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Posts Tagged ‘offshore oil’

Well Integrity Test is ON

Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 14, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Capping Stack BOP onboard the Transocean Discoverer Inspiration close to the MC252 location 7 July 2010.

Capping Stack BOP Before Installation on Well

Here we go ……

  1. Close rams to shut-in flow from the top while allowing flow through choke and kill lines on sides of capping stack.
  2. Slowly close kill line.
  3. Slowly close choke line.
  4. If the pressure holds through all 3 steps, Secretary Chu does a touchdown dance in the BP control room (BOE exclusive :))

Other:

  1. Operation will be halted every 6 hours to monitor pressure;
  2. Ongoing ROV monitoring of well and seafloor;
  3. Remote sensing systems looking for evidence of leakage outside the wellbore;
  4. Up to a 48 hour process

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Cap Talk

Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 13, 2010| Leave a Comment »

  1. 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.
  2. 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?
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. We need to create an environment for leadership, ingenuity, and continuous improvement.  The focus has to be on comprehensive safety achievement.

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How important is deepwater Gulf production? You be the judge.

Posted in Offshore Energy - General, oil, tagged , on July 10, 2010| 1 Comment »

  1. 80% of Gulf of Mexico oil production or a quarter of total US production is from leases in greater than 1000 feet of water.
  2. Per the EIA chart above, a single deepwater Gulf platform (Thunderhorse) surpasses all but four states in oil production.  3 deepwater platforms outproduce all but 3 states.
  3. Total oil production from deepwater facilities approximates that of the State of Texas.

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BP Details Relief Well Timeline

Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged , , , , , , , , , on July 9, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Notes:

  1. Click on the diagram to enlarge
  2. The 9 7/8″ liner has NOT been run yet.
  3. Note the cement bond log.  3 months too late?
  4. Step 2 is to intercept and kill the flow in the annulus.  If there is no flow inside the 7″ casing, step 2 will kill the well.  This step is scheduled to be completed by the end of July.
  5. Step 3 will be necessary to make sure the production casing is plugged, even it there is no flow inside that casing.
  6. The timeframes are understandably conservative.

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Thank you Admiral Allen

Posted in accidents, Uncategorized, well control incidents, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on July 9, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Regarding the relief wells, Development Driller III, which is the lead drilling rig for the relief wells is now at 17,780 feet measured depth, within a couple hundred feet of the proposed penetration point of the wellbore.

Admiral Allen: Thank you for reading BOE and responding to our request.  You even specified “measured depth!”

Relief Well Team:  Great work!  Time to finish the job!

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Montara Vigil Continues, Macondo Relief?, More Regulatory Theory

Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged , , , , , , , on July 6, 2010| Leave a Comment »

  1. Montara watch: 19 days have now elapsed since the Montara Inquiry Report was presented to Minister Ferguson, and there are no recent media updates on the release of the report. Meanwhile, Australian radio has a good piece on Montara – long, but worth the time.
  2. Macondo: The relief well reports continue to be sketchy and inconsistent.  On July 4, the Unified Command reported that the primary relief well had reached 17,400′ (presumably measured depth), while  BP’s update for the same date indicated that the first well had reached 17,725′ (this too must also be measure depth, not true vertical depth).  It’s unclear whether the final casing (9 7/8″ liner) has been set.  Admiral Allen will likely provide a better update today.
  3. More regulatory philosophy: The regulatory system is at least as important as the specific operating requirements.   This UNEP piece provides a good summary of the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches.

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Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on June 30, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Interesting comments from Jane Cutler, CEO of Australia’s National Offshore Safety Petroleum Safety Authority, in NOPSA’s excellent newsletter:

The incidents in the Gulf of Mexico (Deepwater Horizon) and at the Montara wellhead platform are different in many respects, particularly in technical matters. However, they share some common factors prompting regulatory action.

I agree entirely with Ms. Cutler.  International regulators and operators must work in concert to address and resolve these issues.

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Updates on the relief wells

Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on June 29, 2010| Leave a Comment »

BP has released a slide presentation and animation on the relief wells showing the intercept point below the 9 7/8″ casing shoe.   The exact sequence of operations once they reach the intercept point will be interesting to observe. They should encounter flow when they reach the 7″ casing annulus (assuming that is a flow path; there still seems to be some uncertainty in that regard).  Will they attempt to kill the flow in the annulus before milling into the 7″ casing?  Is there flow inside the 7″ casing via channels in the casing shoe? Is there drill pipe inside the casing?

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Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources Committee Posts OCS Reform Act

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on June 28, 2010| Leave a Comment »

link

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More Montara and Macondo

Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged , , , , , , , on June 28, 2010| Leave a Comment »

-The duration of the Montara blowout was 75 Days. Ironically, Day 76 of the Macondo blowout will be the 4th of July.

-Eleven days have elapsed since the Montara Report was presented to Minister Ferguson, who has apparently retained his cabinet position in the new government.  Now that the cabinet has been settled, perhaps there will be more public clamor for the report?

-Cap Summit in DC? – According to Admiral Allen, government and industry experts will convene on Wednesday to decide whether to change the collection cap.  Other designs would provide a better seal and facilitate higher recovery rates via free-standing risers, but the well would flow unabated during the changeover.

-More Macondo irony:  Since the oil spilled is “avoidably lost,” royalties will presumably be due on both the oil spilled and the oil “produced” at Macondo.  However, for fields in water depths greater than 800m, the Deepwater Royalty Relief Act  of 1995 exempts the first 87.5 million barrels of oil equivalent from Federal royalties.  Court interpretations of this poorly written legislation have determined that this relief must be applied on a lease (not field) basis, making the royalty exemption much more generous.  Ironically, Kerr McGee (now part of Macondo partner Anadarko) filed the law suit that resulted in this favorable decision for industry.  MMS, which has been repeatedly (and incorrectly) denounced for being “too cozy with industry,” fought hard for the less generous interpretation.

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