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Message
A possible explanation of what happened on the Deepwater Horizon
Posted on 5/4/10 at 10:11 am
Posted on 5/4/10 at 10:11 am
This has been posted on a couple of other boards out there.
Might as well put it here, too, and see what you guys think.
"The following has just been passed to me which may explain some things (especially whether a liner or full string was run):
This well had been giving some problems all the way down and was a big discovery. Big pressure, 16ppg+ mud weight. They ran a long string of 7" production casing - not a liner, the confusion arising from the fact that all casing strings on a floating rig are run on drill pipe and hung off on the wellhead on the sea floor, like a "liner". They cemented this casing with lightweight cement containing nitrogen because they were having lost circulation in between the well kicking all the way down.
The calculations and the execution of this kind of a cement job are complex, in order that you neither let the well flow from too little hydrostatic pressure nor break it down and lose the fluid and cement from too much hydrostatic. But you gotta believe BP had 8 or 10 of their best double and triple checking everything.
On the outside of the top joint of casing is a seal assembly - "packoff" - that sets inside the subsea wellhead and seals. This was set and tested to 10,000 psi, OK.
This was the end of the well until testing was to begin at a later time, so a temporary "bridge plug" was run in on drill pipe to set somewhere near the top of the well below 5,000 ft. This is the second barrier, you always have to have 2, and the casing was the first one. It is not know if this was actually set or not. At the same time they took the 16+ ppg mud out of the riser and replaced it with sea water so that they could pull the riser, lay it down, and move off.
When they did this, they of course took away ...... hydrostatic on the well. But this was OK, normal, since the well was plugged both on the inside with the casing and on the outside with the tested packoff. But something turned loose all of a sudden, and the conventional wisdom would be the packoff on the outside of the casing.
Gas and oil rushed up the riser; there was little wind, and a gas cloud got all over the rig. When the main inductions of the engines got a whiff, they ran away and exploded. Blew them right off the rig. This set everything on fire. A similar explosion in the mud pit / mud pump room blew the mud pumps overboard. Another in the mud sack storage room, sited most unfortunately right next to the living quarters, took out all the interior walls where everyone was hanging out having - I am not making this up - a party to celebrate 7 years of accident free work on this rig. 7 BP bigwigs were there visiting from town.
In this sense they were lucky that the only ones lost were the 9 rig crew on the rig floor and 2 mud engineers down on the pits. The furniture and walls trapped some and broke some bones but they all managed to get in the lifeboats with assistance from the others.
The safety shut ins on the BOP were tripped but it is not clear why they did not work. This system has 4 way redundancy; 2 separate hydraulic systems and 2 separate electric systems should be able to operate any of the functions on the stack. They are tested every 14 days, all of them. (there is also a stab on the stack so that an ROV can plug in and operate it, but now it is too late because things are damaged).
The well is flowing through the BOP stack, probably around the outside of the 7" casing. As reported elsewhere, none of the "rams", those being the valves that are suppose to close around the drill pipe and / or shear it right in two and seal on the open hole, are sealing. Up the riser and out some holes in it where it is kinked. A little is coming out of the drill pipe too which is sticking out of the top of the riser and laid out on the ocean floor. The volumes as reported by the media are not correct but who knows exactly how much is coming?
2 relief wells will be drilled but it will take at least 60 days to kill it that way. There is a "deep sea intervention vessel" on the way, I don't know if that means a submarine or not, one would think this is too deep for subs, and it will have special cutting tools to try to cut off the very bottom of the riser on top of the BOP. The area is remarkably free from debris. The rig "Enterprise" is standing by with another BOP stack and a special connector to set down on top of the original one and then close. One unknown is if they get a new stack on it and close it, will the pregnant dog broach around the outside of all the casing??
In order for a disaster of this magnitude to happen, more than one thing has to go wrong, or fail. First, a BallS**tty cement job. The wellhead packoff / seal assembly, while designed to hold the pressure, is just a backup. And finally, the ability to close the well in with the BOP somehow went away."
Might as well put it here, too, and see what you guys think.
"The following has just been passed to me which may explain some things (especially whether a liner or full string was run):
This well had been giving some problems all the way down and was a big discovery. Big pressure, 16ppg+ mud weight. They ran a long string of 7" production casing - not a liner, the confusion arising from the fact that all casing strings on a floating rig are run on drill pipe and hung off on the wellhead on the sea floor, like a "liner". They cemented this casing with lightweight cement containing nitrogen because they were having lost circulation in between the well kicking all the way down.
The calculations and the execution of this kind of a cement job are complex, in order that you neither let the well flow from too little hydrostatic pressure nor break it down and lose the fluid and cement from too much hydrostatic. But you gotta believe BP had 8 or 10 of their best double and triple checking everything.
