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Force Majeure on GoM Jackup Rig
Dew,
I suspect this is do to the 'review' of all GOM drilling regulations called for by our beloved president. The rig in question is only rated to 120 ft depth so it's not affected by the deepwater moratorium. However, I think the institution formerly known as the MMS stoppped all new drilling operations in the GOM, regardless of depth, until the rigs in question were re-inspected. I suspect that since the rig is very old (1958), the MMS must've found something not up to snuff.
http://www.rigzone.com/data/rig_detail.asp?rig_id=653
Charlie
business roundtable report to US OMB
link to 54 pg report referenced by a couple of Wall Street Journal articles this morning yet strangely not hyperlinked in the articles.
http://www.businessroundtable.org/sites/default/files/2010.06.21%20Letter%20to%20OMB%20Director%20Orszag%20from%20BRT%20and%20BC%20with%20Attachments.pdf
They can’t simply flip these projects on and off like a light switch.
that's correct but it also applies to the utilization of the rigs elsewhere. Not that i'm an expert on this but what i've read indicates 0.5 to 1.5 yrs between initiation of planning a drilling program and spudding in. I don't think there are enough proposed drilling programs close enough to completing their planning stages to utilize the semi-subs made available by the moratorium. Brazil will take some but the US and Brazil were utilizing most of these rigs. The rest of the world isn't close.
I suspect this case will race thru the courts. The 5th circuit court is mostly composed of Reagan and Bush (I & II) appointees so i doubt if they will go Obama's way and likewise for the Supreme Court. However, I wouldn't be surprised if Congress tries to pre-empt any SC ruling. In anycase, I suspect the regulatory agencies can gum this up so that the moratorium becomes a de facto result regardless of what the SC says.
great. now you've resorted to posting the rantings of a former jockey. me thinks you've been smoking too much of the ganja.
re: How GoM Moratorium Affects Drillers/Service Companies
the target price changes seem to be way out of line the changes in eps estimates. looks like citi is using the moratorium as an excuse. deepwater revenue is about 5% for at least one of those companies and probably lower for others. there will be additional costs as i've pointed out previously but citi has changed the stock estimates by >15%. not that i don't think their new estimates are unreasonable; their previous estimates were v. bad.
when politicians have nothing useful to do they can always change the letterhead.
New Orleans, Louisiana (CNN) -- The federal agency responsible for overseeing the oil industry has been renamed amid a massive reform effort following the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the Department of the Interior announced Monday.
The Minerals Management Service will be called the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, according to an order signed by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar requesting the name change.
of course, this will unnecessarily cost many $millions - not just for the federal agencies but for all of the companies who deal with the former MMS. In case there are any doubters, a small federal lab i once worked in changed it's name by adding a single word. The cost for the lab was in the neighborhood of $3M.
I suspect the name change will also presage establishment of a new bureacracy or shifting of offices since the soon-to-be former MMS also oversaw collection of royalties "from onshore mineral leases on Federal and American Indian lands."
What a lovely bunch of coconuts we have running our country.
the game of blaming everything on Bush is more than tiresome.
the falsehoods in Gasland have been debunked in many forums including here. The filmmakers clearly have no knowledge of the topic since they've apparently lumped hydrofracturing and other stimulation practices together. The little map of the world in the video which purports to show areas where hydrofrac'ing is taking place is just flat out wrong. There is no slickwater hydrofrac'ing taking place in roughly 90% of the areas shown on that map. As an example, roughly 95% of the natural gas produced in Alaska is reinjected because they have no economically viable means of transporting and selling it. Never mind that the natural gas in Alaska isnt produced from shales. Only mindless drones (aka literature majors) believe such crap without questioning the validity. Apparently, college literature classes don't spend enough time examining the writings of Joseph Goebbels.
The expert on “condensed matter” is presumably on the panel to tell us about the devastating impact to the planet from tar balls
she's the only person on the panel that i think will have the mental capacity to understand the processes involved in drilling an oil well and how such an accident can occur. I suspect she has zero experience with pressurized systems and stress; however, she is a legit physicist so she can probably figure things out.
I should've included a drilling engineer in my list of people who could've been substituted for lawyers (although having 2 lawyers wouldn't necessarily be bad). If the panel had included a real oil industry executive, there's a good likelihood that person would've had some sort of well experience.
