I'm sorry, but this is not viable - unless you know something about offshore drilling that I don't know. Drilling three wells at the same time, but only as a failsafe to control a failure of the intended production well, is an enormous waste of money (unless you're prepared to pay for it at the pump or when you purchase anything derived from hydrocarbons.)
Okay, plugging the leak is important, but why aren't BP also doing something like this to contain the effect of the leaked oil: use 'empty supertankers to suck the spill off the surface
The oil does not simply sit on the surface waiting for a giant supertanker vacuum cleaner. It pollutes the entire water column over a vast area.
One solution known to work (the russians did this method), is nuking the hole and collapsing it to an extent that the pressure of the oil can't breach it. You then concrete over the rubble.
I fear "known to work," stretches incredulity to the nth degree. Assuming the blowout cannot be contained at the wellhead, I suspect the relief wells are the best approach. Sadly, it takes time to drill and case a well and then prepare to kill the reservoir. That time is something we don't have in a media-obsessed world that demands instant gratification. If you want oil, it's risky to get it out of the ground. When things go wrong, it can take a long time to fix it. That doesn't sit well with the great unwashed.
Fitness - your arms grow strong from trying to hold the damn things on the daily commute to the office and your cardio improves as you try to outrun the mugger that is interested in your oversized iPhone.
So, some of the mooing masses that use the larger ISPs will find themselves targeted for file sharing. Will this really make any appreciable difference to the issue of downloading illegal content? This is no more than an attempt to target the low-hanging fruit (porn downloading pun unintended.) Tech-savvy downloaders will improve their attempts to maintain online anonymity. The rest of the great unwashed will continue as before...and a few may even find themselves excommunicated from the 'net. Until the content providers embrace a little more flexibility, allow us to consume their garbage in a more convenient fashion and generally act their age, this bizarre legislation will only cause more problems than it solves. On the ass-ometer scale (where Australia's great firewall hits a 9 out of 10,) Baron Mandelson's swansong is worth an 8 - annoying, but not the biggest challenge to common sense.
This relief well is designed to hit the reservoir and then bullhead it with kill-weight mud. Pressure is not diverted - this is solely a means to destroy the payzone's ability to produce oil. BTW, most wells are "drilled at an angle." It's called directional drilling and has been around for years.
The Cameron stack is rated to 15000 PSI. I don't think the wellhead are anything close to 150000 PSI.
Also, you can't just turn a valve under the blowout preventer - it is pretty much the bottom valve. So replacing this isn't an option - you are pretty much stuck with it unless you are prepared to do something drastic.
Stacks are subjected to regular tests. If a test on any of the stack components fails, there are operational procedures to recover the stack to the semi-sub, fix it and test it again.
The top kill is what happens when the oil gets to the surface
Nope - a top kill is basically an operation whereby they pump kill-weight mud directly into the BOP stack. Generally, this is known as "bull-heading" a well.
Furthermore, encountering a pocket of gas is not unexpected. It is something they try to avoid for precisely what happened.
Actually no - you don't really avoid a "pocket of gas," as such. Generally you manage this via the hydrostatic head of fluid in the well bore - you weight up and circulate it out during a kick. Defoamers can help during drilling to reduce gas cutting. Regarding pre and post completion plugging, that's generally accomplished via cement or other downhole tools.
The catastrophic loss of well control followed by the total failure of the stack to control the well is rare in these circumstances.
Do you have any oilfield experience? If so, please cite the other examples of deep water blowouts that occurred when the well was being plugged and abandoned prior to a rig move.
If you're talking about stack failures generally, then I think you've missed the point and demonstrated a lack of understanding of the technology. Citing a 1999 report does nothing to improve the credibility of your assertion. This was Transocean's rig and BP cannot force Transocean to "cut corners." However, if you have a deeper understanding of the well design and abandonment process used in this case, I'm happy to be corrected.
So they put all their faith in a blowout valve that apparently had an unanticipated failure mode
You need to understand a little more about drilling and well control. We're not talking about a valve - it's a Cameron Type TL 18¾in 15K BOP...not a gate valve on your garden hose. These devices will failsafe-shut. Shearing pipe is another matter entirely. For example, the drill string should ideally be under tension with a joint landed in the pipe rams before the shear rams close.
it appears that problems with blowout preventers are far from unknown, even if BP want to bandy around the word "unprecedented" when referring to the failure.