On the outside of the top joint of casing is a seal assembly - "packoff" - that sets inside the subsea wellhead and seals. This was set and tested to 10,000 psi, OK.
This was the end of the well until testing was to begin at a later time, so a temporary "bridge plug" was run in on drill pipe to set somewhere near the top of the well below 5,000 ft. This is the second barrier, you always have to have 2, and the casing was the first one. It is not know if this was actually set or not. At the same time they took the 16+ ppg mud out of the riser and replaced it with sea water so that they could pull the riser, lay it down, and move off.
When they did this, they of course took away ...... hydrostatic on the well. But this was OK, normal, since the well was plugged both on the inside with the casing and on the outside with the tested packoff. But something turned loose all of a sudden, and the conventional wisdom would be the packoff on the outside of the casing.
Gas and oil rushed up the riser; there was little wind, and a gas cloud got all over the rig. When the main inductions of the engines got a whiff, they ran away and exploded. Blew them right off the rig. This set everything on fire. A similar explosion in the mud pit / mud pump room blew the mud pumps overboard. Another in the mud sack storage room, sited most unfortunately right next to the living quarters, took out all the interior walls where everyone was hanging out having - I am not making this up - a party to celebrate 7 years of accident free work on this rig. 7 BP bigwigs were there visiting from town.
In this sense they were lucky that the only ones lost were the 9 rig crew on the rig floor and 2 mud engineers down on the pits. The furniture and walls trapped some and broke some bones but they all managed to get in the lifeboats with assistance from the others.
The safety shut ins on the BOP were tripped but it is not clear why they did not work. This system has 4 way redundancy; 2 separate hydraulic systems and 2 separate electric systems should be able to operate any of the functions on the stack. They are tested every 14 days, all of them. (there is also a stab on the stack so that an ROV can plug in and operate it, but now it is too late because things are damaged).
The well is flowing through the BOP stack, probably around the outside of the 7" casing. As reported elsewhere, none of the "rams", those being the valves that are suppose to close around the drill pipe and / or shear it right in two and seal on the open hole, are sealing. Up the riser and out some holes in it where it is kinked. A little is coming out of the drill pipe too which is sticking out of the top of the riser and laid out on the ocean floor. The volumes as reported by the media are not correct but who knows exactly how much is coming?
2 relief wells will be drilled but it will take at least 60 days to kill it that way. There is a "deep sea intervention vessel" on the way, I don't know if that means a submarine or not, one would think this is too deep for subs, and it will have special cutting tools to try to cut off the very bottom of the riser on top of the BOP. The area is remarkably free from debris. The rig "Enterprise" is standing by with another BOP stack and a special connector to set down on top of the original one and then close. One unknown is if they get a new stack on it and close it, will the pregnant dog broach around the outside of all the casing??
In order for a disaster of this magnitude to happen, more than one thing has to go wrong, or fail. First, a BallS**tty cement job. The wellhead packoff / seal assembly, while designed to hold the pressure, is just a backup. And finally, the ability to close the well in with the BOP somehow went away."
Posted on 5/4/10 at 10:30 am to gliterein
I dont see any reason to think this is fabricated. Makes sense based on everything we have heard and corroborates what others have said.
Posted on 5/4/10 at 10:44 am to lsugradman
Sounds like the cement job was unsufficent to hold the formation back due to them not wanting to damage the reservoir. May have caused a serious downhole kick where the formation came in on them and this may have been bad enough to erode the rubbers on the BOP making them unable to seal off the well.
Posted on 5/4/10 at 11:08 am to Champagne
quote:
Sounds like the cement job was unsufficent to hold the formation back due to them not wanting to damage the reservoir. May have caused a serious downhole kick where the formation came in on them and this may have been bad enough to erode the rubbers on the BOP making them unable to seal off the well.
Definitely cement job has come into play but the kick is what baffles me.....A kick that large just all of a sudden?
Posted on 5/4/10 at 11:12 am to L S Usetheforce
quote:
Definitely cement job has come into play but the kick is what baffles me.....A kick that large just all of a sudden?
This is a horrible tragedy and it depresses me, but, along with my grief and worry, I find myself fascinated by the extensive technology of the rigs AND the very unique geological forces and structures involved in harvesting oil and natural gas.
Posted on 5/4/10 at 11:14 am to Champagne
quote:
I find myself fascinated by the extensive technology of the rigs AND the very unique geological forces and structures involved in harvesting oil and natural gas.
The stories I've heard from my father and Godfather blow my mind.......5000ft of pipe producing oil with currents and pressure.......its crazy.
