"Drilling fluid" used to take pressure measurements might be purified water, which idiots might wave away because it costs money and they have tons of money.
Er, drilling fluid is a thixotropic fluid used to carry cuttings to the surface, lubricate, cool, support the drill string and exert a hydrostatic head. It can be water-based or oil-based (effectively an oil/water emulsion.) The list of additives is as long as your arm and designed to meet the engineering requirements at any point in the drilling phase. It'll usually be circulated out prior to abandonment or pre-production completion.
I'm no drilling expert. I read the articles (but not the whole report) and, as the submitter, I guess I failed to explain that the articles seem to imply that at some point it's okay to switch from drilling fluid to seawater when the rig is recognized as very stable
Displacing a well to seawater is not at all uncommon and is done for a variety of reasons - it's not a gamble. In this case, had the crew spotted returns from the well a little earlier, they would have controlled the kick that became a blowout.
Who would you rather have test it? Deep sea drilling is a tight-knit industry. I would be surprised if there were any independent testing labs for this technology
I'll assume you don't work in the oilfield. However, pressure control equipment is subject to a variety of tests (operational and periodic.) Generally, certification is handled by an organisation like Bureau Veritas or the American Bureau of Shipping. Deep sea drilling is no more tight-knit than any other heavy engineering industry.
possible damage to the blowout preventer during drilling (rubber fragments observed)
I'm going to assume you've never worked in the oilfield - just like/.'s other armchair drillers. Getting chunks of the Hydril at surface are not unusual. It's not actually part of the BOPs as such, but it sits above the conventional rams as an annular preventer. Tripping pipe and tools through the stack will always damage the Hydril (or bag as it's sometimes known,) and I doubt very much that a few missing chunks from the Hydril's fingers would have prevented the BOPs from operating...given that it's the pipe and shear rams that to the real work in the event of a blowout.
Meh, my point it that one cannot arbitrarily expect to shear pipe. Drill collars are another example of something you don't want across your rams when it's time to throw the switch. In any case, the stack and the pipe across the rams has to be managed to ensure the stack has a chance to operate properly.
The fact that the rams needed to shear means that other means of well control had failed. That the stack failed is appalling, but one does not rely upon the stack alone.
I believe the derrick-man has reported massive returns (at the shakers,) to the driller before the abandonment fluid was ejected up the derrick. There were signs before the blowout, but I believe things got out of control very, very quickly. Once gas was settling about the rig, ignition was only a matter of time in the still conditions that night.
Deepwater Horizon is a drilling rig, not a production rig. Once the well was plugged, the rig would have moved on to another drilling location. A separate, production rig would have then been brought out to that location to reopen the well and begin collection.
Correction - the DWH could have run the completion string and installed the sub sea well head. You don't necessarily need another rig to come along to do that job. As it was, the DWH was overdue to spud another well and had to move.
The BOP stack is generally the last resort - it's the fluid in the hole and the skills of the drillers, derrick-men, mud loggers, mud engineers and tool pushers that keep wells (relatively,) safe.
WRT stack safely, a scheduled pressure test cannot replicate a kick or other loss of well control. In fact, a BOP can't shear pipe arbitrarily. Generally, pipe joints are landed in the stack's pipe rams before the shears are operated. If you have a collar or joint across the shears, they won't close properly. You can't operate the brake on the drill floor if the derrick has been engulfed in flames.
Not based on my understanding since they are continuing with the relief well, the purpose of which is to plug the well with cement.
Now that they have the cap in place, if it works I don't see why they don't just turn the well into a producing well. Might as well get something out of the disaster...
The relief well(s) are designed to intersect the payzone that's currently responsible for this blowout. Once the relief well is at total depth and cased, they'll pump a kill-weight fluid into the payzone to stop it producing and then plug and abandon the relief well(s).
WRT production from the current well, that's not viable. There is a huge difference between the well control measures in place at the moment and what would normally constitute a sub-sea completion - cased hole, production string with downhole safety valve and a conventional production wellhead.
It's already been mention, but I'd be looking at snapshots in the array and/or, if your pockets are deep enough, VxFS. Host overheads drop when you're snapshotting in the array (assuming COFW isn't too onerous.) Once you're in the array though, you're operating at the block level (i.e. below any application or filesystem.) Your challenge here is to ensure your snapshots contain useful data and not an arbitrary bunch of 1s and 0s. If you're dealing with file server data, normal snapshots are generally fine. If you're running an app (e.g. Oracle,) then you must quiesce the app before taking a snapshot. If you don't, then your snapshot will be crash consistent. If you quiesce the app, your snapshot will be application consistent. There is a world of difference between the two.
Sadly, the same idiots that send Word documents and use pdf's fancier facilities are the same idiots that are engineering bizarre business processes. For example, I had to complete an online assessment recently. There was nothing special about this assessment - marks out of five for a few key points. For some reason, the assessment was deployed using a downloaded pdf with drop-down menus. The document had to be modified, saved and then spewed back into SAP. I despair...
