Is the Integrity of the Well Failing?

Mathew Simmons agrees

I have seen them following hoses that are laid out on the gulf floor that are covered with dust. The hoses are used to carry the dispersants. Until the get to the skid you can't really tell if it is a hose or a long crack. ????

I do see Viking Poseidon – ROV 2 near the floor of the gulf and there is a constant flow of either sediment or oil billowing around. The ROV followed a rope and then the rope went over some sort of hose. ROV Hose??? The hose went to something well off the gulf floor and it was holding the rope off the bottom where they intersected.

No idea what this means. Don't know if the ROV is the one stirring up the bottom. It is just staying there among all the "smoke"!

i think they say the bigger problem is the casing is blown out of the hole. there is no way to plug it, even the relief wells will not work. there is no way to seal the hole without the casing.

people are saying you have to nuke it. melt the rock and it turns to glass, sealing the hole. russians did it 4 times in 70s to contain submerged wells.

Not a pro here by any means, but why wouldn't they be able to seal it even if the casing is blown out, as long as there's not something the other side of cataclysmic damage way down there. I'm not buying there being that much damage for an entire 2 miles worth of pipe, and barring a Grand Canyon sized crater, it seems like pumping a shite load of mud from the bottom into the hole would work anyway. Stop the flow at the bottom, and then fill from the top with the Great Wall of China.

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it will continue to flow through the other fractures in the casing

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why wouldn't the mud/cement fill the casing? Sorry I think this is a y2k scenario. Not buying it.

I an not the know it all end all of this by a long shot, but here is my uneducated in these matters take on the situation.

Bottom kill will work either way. The well pipe is small. The velocity through the pipe is greater than the flow through pipe and around or through the casing given the same barrels per day. Just like if you have 1k barrels a day through a 1 inch pipe the velocity is higher than the same barrels per day through a 21 inch pipe.

When they pump mud and or concrete the larger route doesn't seem to be a problem to me. The mud/cement should be able to flow just as easily through both routes right?

Right now the flow into the earth is limited. So putting cement into the well at the bottom should be able to cement in the rupture and the surrounding ground while the well itself keeps blowing. So I don't see how quickset concrete wouldn't be able to plug the routes outside of the rupture. It won't seal it completely as the pressure of the oil will work its way around the cement. But you don't need to seal it complete right anyway.

Now even before the flow through the rupture is slowed I doubt that is even a needed step. The You have two miles of channel and or pipe through the earth from the reservoir to the gulf floor. All you have to do is fill it up with mud. You don't even need to overcome the flow of oil like you do with the top kill. All you have to do is replace it with mud.

Think about it. If the mud fills up the well that is exactly what we had pre drilling operations. The oil is contained by the earth above it. Fill it up with mud and the weight simply keeps it in just like it did before the well was ever drilled.

If you think I am missing some aspect of this let me know. The only flaw I could imagine is if the flow of mud can't be put in both the well and any channels the might be outside the drill pipe were the drill mets the current well. Why would this be the case???

And even if it was why couldn't they simply drill into the reservoir and near the end of the well and as you move away from the suction point of the well the flow gets slower just like the further you get from the water going down your tub is slower away from the drain. Pump the cement there maybe in multiple places which they have the capability to do from a single drill rig and then the cement can solidify and plug the well outside the actual well hole itself.

Wells usually plug up on their own and it takes work for the oil companies to keep them going. It is yet another stroke of bad luck for us that this hasn't happened to this well already.

The first well to ever be dug in Louisiana plugged up almost immediately and had to be abandoned.

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why wouldn't the mud/cement fill the casing? Sorry I think this is a y2k scenario. Not buying it.

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there isnt one bottom hole to fill, the formation is flowing up the casing through more than one hole

pumping the mud into the compromised well bore means the mud never got to the bottom hole, it just flowed into the formation through the compromised casing

then flowed right back out

the entire premise of the top kill was to smother the bottom hole with mud weight. under his scenario and analysis the mud never got to the bottom hole and pushing harder with the mud pumps could have made the hole in the compromised casing even larger and caused the entire well bore to collapse opening up a gushing wound

this isnt a y2k scenario, if he right this is a worst case scenario

and all the stuff he says about erosion of the well bore eventaully causing the well structure to collapse is dead on

So is he saying Oil is leaking into the seabed around the well?

I didn't read the article but you really think the well could naturally fracture 13,000 feet of sediment? If the well had that much pressure oil would be shooting out of the water like a geyser. It would without a doubt be the highest pressure well in the entire world!