Posted on 5/4/10 at 11:19 am to L S Usetheforce
quote:
Definitely cement job has come into play but the kick is what baffles me.....A kick that large just all of a sudden?
Yeah i hear ya. I'm not an engineer so Im just gonna speculate here. Maybe the plugs that they set were unsufficient to isolate the downhole interval (reservoir) from the uphole interval. And when they displaced with sea water that may have reduced the hydraulic head on the lower part of the wellbore which could create a serious disequilbrium at the reservoir level. This would cause a big influx of hydrocarbons into the well..ie a kick of epic proportions.
This post was edited on 5/4/10 at 11:20 am
Posted on 5/4/10 at 11:22 am to lsugradman
quote:
Maybe the plugs that they set were unsufficient to isolate the downhole interval (reservoir) from the uphole interval
From the sound of "James" in his interview this seems too sloppy for this group of guys.......
This post was edited on 5/4/10 at 11:25 am
Posted on 5/4/10 at 12:58 pm to L S Usetheforce
This is almost exactly the story I was told by someone who should know exactly what happened.
Posted on 5/4/10 at 1:05 pm to gliterein
I understood about 14 words of that.
Posted on 5/4/10 at 1:07 pm to Alatgr
quote:
I understood about 14 words of that.
quote:
This has been posted on a couple of other boards out there.
Might as
Posted on 5/5/10 at 12:19 am to gliterein
could they have cemented into the BOP preventing it from working properly
Posted on 5/5/10 at 4:30 am to jthib07
quote:
could they have cemented into the BOP preventing it from working properly
I have heard this (overheard, actually) from 2 different industry individuals in the last 48 hours. One gentleman told me (paraphrasing) "It's not like normal cement the way it forms... basically it's like quick-forming kevlar... It cannot be sheared... It got into the BOP and part of it solidified and prevented it from closing."
I'll pick one of the guys' brain when I work again Thursday.
Posted on 5/5/10 at 7:04 am to gliterein
I think it is an absolute miracle that we only lost 11 guys.
Posted on 5/5/10 at 7:29 am to gliterein
quote:
A possible explanation of what happened on the Deepwater Horizon
This has been posted on a couple of other boards out there.
Might as well put it here, too, and see what you guys think.
"The following has just been passed to me which may explain some things (especially whether a liner or full string was run):
This well had been giving some problems all the way down and was a big discovery. Big pressure, 16ppg+ mud weight. They ran a long string of 7" production casing - not a liner, the confusion arising from the fact that all casing strings on a floating rig are run on drill pipe and hung off on the wellhead on the sea floor, like a "liner". They cemented this casing with lightweight cement containing nitrogen because they were having lost circulation in between the well kicking all the way down.
The calculations and the execution of this kind of a cement job are complex, in order that you neither let the well flow from too little hydrostatic pressure nor break it down and lose the fluid and cement from too much hydrostatic. But you gotta believe BP had 8 or 10 of their best double and triple checking everything.
On the outside of the top joint of casing is a seal assembly - "packoff" - that sets inside the subsea wellhead and seals. This was set and tested to 10,000 psi, OK.
This was the end of the well until testing was to begin at a later time, so a temporary "bridge plug" was run in on drill pipe to set somewhere near the top of the well below 5,000 ft. This is the second barrier, you always have to have 2, and the casing was the first one. It is not know if this was actually set or not. At the same time they took the 16+ ppg mud out of the riser and replaced it with sea water so that they could pull the riser, lay it down, and move off.
When they did this, they of course took away ...... hydrostatic on the well. But this was OK, normal, since the well was plugged both on the inside with the casing and on the outside with the tested packoff. But something turned loose all of a sudden, and the conventional wisdom would be the packoff on the outside of the casing.
Gas and oil rushed up the riser; there was little wind, and a gas cloud got all over the rig. When the main inductions of the engines got a whiff, they ran away and exploded. Blew them right off the rig. This set everything on fire. A similar explosion in the mud pit / mud pump room blew the mud pumps overboard. Another in the mud sack storage room, sited most unfortunately right next to the living quarters, took out all the interior walls where everyone was hanging out having - I am not making this up - a party to celebrate 7 years of accident free work on this rig. 7 BP bigwigs were there visiting from town.
In this sense they were lucky that the only ones lost were the 9 rig crew on the rig floor and 2 mud engineers down on the pits. The furniture and walls trapped some and broke some bones but they all managed to get in the lifeboats with assistance from the others.