In contrast, the Rogers commission had several experts with direct experience in the matter being investigated. This commission has 0 members with direct experience in the source/cause of the problem(s) but many 'experts' (again being generous) in dealing with effects (mostly biological). Not even sure any members on this commission could claim experience in remediation (unless liability is included as being remedial).
National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling
The Commission shall be composed of not more than 7 members who shall be appointed by the President. The members shall be drawn from among distinguished individuals, and may include those with experience in or representing the scientific, engineering, and environmental communities, the oil and gas industry, or any other area determined by the President to be of value to the Commission in carrying out its duties.
apparently 'other' was most important. 3 scientists (being generous), 0 engineers, 0 oil & gas industry reps (being a director does not provide oil industry experiencce).
there are, however, 4 lawyers - none of whom have any technical education or experience (i.e. they're policy wonks).
The scientists are 2 environmental types and 1 condensed matter physicist. Substituting a geologist and a mechanics person for a couple of the lawyers probably would've been more productive.
quite clear that this commission doesn't have quite the intellectual and technical power of the Challenger (Rogers) commission.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Commission_on_the_BP_Deepwater_Horizon_Oil_Spill_and_Offshore_Drilling
Klein article:
pathetic.
not only do places like Plaquemines Parish stand to lose their fisheries, but also much of the physical barrier that lessens the intensity of fierce storms like hurricane Katrina...
marvelous. i'd like to see that claim substantiated.
That oil entered the marshland and stayed there, burrowing deeper and deeper thanks to holes dug by crabs.
all the way to the mantle, i'm sure.
Katrina pulled back the curtain on the reality of racism in America, the BP disaster pulls back the curtain on something far more hidden: how little control even the most ingenious among us have over the awesome, intricately interconnected natural forces with which we so casually meddle.
ahh, the rascism card. now that's relevant. And since when did casual tasks cost $1.5M/day?
writing like Ms Klein's exemplifies why literature majors don't get paid much.
company man said there's no choppers until next week so get back to work. Schlumberger rings onshore, charters their own chopper to evacuate and six hours after they go the explosion occurs.
Kadaicher,
none of the above is true.
http://energycommerce.house.gov/documents/20100614/Schlumberger.MC.252.Timeline.pdf
don't know anything about the education or experience of the bp crew but i agree with the rest of your other post.
Charlie
while the alpha article was reasonably good i think the writer doesn't understand how much prepatory work is required prior to spudding an off-shore well. Just because rigs are now available does not mean that they will be able to start drilling if they were all moved to Brazil, Angola, etc.
companies re-evaluating all employees and training and moving as required. This is worldwide, not just GOM.
companies re-evaluating all employees and training and moving as required. This is worldwide, not just GOM.
yeah, i know. that's part of reason why i think the impact of the GOM moratorium will be larger than i initially anticipated. People are being asked to move to new locations on very short notice and others go to work 'wondering each day if this will be their last day in that position'. Consequently, many folks are simply pre-emptively changing jobs. i'm talking about desk jockey and lab folks - not rig guys.
White House science adviser John Holdren, an environmental scientist, pulled aside two top security officials, White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan and National Security Council chief of staff Denis McDonough. He pressed them on what secret technology the government had—a submarine, for example—that could help....
lmao. why didn't he ask to consult with the aliens at Area 51? to be fair though, the guy looks to have been a legit scientist before he became a macro policy bureaucrat.
"stop work” authority vested in every production employee ...How well does this practice carry over to the oil & gas business?
It was one of the first things emphatically drilled into my head in my first training class. The article you posted didn't do justice to Watson's reply. He quite emphatically added that CVX rewards employees who stop work to avoid problems. I believe this is the rule within most of the major non-NOCs and service companies (probably including HAL). However, individuals ultimately decide whether the rules will be followed. Inevitably, bad actors come into play.
As an example, I recently heard about a case where a driller decided to drill through a stuck nuclear tool over the objections of the engineers employed by the service company to whom the tool belonged. Of course the result was a small environmental disaster and the service company was found to be partially liable. Most of my colleagues thought this was a quite unreasonable result because the engineers protested and had no control over the driller. I thought the field engineers could have done far more than they did, e.g. informing their managers and corporate legal representatives and letting the driller know that they were doing this. In addition, I would've been inclined to call the local news media in front of the driller. Nothing like news crews and lawyers to effectively scare the crap out of people (this obviously won't work in many other countries but this case wasn't in those other countries). However, this view wasn't well received and i was talking to a bunch of PhDs so I suspect it would go over even less well with field engineers. In anycase, the field engineers should've notified management - they didn't. There are many very smart and clever field engineers but I wouldn't even bet on them to really find ways to shut down an operation when confronted with a really determined driller.
