Reply With Quote
It looks more like stuff at the bottom being kicked up by the sub's propellers. I hope I'm right.
Sources around the net are claiming that the seabed surrounding the Deep-water Horizon has been compromised and methane gas and oil is leaking from the weakened floor itself....
Oil And Gas Leaks From Cracks In Seabed Confirmed – Videos Show Gulf Oil Spill Leaking From Seafloor
Alexander HigginsAlthough BP denies that there is oil or gas leaking from the cracks in the sea floor many people watching the BP Oil leak cam have witnessed explosions and leaks from the seafloor.
ROV films oil leak coming from rock cracks on seafloor.
If this is true, then the BP oil leak has just turned from an ecological disaster to a earth-changing catastrophe...AND relief wells won't help...
Last edited by Nbadan; 06-13-2010 at 04:06 PM.
It looks more like stuff at the bottom being kicked up by the sub's propellers. I hope I'm right.
From the Oil drum forum...
*sic*So you have to ask WHY? Why make it worse?...there really can only be one answer and that answer does not bode well for all of us. It's really an inescapable conclusion at this point, unless you want to believe that every Oil and Gas professional involved suddenly just forgot everything they know or woke up one morning and drank a few big cups of stupid and got assigned to directing the response to this catastrophe. Nothing makes sense unless you take this into account, but after you do...you will see the "sense" behind what has happened and what is happening. That conclusion is this:
The well bore structure is compromised "Down hole".
That is something which is a "Worst nightmare" conclusion to reach. While many have been saying this for some time as with any complex disaster of this proportion many have "said" a lot of things with no real sound reasons or evidence for jumping to such conclusions, well this time it appears that they may have jumped into the right place...
Much, much more: The Oil Drum forumIt means they will never cap the gusher after the wellhead. They cannot...the more they try and restrict the oil gushing out the bop?...the more it will transfer to the leaks below. Just like a leaky garden hose with a nozzle on it. When you open up the nozzle?...it doesn't leak so bad, you close the nozzle?...it leaks real bad,
same dynamics. It is why they sawed the riser off...or tried to anyway...but they clipped it off, to relieve pressure on the leaks "down hole". I'm sure there was a bit of panic time after they crimp/pinched off the large riser pipe and the Diamond wire saw got stuck and failed...because that crimp diverted pressure and flow to the rupture down below.
Contrary to what most of us would think as logical to stop the oil mess, actually opening up the gushing well and making it gush more became direction BP took after confirming that there was a leak. In fact if you note their actions, that should become clear. They have shifted from stopping or restricting the gusher to opening it up and catching it. This only makes sense if they want to relieve pressure at the leak hidden down below the seabed.....and that sort of leak is one of the most dangerous and potentially damaging kind of leak there could be. It is also inaccessible which compounds our problems. There is no way to stop that leak from above, all they can do is relieve the pressure on it and the only way to do that right now is to open up the nozzle above and gush more oil into the gulf and hopefully catch it, which they have done, they just neglected to tell us why, gee thanks.
A down hole leak is dangerous and damaging for several reasons.
There will be erosion throughout the entire beat up, beat on and beat down remainder of the "system" including that inaccessible leak. The same erosion I spoke about in the first post is still present and has never stopped, cannot be stopped, is impossible to stop and will always be present in and acting on anything that is left which has crude oil "Product" rushing through it. There are abrasives still present, swirling flow will create hot spots of wear and this erosion is relentless and will always be present until eventually it wears away enough material to break it's way out. It will slowly eat the bop away especially at the now pinched off riser head and it will flow more and more. Perhaps BP can outrun or keep up with that out flow with various suckage methods for a period of time, but eventually the well will win that race, just how long that race will be?...no one really knows....However now?...there are other problems that a down hole leak will and must produce that will compound this already bad situation.
