Radman has the expertise; but Stephanie has given him a workout! I just posted the discussion page on FB, as our InvestiGatorZ team has been engaged in back engineering this for some time on our radioBlogs at BTR (BlogTalkRadio).

Some intro: I have a background in corrections/zooKeeping convicted felons. I now use radioblogging to connect with the exPERTS with the questioners in LIVE open line forums.

You will find our discussions on Facebook and other blog sites; most of our energies are being devoted to educate the blogging community on a subject that very few were writing about in April of this year. Who would have thought this would be the hottest discussion in North America in an Election year??

I was the tech support for EnergyExpertsLIVE on BTR in 2008; we had wonderful guests and hosts discussions on Energy Policy and my own scant background in drilling, exploration and workover of completion wells in Kern County, led me to question the exPERTS that I met in the field…for about 3 years.

So keep asking the experts Stephanie, and yall can join us on FB to follow the industry to its glorious turnaround; i.e., clean it up or swim in the Gulf with the dead fishies…memo to all of the above corporations.

Radman, I value your exPERTise. Really. I hope that we can have you call in to one our networks to debate with those of US who prefer talking to typing. Blogs turn viral, and so the discussions will OUTlast and OUTperform the industries that are sinking along with that rig in the Methane Gulf.

One last thought…Follow the Euros. Why have ALL the regulatory agencies rallied to protect the Polluters? Look at the Board of Directors for ALL the contract companies…the BP execs who sold Stock in their own company before the disaster? The Rise of NALCO, with a former executive of Monsanto? If anyone with prior knowledge of an accident can PROFIT from said accident, what is the inCENTive to avoid accidents?

Stephanie, you are on the right TRACK…ask the expert why anyone would dump a billion gallons of water on an oil and gas fire; on a floating platform, worth a billion dollars and ready for the junk heap, according to the mandated decommissioning time of offshore platforms?

I will save a few more questions for next time, if we have the Grace of God to continue…some of MY questions about offshore were sent to me in 2008 by a high school student in New Jersey who wanted to interview me as an exPERT! LOL :))
http://RenegadeLawyerBlog.com is not mine, but is following our FB posts.

The permanent solution to the BP spill is the drillingof 2 relief wells, designed to intercept the damaged wellbore at a depth of approx. 10,000 ft below seafloor, mill a hole into the casing pipe, and then pump cement and heavy mud into it. Once they are connected into the old wellbore, it will be plugged permanently within a few days.

There is a interesting graphic in teh last issue of Time that shows the 2 wells BP is drilling. I am surprised they are not talking about them. Instead, everybody is haggling about useless containment domes, top kills, junk shots etc.

Here is a picture from a similar situation alst year in Australia:
http://www.upstreamonline.com/multimedia/archive/00031/Montara_well_repair__31545a.jpg

As you know, seismic imaging is used to find subsurface reservoirs that may contain oil and gas. Back in the 60s, it was 2D, now it is 2D, 3D and 4D. Whether the imaging is done on land or offshore, GPS is used to record the coordinates of the seismic source for each shotpoint as well as receivers. This is easier on land. Offshore, if the recording streamer cable is very long (20,000 feet in some cases if you need to see below things like salt), it can experience feathering due to currents, but the end of the streamer is recorded as well. I am not a seismic acquisition specialist, but know a bit about it. Does this help?

10,000 PSI reservoir pressure is normal in the Gulf of Mexico, even more. Some of my wells I proposed onshore in Louisiana had more reservoir pressure. One thing I am not so sure about are these speculations about 30,000 – 40,000 – 80,000 barrels per day flowing out of the damaged wellhead. I have never seen a Gulf of Mexico reservoir produce this much. Even if the oil is flowing through the annulus of the well (not through the much narrower tubing pipe), and even though there is no choke on the wellhead, this would be an unheard-of production record. Sad, it’s flowing into the water and not into a tank :(

I’d like to hear your story about shooting a seismic line across the Great Barrier Reef :) That was before HSE was involved in everything :)

Radman

Also, remember that the reservoir may not experience any pressure decrease even though oil is flowing out of it. Many reservoirs produce with strong water drive, which means formation water from structurally lower portions of the reservoir (= the acquifer) displaces the oil at the top of the reservoir and it is being produced, and the reservoir pressure is maintained. Many people think there is a big void down there somewhere from which oil and gas are pumped out like a tank a gas station. That ain’t the case :)

All:

I was on a “Mississippi mud boat” called the Bayou Chico when it was outfitted with the first satellite navigation system (NNSS) in Brisbane, Australia, courtesy of the US Navy. We shot lines in the Arafura Sea, Solomon Sea, and ran a highly illegal boot-leg survey across the Great Barrier Reef. This was in 1969 and our navigational precision was limited to the continental shelf, since the Doppler sonar was unreliable at depths greater than 100 fathoms.