On a somewhat related note, i think the effects of Obama's 6 month moratorium will be more severe than I first thought and my first thoughts were very bad. 1. i think the moratorium will be longer than 6 months 2. displacements of personnel, assets, and planning are occurring throughout the entire industry (exploration and production, refining, service companies, materials suppliers, ...). I suspect substantial oil and NG price increases are imminent but this won't necessarily lead to commensurate profits because of the costs associated with reallocating personnel and assets and delays between starting new projects and realizing profit. It should be noted that the reallocation of personnel also involves people moving to other companies which means companies will have added costs of hiring and training. In addition, it's likely that new reg's on things like BOPs will probably be established and the exploration companies will consequently require new certifications and that will require new testing before field implementation is allowed. But those are topics i'll leave to folks like Kadaicher. Anyway, the industry is a mess and between BP and obama we have a tragic comedy of errors.
THE FACTS: ... experts say the relief well runs the same risks that caused the original well to blow out. It potentially could create a worse spill if engineers were to accidentally damage the existing well or tear a hole in the undersea oil reservoir.
while the first statement is true, given the example of the DwH, prudence and caution will be exercised to an extreme. The part about accidentally damaging the well and tearing a hole in the reservoir is nonsense. Drilling into another well is damaging by definition but the original well appears to be so damaged that it would be difficult to screw it up more by drilling into it (which is actually the optimal result). Tearing holes in reservoirs.....eesh, total crap.
getting back to go seek's post: i listened to the first part of the congressional inquisition of the 'big oil' execs. Several representatives referred to the title of the hearing as being something like 'future of energy' rather than being narrowly related to the DwH accident and safer exploitation of deepwater oil. A good bit of the discussion revolved around climate change and alternative energy development. It would be nice if Representatives held their assertions to the same level of proof or support that they seek to impose on others. As an aside, some of the phrases i heard sound suspiciously identical to some favored by certain politically well connected humans at MIT and some of the DOE labs. The expertise and motivations there have zero relationship to deepwater oil exploration and production.
Dear caravon:
I'm glad you've discovered how to use the bolding feature. Your next assignment can be to brush up on your reading comprehension skills.
regards,
somebody who has a much better grasp than you of English grammar, world history, and the oil industry.
BP was more concerned with financial consequences rather than fixing the leak. It did NOT take the leak consequently very seriously.
It was a catastrophic engineering blunder.
caravon,
the financial consequences are obviously linked to the leak so your 1st statement is obviously wrong. There were probably things that BP could have done better but to say they didn't take the leak 'very seriously' is also ridiculous. That you've concluded that the accident is a 'catastropic engineering blunder' suggests that your knowledge of the matter is as superficial as your knowledge of history. There may have been engineering blunders but they almost certainly were not the sole cause of this accident.
cso
PL1,
that article isn't exactly honest or accurate.
while i wouldn't say the ingredients in Corexit are pleasant it's not like Nalco or the EPA were hiding the ingredients. The only unknown hazardous ingredient is the "Organic sulfonic acid salt" and it appears to be much less toxic than the other ingredients.
http://www.nalco.com/documents/9500A_MSDS.pdf
I've forgotten the exact wording of the regs but it can be paraphrased as "there must be an MSDS for any substance which is used in a work process" (so stuff like soap in a company's bathrooms are exempted but anything used to accomplish a job must be documented). The MSDS in turn is required to list the hazardous constituents of the substance and the hazards associated with the chemicals. Obviously, proprietary ingredients are not required to be specifically identified, however, the hazards and toxicity levels must be disclosed.
regards,
Charlie
Re: Anti-fracking propaganda
i totally agree that there is an emotional side to this and guys like Markey are playing into as hard as they can. He is the worst kind of politician. I'm sure he's very proud of himself but he should really be embarassed nearly every time he opens his mouth.
as for bull or bear on shale gas: the only way the DwH makes a difference is in the emotional aspect (bearish). Obama's kabosh on shallow water exploration permits until they review regulations may have some effect because many of those wells would probably be gas producers (bullish). I think the shale gas biz has made enough in-roads where it will continue.
the nation propaganda
the article starts off with an allegory by a local Dimock activist and disgruntled gas lessor without setting an objective stage. The activist's comment "no rules, no regs, just rigs" could only be accepted as accurate by the most biased and self-delusional of readers. Quotes such as "After a stray drill bit banged four wells...weird things started happening to people's water...." There is no specific description of what constitutes 'weird' or context given for the "stray bit" nor what constitues banging. Was this something that happened at the surface or in the subsurface? Citing an objective source, preferably one with legal authority would be nice.
