RELEASE THE KRACKEN (Part one of a multi-part story)
If I were a novel writer I would describe it as literally a demon from below looking to escape the confines of centuries of imprisonment. In 2010 the Clash of the Titans (2010 film), a remake of the 1981 film of the tales of Perseus has a scene where this terrifying monster from the deep emerges to try save the day for the bad guys. It escaped with a fury unheard of and sought revenge. But this is not a novel, a TV series, nor a good movie, it is a sad, very sad true story that shares many of it's core elements with the other problems we have today in this country.
This is my insight into the Deepwater Horizon disaster. After the immediate needs of those involved, after the reports are compiled, the villains sought, the fingers pointed eventually the truth will come out.
It will be a collection of mistakes, misuse and several familiar terms, keywords and phrases like "To big to fail", "Big Business", "Deregulation", "Greed", "Oversight Failures" and "Technology Obsolescence".
It will lead eventually to more hearings and the hearings may lead to criminal charges. At least on the TV and in the papers. BP had a battle plan going in hours of the disaster. In fact their disaster plan was 55% of the entire disaster manual. The section that covered media and legal protection.
There will be many lawsuits on many levels and sources told me in the initial realization of what happened, BP had enlisted the aid of over 100 lawyers to prepare for the lawsuits forthcoming which in a sense of spastic humor reminded me of the old joke."What do you have when 100 lawyers drown on a sinking ferry boat". Ans. Water Pollution. How ironic that joke is not funny anymore.
Already the ads are portraying those involved in the solution, BP's hired hands, looking like the good guys. Like the second joke of the day. "I'm from the government and I'm here to help". The government has a serious PR problem simply because no one usually believes what they have to say especially after eight years of lies. That and partisan politics will raise it's ugly head. Already the blame game is doing well and the pointed fingers are out. Some well aimed and some should be broken off and stuffed into the mouths of those who would deceive us.
And as they have proven in the past, it will be a charade. I hope they are not that hollow this time. The truth is most of the Politicos and the Judges all made tons of money with oil stocks and futures and who is going to prosecute their benefactor. It stinks and it hasn't even stated yet.
THE INNOCENTS
The results are horrendous - May they rest in peace - the senseless deaths of 11 men working the BP rig. Nothing can mend that. Even with heroic efforts of their co-workers and rescue personnel. The next phase is the resultant impact on our environment.
Under stated, as all the damage will take decades to surface and correct
if it does, this disaster is the worst in our nation’s history. Sure BP will lend financial aid to those affected this year but what happens when the fisheries, marshes and breeding grounds, oyster and clam beds, rookeries and the beaches and beach life don't fully return to normal for many years and years after that will the way of life return?
I have friends who tell me, and they live there, New Orleans never went back to normal. It's not even 70% of what it was and yes you can kill a lifestyle just like you can kill the environment.
WHAT HAPPENED
They were dealing in a newer deeper unknown environment with thirty-year-old technology. The drilling was at extreme depths of seawater over a mile deep and then going into the ocean floor deeper and deeper. The pressures must be beyond
comprehension. But the technology though it had worked before, was not up to par, it was drilling as
usual and the cards started to add up. First, claims of sub par or bad parts and reports of safety violations.
The supervisors were ignoring recommendations of experts and pressing forth for economic reasons...profit, cut costs. Total it up, bad processes, bad safeguards, bad inspections, bad onsite management added up to a house made from a deck of cards. And one day the deck of cards collapsed.
LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION.
After all the US is the worlds largest gas consumer. After all it’s about feeding the gas needs of a
nation. What hypocrisy. While we are looking for alternate fuel sources for our cars, like hybrids, fuel cells, electrical and natural gas, the Detroit idiots go in another direction. Cadillac announces a new 556HP turbocharged V-8 engine for it’s “CVT- V" that can do 0-60 in 3.9 seconds.
I know what BP was thinking, their profits last year were $16 billion dollars and the Deep Water Horizon well could easily add a lot more. April 20th, 2010, at 10:00 PM tragedy took place fifty miles off shore and five thousand feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico just off the continental shelf.
BP and the others are bottom line money mentality
companies. Their execs are good at making profit, providing jobs, huge
dividends for their shareholders and covering their posteriors. As with any
corporation, and the main purpose of the corporation is protection. That’s why
you form a corporation, protection.
APRIL 20, 2010
The rig, the DEEPWATER HORIZON, unexpectedly began to shake and a loud bubbling
noise was accompanied by natural gas, methane, drilling mud and seawater shot
high above the lower levels of the drill ship. The gas exploded and the rig was
engulfed in flames. A second explosion followed and the electricity went out.
Eleven men died instantly and 115 others rushed to the lifeboats or jumped into the Gulf of Mexico. The men who died probably had no time, and never knew what hit them. Two days later, the Deepwater Horizon sank to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, and oil has been spilling into the Gulf of Mexico at immeasurable rates.
Estimates vary based on who you ask of from BP’s original low-ball of 1000 barrels which escalated to 5,000 to at least 10,000 barrels per day since then. There are 42.5 gallons in a barrel. The MC 252 wellhead is located in 5,067 ft of water and is located about 50 miles offshore from the coast of Louisiana. The total depth of the well was 18,360 ft below sea level. (13,293 ft below the sea floor).
Yesterday the word "millions" was used to express the volume of gallons of black death as the estimates for the leak becomes more logically evaluated. There is so much leaking the scientists, the best brains in the country can't come with an exact number.