This down hole leak will undermine the foundation of the seabed in and around the well area. It also weakens the only thing holding up the massive Blow Out Preventer's immense bulk of 450 tons. In fact?...we are beginning to the results of the well's total integrity beginning to fail due to the undermining being caused by the leaking well bore.
The first layer of the sea floor in the gulf is mostly lose material of sand and silt. It doesn't hold up anything and isn't meant to, what holds the entire subsea system of the Bop in place is the well itself. The very large steel connectors of the initial well head "spud" stabbed in to the sea floor. The Bop literally sits on top of the pipe and never touches the sea bed, it wouldn't do anything in way of support if it did. After several tens of feet the seabed does begin to support the well connection laterally (side to side) you couldn't put a 450 ton piece of machinery on top of a 100' tall pipe "in the air" and subject it to the side loads caused by the ocean currents and expect it not to bend over...unless that pipe was very much larger than the machine itself, which you all can see it is not. The well's piping in comparison is actually very much smaller than the Blow Out Preventer and strong as it may be, it relies on some support from the seabed to function and not literally fall over...and it is now showing signs of doing just that....falling over.
If you have been watching the live feed cams you may have noticed that some of the ROVs are using an inclinometer...and inclinometer is an instrument that measures "Incline" or tilt. The BOP is not supposed to be tilting...and after the riser clip off operation it has begun to...
This is not the only problem that occurs due to erosion of the outer area of the well casings. The way a well casing assembly functions it that it is an assembly of different sized "tubes" that decrease in size as they go down. These tubes have a connection to each other that is not unlike a click or snap together locking action. After a certain length is assembled they are cemented around the ouside to the earth that the more rough drill hole is bored through in the well making process. A very well put together and simply explained process of "How to drill a deep water oil well" is available here:
It's a race now...a race to drill the relief wells and take our last chance at killing this monster before the whole weakened, wore out, blown out, leaking and failing system gives up it's last gasp in a horrific crescendo.
We are not even 2 months into it, barely half way by even optimistic estimates. The damage done by the leaked oil now is virtually immeasurable already and it will not get better, it can only get worse. No matter how much they can collect, there will still be thousands and thousands of gallons leaking out every minute, every hour of every day. We have 2 months left before the relief wells are even near in position and set up to take a kill shot and that is being optimistic as I said.
Over the next 2 months the mechanical situation also cannot improve, it can only get worse, getting better is an impossibility. While they may make some gains on collecting the leaked oil, the structural situation cannot heal itself. It will continue to erode and flow out more oil and eventually the inevitable collapse which cannot be stopped will happen. It is only a simple matter of who can "get there first"...us or the well.
We can only hope the race against that eventuality is one we can win, but my assessment I am sad to say is that we will not.
The system will collapse or fail substantially before we reach the finish line ahead of the well and the worst is yet to come.
Sorry to bring you that news, I know it is grim, but that is the way I see it....I sincerely hope I am wrong.
We need to prepare for the possibility of this blow out sending more oil into the gulf per week then what we already have now, because that is what a collapse of the system will cause. All the collection efforts that have captured oil will be erased in short order. The magnitude of this disaster will increase exponentially by the time we can do anything to halt it and our odds of actually even being able to halt it will go down.
The magnitude and impact of this disaster will eclipse anything we have known in our life times if the worst or even near worst happens...
We are seeing the puny forces of man vs the awesome forces of nature.
We are going to need some luck and a lot of effort to win...
and if nature decides we ought to lose, we will....
We all need for things to start going good for us soon or this situation could be exponentially bad in short term.. how bad? ...ever hear of the Clathrate gun hypothesis?
if they screwed up with this wellhead, where's the confidence that they can won't screw one or both of the relief wells?
How can be sure the relief drillings will actually hit the reservoir?
The relief wells have to remove how much oil (and where does it go? since BP hasn't ordered a mega-tanker to the site) has to be pumped until the pressure is reduced enough to seal the first hole?
