In another comment thread (Schlumberger BP), Diogenes II asked a few questions, but the answer was too long for a comment, so I’m posting it here. Hopefully the questions will be clear from the answer, but if not, read the original questions from .

What follows is a more general overview and a background set of observations.

Questions and Answers about the BP Spill

Q: How to find a quick technological fix?
A: Resist the urge for fairy tale quick fixes, remember, no single entity is losing more money per day on this event than BP. BP has direct access to any and all resources of any company out there (remember, this spill event is negatively impacting ALL offshore drilling globally, and especially in the gulf). BP also made about 16 billion after tax profit last year if I read it right, so they can actually pay for this all more or less in cash. And they are paying. I have repeatedly seen drilling engineers say: wow, if I had gotten the design and implementation assignment for some of the stuff BP has done so far, it would have taken 4-6 months to complete, and they have gotten some parts done in weeks. I am not a fan of BP, they are clearly negligent if not actually criminally negligent in this process, but don’t confuse that with incompetence now, now the job is to fix this as soon as possible.

Q: what actually happened? Where is the rig located? What is the geology of the Gulf?
A: For an in-depth chronology of events, including background data, see What caused the Deepwater Horizon disaster?.

The rig is I think about 500 feet from the wellhead. The Ixtoc blowout, if I remember right, at 150 ft, was where the rig sank ontop of the wellhead/BOP unit.

Gulf geology is outside any area I can pretend competence at, google it, it’s complex, unstable, and varies widely depending on where you are drilling from shallow to deep to ultra deep.

Q: Why can’t we just dump microbes on the spill and have it magically get all cleaned up? Or: why can’t technology just fix this now?
A: The bacteria is what will eat the oil, the gulf is filled with bacteria, because the gulf seeps an unknown but very large quantity of petroleum products every year. The problem is that what is being spilled is in a concentrated area, and is all at once. Avoid mcgiver solutions, again. There has been quite a bit of discussion about microbial action, and one thing that has been pointed out is that, besides the fact that they work best at higher temperatures, they also consume oxygen in the water to catalyze the oil. So you’re talking about the potential of creating even larger dead zones than the gulf already was suffering from because of nitrate and other pollutants being tossed into the gulf from our agricultural heartlands via the Mississippi river and other rivers that dump their wastes into the gulf.
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Purely for the technically inclined, this was just updated. Shows the current revised pressure measurements at the Deepwater Horizon wellhead, inside the BOP unit, and at the exit point. Now you know too!

Taken from this theOilDrum.com thread.

Data source is the new: www.energy.gov/open/oilspilldata.htm page.

shelburn on June 8, 2010 – 7:08pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Parent subthread | Comments top

DATA – DATA – DATA
Love it!!

http://www.energy.gov/open/oilspilldata.htm

A major change from previous information. 4,400 psi at wellhead vs 8,000 to 9,000 psi previously thrown out casually at press briefings.

This actually makes more sense as it seems to indicate where BP might have gotten the estimated 20% increase in flow after cutting the riser off.

4,400 psi pressure at the wellhead, 2,560 psi at top of BOP, 2,250 psi static (past the riser kink.

1,840 psi pressure drop across BOP
310 psi drop across LMRP and kink, presumably mostly in the kink.
About a 17% difference. Obviously the calculation is much more complicated but 17% is pretty close to 20%.

Within the BOP:

730 psi drop at test rams
430 psi drop at lower pipe rams
620 psi drop at pipe rams and casing shear
60 psi drop at blind/shear rams

Someone who knows a lot more about BOPs might comment but it would indicate to me that most of the rams are at least partially operated or have some sort of obstruction.

This aliilaali guy is improving fast, so I wanted to share his opinions about what the flow rates probably are, and also shelburns (under the fold), and what they could max out as, as well as what he thinks the causes are. He puts this in a nice theoretical congressional investigation context, but it’s just his opinion. Ie, he’s using this as a writing device. That is, please don’t take this as actual testimony. I’m saying this clearly because sometimes people just don’t get humor and mistake it for fact.

