Macondo well as far back as February,
more than two months before an explosion killed 11 and spewed oil into the Gulf of
Mexico.

    It took 10 days to plug the first cracks, according to reports BP filed with the
Minerals Management Service that were later delivered to congressional investigators.
Cracks in the surrounding rock continued to complicate the drilling operation during
the ensuing weeks. Left unsealed, they can allow explosive natural gas to rush up the
shaft.

    “Once they realized they had oil down there, all the decisions they made were
designed to get that oil at the lowest cost,” said Peter Galvin of the Center for
Biological Diversity, which has been working with congressional investigators probing
the disaster. “It’s been a doomed voyage from the beginning.”

    ***

    On Feb. 13, BP told the minerals service it was trying to seal cracks in the well
about 40 miles (64 kilometers) off the Louisiana coast, drilling documents obtained by
Bloomberg show. Investigators are still trying to determine whether the fissures
played a role in the disaster.

    ***

    The company attempted a “cement squeeze,” which involves pumping cement to
seal the fissures, according to a well activity report. Over the following week the
company made repeated attempts to plug cracks that were draining expensive
drilling fluid, known as “mud,” into the surrounding rocks.

    BP used three different substances to plug the holes before succeeding, the
documents show.

    “Most of the time you do a squeeze and then let it dry and you’re done,” said John
Wang, an assistant professor of petroleum and natural gas engineering at Penn State
in University Park, Pennsylvania. “It dries within a few hours.”

    Repeated squeeze attempts are unusual and may indicate rig workers are using
the wrong kind of cement, Wang said.

In other words, the well may have lost integrity in February, and never been properly
repaired. If cracks in the well were never fully sealed, then the well may have been
unstable starting in February and continuing until the April 20 explosion. (There is
substantial evidence that there are cracks in the well now.)

Bloomberg continues:

    In early March, BP told the minerals agency the company was having trouble
maintaining control of surging natural gas, according to e-mails released May 30 by
the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is investigating the spill.

    ***

    While gas surges are common in oil drilling, companies have abandoned wells if
they determine the risk is too high.

    ***

    On March 10, BP executive Scherie Douglas e-mailed Frank Patton, the mineral
service’s drilling engineer for the New Orleans district, telling him: “We’re in the midst
of a well control situation.”

    The incident was a “showstopper,” said Robert Bea, an engineering professor at
the University of California, Berkeley, who has consulted with the Interior Department
on offshore drilling safety. “They damn near blew up the rig.”

In other words, not only is it possible that the well casing has been unstable since
February, but BP may have ignored standard drilling practices by failing to abandon
the well when the natural gas began surging too violently.

Sure, the rig didn't actually catch fire and sink until April, but cracks in the well and
dangerous natural gas surges may mean that BP actually started losing containment
of the well much earlier.

Note 1: These new facts also add to the massive evidence that BP has been criminally
negligent.

Note 2: I am not saying that the well has been gushing oil since February (although
oil industry expert Matthew Simmons says that the amount of oil leaking from the
riser and blowout preventer since April 20th does not account for the massive oil
plumes observed in the Gulf).
4 comments
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Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Fire BP, Remove Them from the Crime Scene and Let a Team of Experts Fix This
Mess on BP's Dime


BP was criminally negligent in drilling the well which blew out. See this, this, this,
this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.
[embedded links and/or video at url above]

It has bungled everything it has done since. Indeed - as discussed below - it has
made things worse.

And BP has tried to cover up its blunders by lowballing spill estimates, keeping
reporters out of areas hardest hit by the oil (and see this, this, this and this) and
threatening to arrest them if they try to take pictures, hiding dead birds and other
sealife, telling cleanup workers they'll be fired if they use respirators, and using
dispersants to hide the amount of spilled oil (the dispersants are only worsening the
damage caused by the spill).

Given the enormous stakes (don't forget that we are starting a potentially "extremely
active" hurricane season), why are we letting BP continue to be in charge of
containment operations?

