BP's Final "Top Kill" Procedure For Gulf Oil Spill

eldavojohn writes "So far every attempted fix has resulted in failure to contain the Gulf of Mexico oil spill with the exception of the riser insertion method that appears to be little more than a mile-long tube sucking up oil. After attempting many options to allow the continued collection of crude oil, BP is finally considering a 'top kill' option that will kill the well. A vessel at the surface will use 30,000 horsepower pumps to slam kill mud and clay into the well's bent riser, allowing them to cap the well off with two relief wells (which won't be ready for several months). If that fails, the vessel will move on to a 'junk shot' that involves spewing larger debris like shredded rubber and golf balls into the lines to gum up the flow and stop it. Government officials acknowledge that while this may provide a solution, it may also worsen the situation if the resulting pressure causes the lines to blow or fail at other points. While this is likely one of the worst environmental disasters to hit the gulf, BP's debacle has caused Shell to pre-build cofferdams into seven wells that it is currently drilling in the gulf. These would drop into place in the event of such a catastrophic failure of a riser under the well."

Comments

Wrong summary

[MouseR]

The mud or junk will not be inserted through the riser pipe.

There are access pipes on the BOP itself for this kind of stuff.

The mud or junk will therefore be inserted BEFORE the riser pipe.

Blocking the riser would be useless given it's bent, cracked at the BOP and could potentially rip off due to the blockage.

Re:Environmentalism

[Pojut]

if we get into a car accident, we're quick to shrug it off as just that: an accident. Nobody's fault. We pick up the pieces and move on.

I would just like to say that, as a former mechanic, I've been blamed for accidents caused by a completely unrelated item I worked on.

"You worked on my car, and I got in an accident three days later! It's your fault!"
"Sir, I replaced your air filter and both O2 sensors."
"And now my car didn't stop in time!"
"Sir, what happend exactly"
"I was texting my wife, and next thing I knew I had run into someone! I tried to stop but I couldn't!"
(What I wanted to say): "Sir, life isn't like Mechwarrior, you can't stop instantly."
(What I actually said): "Sir, why were you texting and driving?"

I think a lot of people forget this

[Sycraft-fu]

While you can come up with all kinds of theoretical methods for dealing with something like this, it isn't the sort of thing you can test. I mean it is unfeasible (not to mention irresponsible) to build an oil rig and then break it just to test and see how fixes might work. So pretty much everything is unproven, untested and you just have to try shit and see what works.

Now this isn't to say BP is blameless here, there are remediation measures they should have taken, but didn't. The biggest would be having enough booms ready to contain a well disaster (it would take a lot, but really not cost all that much) and training their people in proper booming. That is a proven method for reducing the spread.

However it is just to help deal with the spread, it doesn't actually fix the problem. The problem fixes, well you just don't know since it cannot be tested until an actual disaster happens.

Re:How many blunders will the American gov't allow

[Red Flayer]

given that it was designed and certified to protect against this very sort of disaster.

Designed? Possibly. Certain safety standards that are mandatory for offshore drilling near other countries were not used on this rig. Certified? Not really. If someone did certify the safety precautions, they should lose whatever authority they have to certify anything. How many reports of safety precautions and features being overlooked, ignored, or just plain not done properly do we need before we can consider that this well was not being built with adequate safety precautions?

given that it's entirely possible that BP, Transocean, SLB, and Halliburton were all following the established safety protocols in conformance with past experience.

Yeah... you might want to read up on that some... it is quite clear to anyone who has read any of the reports out there that safety protocols and industry best practices were not followed.

BP makes 93 mil a day

[jDeepbeep]

Except that the government makes more off taxes on oil and it's downstream products than companies like BP make in profit on oil.

I don't have the tax numbers at my fingertips, but it seems that BP posted $93,000,000 USD profits per day for the first quarter of 2010.

Accident vs. Negligence

[archer, the]

I was watching a documentary on this Sunday. They interviewed one of the rig survivors. According to the survivor, pieces of the blowout prevention device had come up the pipe weeks before. They didn't bother to fix the BOP. When one of the controllers on the BOP failed, again, weeks before the accident, they didn't bother to fix the BOP. When Transocean wanted to put 3 cement plugs in the well, sandwiching the heavy drilling fluid, the BP managers said "No, use 2 plugs," so that it would take BP less time to unseal the well when they hooked up the pumping rig. According to the survivor, it was when they took the pressure off the well, with only two plugs, that the plugs failed.