On May 31st, the Washington Post noted:
On June 2nd, Bloomberg pointed out:Sources at two companies involved with the well said that BP also discovered new damage inside the well below the seafloor and that, as a result, some of the drilling mud that was successfully forced into the well was going off to the side into rock formations.
"We discovered things that were broken in the sub-surface," said a BP official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. He said that mud was making it "out to the side, into the formation."
On June 3rd, The Canadian Press quoted the top government official in charge of the response to the oil spill - Admiral Thad Allen, the commandant of the Coast Guard - as pointing to the same possibility:Plugging the well is another challenge even after BP successfully intersects it, Robert Bea, a University of California Berkeley engineering professor, said. BP has said it believes the well bore to be damaged, which could hamper efforts to fill it with mud and set a concrete plug, Bea said.
On June 7th, Senator Bill Nelson told MSNBC that he's investigating reports of oil seeping up from additional leak points on the seafloor:The failure of the so-called top kill procedure - which entailed pumping mud into the well at high velocity - suggested "there actually could be something wrong with the well casing, and there could be open communication in the strata or the rock formations below the sea floor," Allen said.
Washington BlogSenator Bill Nelson (D-FL): Andrea we’re looking into something new right now, that there’s reports of oil that’s seeping up from the seabed… which would indicate, if that’s true, that the well casing itself is actually pierced… underneath the seabed. So, you know, the problems could be just enormous with what we’re facing.
Andrea Mitc , MSNBC: Now let me understand better what you’re saying. If that is true that it is coming up form that seabed, even the relief well won’t be the final solution to cap this thing. That means that we’ve got oil gushing up at disparate places along the ocean floor.
Sen. Nelson: That is possible, unless you get the plug down low enough, below where the pipe would be breached.
We have a right to know what's really going on.
Given the impact on America's people, natural resources and economy, BP and the government must fully disclose the amount of damage underneath the sea floor, and what that means for the efforts to cap the well.
Reminds me of an old oil field joke. Each day, a drilling log has to be filled out. The joke is, during a blowout the crew shuts in the well and enters that into the log. Then the drillers next entry in the log is ...On April 1, a job log written by a Halliburton employee, Marvin Volek, warns that BP’s use of cement “was
against our best practices.”
An April 18 internal Halliburton memorandum indicates that Halliburton again warned BP about its practices,
this time saying that a “severe” gas flow problem would occur if the casings were not centered more carefully.
Around that same time, a BP do ent shows, company officials chose a type of casing with a greater risk of
collapsing.
10 minutes running, 30 minutes walking back ....
I blame Obama. He should have known about this.
fuuuuuuuuuuuuuu 2012 here we come
I blame this on the Large Hadron Collider. France opened up a black hole next to Texas to take out its biggest compe ion in Apocalyptic survival no doubt.
Silly. There is no such thing as global warming, remember?
# The New York Times
June 14, 2010
Cash Flows for BP, but Investors Worry
By JAD MOUAWAD and CLIFFORD KRAUSS
Although BP generates billions of dollars in profit every quarter, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is rattling both government and investor confidence in the London-based oil giant’s ability to handle the economic consequences.
As the administration continued to pressure BP on Monday to set aside money in a fund dedicated to paying spill damages, company’s directors met via teleconference to discuss the meeting on Wednesday between BP executives and President Obama.
The directors focused on how to respond to the administration’s request that the company suspend the dividend, which was $10.48 billion last year, and set up a multibillion-dollar escrow account to guarantee payment of damages. Although a company spokesman declined to discuss the board meeting in detail, he said that BP does not need to announce a decision on payment of the next quarter’s dividend until late July.
Investors are becoming increasingly nervous at BP’s liabilities and the company’s ability to pay. BP shares were down about 9 percent in New York trading on Monday. The uncertainty has cut the value of BP’s shares in half since April 20, when the Deepwater Horizon drilling ship exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. BP’s market capitalization has dropped about $90 billion.
