A Petroleum Engineer's Explanation

I have had some time to think about why they stopped the relief well operation and I think I have come up with a reasonable answer. They were ready to kill the well however if they had killed the well then they wouldn't be able to test the new device in actual conditions. If the device works as planned then it's likely to become the device that the industry relies on and continues to develop for quickly solving a future blowout issue. Maybe not solve but at least mitigate. If it works and they had developed it prior to the DWH disaster then the scope of the spill would have been significantly reduced.

reply to post by billyjack


I'm afraid that I have to agree with you. I have a reliable contact within TransOcean (he's working on the relief well project and when I first met him years ago he was a driller on a land based rig. He's well up the ladder now) and they are frustrated.

When you take into account the way the cleanup is being handled it adds to my doubts.

On an up note- the size of the slick on Google Earth is slowly but surely reducing in size.

Originally posted by billyjack
reply to post by Mike6158

 

I am really starting to wonder about the entire procedure over the last 2 1/2 months. As I stated in a previous post I didn't understand why they didn't unscrew the flange and make up another BOP & that there must be a problem I wasn't aware of. Now they are doing the exactly what I said. The puzzling part is why they didn't do this 2 months ago. There is no information they have now that they didn't have before.

I find it hard to believe that there isn't an engineer in BP that wasn't screaming about doing this procedure from day 1.

I don't know why either, do you suppose the accountants convinced them to lay off the experienced engineers who knew what they were doing and replace them with recent college grads who they could pay half as much, but whose inexperience would lead to bumbling like this?

Or is it like NASA whose engineers told them the shuttle could blow up if they launched in cold weather, but the management disregarded what the engineers said and made their own decisions in contradiction to engineer's recommendations?

Although, I think the blow out was caused by a comedy of errors, I now start wondering if the aftermath hasn't hasn't been orchestrated to elicit a political response.

I agree with the "comedy of errors" though it will be a while before I can laugh at it, but I don't see what the political response motivation could possibly be.

At least the flow of oil is stopped. Time to kill it and figure out what went wrong...

So does this mean they are or are not going to continue drilling the relief wells? And why is this solution apparently "working" when other containment efforts failed? What has changed? And what of the alleged leaking from elsewhere that prevented capping the well before because "the pressure would cause it to leak elsewhere?"

This is all very confusing to the casual observer.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


I agree "comedy" should have been changed to a "series'. Killing 11 "hands" certainly isn't comedy.

I don't like to believe that the extent of the spill was orchestrated, but it is no secret that the Obamites hate the energy industry and want to promote "green" energy. Add in that the EPA has just cancelled 125 air quality permits issued by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality on refineries, electricity generators and others, and Rahm does not want to waste a crisis. At the same time they are trying to push Carbon Cap & Trade, while from my technical perspective the latest effort that is apparently working with no more data than they had 2 1/2 months ago I kind of start wondering. I find it hard to believe that there wasn't an engineer at BP that didn't suggest tieing onto the flange a long time ago.

It just doesn't add up, in my opinion.

reply to post by billyjack

Maybe but I thought it was brilliant in your earlier posts when you suggested a disaster like this might be partially caused by accountants making the decisions that operational people should be making. So I was completely on board with that, corporate greed, follow the money, etc all makes sense to me.

BP is going to get stuck with a multi-billion dollar bill for this, so in the context of pinching pennies to improve the bottom like, how in the world could they be incentivized to go along with the Obama administration to prolong the leak, if that is what you are suggesting may have happened? The Obama administration/US government is sending invoices to BP, they just got their 4th invoice for over $100 million.

So while the incompetent problem solving is puzzling, the financial mechanics of the supposed conspiracy escape me, and as you point out, there's no absence of greed in corporations, so that part seems difficult to reconcile.

reply to post by AceWombat04


The relief well process is still taking place. They were close to killing it and were stopped for "more calculations". I think that means they wanted to test the new capping device.

Did they bolt the new piece to the BOP or was it stabbed onto the riser but utilize a "new" sealing mechanism? I thought the connection was a new design.

Et al-

When you talk to people close to the situation, some actually working on solutions and cleanup, you can't help but wonder what is going on. It's either governmental ineptitude or they have been intentionally holding back relief efforts... or a little of both. They seem hell bent on shutting down the oil industry and forcing the country to move to replacements that do not exist.