The activist claims she never would have signed her lease if she'd known hydrofracing would be involved yet she also notes she had never heard of hydrofracing. How could any credulous person accept this sort of writing as intelligent.
The article claims damage to several water wells without citation to any authoritative source. All hearsay from the activist and 'other residents'. The only documented contamination seems to be due to careless handling of liquids at the surface. That sort of thing could happen in any type of oil and gas drilling and many industrial processes. It is not a 'feature' specific to hydrofracing. As for the explodiing well: it never is made clear whether the well was a gas well or water well. It does appear to be documented because at the end of the story (no surprise) there is a comment that the PA DEP determined that the well's "improper casing" was to blame. As go seek as related from Louisiana: water wells in gas producing areas sometimes experience natural gas excursions and gas wells in those areas don't necessarily use fracturing of any variety. That doesn't make it desirable but if folks want to put water wells in places where gas and oil exist in the subsurface, then they may get some of the gas and oil along with the water. It's not like wishing the gas away will actually work.
Your highlighted part about "A string of recent disasters..." is another priceless gem of illogic. Liability lawyers will be first to tell you that they are the vultures that keep bad actors in line. BTW I like vultures so nobody should read that as a disparaging comment. Vultures and liability lawyers serve a useful purpose. Regulation can not prevent accidents and government employees generally do not have the expertise to act as an effective second line of oversight (management) to prevent accidents.
The bit about the 'Halliburton loophole' is obviously thrown in to gather support from the lingering 'anything anti-Bush-Cheney' crowd. Truly lame and their attempt to connect the fracturing techniques developed in the 1940s to those used in gas shales is a stretch. Of course, the vast majority of lay people have no idea what the writer is attempting to describe but it sounds authoritative so many people tend to accept it. I call that style of writing propaganda.
Your highlighted sentence "Drilling is now regulated entirely at the state level..." is another example of the propagandist style of writing. The alleged problems have yet to be proven to be due to drilling which is the part which is regulated by the states. The proven contamination of surface water by surface activities related to the drillers is something that is covered by state and federal governments. The fact that at least one company, e.g. Cabot, has been penalized for failure to properly contain their chemicals and wastes demonstrates the falsity of the premise of "no rules, no regs, just rigs" as well as the implication that the states are incapable of enforcing environmental protection regulations.
Then the writer throws in the guaranteed to scare the crap out of everybody bit about radioactivity: "the Marcellus, which is naturally radioactive, must find a way to dispose of thousands of gallons of water, toxic chemicals, brine and radium." This is the same sort of BS that spawned the Radon detecting business back in the 1990s. I hate to tell these people but if it were not for the "naturally radioactive" rock in the Earth, then there would not be life as we know it on Earth. I'd like to see documentation of the radium concentration in the fluids flowed back to the surface. I'd bet they're very similar to the concentrations in streams flowing through the same types of rocks. Of course, I'd want the analyses of both the well fluids and surface waters to be done in the same labs so the contamination levels from the hot lab would be the same.
on and on and on....
"[Switzer] says that companies dump waste into creeks and ponds, or into pits lined with thin plastic." Well, yeah, sort of. Thin is qualitative. And oh, by the way, the pits lined with plastic are legal and required. The sentence is literally a logical one where the good, legal, and required part is placed after the 'or' but the bad and illegal and almost certainly non-intentionally practiced part is placed first. More propagandist writing.
so i'll quit since i think i've sufficiently made the point that the article is a piece of crap. I don't read The Nation but after reading this article i wouldn't ever go out of my way to start.
regards,
Charlie
bs and nothing but bs. waiting for the luddites to discover that toilet paper is carcinogenic.
i wasn't very fond of that op-ed piece. It's a bit of a stretch to say the US drilling moratorium is going to hurt US or other western companies in their ability to obtain natural resources elsewhere. The rigs headed for the GOM will go elsewhere since there is not a glut of deepwater rigs. There will be losses associated with the relocation and changes in plans but the losses will be mostly within the US.
