Question: Why Plug the BP Gusher?

RJM62

RJM62

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Okay, here's a stupid question I'm having a hard time finding an equally stupid answer to: If the present cap BP's testing actually works, why not use the oil? Why plug what appears to be an enormously productive well?

-Rich
 
RJM62 said:
Okay, here's a stupid question I'm having a hard time finding an equally stupid answer to: If the present cap BP's testing actually works, why not use the oil? Why plug what appears to be an enormously productive well?
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The oil is still down there, and they'll still have access to it via other wells. The most probable way this leak ends is through the two "relief wells" that are nearing completion, which should reduce pressure enough to allow them to squish and seal the leaky well.
-harry
 
mantakos said:
The oil is still down there, and they'll still have access to it via other wells. The most probable way this leak ends is through the two "relief wells" that are nearing completion, which should reduce pressure enough to allow them to squish and seal the leaky well.
-harry
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Okay, that part I understand. But since this well is already there, why not use it? Is it safer / easier to pump from the relief wells or other new wells than to use the one that's already there?

Thanks,

-Rich
 
RJM62 said:
Is it safer / easier to pump from the relief wells or other new wells than to use the one that's already there?
Thanks,
-Rich
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Yes, by orders of magnitude. It's a bad well, possibly damaged casing, unknown condition of inner piping, non-functional blow-out preventer..... Better off plugging it and starting over.

Gary
 
No expert by any means.
By the news coverage, the way I understand it, is they will use the relief well they are drilling now to do what the original well would have done.
They can seal the original one then.
 
From what I understand, even if the new cap does catch all the oil, it will still have to be pumped up to a surface ship. In the event of a hurricane, the surface ships will have to leave and the well will continue to pump crude into the Gulf. The problem is that the current well head is too damaged to be able to seal off the tremendous pressure.
 
According to BP any oil they capture from the ****ed up well will be used to pay for the environmental rehab which is a joke, imho.
 
I heard that they welded a womans wedding ring on the top of the pipe and the well quit PUTTING OUT.:goofy:
 
I thought that this was, originally, an exploration well - just to see what, if anything was down there. They were in the process of capping it off when it blew. The relief wells are supposed to drill into the same bore-hole so mud can be pumped inside the shaft to seal it. It's going to be quite a feat to drill, what, a total of a couple of miles? and hit an 8"-10" shaft, but that's the plan.
 
RJM62 said:
Okay, that part I understand. But since this well is already there, why not use it? Is it safer / easier to pump from the relief wells or other new wells than to use the one that's already there?

Thanks,

-Rich
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Because the well head is probably irretrievably damaged. You can't send divers to 5000' to fix it even in WASP or NEWT suits, it would be awfully difficult if not impossible to do it with ROVs. Besides, there's no way to do it under pressure anyway.
 
Matthew said:
I thought that this was, originally, an exploration well - just to see what, if anything was down there. They were in the process of capping it off when it blew. The relief wells are supposed to drill into the same bore-hole so mud can be pumped inside the shaft to seal it. It's going to be quite a feat to drill, what, a total of a couple of miles? and hit an 8"-10" shaft, but that's the plan.
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With the current state of siemographics and directional drilling, a good drilling team can hit the bore. Remember, they make tunnel ends meet in the middle these days.

As far as "exploration well" goes, that is a budgeting term typically used for the first bore in a reserve. If it pans out, it becomes a production well. They were capping it off because the drilling was done, they were going to take the drilling rig offsite and bring out the production platform to which they would hook up risers from that well and back down to a pipeline that would either go to shore, or tie into another pipeline. Once the riser is in place, they then put the well in production by clearing the mud and the plugs out.
 