Drilling Relief Wells is Tricky

Remember, there is probably damage beneath the sea floor. A misstep by BP could
make things much worse.

Drilling relief wells is extremely difficult.

As I wrote on June 5th:

    Many technical experts have said that the first attempts to complete the relief well
in August could miss entirely on the first try, as it is difficult to intersect the blown-out
well at the precise location and angle needed.

    As PBS notes:

        Several experts have compared [intersecting the leaking well with the relief
well] to hitting a target the size of a dinner plate two miles underground.

        ***

        The ... challenge is to exactly intercept the original well bore, which is only
about a foot across. If they miss on the first attempt, they'll need to back up slightly,
plug the hole they just made, and try again. Each attempt could take several days.
[David Rensink, the incoming president of the American Association of Petroleum
Geologists] says that the chances that they'll hit the well bore correctly on the first try
are "virtually nil."

        "If they're within 20 feet of it, that would be pretty good," he says. However,
each attempt will reduce the uncertainty and get them closer, and Rensink says that
he's "very certain" that the relief well will work eventually.

        "The reason is that they're going to keep at it until they make it work," he says.

    If the current relief wells fail, it could be until December or early next year until a
correctly-positioned relief well can be completed.

    Indeed, ABC News implies that even after the relief well is completed, the Gulf oil
may keep on flowing for months. Specifically, ABC points out:

        Past experience in the Gulf of Mexico has been sobering. In 1979, a Mexican-
owned rig called Ixtoc-1 suffered a blowout and collapsed, and 140 million gallons of
oil escaped into the water. Pemex, the Mexican oil company, drilled two relief wells --
and even then oil kept escaping for three months after the first one was finished.

    Similarly, MSNBC writes:

        If the [Ixtoc] disaster serves as a precedent, the BP spill could continue even
after the two relief wells are expected to be finished in August.

And Spiegel reports today that there are many dangers with completing the relief
wells:

    Independent experts warn that relief wells, like any well, are not without risk.
"More oil could leak than before, because the field is being drilled into again," says
Fred Aminzadeh, a geophysicist at the University of Southern California. Ira Leifer, a
geochemist at the University of California in Santa Barbara, voices similar concerns:
"In the worst case, we would suddenly be dealing with two spills, and we'd have
twice the problem."

    ***

    Leifer is a member of a team of experts deployed by US President Barack Obama
to estimate the volume of oil currently flowing in the Gulf of Mexico.

    ***

    BP's most recent efforts to stop the flow of oil have only made the situation worse,
says Leifer. The engineers' attempt to seal off the well from above, using a method
known as "top kill," failed and only enlarged the borehole, according to Leifer. Now,
he adds, there is almost nothing stopping the oil from flowing out of the well.

    ***

    As straightforward as it sounds, this approach [i.e. killing a spill by drilling relief
wells] has not always been easy to implement in the past. The disaster in the Timor
Sea, for example, ended in a debacle. It took engineer five tries to even find the
borehole under the sea floor. Shortly before the end, the West Atlas oilrig went up in
flames, after all.

    Repeat of History?

    Another case is also a warning sign for BP. In June 1979, engineers with the
Mexican oil company Pemex lost control of the Ixtox I, an exploratory well in the Gulf
of Mexico. Just as BP is now attempting to do, engineers at the time drilled two relief
wells.

    ***

    Is history repeating itself? The spill in the Macondo oil field could also continue to
gush uncontrollably well beyond BP's August deadline. Pemex Director Carlos
Morales, currently providing BP with technical advice, expects the spill to continue for
another "four to five months." Leifer also believes that the disaster on the sea floor
could drag on "until late fall."

    Although the BP engineers have already completed two-thirds of the first relief
well, it is extremely difficult to find the out-of-control well in the middle of the
bedrock, says David Rensink, incoming president of the American Association of
Petroleum Geologists.