That latter point brings up what will probably end obama's foolishness. That would be lost or delayed tax revenues to the US gov't. Of course obama may think that will only be a problem for the next administration in 2012. 8^)
Devon is looking like God loves them. I'm not sure if Rowan was involved in any projects over 500 ft but their timing was also good.
but is every oz available for re-use?
John,
no, but a very large percentage is and it is occupying expensive floor space in a few large banks in places like Manhattan. I'd bet those large banks don't own much of that gold because the value of the gold is probably negative after extracting the floor space cost, cost of the vault infrastructure, and the salaries of all the personnel associated with guarding and accounting for the gold. It makes much more sense to charge rent to folks who think there is value in gold. Gold 'investing' is a 'bigger fool' game that persists because of history and a huge and every growing population of fools. (But don't get me wrong; I think gold is a very interesting metal and i've spent a decent amount of time pecking around looking for it).
you may have it backward when you say "the company could be profitable even w/o gold production", however, this is something that changes from year to year in a single mine (i.e. mining copper from many 'copper mines' would not be profitable w/o gold extraction). In anycase, the economics of a mine are evaluated as a whole - not on a specific metal being extracted from the ore.
As for production as a function of time: as i said previously, there has been consolidation. Miners are getting much smarter than they've been in the past. They aren't in the position of De Beers circa 1970 but they certainly understand that restricting supply can help their profitability. Of course, supply restriction is getting help from environmental regulations in some of the bigger metal mining countries in the world. Political instability in some other countries also helps (e.g. look at BHP's experience in Papua New Guinea).
Some mines can extract gold profitably with grades as low as about 0.1 grams/tonne. If my memory is correct, the avg crustal abundance is about 0.004 g/tonne. That is NOT a huge difference and the consequence is that if gold prices were to double, then there would be a huge amount of currently worthless rock around the world that would become ore. Like everything else, supply and demand has its own braking mechanisms.
regards,
Charlie
Kadaicher,
Projects underway can continue subject to a 30 day federal review. Of course the reviews are more complex if there have been side-tracks etc. The increased risk aspect will still exist even under 30-day delays but new projects which are the victims of the 6 month moratorium will not necessarily represent a greater risk (however, i could be wrong as i suggest below).
Field engineers are fired en masse everytime the oil market takes a dive and there always seems to be a new batch and enough of the old batch available when the market recovers. I'm sure you know this but the others on the board may not.
Obviously, the non-US operations will proceed and many of the more experienced US field engineers may opt out of taking assignments in the less pleasant of those locations. Some of those folks will indeed leave the industry and when drilling in US waters resumes those jobs will have a higher percentage of non-US citizens. That probably won't be true for the less skilled rig jobs but the higher paying high-skill jobs which politicians should care about will be. I don't think the non-US field engineers will present a higher risk.
However, another aspect to this which few realize is that the unemployment rate in the delta region (excluding new orleans) was far below the US national average. It has been that way for many years. With both the fishing and a large chunk of the oil & gas industry now shut down, many of the newly unemployed will move out of the region. That will reduce the population from which the oil industry drew upon when replacing the lower-skill workers on rigs and boats. I suspect that may be the biggest source of increased risk because those are jobs that rely on local supply.
regards,
Charlie
the effect on CLB may be muted but the cut to revenues will be spread around. The deepwater 'moratorium' will cost many $100's of millions - effectively punishing many companies who had nothing to do with this accident.
The supposed 6 month duration of the moratorium is also effectively a 1 yr moratorium for any projects in deep water off Alaska.
Obama seems to be intent on keeping unemployment high as a means of keeping inflation low.
governmental incompetence at its best
i'm in complete agreement w/ regard to your natural resource investment strategy
i'm not particularly impressed by the graph. The NASDAQ index also had a nice run a few years ago. Then people got all sad and weepy over the dot.com crash.
just as an example of how disingenuous that article is, they imply that Au is still underpriced because it "is still at half the peak set in 1980, after adjusting for inflation". Of course, they fail to mention that 1980 was a bubble and the market crashed in 1982.
There is no shortage of gold as demonstrated by the piles of it sitting around in banks. There is also no lack of capacity to mine it. I'd bet this is a particularly sweet time for mining companies because their equipment costs are not being driven up by competition for manufacturing supply due to high oil, coal, and natural gas prices. In addition, unemployment is high so labor costs are down (it's not like these are highly skilled jobs). I'd be surprised if avg production cost/oz is above $350/oz in the US.