On the contrary, this failure is exceptionally rare. This is a normal operation that went catastrophically wrong:
1. The well had been cemented and the mud in the marine riser and well was being circulated out prior to temporary abandonment.
2. A sudden kick (gas in this case,) forced the displacement fluid from the riser.
3. The gas settled about the rig, found an ignition source and exploded.
4. The blowout preventers failed to shut the well in (either by manual or fail-safe actuation.)
At this point, the rig was burning and the well was open to the atmosphere. Once the rig had sunk, the marine riser collapsed and lays buckled. It seems that it's leaking from multiple points and underwater footage of the end of the riser seems to show the box end of a piece of drill pipe spewing oil.
In order to control the well, either the BOPs must operate (shearing the drill pipe,) or the well must be killed (probably by drilling a relief well and then pumping heavy weight mud into the pay zone.)
No, you can't bury a blowout with concrete. If they are unable to cycle the rig's subsea BOPs or otherwise shut it in, the well will continue to produce until a relief well intersects this payzone and pumps kill-weight mud.
The chain of events is unclear at the moment, however...it seems to follow this chronology:
1. The well had been cemented and the mud in the marine riser and well was being circulated out prior to temporary abandonment.
2. A sudden kick (gas in this case,) forced the displacement fluid from the riser.
3. The gas settled about the rig, found an ignition source and exploded.
4. The blowout preventers failed to shut the well in (either by manual or fail-safe actuation.)
At this point, the rig was burning and the well was open to the atmosphere. Once the rig had sunk, the marine riser collapsed and lays buckled. It seems that it's leaking from multiple points and underwater footage of the end of the riser seems to show the box end of a piece of drill pipe spewing oil.
In order to control the well, either the BOPs must operate (shearing the drill pipe,) or the well must be killed (probably by drilling a relief well and then pumping heavy weight mud into the pay zone.)
As far as I am aware, the Piper explosion resulted in blowouts. Red Adair was onsite and relief well(s) were drilled. It was primarily an oil production platform, but gas is a by-product of oil production.
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I'm sorry, but this is not viable - unless you know something about offshore drilling that I don't know. Drilling three wells at the same time, but only as a failsafe to control a failure of the intended production well, is an enormous waste of money (unless you're prepared to pay for it at the pump or when you purchase anything derived from hydrocarbons.)
Okay, plugging the leak is important, but why aren't BP also doing something like this to contain the effect of the leaked oil: use 'empty supertankers to suck the spill off the surface
The oil does not simply sit on the surface waiting for a giant supertanker vacuum cleaner. It pollutes the entire water column over a vast area.
One solution known to work (the russians did this method), is nuking the hole and collapsing it to an extent that the pressure of the oil can't breach it. You then concrete over the rubble.
I fear "known to work," stretches incredulity to the nth degree. Assuming the blowout cannot be contained at the wellhead, I suspect the relief wells are the best approach. Sadly, it takes time to drill and case a well and then prepare to kill the reservoir. That time is something we don't have in a media-obsessed world that demands instant gratification. If you want oil, it's risky to get it out of the ground. When things go wrong, it can take a long time to fix it. That doesn't sit well with the great unwashed.
And what are they actually for?
Fitness - your arms grow strong from trying to hold the damn things on the daily commute to the office and your cardio improves as you try to outrun the mugger that is interested in your oversized iPhone.
So, some of the mooing masses that use the larger ISPs will find themselves targeted for file sharing. Will this really make any appreciable difference to the issue of downloading illegal content? This is no more than an attempt to target the low-hanging fruit (porn downloading pun unintended.) Tech-savvy downloaders will improve their attempts to maintain online anonymity. The rest of the great unwashed will continue as before...and a few may even find themselves excommunicated from the 'net. Until the content providers embrace a little more flexibility, allow us to consume their garbage in a more convenient fashion and generally act their age, this bizarre legislation will only cause more problems than it solves. On the ass-ometer scale (where Australia's great firewall hits a 9 out of 10,) Baron Mandelson's swansong is worth an 8 - annoying, but not the biggest challenge to common sense.
This relief well is designed to hit the reservoir and then bullhead it with kill-weight mud. Pressure is not diverted - this is solely a means to destroy the payzone's ability to produce oil. BTW, most wells are "drilled at an angle." It's called directional drilling and has been around for years.