...it's a shame that instrumentation of things such as EMC's PowerPath are a little painful. I guess there will always be gaps where vendor meets vendor and closed source meets open source, but it remains rather complex to analyse what's happening in Solaris with PowerPath and some Storage Foundation stirred in for good measure. Impossible? No...but maybe we'd all benefit from a little more interoperabilty?
It's a great article though - Brendan's a DTrace authority is impressive.
Arch Crippledick, Microsoft's VP for Patent Lunacy, stated "patenting Everything is a bold move designed to harness Microsoft's rich creativity and demonstrate our committment to monetise every, er, thing."
Mankind has done a good job at getting sloshed since we crawled out of the primordial soup. Our techniques have produced palatable booze of all types...why would we need beer with such a high alcohol content?
You thought we'd lost our minds with our crazy continental firewalling...but we're not done yet! Begone Darwin and all that reactionary claptrap. Come to Australia where the earth is flat (ignoring Uluru, hell...we've ignored the rights of Aboriginal folks, so we can ignore their rock!)
I don't think that's fair at all. Instant gratification? We've moved beyond forty fucking days.
Do you have *any* idea at all what it takes to control a blowout of this magnitude? If the media had focussed on the facts, explained the technology and indicated the options in a sensible fashion, we'd all be better informed. Everyone with an ounce of oilfield experience and/or a semi-functional brain would probably have realised that the real solution required relief wells. This is calm and patient work that quietly proceeds whilst cofferdams, top-kills and junk shots capture the media's attention.
It's not a "leaky well," sadly. It's a blowout - this is a catastrophic loss of well control. There were contingencies in place, but they failed with a sad loss of life. Well control is an inexact science and takes time. You simply cannot have three rigs on station, each drilling into the payzone on the off-chance that one rig experiences a blowout.
Slashdot Mirror
Considering it was a rig owned by BP, operated by Transocean and installed by Haliburton
Correction, it was a Gen IV semisub owned by Transocean and operated by BP. Halliburton were the cement service company.
"Drilling fluid" used to take pressure measurements might be purified water, which idiots might wave away because it costs money and they have tons of money.
Er, drilling fluid is a thixotropic fluid used to carry cuttings to the surface, lubricate, cool, support the drill string and exert a hydrostatic head. It can be water-based or oil-based (effectively an oil/water emulsion.) The list of additives is as long as your arm and designed to meet the engineering requirements at any point in the drilling phase. It'll usually be circulated out prior to abandonment or pre-production completion.
I'm no drilling expert. I read the articles (but not the whole report) and, as the submitter, I guess I failed to explain that the articles seem to imply that at some point it's okay to switch from drilling fluid to seawater when the rig is recognized as very stable
Displacing a well to seawater is not at all uncommon and is done for a variety of reasons - it's not a gamble. In this case, had the crew spotted returns from the well a little earlier, they would have controlled the kick that became a blowout.
Who would you rather have test it? Deep sea drilling is a tight-knit industry. I would be surprised if there were any independent testing labs for this technology
I'll assume you don't work in the oilfield. However, pressure control equipment is subject to a variety of tests (operational and periodic.) Generally, certification is handled by an organisation like Bureau Veritas or the American Bureau of Shipping. Deep sea drilling is no more tight-knit than any other heavy engineering industry.
possible damage to the blowout preventer during drilling (rubber fragments observed)
I'm going to assume you've never worked in the oilfield - just like /.'s other armchair drillers. Getting chunks of the Hydril at surface are not unusual. It's not actually part of the BOPs as such, but it sits above the conventional rams as an annular preventer. Tripping pipe and tools through the stack will always damage the Hydril (or bag as it's sometimes known,) and I doubt very much that a few missing chunks from the Hydril's fingers would have prevented the BOPs from operating...given that it's the pipe and shear rams that to the real work in the event of a blowout.
Now people will be able to inject others with toxins and it will be impossible to detect it
Detection of a toxin will be unaffected. You may even notice the large band-aid that the bad guy has just slapped on your forehead too.
Takes the fun right out of parenting...
Wait...what? Parenting is fun?
Meh, my point it that one cannot arbitrarily expect to shear pipe. Drill collars are another example of something you don't want across your rams when it's time to throw the switch. In any case, the stack and the pipe across the rams has to be managed to ensure the stack has a chance to operate properly.
The fact that the rams needed to shear means that other means of well control had failed. That the stack failed is appalling, but one does not rely upon the stack alone.
I believe the derrick-man has reported massive returns (at the shakers,) to the driller before the abandonment fluid was ejected up the derrick. There were signs before the blowout, but I believe things got out of control very, very quickly. Once gas was settling about the rig, ignition was only a matter of time in the still conditions that night.
Deepwater Horizon is a drilling rig, not a production rig. Once the well was plugged, the rig would have moved on to another drilling location. A separate, production rig would have then been brought out to that location to reopen the well and begin collection.
Correction - the DWH could have run the completion string and installed the sub sea well head. You don't necessarily need another rig to come along to do that job. As it was, the DWH was overdue to spud another well and had to move.
The BOP stack is generally the last resort - it's the fluid in the hole and the skills of the drillers, derrick-men, mud loggers, mud engineers and tool pushers that keep wells (relatively,) safe.
WRT stack safely, a scheduled pressure test cannot replicate a kick or other loss of well control. In fact, a BOP can't shear pipe arbitrarily. Generally, pipe joints are landed in the stack's pipe rams before the shears are operated. If you have a collar or joint across the shears, they won't close properly. You can't operate the brake on the drill floor if the derrick has been engulfed in flames.
Not based on my understanding since they are continuing with the relief well, the purpose of which is to plug the well with cement.
Now that they have the cap in place, if it works I don't see why they don't just turn the well into a producing well. Might as well get something out of the disaster...
The relief well(s) are designed to intersect the payzone that's currently responsible for this blowout. Once the relief well is at total depth and cased, they'll pump a kill-weight fluid into the payzone to stop it producing and then plug and abandon the relief well(s).
WRT production from the current well, that's not viable. There is a huge difference between the well control measures in place at the moment and what would normally constitute a sub-sea completion - cased hole, production string with downhole safety valve and a conventional production wellhead.
It's already been mention, but I'd be looking at snapshots in the array and/or, if your pockets are deep enough, VxFS. Host overheads drop when you're snapshotting in the array (assuming COFW isn't too onerous.) Once you're in the array though, you're operating at the block level (i.e. below any application or filesystem.) Your challenge here is to ensure your snapshots contain useful data and not an arbitrary bunch of 1s and 0s. If you're dealing with file server data, normal snapshots are generally fine. If you're running an app (e.g. Oracle,) then you must quiesce the app before taking a snapshot. If you don't, then your snapshot will be crash consistent. If you quiesce the app, your snapshot will be application consistent. There is a world of difference between the two.
...but is he still So Ronery?
How do you market an oxymoron?
Why...ask Bill Gates! I know, it's a cheap shot - 's/Bill Gates/Steve Jobs/g' if you wish.
...er, I forgot.
I agree.
Sadly, the same idiots that send Word documents and use pdf's fancier facilities are the same idiots that are engineering bizarre business processes. For example, I had to complete an online assessment recently. There was nothing special about this assessment - marks out of five for a few key points. For some reason, the assessment was deployed using a downloaded pdf with drop-down menus. The document had to be modified, saved and then spewed back into SAP. I despair...
Sent from my iPhone.
He never really went.
...it's a shame that instrumentation of things such as EMC's PowerPath are a little painful. I guess there will always be gaps where vendor meets vendor and closed source meets open source, but it remains rather complex to analyse what's happening in Solaris with PowerPath and some Storage Foundation stirred in for good measure. Impossible? No...but maybe we'd all benefit from a little more interoperabilty?
It's a great article though - Brendan's a DTrace authority is impressive.
...Microsoft decides to patent "Everything."
Arch Crippledick, Microsoft's VP for Patent Lunacy, stated "patenting Everything is a bold move designed to harness Microsoft's rich creativity and demonstrate our committment to monetise every, er, thing."
Mankind has done a good job at getting sloshed since we crawled out of the primordial soup. Our techniques have produced palatable booze of all types...why would we need beer with such a high alcohol content?
I've played around with ChromeOS on a virtual machine and it sucks.
Two thoughts spring to mind:
1. you're not in the target demographic
2. unless you have invented time travel, you're not using the OS that will ship in the Fall
Ladies and Gentlemen
You thought we'd lost our minds with our crazy continental firewalling...but we're not done yet! Begone Darwin and all that reactionary claptrap. Come to Australia where the earth is flat (ignoring Uluru, hell...we've ignored the rights of Aboriginal folks, so we can ignore their rock!)
Best wishes
Conroy et al.
x
I don't think that's fair at all. Instant gratification? We've moved beyond forty fucking days.
Do you have *any* idea at all what it takes to control a blowout of this magnitude? If the media had focussed on the facts, explained the technology and indicated the options in a sensible fashion, we'd all be better informed. Everyone with an ounce of oilfield experience and/or a semi-functional brain would probably have realised that the real solution required relief wells. This is calm and patient work that quietly proceeds whilst cofferdams, top-kills and junk shots capture the media's attention.
It's not a "leaky well," sadly. It's a blowout - this is a catastrophic loss of well control. There were contingencies in place, but they failed with a sad loss of life. Well control is an inexact science and takes time. You simply cannot have three rigs on station, each drilling into the payzone on the off-chance that one rig experiences a blowout.