That production is not expanding is probably more a matter of consolidation in the mining industry and their ability to better control the market rather than a diminishing reserve base. However, that doesn't necessarily make Au miners a good investment 'cause I think there profitability is well baked into their prices.
Speculators are buying gold faster than the world’s biggest producers can mine it
that story is complete BS.
Dew,
i have no doubt that bubba and jim-bob were able to get ~1/4 lb of used motor oil to wet ~1/4 lb of dried hay. However, I doubt if the approach would be helpful to the spill. The soggy hay-oil combination is probably at least 3/4 lb. Moving the hay in and the mess out would be a lot of trucks and a lot of EPA forms. The notion that it could be used for power is completely hair-brained. I'm also doubtful that the combined mess would bob around on the surface awaiting a sandrake or front-end loader.
Tar balls are mother nature's way of effectively doing the same thing but in neater form. After the volatile parts of the oil evaporate, the heavier fraction gets rolled around with sand, shells, and other organic matter to form a compact semi-solid which will be much easier to remove than hay matted with oil. This will be the mother of all tar ball farms but my speculative 2 cents is that dealing with those will be cheaper and more effective than the absorption/adsorption/wetting schemes i've seen so far.
The first DOE report on the accident is due out this Friday.
Charlie
Kadaicher,
thanks very much for the annotation and link. There's some very damning stuff in there. I'll leave it at that - it's not just the RIG, BP, and HAL folk who are under wraps.
BTW the shear ram failures i was referring to were all in non-job settings. The failures were apparently due to mismatches between the heavier gauge pipe used in deepwater drilling and BOPs that hadn't likewise been upgraded to deal with the heavier gauge pipe.
Charlie
the speculation in the last couple days has been that it was BP engineers who said let's replace the drilling mud with seawater before we finish the plug.
The reality is there are going to be so many red herrings. You always do that (laughing nervously), that's always the procedure, right? [I do not understand what this means—comments?]
he's simply saying, "that's the accusation; we'll wait for the trial to say more". the supposition is that replacement of mud by seawater provided insufficient confining pressure to prevent hydrocarbons from unexpectedly entering the well and subsequently the riser.
the red adair quote was priceless.
media misrepresentation
unfortunately from the 18May10 WSJ
Disaster Plans Lacking at Deep Rigs
....In 2008, Chevron was plagued with accidents while using the Discoverer Deep Seas rig in more than 7,000 feet of water in the Gulf. There was a fire, then a leak deep under the sea. Finally the cement and steel casing inside the well collapsed, allowing drilling fluid to flow out of control. Workers stopped the flow only by permanently plugging the well.
Chevron says the well was "safely and permanently" abandoned after the problems. "One of Chevron's core values is the safety of our employees, contractors and neighbors,"
this exemplifies the point i've been trying to make with oxygen on the biotech board. The inference from the story and the quote above seems to be that lack of safeguards and planning have led to accidents in GOM oil exploration and the inability to address those accidents. The facts are quite different from the inference.
When one actually examines the accident reports:
http://www.gomr.mms.gov/homepg/offshore/safety/acc_repo/2008/080427.pdf
http://www.gomr.mms.gov/homepg/offshore/safety/acc_repo/2008/080920.pdf
http://www.gomr.mms.gov/homepg/offshore/safety/acc_repo/2008/081101.pdf
http://www.mms.gov/incidents/
one will notice that: 1. the fire was in the engine room of the rig and was due to use of an inappropriate o-ring in a fuel line and had no relationship to drilling other than the drilling was being done from the same ship. The fire was quickly extinquished. 2. the incidents were merged together into a single paragraph to make them appear to be related , however, they are actually 3 separate incidents which occurred over a 7 month period and were completely unrelated. and 3. the implied severity in the WSJ article is greatly overstated - at least wrt to the general public. The loss of the well was, of course, expensive but was not catastrophic.
ot wells
I suppose it is common to have the drilling apparatus also become swallowed up into the hole resulting in another set of tools having to be sent down to sever the pipe? Is that common?
yup. very common. can also be very expensive.