I'm just glad nobody has mentioned nukes yet...
I believe it is around 150,000 PSI.
The Cameron stack is rated to 15000 PSI. I don't think the wellhead are anything close to 150000 PSI.
Also, you can't just turn a valve under the blowout preventer - it is pretty much the bottom valve. So replacing this isn't an option - you are pretty much stuck with it unless you are prepared to do something drastic.
Stacks are subjected to regular tests. If a test on any of the stack components fails, there are operational procedures to recover the stack to the semi-sub, fix it and test it again.
The top kill is what happens when the oil gets to the surface
Nope - a top kill is basically an operation whereby they pump kill-weight mud directly into the BOP stack. Generally, this is known as "bull-heading" a well.
the blast could require, for example, some drilling to place the explosive
Yes, yes - we can use the relief well!
Furthermore, encountering a pocket of gas is not unexpected. It is something they try to avoid for precisely what happened.
Actually no - you don't really avoid a "pocket of gas," as such. Generally you manage this via the hydrostatic head of fluid in the well bore - you weight up and circulate it out during a kick. Defoamers can help during drilling to reduce gas cutting. Regarding pre and post completion plugging, that's generally accomplished via cement or other downhole tools.
The catastrophic loss of well control followed by the total failure of the stack to control the well is rare in these circumstances.
Do you have any oilfield experience? If so, please cite the other examples of deep water blowouts that occurred when the well was being plugged and abandoned prior to a rig move.
If you're talking about stack failures generally, then I think you've missed the point and demonstrated a lack of understanding of the technology. Citing a 1999 report does nothing to improve the credibility of your assertion. This was Transocean's rig and BP cannot force Transocean to "cut corners." However, if you have a deeper understanding of the well design and abandonment process used in this case, I'm happy to be corrected.
So they put all their faith in a blowout valve that apparently had an unanticipated failure mode
You need to understand a little more about drilling and well control. We're not talking about a valve - it's a Cameron Type TL 18¾in 15K BOP...not a gate valve on your garden hose. These devices will failsafe-shut. Shearing pipe is another matter entirely. For example, the drill string should ideally be under tension with a joint landed in the pipe rams before the shear rams close.
it appears that problems with blowout preventers are far from unknown, even if BP want to bandy around the word "unprecedented" when referring to the failure.
On the contrary, this failure is exceptionally rare. This is a normal operation that went catastrophically wrong:
1. The well had been cemented and the mud in the marine riser and well was being circulated out prior to temporary abandonment.
2. A sudden kick (gas in this case,) forced the displacement fluid from the riser.
3. The gas settled about the rig, found an ignition source and exploded.
4. The blowout preventers failed to shut the well in (either by manual or fail-safe actuation.)
At this point, the rig was burning and the well was open to the atmosphere. Once the rig had sunk, the marine riser collapsed and lays buckled. It seems that it's leaking from multiple points and underwater footage of the end of the riser seems to show the box end of a piece of drill pipe spewing oil.
In order to control the well, either the BOPs must operate (shearing the drill pipe,) or the well must be killed (probably by drilling a relief well and then pumping heavy weight mud into the pay zone.)
No, you can't bury a blowout with concrete. If they are unable to cycle the rig's subsea BOPs or otherwise shut it in, the well will continue to produce until a relief well intersects this payzone and pumps kill-weight mud.
The chain of events is unclear at the moment, however...it seems to follow this chronology:
1. The well had been cemented and the mud in the marine riser and well was being circulated out prior to temporary abandonment.
2. A sudden kick (gas in this case,) forced the displacement fluid from the riser.
3. The gas settled about the rig, found an ignition source and exploded.
4. The blowout preventers failed to shut the well in (either by manual or fail-safe actuation.)
At this point, the rig was burning and the well was open to the atmosphere. Once the rig had sunk, the marine riser collapsed and lays buckled. It seems that it's leaking from multiple points and underwater footage of the end of the riser seems to show the box end of a piece of drill pipe spewing oil.
In order to control the well, either the BOPs must operate (shearing the drill pipe,) or the well must be killed (probably by drilling a relief well and then pumping heavy weight mud into the pay zone.)
As far as I am aware, the Piper explosion resulted in blowouts. Red Adair was onsite and relief well(s) were drilled. It was primarily an oil production platform, but gas is a by-product of oil production.