Yesterday we were watching the evening news and the reporter raised concerns about a rise in well pressure. I hadn’t heard anything about that, so I checked the transcript from Admiral Allen’s briefing, and he said no such thing. Here is a direct quote from the transcript:
Finally, we have finished approximately 24 hour period of doing an ambient pressure test on the well head. The pressure has not changed depreciably (must mean appreciably) over that time period. So the one thing we can rule out right now that it has direct communication with the reservoir. Had the pressure risen, we would have known that there were hydrocarbons being forced up from the reservoir. So we know there’s some kind of a – something that is between the annulus and the reservoir that is not allowing the flow of hydrocarbons forward.
Given the absence of technical details and people to explain them (an ongoing issue), one can understand the reporter’s confusion. Attempting to read between the lines, I would assume they conducted a negative pressure test (reduced pressure at the wellhead to ambient or that of a column of sea water), and that pressure readings remained constant for the duration of the test. This would imply that there was no influx of oil and gas up the annulus. Perhaps the annulus was sealed during the recent cementing operation or flow up the annulus is otherwise blocked.
Of course, we are still waiting for the Unified Command to comment on the well’s flow path. While this information is fundamental to the root cause analysis of the blowout, there is no apparent political pressure (unlike with flow rates) to inform the public about the latest thinking in that regard. This is interesting because some of the prescriptive responses to Macondo that are already in progress may be based on erroneous information about the cause of the blowout.
Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE) 