But I think this is a fair overview from a guy who does this for a living in deep water, and almost, ideally, might help serve as a basic reality check for some of the wilder ideas that are probably starting to float around the internet right about now. Source is theOildrum.com BP Deepwater Oil Spill – The Oil in the Water, Seeps, and an Open Thread thread.

aliilaali on June 8, 2010 – 1:53pm Permalink | Subthread | Comments top

idle thoughts on flow rates…..seems like folks putting out numbers high as 200,000 BOPD …other are crunching 100,000 BOPD ……these are very high numbers and all I can say is IMHO we are not lucky like the Saudi’s…..these numbers are what we wish we could get form a well in the GOM… producers have been searching for wells that can put out such numbers for 30 odd yrs and it just hasn’t happened yet …if a BP engineer is called to testify under oath today to congress…..IMHO the conversation would be roughly similar to

Congress: do you beleive the rate is 5,000 BOPD
BP ENgg: i hope not….if its 5000 i’ll crack some balls in the geology and reservoir dept…and I wont be getting any yearly bonus drilling such wells this far out in the sea

Congress: do you believe its 20,000 BOPD
BP Engg: congressman you’re not as stupid as you look …and my bonus will come in good this year then

COngress: do you beleive its more than 30,000 BOPD
BP Engg: if you want me to sign something …i will need you to put 30,000 as the flow rate …that’ll cover my ass good and proper

Congress: do you believe its 40,000 BOPD
BP Engg: theoretically its possible…but I can only hope for such good luck in the Mississippi delta
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Hot off the presses. Now, this comes from the attorney planning the litigation against BP for the Gulf Deepwater Horizon blowout, so of course as a source it’s not balanced, but it seems to confirm some chunks of some of the earlier rumors that have been floating around.

A prominent Houston attorney with a long record of winning settlements from oil companies says he has new evidence suggesting that the Deepwater Horizon’s top managers knew of problems with the rig before it exploded last month, causing the worst oil spill in US history. Tony Buzbee, a lawyer representing 15 rig workers and dozens of shrimpers, seafood restaurants, and dock workers, says he has obtained a three-page signed statement from a crew member on the boat that rescued the burning rig’s workers. The sailor, who Buzbee refuses to name for fear of costing him his job, was on the ship’s bridge when Deepwater Horizon installation manager Jimmy Harrell, a top employee of rig owner Transocean, was speaking with someone in Houston via satellite phone. Buzbee told Mother Jones that, according to this witness account, Harrell was screaming, “Are you fucking happy? Are you fucking happy? The rig’s on fire! I told you this was gonna happen.”

Whoever was on the other end of the line was apparently trying to calm Harrell down. “I am fucking calm,” he went on, according to Buzbee. “You realize the rig is burning?”
“The rig’s on fire! I told you this was gonna happen!”

Not looking so good here for BP. This sounds true to me by the way, for what that’s worth, which I admit isn’t a lot.
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Here’s an early draft of the new deep water drilling regulations. If you scan them, you can basically see all the points where BP’s cost cutting efforts created the scenario where a blowout could occur. There’s also a NY Times article, In Gulf, It Was Unclear Who Was in Charge of Rig, that helps show where the lapses occurred that these new regulations will hopefully help prevent in the future.

You can bet there’s a lot of drillers out there now who are cursing BP loudly…. but sometimes this is what it takes to unroll decades of loose industry/government coziness, a process that got even worse under the GW Bush group, where the MMS/Oil industry links and connections became almost a farce in terms of ensuring strict regulations would be carried out and enforced.

New deepwater exploratory drilling will be on hold for six months pending the findings and recommendations of a presidential commission investigating the causes of the explosion that sank Transocean’s Deepwater Horizon rig leased by BP Plc.

Such a lengthy moratorium could impact future U.S. oil and natural gas output. U.S. Gulf offshore oil operations produced 1.6 million barrels of oil per day in 2009, accounting for 8 percent of U.S. liquid fuel consumption, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

In addition to the deepwater drilling moratorium, the Interior Department has also outlined a series of potentially costly new safety rules and standards that oil companies will have to contend with.

Here some details about the drilling ban and safety measures:

DEEPWATER DRILLING MORATORIUM

* The six-month moratorium will apply to all new exploratory drilling at depths more than 500 feet.

* Thirty-three exploratory rigs in the Gulf of Mexico will have to stop drilling operations as soon as safely possible and remain out of action for six months.

* Companies that have an approved permit to conduct exploratory drilling in deepwater, but have not started their project, will not be allowed to start drilling during the moratorium.

* Shallow water drilling and wells already in production will be able to continue work under the moratorium.

* As part of the ban, Royal Dutch Shell’s proposal to drill exploration wells in the Arctic this summer has been postponed until 2011.

* Upcoming lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and off Virginia have been canceled.

SAFETY STANDARDS

* Blow-out preventers (BOPs) on floating drilling operations need to certified by an independent third party. The department will also develop formal equipment certification standards for BOPs.

* Within a year, BOPs on all operations will be required to have two sets of blind shear rams spaced at least four feet apart.
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