This is people putting money before safety. This isn't an "accident". I would consider an earthquake ripping the BOP off the well an accident. I would consider a jet crashing on the rig and somehow managing to destroy the BOP an accident. This was people cutting corners and getting caught.

(Note well: This assumes the survivor was telling the truth.)

Re:How many blunders will the American gov't allow

[Halo1]

In all fairness, we still have no idea what went wrong. I want BP to be dragged across the coals for this as much as the next guy, but the truth of the matter is that we still don't know why the BOP failed, given that it was designed and certified to protect against this very sort of disaster.

There's at least one survivor who claims that the BOP was punctured weeks before the blast, but that they were pressured in continuing operations regardless because they were running behind schedule and "time is money".

Re:How many blunders will the American gov't allow

[OnlineAlias]

Uh, yes we do. The BOP failed because the gasket that was in it sheared off and came back up the pipe. Despite this, BP executives told them to push on and not worry about it because they were already behind.

"...during a test, they closed the gasket. But while it was shut tight, a crewman on deck accidentally nudged a joystick, applying hundreds of thousands of pounds of force, and moving 15 feet of drill pipe through the closed blowout preventer. Later, a man monitoring drilling fluid rising to the top made a troubling find.

"He discovered chunks of rubber in the drilling fluid. He thought it was important enough to gather this double handful of chunks of rubber and bring them into the driller shack. I recall asking the supervisor if this was out of the ordinary. And he says, 'Oh, it's no big deal.' And I thought, 'How can it be not a big deal? There's chunks of our seal is now missing,'"

And there you have it. They were being pushed too hard, and made huge mistakes. BP needs to pay dearly for this, maybe even be put out of business completely, so that all the other companies can witness what happens to them if they do the same thing.

Let them factor that in to their actuarial tables..a big fat "closed for business" if a mistake like this takes place.

Re:How many blunders will the American gov't allow

[UnknowingFool]

According to this 60 minutes report, the BOP was possibly damaged weeks before the incident but not fixed and one of the two control modules of the BOP wasn't functioning properly but this condition was not investigated fully and corrected.

Also Transocean wanted to finish the well by inserting 3 concrete plugs with finishing mud in between them to close off the pipe. BP didn't want the mud. This would sped up the next phase of production but it removed some of the effectiveness of the plugs to seal the pipe. BP got it's way.

Re:Environmentalism

[girlintraining]

All of your links are to a single person, Mike Mason, an electrical engineer, making claims about equipment he doesn't service.

Now, where's my +5, Informative? Or will this be a -1, Troll for not immediately jumping to hysterics and saying we should burn BP to the ground as profiteering gluttons -- which is what's happened to all my other posts so far.

Re:How many blunders will the American gov't allow

[MrHanky]

Related link from Harpers.org April 2009:

On Friday, the New York Times reported that the federal Minerals Management Service (MMS) repeatedly violated environmental requirements when approving oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, ignoring and overruling scientists who noted the risk of potentially catastrophic spills. In the April 2009 issue of Harper’s Magazine, Bryant Urstadt discussed the “culture of ethical failure” at the MMS and its wasteful Royalty-in-Kind program.

It's not very long (a few pages), but a shocking read.

Summary (unsurprisingly) misstates TFA

[uncqual]

I believe the summary misstates the article (I know that's shocking).

The summary:

A vessel at the surface will use 30,000 horsepower pumps to slam kill mud and clay into the well's bent riser,

The article:

It will use the BOP's three-inch-diameter choke and kill lines, which open into the space between the well's casing and the drill pipe that runs up the riser. The lines are being cut and spliced into hoses connected to the Q4000, a vessel on the surface, whose 30,000-horsepower pumps will drive a dense mix of clay and other substances called kill mud into the lines.

The kill line is part of the BOP. Nothing is being forced back down the riser (the bent, broken, patched, leaking mile long pipe now laying on the ocean floor).

Here's nice graphic showing what they seem to be trying to do.

Re:What KILLS me is...

[coaxial]

You think Phillip Morris should be allowed to kill babies since cigarette taxes are so high?

Look, it's not like they use the whole baby during the manufacturing process.