SPECIFICS, STATS, CHRONOLOGICAL DISASTER:
(Abbreviated)
The Deepwater Horizon was a floating oil drilling platform. It was the fifth generation version with ultra-deepwater capacity and dynamic positioning. It's column-stabilized. Thus rig stays in position and the drill head remains stable. It's called a "semi-submersible Mobile Offshore Drilling Unit (MODU)".
The unit as seen from above basically measures 400 x 250 feet. In can operate in 8,000 foot waters and drill to 30,000 feet and has done so before. Owners, Transocean claim the deepest well. Cost was $560 million for the platform and was built by Hyundai Heavy Industries in South Korea in 2001.It operates under the Marshalese flag. Leased to BP until September 2013.
From Wiki: Offshore drilling rigs are large, complex, mechanical operations that operate in conditions subject to both human error and adverse natural conditions. Minerals Management Service records show that since 2001, there have been 69 offshore deaths, 1,349 injuries and 858 fires and explosions in the Gulf of Mexico. There were 39 fires or explosions on offshore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico in the first five months of 2009, the last period with statistics available.
There had been numerous previous spills and fires on the Deepwater Horizon; the Coast Guard had issued pollution citations 18 times between 2000 and 2010, and had investigated 16 fires and other incidents. The previous fires, spills, and incidents were not considered unusual for a Gulf platform and have not been connected to the April, 2010 explosion and spill.
The Deepwater Horizon did, however, have other serious incidents, including one in 2008 in which 77 people were evacuated from the platform when it listed and began to sink after a section of pipe was accidentally removed from the platform's ballast system.
By April 20, the Deepwater Horizon well operation was already running five weeks late. Internal BP documents show that BP engineers had concerns as early as 2009 that the metal casing BP wanted to use might collapse under high pressure.
In March 2010, the rig experienced problems that included drilling mud falling into the undersea oil formation, sudden gas releases, a pipe falling into the well, and at least three occasions of the blowout preventer leaking fluid. The rig's mechanic has stated that the well had problems for months and that the drill repeatedly kicked due to high gas pressure providing resistance. The levels of gas coming up from the well were twice as high as he'd ever seen in his career
SOMETHING IS WRONG:
April 19
th, 2010 - The final string of production casing
from the wellhead at the sea floor to total depth had been put in the hole. Only
51 barrels of cement were used according to the well plan.
This was not sufficient to ensure a seal between the 7-inch production casing
and the previously cemented 9 7/8-inch protection casing. Reportedly, engineers felt 105 barrels should of been used.
Mud had been lost to the reservoir this is called “lost circulation”. It usually indicates good reservoir quality, an interval of lower pressure or both, and can result in an enlarged wellbore or “washout”. The significance of this is that it might have been difficult to create a good cement seal between the casing and the formation. It also would have been impossible to ensure the effectiveness of the cement seal without running a cement-bond log, and this was not done.
The cement contained a nitrogen additive to make it lighter so that it would flow more easily and better fill the area between the casing and the lost circulation-washout zone. This also may have decreased its sealing effectiveness. Gas from the reservoir may have further diluted the viscosity of the cement.
While waiting approximately 20 hours for
the cement to dry on April 20, the crew began displacing the drilling fluid
(“mud”) in the wellbore and riser with seawater before setting a cement plug
and moving off location. This mud was pumped into tanks at the surface, and
then onto a platform supply vessel alongside the rig (whose captain gave testimony before an MMS hearing last week).
Seawater is much lighter than drilling mud so there was less downward force
in the wellbore to balance the flow of gas from the reservoir. The drilling
supervisors knew that there was gas in the drilling fluid because a gas flare
can be seen in photos probably coming from a diverter line in the riser.
The chart of drilling parameters for the last two hours before the blowout suggests that the riser and upper 3,000 ft of the wellbore were fully displaced with seawater by 20:00 on April 20, and the crew was circulating the drilling fluid
10 minutes later, at 20:10, the mud pit
volume began to increase probably because of gas influx.
The volume increased so much, that the recorder re-zeroed four times to-recheck.
When the crew stopped pumping at 21:08, the mud pit volume decreased and this
may have alleviated some concern about gas influx.
At 21:30, they stopped pumping again and circulated, but the pit volume
continued to increase. Standpipe pressure increased and decreased twice between
21:30 and 21:42
This, along with a steady increase in mud pit volume, suggests that surges of gas were entering the drilling fluid from a gas column below the wellhead, and outside of the 7-inch production casing. Gas had probably channeled past the inadequate cement job near the bottom of the well and, by now, had reached the seals and pack-offs separating it from the riser at the sea floor.
At 21:47, the rate of standpipe pressure and mud pit volume went off scale, and water flow was measured at the surface. The blowout had begun. Between 21:47 and 21:49 the gas behind the 7-inch production casing apparently overcame the wellhead seals and pack-offs that separated the wellbore from the riser.
Almost instantaneously, the gas shot the water out of the riser and above the crown of the derrick. Then, it was all over.
INFO FROM THE OILDRUM.COM,
SIXTY MINUTES, WIKIPEDIA, .GOV RECORDS, AND OTHER VALUBLE SOURCES ON THE WEB and TV. PROVIDED BY THOSE WHO BELIEVE THE PUBLIC HAS THE RIGHT TO THE TRUTH.