Cap Talk

July 13, 2010 by offshoreenergy

Presumably BP is very slowly and carefully shutting in Macondo with the newly installed cap. Wellhead pressures are no doubt being very closely monitored. The strength of the 16″ casing is a concern as is the potenital for creating channels back to the surface. Those types of problems must be avoided.
How concerned was the BP team about attempting the bottom kill without the sealing cap in place? Is the cap needed to create sufficient back-pressure and reduce the weight requirements for the kill mud? Absent the cap, would the required kill weight be high enough to seriously risk fracturing outside the production casing and causing an underground blowout?
If BP can successfully shut-in the well, that will of course be fantastic news. However, questions must be raised about the sequence of intervention attempts and the reasons why such a sealing cap wasn’t tried sooner. The more we can minimize the screaming and finger-pointing, the more public and private benefit will be derived from this discussion.
Can we broker a cease-fire in the moratorium debate and focus our collective energy on addressing the immediate technical and policy issues at hand? In the interim, each well should be carefully considered on a case-by-case basis. Water depth is only one consideration, and may prove to be a relatively minor factor in the Macondo blowout.
We need to create an environment for leadership, ingenuity, and continuous improvement. The focus has to be on comprehensive safety achievement.

Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE)