Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE)

The Deepwater Driller III (pictured) has spudded the first relief well.

Discoverer Enterprise will support seafloor contaiment system.

While BOE’s eager but poorly managed staff struggles to keep pace, Upstream is providing excellent coverage of the well intervention, relief well, and seafloor containment system stories.  This is the news of greatest interest to our small, but highly sophisticated readership.  (For extensive coverage of news celebrities standing near the shore or bravely venturing into streamers of oil, turn your attention to the network news.)

Anyway, lots of new developments: the relief well was spudded, another rig is on the way to drill a second relief well, the seafloor containment system is ready to be transported to the site, and plans to install a second BOP stack (on top of the first) proceed.   But perhaps of greatest interest to BOE readers is the report that BP had closed the rams but did not stem the flow.  The BP spokesman suggested that the rubber portions of the rams may have been eroded and were thus unable to seal the well.   This makes sense for the pipe rams and annular preventers (although some flow reduction would still be expected), but what about the shear ram?  Was it closed?  Was it unable to cut pipe that was inside the stack?  What happened when the crew attempted to shut-in the well prior to evacuation?  When can we expect a statement from Cameron, the BOP manufacturer?