Henning said:
Because the well head is probably irretrievably damaged. You can't send divers to 5000' to fix it even in WASP or NEWT suits, it would be awfully difficult if not impossible to do it with ROVs. Besides, there's no way to do it under pressure anyway.
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I'm no oil-well guy: But I understood that the blow-out preventer was in place at the well head in order to prevent just this kind of event. The BOP failed and the explosion damaged it to the point where it had to be sawed off and that is why the entire volume of oil is flowing straight out of the ground. It's a heck of a long way underwater for any kind of quick fix.

I'm still impressed at both deep-water and directional drilling capabilities.
 
Matthew said:
I'm no oil-well guy: But I understood that the blow-out preventer was in place at the well head in order to prevent just this kind of event. The BOP failed and the explosion damaged it to the point where it had to be sawed off and that is why the entire volume of oil is flowing straight out of the ground. It's a heck of a long way underwater for any kind of quick fix.

I'm still impressed at both deep-water and directional drilling capabilities.
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That is correct, that's what it's there for, it's a last ditch thing, an emergency device, and it typically has 3 different methods of doing its job. The drilling mud is however the primary method of keeping the well suppressed.
 
Henning said:
With the current state of siemographics and directional drilling, a good drilling team can hit the bore. Remember, they make tunnel ends meet in the middle these days.
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I heard this morning that relief well drilling has a pretty high (90% or more) success rate.

It just doesn't happen overnight.

--

And they seem to have just capped the well with another piece of equipment and will start closing valves in a couple of hours and see what happens.
 
Henning said:
Because the well head is probably irretrievably damaged. You can't send divers to 5000' to fix it even in WASP or NEWT suits, it would be awfully difficult if not impossible to do it with ROVs. Besides, there's no way to do it under pressure anyway.
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I understand now. It just seemed a waste to me because I was thinking that if they could cap it, then why not collect and use it? But as I suspected, there's more to it than meets the eye.

Thanks,

Rich
 
Steve said:
According to BP any oil they capture from the ****ed up well will be used to pay for the environmental rehab which is a joke, imho.
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Which part is the joke? The environmental rehab plans?

That they must perform environmental rehab?

That they would/should use revenue from that source to pay for said rehab?

Or that BP said that they would perform environmental rehab?

Or that they could recover enough oil to pay for rehab?

So many possibilities...
 
Henning said:
With the current state of siemographics and directional drilling, a good drilling team can hit the bore. Remember, they make tunnel ends meet in the middle these days.
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For a car-tunnel, this makes perfect sense to me -- you can make pretty accurate measurements of "how far does my tunnel deviate from this laser line", and use that to get things to line up. Car tunnels tend to go in straight segments.

But my understanding is that these oil well holes are about one foot in diameter, many miles under the ocean, and traveling in curved lines. You can't use GPS (or any radio technology) to establish the position of the drill bit because radio doesn't travel through rock and water very well. I'm not sure how you could track a laser line either (but am curious if you can).

How do you accurately guide a drill hole over several miles of undersea rock to hit a 1' target? Do they use some form of echolocation (listening for the rushing oil and home in on it) to pilot the bore to its target?

Chris
 
colohan said:
For a car-tunnel, this makes perfect sense to me -- you can make pretty accurate measurements of "how far does my tunnel deviate from this laser line", and use that to get things to line up. Car tunnels tend to go in straight segments.

But my understanding is that these oil well holes are about one foot in diameter, many miles under the ocean, and traveling in curved lines. You can't use GPS (or any radio technology) to establish the position of the drill bit because radio doesn't travel through rock and water very well. I'm not sure how you could track a laser line either (but am curious if you can).

How do you accurately guide a drill hole over several miles of undersea rock to hit a 1' target? Do they use some form of echolocation (listening for the rushing oil and home in on it) to pilot the bore to its target?

Chris
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Explosives. Seriously, they use explosives. They have very accurate 3D seismology that they use to "see" and correct by.
 
Henning said:
Explosives. Seriously, they use explosives. They have very accurate 3D seismology that they use to "see" and correct by.
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And they use a magnetometer. When they get close, they run electric current through the metal casing in the target well. Then by using sensitive magnetometers in the relief well they can home right in on it. You will note that the reports now are that the relief well is within a few feet horizontally although still hundreds of feet vertically. This gives them the ability to correct the well bore should they be off, and eliminate the need for very sharp corners in the well bore by making small corrections early.