As for the rubber chunks. You are either being dishonest or your recollection is poor. The electronics technician did not discover those chunks. That was one of his 2nd hand bits of information. He would've had no business being in a place where he could've recovered pieces so your claim makes no sense. Of course, his story that chunks were returned to the surface might be true. You really should come to grips with the fact that I'm not discounting or dismissing any firsthand, attributed, or anonymous claims from folks who were supposedly on the DwH. I am saying that speculation and apparent politically motivated manipulation of misunderstood processes is unhelpful and wrong, respectively.
As an example let's assume that rubber chunks were indeed returned to the surface. You assume a priori that the chunks came from the annular. Well, there are other possible sources for rubber chunks being returned to the surface. For example, there are these things called "packers". I have no idea whether or not a packer was used or lost during an earlier stage in the drilling but it is quite possible that one was and it was subsequently returned to the surface during continuation of drilling. The 60 minutes description of the timing and context of rubber chunks was incomplete and certainly didn't involve objective analysis by an independent expert. So there is yet another example of your lack of objectivity and how reliance on popular news sources for information can lead to potentially incorrect conclusions.
as for not 'absorbing' English: please go back and read my statement which involves the words "your thesis". In that statement i explicitly state what you wrote in all caps. Apparently, I did comprehend your thesis perfectly. I also said you may be correct but you have no objective proof at this time and consequently you are just a posturing belligerent with poor information processing capabilities.
Your bolded quotes of my words do not imply that I do not know anything about drilling and well completion processes. I know a great deal about those things and yes, I'm willing to wager, much, much more than anybody working at CBS. I don't have to know any details specific to the DwH to know that there are details which can provide alternative explanations for observations which you and others have used to derive conclusions. The rubber chunks case I gave above is an example. I also know that things like fracturing of rock around the wellbore during drilling, drilling of sidetracks, and getting pipe and tools stuck are common. I don't think any objective drilling expert would jump to the conclusion that these were necessarily related to the blowout. An electronics technician is not a drilling expert.
My knowledge of things related to oil and natural gas is very highly specialized and came from many years in universities, research labs, and industry. However, I know that in many specific areas (particularly in field operations), there are plenty of folks, even on this board, who know more than me and I even provided an example. If that isn't objective enough for you, then you really need to engage in some introspective analysis of yourself.
cso
[ot gom mess ad infinitum]
oxygen,
you are correct, i have no reason to apologize to you. I've listened to the 60 minutes replay and reviewed what i wrote. The only thing i'd change is to be more precise in my criticism of some of the text you posted, e.g.:
"...stepping up the drilling pace which compromised the integrity of the drill hole walls, cracking them."
Damage to a wellbore during drilling is fairly common. It does not lead to catastrophic failures such as what happened with the DwH. Based on the context of your post it appeared that there was an attempt to link wellbore damage possibly incurred due to rate of penetration as the cause of the accident. 60 minutes also mentioned that there was a side track drilled because pipe or a tool got stuck. Every account reported in the media and by the company executives in front of the congressional panel has been that the well had reached total depth and the final liner had been cemented. Damage to the wellbore might cause other problems with production and logging but i don't see how wellbore damage could be relevant to the accident if the well has been cemented to total depth. Likewise drilling of sidetracks is common and there is no reason to believe without other evidence that it contributed to the accident. I'd defer to Kadaicher on the natural resources board for a couple of reasons; however, it is clear to me that 60 minutes and you have taken a couple of things that are crafted and intoned to sound bad but but are neither necessarily bad nor unusual and you've applied them out of context in order to derive a conclusion which meets with an agenda which appeals to your personal set of non-scientific beliefs.
You make blithe response about 'not terribly complicated concepts'. While the concept is not complicated to me, the details are quite complex and that's a good part of the reason why development of these resources is expensive. Part of your thesis seems to be that this accident resulted from cutting corners or rushing the job in order to save costs. While that could be the case it is not yet proven in a comprehensive peer-reviewed scientific study nor a court of law. In addition, you obviously don't have a clue about the details yet you believe that you are informed enough to be able to assign cause and sources of failure and suggest superior approaches to addressing the spill. And who to call on to substantiate your opinion regarding the cause - an electronics technician whose job function was not on the drill floor and is only passing on 2nd and 3rd person hearsay, a former employee who was not involved in this project, and some 2008 e-mails that are obviously not specific to this event.
I don't doubt for a minute the technician's description of his personal experiences during the accident. His 2nd & 3rd person recantations of the other discussions range from not necessarily bad or unusual topics to potentially damning observations. However, even in the latter case it is not clear that destruction of the annular seal would necessarily lead to a blowout and you should note that you have not heard from any immediate sources regarding those details. In addition, the blowout preventer is still on the seafloor so any assessments of blowout preventer component functionality or failure are probably inconclusive.