So, I am curious about the system that located the deep water oil that relegated me to the operator of a museum piece!

I have experienced the “send money, lawyers and guns” clout of the oil industry, in terms of gaining access to profitable oil fields around the world. I know how risky offshore oil exploration is even when “due diligence” is performed.

What baffles me is how such an expensive effort to harvest what seems to be the greatest gusher of all time (10,000 psi and millions of gallons of crude/day) could be sabotaged by skimping on the “due diligence” part of the operation?

Were all the controls and safety systems, including the blow-out preventer, tested at regular intervals? Were the crews fully trained and signed off to operate the various equipment on the rig? Were safety drills performed? Why couldn’t the blow-out preventer be manually over-ridden? Most importantly, where was the oversight by the Prime contractor? If I invest $500 megabucks in a project, I want to know that my subcontractors are doing their jobs per spec!

Evidently, the short-term profits gained from taking short-cuts regarding performance has cost BP $1.2 gigabucks, and that figure is climbing.

Following this thread, I recall that this well configuration is the penultimate to the production well system, and that the pressures and other characteristics of this particular find were becoming understood, in terms of how to handle the output. I would like to know how the (10,000 psi and millions of gallons of crude/day) metric compares to the spectrum of other finds. It seems to me that this phenomenon is more like an eruption than a gusher a la the classic Texas oil shower we see in the movies.

Finally, thank you all for this valuable insight to this incredible mess. The public needs to hear about the how and why of the blowout, along with the best remedies. What they are hearing is mostly propaganda from all sides. [I was told that this would never have happened if the Democrats had allowed drilling on the continental shelf.]

Perhaps we all can calm down long enough to do damage control. Point fingers later.

I don’t know what a smaller containment dome would do… whether it would work. I will be in a meeting with a bunch of deepwater drilling guys on Friday and I can ask them….

They will stop the leak, but it may take time. Ultimately, the one solution that will work is drilling the relief well. The bad thing about that is that it will take time. Possibly several months because a deepwater well designed to 18,000 feet subsea can easily take 3 months to drill from the date they spud it.

“Drilling mud” is a technical term for the fluid that is pumped into the wellbore from the drilling rig, through the drill pipe. It comes out the bit and returns to the surface where it is filtered, and pumped back in. Its function is to (a) wash away the cuttings created by the bit as it is drilling through rock formations, (b) lubricate the wellbore and keep it in good shape (c) carefully maintain pressure balance between the wellbore and formations. The mud composition is a science in itself and no two wells will have drilling mud exactly the same. There is a mud contractor on the rig with their own engineers whose job it is to control the mud. Compositions vary depending on the type of formation being drilled, so that the mud does not dissolve it or the formation does not cave into the wellbore. Composition also vary depending on the formation pressure the wellbore is encountering. The idea is to continuously regulate its density, so that the hydrostatic pressure in the wellbore equals the pressure in the rock formations the wellbore is drilling through. If the mud is mixed too light, the hydrostatic pressure in the wellbore will not be enough to keep formation fluids from entering it and you can get a pressure kick or, in the worst place, an underground blowout. If the mud is too heavy, it will be leaking from the wellbore into the formation and lost, which costs money and drains supplies.

So, in this case, they plan to pump some type of dense mud and/or fast-hardening cement into the relief well, pump it into the damaged wellbore, where it will be carried up by the pressure of the oil and gas escaping from the reservoir. The idea is that the mud and cement will have 10,000-12,000 feet to travel up to the seafloor, which will give them enough time to eventually harden and plug the damaged wellbore.

I haven’t heard about the mud volcano here in Indonesia. But that is a different kind of mud. “Mud volcanoes” are common in oil and gas producing basins, where natural gas is escaping from the ground is large quantities. Simply gas vents on the seafloor. In this case, the “mud” refers simply to dirt on the seafloor :)

I was reading that the “BOX” they were going to place over the ocean floor was freezing up and clogged the exit pipe. Now they want to install a smaller one. Won’t that do the same thing? I also read theyw ere thinking of cutting the pipe and installing a larger pipe and the fear was that it could let more oil out and maybe impossible to close up. What happens if they can’t stop this leak? it seems like they could make a huge concrete box that weighs 50 tons or something like that and just set it on top of the leak using mass/weight to seal the edges on the floor.

Also what is this “Mud” they are talking about and how is this mixed with concrete to seal up the leak?

On a separate subject I read about this mud volcano in Indonesia that has been pumping out mud for like 6 months or so. They wanted to drop concrete blocks in to it to help “Clog” it up. Pretty interesting stuff.

Stephanie R
memphissigncompany.com