On the face of it, the mistrust in BP’s finances seems misplaced. With oil trading above $75 a barrel, the company has torrents of cash flowing in and maintains that it will be able to use that revenue to pay for the cleanup as well as many of the penalties it will face.
BP is the biggest oil and gas producer in the United States, which accounts for about a third of its global business. It operates the biggest oil field in North America — Prudhoe Bay in Alaska’s North Slope. Its refineries in Texas City, Tex., and Whiting, Ind., are among the five largest in the country.
BP had net income of $6 billion in the first quarter, after posting a $17 billion profit last year. Globally, BP had 63 billion barrels of resources as at the end of 2009, including more than 18 billion barrels of proved reserves.
The company’s operating cash flow last year was $27.7 billion and it spent $22 billion on capital expenses, including exploration and development projects. At the end of 2009, it had $8.34 billion in cash and cash equivalents. It had debt of $26.16 billion at the end of last year, giving it a debt-to-equity ratio of 20 percent. The company has said that it could raise that ratio to 30 percent and still have an appropriate level of financial flexibility.
But BP now faces bigger risks. Its inability to stop the leak — and put an end to the worst environmental disaster in American history — means it is facing a political crisis as much as a financial one.
The drop in share price could make BP a target for a takeover by Western rivals or even one of Asia’s national oil companies. The company’s poor safety record could jeopardize its ability to do business in the United States. Globally, BP could see its reputation erode, affecting its ability to bid for projects and develop resources.
The crisis is also likely to damage BP’s balance sheet and its ability to borrow money. Its bonds are now trading at junk levels, which would raise the price it would have to pay to raise capital, if needed.
So far, the company says it has spent $1.43 billion on the spill, including cleanup costs. And it has defended its ability to face claims.
“Our asset base is strong and valuable,” BP said in a statement last week, adding that it had “significant capacity and flexibility in dealing with the cost of responding to the incident, the environmental remediation and the payment of legitimate claims.”
Fadel Gheit, an oil and gas analyst at Oppenheimer & Company, said in a research note that he expects BP to have an operating cash flow of $34 billion in 2010 and $37 billion in 2011. BP can borrow up to $15 billion and still “keep its debt ratio below the top of its acceptable range of 20-30 percent,” he said.
A firming of oil and gas prices in recent days has also helped the company’s revenues, Mr. Gheit said. He estimated that every dollar increase in the price of a barrel of oil produces $100 million extra per quarter.
For the moment, the main risk lies in estimating the liability the company may face.
Depending on how much oil is spilled, and how long the spill lasts, the cost to BP could range from $4.5 billion, if the spill were stopped today, to $26 billion, if it lasted a total of 90 days, when a relief well is expected to be completed, according to Kevin Book, an analyst at Clear View Energy Partners.
This includes payment for all tourism and commercial fishing revenues for the four states most affected by the spill — Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi — which amounts to around $15 billion for a full year. It also includes civil fines of $25,000 per day and criminal penalties of $4,100 per barrel spilled. And it includes clean-up costs estimated at between $23 million to $35 million per day.
But estimates vary. Credit Suisse has estimated that the cleanup would cost $15 billion to $23 billion, plus another $14 billion of claims.
Oppenheimer estimated that BP would eventually face $20 billion in claims and cleanup costs. Punitive damages to the federal and state governments could double that figure. Mr. Gheit said the maximum cost could range up to $60 billion, which would be paid over many years.
BP could fight these claims in court to reduce punitive damages. Plaintiffs in the Exxon Valdez spill received 10 cents for every dollar claimed in court against Exxon Mobil. Also, the “total cost burden is unlikely to arrive in a single instant — much of the liability will be litigated and paid out over time,” Mr. Book said.
The government has also raised the prospect of making BP pay the salaries of workers affected by the government’s temporary moratorium on offshore oil drilling. This is an unprecedented demand, and legal experts said the argument has little chance of standing before the courts. But it also increases the uncertainty over BP’s liabilities.