-Skip
 
RJM62 said:
Okay, here's a stupid question I'm having a hard time finding an equally stupid answer to: If the present cap BP's testing actually works, why not use the oil? Why plug what appears to be an enormously productive well?

-Rich
Click to expand...

Let's not forget the forensics on the BOP. It needs to come up to find out precisely why that sucker failed.
 
I been reading on some oil industry blog that if they dont plug it BELOW the damage the leaking oil is going to keep eroding the rock around the casing till the entire sea bed around the well is gushing oil. That could be quite exciting.
 
Chip Sylverne said:
Let's not forget the forensics on the BOP. It needs to come up to find out precisely why that sucker failed.
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That most likely will not happen. P&Aing that rig will raise its own set of risks not to mention removing the cap. Not worth it.
 
colohan said:
How do you accurately guide a drill hole over several miles of undersea rock to hit a 1' target? Do they use some form of echolocation (listening for the rushing oil and home in on it) to pilot the bore to its target?
Click to expand...

Determining the location of a wellbore is pretty much just an excercise in surveying. We have tools which measure the inclination and orientation (direction relative to north) of the wellbore. We can take the measurements continuously while drilling or at selected stations after a well has been drilled. The measurement data is then integrated to determine the location of the wellbore and/or drillbit.

As with any survey method there is some uncertainty as to the exact location of the wellbore or drillbit. That uncertainty is typically on the order of a few feet.

For a relief well standard directional drilling methods are used to get within a few feet of the target and then other techniques are used to verify the proximity of the target well and make the intercept. The "other techniques" can include detecting the target well's casing or drillpipe with a magnetometer.

The surveying part is relatively easy. Steering the bit to the target use to be the tricky part. With the drilling tools used today, steering usually isn't much of a problem. The big leap in technology came when folks figured out how to record the wellbore inclination and orientation at the surface without requiring an electric line. These days the use of mud motors, bent subs (when required), and measurement-while-drilling makes very accurate directional drilling a routine every-day operation.
 
Henning said:
That most likely will not happen. P&Aing that rig will raise its own set of risks not to mention removing the cap. Not worth it.
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Ah, but here come the liability boys. The insurance companies are going to want to find out why it didn't work, as they want to place the blame squarely on some company (some company's insurance company). They will come up with a thousand arguments that so long as the bottom kill works, it is perfectly safe to remove the BOP (and perhaps also plug the top while they are at it).

-Skip
 
Maybe, but then there is nothing forcing MMS to allow it. In the end it comes down to Respondeat Superior, and that's BP.
 
Skip Miller said:
Ah, but here come the liability boys. The insurance companies are going to want to find out why it didn't work, as they want to place the blame squarely on some company (some company's insurance company). They will come up with a thousand arguments that so long as the bottom kill works, it is perfectly safe to remove the BOP (and perhaps also plug the top while they are at it).
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I doubt you'll find an engineer that would recommend removal/recovery of the BOP. I suspect it'll eventually be pumped full of concrete and abandoned in place.

The investigation likely won't require recovery of the entire stack. The control pods can be recovered and the exterior of the stack can be/has been visually inspected. Obviously attempts were made to function the preventer in the days following the blowout. The failure analysis at that point determined why the stack could not function.

At their heart, BOPs are simple mechanical devices. The control systems are not so simple. The control pods are designed to be recovered so that is not a problem. After that it's pretty much a matter of data review (did the control system have adequate pressure and volume) and a determination of what was physically broken.

In the end I suspect that the BOP failure will come down to something simple like drillstring tools in the stack which prevented it from sealing. We have that condition every day and work diligently to avoid well control problems while we're in that condition. I suspect BP failed on the diligent part.
 
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