Gulf Oil Leak Plugged?

RobHart writes "The LA Times is reporting that the Gulf oil leak appears to have been plugged by the 'top kill.' 'Thad Allen, who is coordinating the government response, says the well still has low pressure, but cement will be used to cap the well permanently as soon as the pressure hits zero.'"

Comments

Too early

[Hatta]

This is just step one of the top kill. It's just plugged with mud, which is still streaming out of the hole. Don't start celebrating until they actually top it with concrete.

I've got to wonder, if this does work is BP going to go ahead with their "relief well".

Re:Too early

[Dishevel]

Because there was a chance that it could make the situation worse. They were trying things first that if they went wrong would not make the problem worse.

Re:Too early

[bratloaf]

They were working on this from the start, as well as the "top hat" that will probably not be needed now. They had at least 3 different methods working in parallel. This one took this long because it was unbelievably complicated and had never been tried at anything even close to this depth. This (the actual stoppage) is an amazing success for the many 100's of skilled engineers that have been working around the clock on it for weeks. (Mostly not BP people BTW)

Re:Too early

[Andy Dodd]

"They had immediately started construction of a second well to collect oil from the same reserve."

Um, I have not seen any evidence of this. Do you mean the relief wells? Those are a bit of a misnomer - the name implies that it relieves the pressure forcing the leak by sucking out oil, but apparently a "relief well" is actually the standard way of injecting kill mud deep into a well (as opposed to a "top kill" which is apparently less likely to work.).

Not sure if they'll continue the relief well to ensure that the current well is 100% dead by getting kill mud deeper down into the well.

Re:Too early

[maxume]

Speculation:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-l-cavnar/bp-top-kill-today-finally_b_590178.html

In short, the guy thinks that maybe they waited because they didn't think it would work until the pressure in the well had reduced some.

Re:Too early

[Mindcontrolled]

For a full plug & abandon procedure, they'd not only have to pour some cement, but actually go down the bore again, pull the string, place multiple seals and cement those, so as to protect from further blowouts. That might not be possible at all here, so some basic cementing might have to suffice until the relief well is done. While this is looking good at the moment, we have just reached a temporary solution, at the time being just a temporary seal with the mud pumps holding against the reservoir pressure. We have to hope that the engineers manage to transform that into a static solution. I am pretty sure that the relief wells have to be completed - I don't see how a long term solution could be achieved without getting down to the bottom of the well otherwise. All this hugely depends on the condition of the bore - is the casing intact? Obstructions? Partial collapse?

Re:Too early

[rhsanborn]

From radio reports, it sounded like this mud method had risk in that it could damage the blowout preventor causing a worse leak. The other methods were an attempt to avoid breaking the blowout preventer further and causing the hole to become unrestricted and allow for an even greater flow.

Re:about time

[bratloaf]

They had to fabricate all kinds of gear that had never been made before. This was a herculean effort by 100's of the most skilled deepwater engineers in the world, and they actually did it in record time. This was not a small task, it would normally take months to pull something like this off.

Re:glad to see this

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm looking forward to seeing BP get raked over the coals. Bastards. The way they attempted to cover up how bad the spill is is really disgusting. See http://www.newsweek.com/2010/05/26/the-missing-oil-spill-photos.html

Engineers/Geologists on the Status of Top Kill

[Gooseygoose]

Pretty good stuff over at The Oil Drum on this...they just said they have two unconfirmed reports that cementing will start within hours on their twitter feed- http://twitter.com/theoildrum

latest "live" thread with great insights in the comments: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6515

Relevant links to top kill procedure (scroll to comments in each, they're very good.)

Deepwater Oil Spill - Permissions and Concerns about Top Kill http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6513

Deep Water Spill - Waiting for Top Kill (more updated tech) http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6509

The Gulf Deepwater Oil Spill - the Top Kill Attempt (the technical aspect of what just happened) http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6505

The Gulf Deepwater Oil Spill, barriers, flow rates, and top kill http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6501

Hope you find this informative...

Re:relief well ... bet on it

[Trepidity]

Though the name's confusing, a "relief well" isn't a separate well into the original reservoir that can be put into production. It's a well that's drilled at at an angle, calculated to intercept the bore of the original well somewhere in the rock above the reservoir. If it intercepts it, pressure gets diverted up through the new well, which is presumably under control, and then a bunch of heavy mud is pumped in to plug it up.

Not so fast there...

[TrisexualPuppy]

I was told by one of my old girlfriends who works for Schlumberger (she has her own sources) that this isn't a permanent fix. They are doing a top fill because it is faster than waiting for the relief well to do a bottom fill. This top fill is likely a temporary measure, and they are still going to have to drill a relief well to intercept the main well which is going to take time.

We can only pray that once they cap this, it sticks till they can get the relief well fully drilled.

Re:Not so bad

[JoshuaZ]

Before you accuse other people of ignorance it might help to do a little research. By many estimates this spill is much larger than the Exxon Valdez spill. See for example http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100527/us_nm/us_oil_rig_flowrate.

Re:relief well ... bet on it

[maxume]

The relief well does not divert the pressure. They can use it to inject mud (which has a density much higher than oil or seawater) into the original bore. As the mud fills the well, the higher density will increase the pressure until it matches the outward pressure of the reservoir.

So 8,000 vertical feet of seawater/oil is not enough to stop the leak, but 8,000 vertical feet of drilling mud that has a much higher density can do the job.

Re:Hmm...

[jeff4747]

You are describing the containment dome, which was tried and failed.

It failed because of the high pressure and low temperature. Methane from the well was forming Methane Clathrates, which would plug up the hole.

The "Top hat" fix was going to use a dome into which they pumped hot methanol to keep the pipe clear, but it seemed less likely to work than the current approach.