I can assure you as somebody who does work in the industry that any fulltime (i.e. non-fixed term contract) employee of BP or RIG who was on the DwH or is working on the remediation is NOT speaking to reporters. I'm sure any lawyer on this board can explain to you why employees of these and related companies will not speculate about the cause(s) of the accident NOR speculate or comment on remediation of the leak (that's for JBOG). Those lawyers can also explain to you why hearsay generally isn't admissable as evidence (I'm not a lawyer but i suspect it has something to do with objectivity and reliability).
Unfortunately, the absence of knowledgable voices provides opportunity for the paranoid and politically motivated but illiterate of specific details to fill the void of information sought by the naturally curious populus. I have not said that all of the information being put forth is wrong or is provided by technically illiterate people. Between much of the technically detailed fact and the lay-person the 'mass media' tends to inject a level of simplification that distorts truth. In some cases i suspect there is intentional manipulation to portray oil companies in a negative light (i put 60 minutes in this category). Unfortunately, even objective simplification tends to use analogy or use of circumstances which are commonly observed or experienced by the lay person and that has a tendency to lead folks like you to consider themselves as 'well-informed'.
Kadaicher has provided enlightenment to me on some technical aspects (particularly regarding blowout preventers of which i am admittedly far from expert) and provided links to anonymous but credible sounding sources. However, I will still maintain that very few people, and possibly nobody, could have a complete set of data necessary to fully describe the sequence of events. As for blame - that's not my business and i don't really care.
enjoy,
Charlie
[ot more gom stuff]
BP site managers pressured Transocean into stepping up the drilling pace which compromised the integrity of the drill hole walls, cracking them. Also, the rate of downward pressure at which the man-made "mud" was pumped back down into the drill whole was now insufficient. This "mud" creates a downforce which is designed to counteract the upward pressure of the oil and gas so that they can cap the well with concrete plugs allowing for extraction at a later date.
You nor any media person has any credible evidence that sentences #1 and #2 are true and there's a bit of complete nonsense contained in #1. Sentence #3 is a hack explanation which illustrates your lack of knowledge. The well is no where near being the deepest in the world. Again, you're out of your water so it would probably be best to wait for facts.
[ot gom oil mess]
To challenge my "brilliant estimate" with cynicism when you've done no research is down right closed minded. That fact is fact and I see no need in debating you on it.
if the Exxon Valdez spilled 250k bbls (wikipedia number), then your number for the DwH well would be 50k bbls/day. Given what existing wells in this sort of environment produce that number is possible but probably high. The 70k bbl/day number from the professor from Indiana being touted on CNN is very unlikely. But again, speculation is a lot of fun so why wait for the facts.
As for hiring more clean-up companies. There are some logistical and logical barriers to just throwing money up in the air and hoping that the people who pick it up go out and do the job without exacerbating the problem and not getting hurt in the process. I've heard exactly one mention in the media regarding fumes in the area of the spill. People don't seem to connect the dots between that and what happens to the oil between the pipe opening on the seafloor and it becoming tar balls (and you might want to wonder why they are called 'tar balls'). As much as 90% of the mass of the stuff coming out of that well is going into the atmosphere before it hits the beach (that number may be high but the percentage is closer to 90% than it is to 20%).
regards,
Charlie
ot gom oil spill
How about hiring more help from outside environmental cleanup organizations? The spewing oil is still not contained and every 5 days it gushes the equivelent of The Exxon Valdez disaster into the Gulf, all over again. This disaster was precipitated by the need to reduce costs at the expense of safety and now the same cost containment efforts are underway with the clean-up.
oxygen,
hiring more people for clean-up is like calling in the janitorial staff to assist with an amputation. The problem is on the seafloor and no environmental company has the expertise to fix the problem on the seafloor. You nor I know if the accident was precipitated by an attempt to reduce costs. Everyone in the industry knows the costs associated with an Exxon Valdez or Piper Alpha and consequently huge amounts of money are spent on avoiding accidents. The insurance costs to oil industry companies are enormous so those companies are quite willing to spend money on equipment, materials, personnel, time, and training to avoid anything which will cause those costs to increase further.
people obviously derive some sort of satisfaction from speculation but forming opinions without being informed is not useful and often harmful.
regards,
Charlie