The safety shut ins on the BOP were tripped but it is not clear why they did not work. This system has 4 way redundancy; 2 separate hydraulic systems and 2 separate electric systems should be able to operate any of the functions on the stack. They are tested every 14 days, all of them. (there is also a stab on the stack so that an ROV can plug in and operate it, but now it is too late because things are damaged).
The well is flowing through the BOP stack, probably around the outside of the 7" casing. As reported elsewhere, none of the "rams", those being the valves that are suppose to close around the drill pipe and / or shear it right in two and seal on the open hole, are sealing. Up the riser and out some holes in it where it is kinked. A little is coming out of the drill pipe too which is sticking out of the top of the riser and laid out on the ocean floor. The volumes as reported by the media are not correct but who knows exactly how much is coming?
2 relief wells will be drilled but it will take at least 60 days to kill it that way. There is a "deep sea intervention vessel" on the way, I don't know if that means a submarine or not, one would think this is too deep for subs, and it will have special cutting tools to try to cut off the very bottom of the riser on top of the BOP. The area is remarkably free from debris. The rig "Enterprise" is standing by with another BOP stack and a special connector to set down on top of the original one and then close. One unknown is if they get a new stack on it and close it, will the pregnant dog broach around the outside of all the casing??
In order for a disaster of this magnitude to happen, more than one thing has to go wrong, or fail. First, a BallS**tty cement job. The wellhead packoff / seal assembly, while designed to hold the pressure, is just a backup. And finally, the ability to close the well in with the BOP somehow went away."
DUDE! Could you put this in laymans terms.
Posted on 5/5/10 at 8:05 am to munchman
quote:
DUDE! Could you put this in laymans terms.
There was a frickload of oil and a frickload of pressure. They ran a frickload of production casing which is a fricking sight different than fricking liner. They cemented the frick out of the casing because the well was kicking like a frick all the way fricking down. You've gotta be fricking careful with a cement job like this or you'll royally frick it. They fricked up and royally fricked it. They were getting ready to move the frick out and that's when the fricking shite hit the fan. Some really fricking explosive shite travelled all the way up the fricking casing and a big fricking cloud of that shite sat right the frick over the rig because there was no fricking wind or any shite like that. The fricking engines set all that fricking shite ablaze and a frickload of explosions sent motherfrickers and motherfukcing shite flying everywhere. A lot of motherfrickers were fricked up. (Get this...the frickers - including the head honcho mother frickers - were there throwing a fricking party for having a bitchin safe fricking rig).
There's supposed to be four fricking ways of making sure that shite doesn't frick up and they're tested all the fricking time, but not a one of them fricking worked. The fricking rams that are supposed to fricking shear the fricker right the frick off got fricked. It is fricking likely they got fricked by the really fricking strong cement and couldn't fricking work.
The fricking media has no fricking idea about the volume of oil that's fricking leaking. The frickheads are planning relief wells, but that's two fricking months away from making the slightests frick's worth of a difference. Some frickheads are talkling about using a fricking sub, but they're fukcing nuts...that's just too fricking deep.
This shite is fricked.
This post was edited on 5/5/10 at 8:06 am
Posted on 5/5/10 at 8:41 am to munchman
Posted on 5/5/10 at 8:47 am to Putty
quote:
Putty
Well, you've certainly shown the diversity of the word frick.
Posted on 5/5/10 at 9:01 am to Putty
quote:
There was a frickload of oil and a frickload of pressure. They ran a frickload of production casing which is a fricking sight different than fricking liner. They cemented the frick out of the casing because the well was kicking like a frick all the way fricking down. You've gotta be fricking careful with a cement job like this or you'll royally frick it. They fricked up and royally fricked it. They were getting ready to move the frick out and that's when the fricking shite hit the fan. Some really fricking explosive shite travelled all the way up the fricking casing and a big fricking cloud of that shite sat right the frick over the rig because there was no fricking wind or any shite like that. The fricking engines set all that fricking shite ablaze and a frickload of explosions sent motherfrickers and motherfukcing shite flying everywhere. A lot of motherfrickers were fricked up. (Get this...the frickers - including the head honcho mother frickers - were there throwing a fricking party for having a bitchin safe fricking rig).
There's supposed to be four fricking ways of making sure that shite doesn't frick up and they're tested all the fricking time, but not a one of them fricking worked. The fricking rams that are supposed to fricking shear the fricker right the frick off got fricked. It is fricking likely they got fricked by the really fricking strong cement and couldn't fricking work.
The fricking media has no fricking idea about the volume of oil that's fricking leaking. The frickheads are planning relief wells, but that's two fricking months away from making the slightests frick's worth of a difference. Some frickheads are talkling about using a fricking sub, but they're fukcing nuts...that's just too fricking deep.
This shite is fricked.
Post of the Year nominee.
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