Mr. Gheit said that if the Obama administration pushed BP to pay the salaries for the 15,000 to 20,000 workers who could lose their jobs for up to a year due to the drilling moratorium, that could raise the company’s liabilities by an extra $1 billion to $1.5 billion. More importantly, it would open the door to more claims by workers and business owners who lose income indirectly from a drilling moratorium.
“Once you open the door, it’s an avalanche,” Mr. Gheit said. “Those oil workers are not going into the fast food restaurants, they are not going to be driving their cars, they are not going to be shopping.”
Wait, because I'm not sure I read this right...
But if the entire well just completely fails we could see a weekly output equaling or surpassing the total amount leaked to date? Holy, ing .
It's been a catastrophe for a while, Dan..
There are a ton of geologists in my dept at UNM who specialize in petroleum studies of some sort. I have no way of knowing if they'll let me, but I'm now so freaked out by this I think I'll pick their brains the moment I get a chance.We need to prepare for the possibility of this blow out sending more oil into the gulf per week then what we already have now, because that is what a collapse of the system will cause. All the collection efforts that have captured oil will be erased in short order. The magnitude of this disaster will increase exponentially by the time we can do anything to halt it and our odds of actually even being able to halt it will go down.
That amount of oil going into the gulf would basically kill off the fishing industries in the entire gulf as well as most of the beaches. I don't think we'd have any hope of keeping the oil contained if the volume was that high. All assumptions, but if we can't contain it now how could we contain it with that much pouring into the gulf each week?
A full blowout could equal anywhere from 2-4 billion gallons of oil in the gulf, what we've seen so far is a small fraction of that amount....
You're probably not the first person to think of this. Would be really cool if they actually talked to you though. They might be a bit more open to talking to a fellow "ologist", even if it's of the sky variety. :P: Let us know what they say if you actually go through with that.
Where is word? I wonder if he has any input on the situation, being ST's resident drilling expert and all....
The primary problems have nothing to do with geology or the study of petroleum. You see, oil is so much lighter than water, that there is about a 350 PSI difference between oil and sea water at that depth. It gets worse. I forget how far the well is tapped under the sea bed, but the pressure of the ocean floor over the oil, and extra depth, makes the pressure rather extreme. If I recall correctly, the oil pocket is around 18000 ft. This 350 PSI difference now becomes about 1200 PSI for just the difference between oil and water. However, only the fort 5000 or so feet are sea water. The remaining almost 13000 feet is sea floor, at a greater density than sea water. We are now talking of at least 2000 PSI differential pressure. This is how I understand the sciences. I have been told the pressure is actually about 3000 PSI.
Now tell me. Just how is normal petroleum sciences going to deal with deep underwater problems?
Deepwater conditions are extreme. Check.
I haven't the foggiest. Please advise us, profe.
Weren't they already supposed to have a plan for worst-case contingencies, or did that get waived too?
Fishing has already been suspended in one third of the federal fishery in the Gulf of Mexico. I don't know anything about the state by state action, but would imagine that Louisiana is pretty well ed already.
Has it hit the beaches in FL yet?
That's my question. If worst case scenario involved pretty much making the entire gulf an oil drum, you'd think that standards would be upheld more rigorously, despite the one-in-million nature of sun a catastrophe. To not do so is criminally irresponsible.
What do libertarians have to say about situations like this, where a non-gov party could theoretically taint a natural area so thoroughly? Let's hypothesize that BP gies into bankruptcy due to the spill... Should the people who rely on the Gulf just suck it up and move on?
Fun poking blindly the original well with relief wells
BP's Spill Relief Wells Draw Scrutiny
http://www.aolnews.com/gulf-oil-spil...82?sms_ss=digg
They'll have to.
Injuries are instant; remedies however, can be very slow.
I wonder if a very large suction pile would work?
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