    "You're trying to intersect the well bore, which is about a foot wide, with another
well bore, which is about a foot wide," Rensink said recently. Hitting it with the first
attempt, he adds, "would truly be like winning the lottery."

    Instead, the engineers will presumably have to repeatedly pull back the drill head
to adjust the direction, Rensink predicts. "If they get it on the first three or four
shots, they'd be very lucky."

    More Caution

    Rensink is particularly concerned that BP, in drilling the relief wells, will penetrate
into precisely those rock formations in which extreme pressure and temperature
conditions facilitated the April blowout in the first place. Gas bubbles and gushing oil
from the depths are real possibilities. "Any relief or kill well needs to be drilled with
more caution than the first well," Donal Van Nieuwenhuise, a geologist at the
University of Houston, told the New Orleans daily Times-Picayune. "You don't want a
repeat performance."

    ***

    Indeed, the engineers aren't only facing a formidable technical challenge.
Weather will also play a significant role. Forecasters have already predicted that this
hurricane season, which began this month, could be one of the most active on
record. Drilling would have to be ceased for the duration of each strong storm.

An oil industry geologist adds:

    [There are] lots of potential complications [in drilling relief wells]. A big one would
be using too high a mud weight/pump pressure and fracturing thwe rock around the
[relief well] and losing it. Also instead of the mud building a tall colume inside the
well bore and stoping the flow it might escape out of ruptured [casing] or failed
[cement] shoes. Then they might not ever be able to build enough back pressure to
stop the flow. I suspect many of these possible problems won't reveal themselves
until the actual kill process begins.

BP is Not the Only One with Expertise

Government spokesmen have said that BP's technical knowledge and equipment are
superior to the government's. But that is misleading.

The U.S. government might not have expertise, but many private companies do. For
example, Norway's Statoil is the largest offshore operator in the world, with enormous
experience in deepwater drilling. Chevron, Exxon, Royal Dutch Shell and other
companies also have substantial experience in such operations.

These companies are not without their own - although smaller - history of spills. But
BP's safety record is the worst. See this, this, this and this.

And because other companies don't have a huge, direct legal and financial interest in
trying to underplay this spill (BP could be fined between $1,100 and $4,300 per
barrel of oil released, and oil industry expert Matt Simmons believes that BP will be
driven into bankruptcy), they will likely be somewhat more motivated to protect the
Gulf and less motivated to try to cover their backs by hiding the evidence and
pretending everything is fine. Moreover, group-think will likely be less if a diverse
team drawn from different companies is involved, instead of a bunch of guys within
the same company - BP.

Numerous countries have also offered to help. See this, this, this and this, but BP and
the U.S. government have rejected their offers.

And the offers from many private citizens - many with relevant expertise - to help
clean up the oil pollution have been rejected by BP as well.

Indeed, it is no longer just the U.S. threatened by this catastrophe, but also Mexico,
Cuba, and possibly many other countries as well.

Fire BP

The government shouldn't let the knuckleheads who caused the blowout and have
made everything worse drill the relief wells and control the mitigation and cleanup
efforts.

The White House should, instead, remove BP from the scene of the crime and
appoint an international team of experts to drill relief wells, kill the spill, and clean up
this mess on BP's dime.

3 comments
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
BP Admits That - If It Tries to Cap the Leak - the Whole Well May Blow


As I previously noted, oil industry expert Rob Cavner said that BP must "keep the well
flowing to minimize oil and gas going out into the formation on the side":

This has just been confirmed by BP.

Specifically, BP's Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles told CNN last Thursday that
BP's data indicates that BP can't cap the leaking oil, or it might cause the well casing
to blow out:


Suttles denies that there is evidence that the well casing has already blown out
beneath the sea floor.

But many experts - including experts working for BP - say that there is damage
beneath the sea floor. Indeed, Matt Simmons told Bloomberg today that America's
top research vessel - the Thomas Jefferson - found that the well casing is gone, and
can no longer even be seen on the sea floor, having been destroyed: