The flow of oil has stopped, and testing is in progress – meaning Energy Secretary Steven Chu is probably gagged and bound in some back room.
Wells cautioned that the test had just begun, at 2:25 p.m. Central time, and that there were still many milestones yet to reach before the company would be able to conclude that the cap could seal off the well and keep oil from flowing into the ocean, or alternatively, that the company would have to restart containment operations to collect oil from the well.
Wells emphasized that the purpose of the test is to find out how strong the well is. The company is hoping that the well is strong enough to keep oil sealed in underneath the cap. However, if the well isn’t strong enough for that, the test should yield more detailed information about the well, Wells said.
“We’d all like the result that there’s perfect integrity, but the purpose of the test is to see what the integrity is,” Wells said.
This , Fin-Reg and Goldman getting a slap on the wrist , all within a few hours . Well played scumbags , well played .
Paint rooves white?Sure, and paint freeways white while your at it!
Ever stand barefoot on asphalt in the summer? Then you know what I mean.
White freeways, why didn’t they think of this before?
I know ….they DID! They’re just figuring out how many illegals, who get around Arizona, will get work from this stimulus project.
Harvard geniuses sure are entertaining to watch….
This cap weighs 75 tons. The Blow Out Preventer weighs 450 tons. They haven’t put any “plug” (mud or cement) downhole because they couldn’t from the surface. That was the purpose of the relief wells.
They stopped drilling those wells probably to run seismic tests checking to see if anything is letting go below the seabed surface.
All of that well pressure is now trapped at the surface under the BOP and TopHat. If that foundation link goes, then they are screwed. If that pressure blows out a section of the formation the relief wells were aiming for, their sucess is compromised.
Resuming drilling of the relief wells will add to the seismic background noise now being monitored for saftey reasons.
This capping is dangerous and risky in my opinion as the original plan of letting it bleed till it could get stuffed from behind made sense.
I hope it works but it looks more like a hail mary pass for the fans, consequences be damned.
IF its an attempt to salvage the well and get another riser on it to turn it into a production well,,,, well good luck with that considering how compromised this well is.
Reminds of the part in Atlas Shrugged when they didn’t know what they were doing and blew up a good chunk of the country.
Another miracle from Obamessiah: He stopped the leak!
“..but the purpose of the test is to see what the integrity is,..”
Are they talking about the well here or the white house?
Why can’t they just hook up a pipe and just pump, or let flow, the oil into a tanker? I am no expert, but shouldn’t it be easier than having to pump the oil out, if it just flows out under pressure? I know that is a very simple way of putting it and there are other problems, but shouldn’t that be possible?
Kevanywhere
Anything is possible but the practicality and logistics regarding this spill is the problem.
The “pipe” has to be a mile long.
That’s a lot of pipe that has to be welded together.Fabricating that monstrosity alone is a nightmare, but doing so with a flotilla of ships around trying to salvage and clean up the already spilled oil is an epic undertaking.
It has to be strong pipe to withstand the pressure of the well and its own weight when suspended vertically.
It needs a secure anchoring point at the surface,,,much like a stabilized oil platform that blew up.
And it needs a secure anchor point at the bottom which is now this monster on the seafloor which has been rocked by a massive kickback and its foundation is Maybe compromised.
This “spill” is wasted money BP or any oil company would love to have as revenue. Saying that I have no doubt someone wants to salvage it.
But in this case due to the damage to the well incurred via the blowout and piss poor design, that option looks more like making a silk purse out of a sows ear, than a viable financial solution.
It’s my opinion that its better to kill this well than dump any more time and resources into trying to make it pay.
It’s cheaper drilling a brand new well into this very BIG oil formation the right way.
But with these clowns, don’t be surprised if there is a run on PVC tubing from Home Depot.
G
Your point is?
1) How dare these people ruin a perfectly good crisis…when it is needed to justify a fantasy-land climate cure.
2) The best way to deal with this situation is to destroy the well and bankrupt an oil company.
3) You forgot to mention that this test is racist.
Taping the “gusher” off is a perfectly logical procedure.
Remember the loons in the government prevented efficient slick licker from cleaning up floating oil…….for political capital.
The conduct of the administration, the Coast Guard, the EPA, The Energy Department is grounds for impeachment and treason. People have been shot for less.
So after 86 days of fiddle-farting around BP finally manages to stop the leak.
This is beyond incompetence. The solution was obvious from the beginning. This whole incident has been playing to someones agenda and that needs to be exposed all the way to the top.
It’s likely not any grand conspiracy, but rather a fortuitous combination of incompetence, bad luck, and letting things slide to capitalize on an unfortunate event. Rahm Emanuel: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste”. Like any good corporation, I’m sure that BP has isolated this section of their empire to limit liability. This thing will drag out in the courts over the next decade or so to make everyone’s lawyers richer.
Seriously, could they hire a senior VP with a more confusing name?
G- I thought the problem all along when they were trying to contain the blowout was a severely ruptured casing somewhere between the formation and the seabed; ergo the disappearance of about 50,000 bbls of mud/cement sealant into whoknowswhere?? and accordingly the compromised integrity of the whole shootin’ match. Is that not the case?
sasquatch
I agree with Everything you have said!!!
My only point was that the relief wells were the only safe and secure way (in my opinion) of killing this thing for good. The technology for doing this is proven, they only needed to drill one but did two for security,and were preceding grandly until the regime told them to stop. All they needed was some more time.
As I said I hope this works, but it has a more of “I kicked some ass and look what I got done” theatrics than proven practice.
If this well blows out sideways because of this, the mess will be harder to clean up than it is now due to multiple leak sources.
IF the now 525 ton monstrosity on the sea floor topples due to pressure erosion at the well face, then what do they have to work with?
“The conduct of the administration, the Coast Guard, the EPA, The Energy Department is grounds for impeachment and treason. People have been shot for less.”
I agree and would be willing to donate to the ammo fund!
Is this the grand solution that the think tank of Hollywood actors and directors, and nobel prize winners came up with?
Let’s have a meeting!!!!
Internet scuttlebut has it that the shut in pressure is hanging around 7000 psi. Some 2000 psi less than expected.
This could indicate a breach in casing integrity further uphole from the target zone or it could mean that the formation pressure is depleted.
If the shut in pressure is as high as 7000 psi this bodes well for the security of the surface casing and much of the wellbore.
Something else that is being missed in this whole thing is that they needed to be able to choke the flow at the wellhead to successfully kill the wild well through the relief well. What they had was, IMHO, insufficient. My point is that the installation of the current incarnation of the top hat was absolutely essential in the longer run.
Syncro
Snagglepuss
You got it in a nutshell. But remember the well was still flowing and hence had a reduced pressure on the compromised casing string.They were also trying it from the top down which had to overcome the gaseous and liquid component of the well stem.
The relief system plan was to get under the compromised casing {or casing entirely) so the mud would have hydrostatic pressure at a greater depth working for it.
here’s a previously posted link that explains it with some pretty good vids
http://www.drillingahead.com/forum/topics/bp-relief-wellswhat-is-a
Gotta go
I wonder how the families of the workers killed on the rig when this all started, are doing…
I am pleased and impressed with the good result. My hat is off to the engineers at BP for their success.
G- Thanks. If you get a chance to revisit this thread- one question:
Is there a greater pressure differential to overcome if attempting to stem the flow somewhere up the wellbore (and thus forcing it back down into the formation) than there would be right at the well bottom?
Thanks G. But I still don’t understand, you say that the pipe takes time to make but BP has two drills working now to tap the pipe below the well head, are they not able to take the oil or are they for something else. If the problem is pressure than wouldn’t oil flowing up a pipe relieve the pressure from the cap? I admit I am no expert, but it seems that letting the oil flow into a pipe would solve alot of the problems.
I suppose Chu thinks we should paint the Gulf and beaches white.
Seriously, I was flying out of town on a regional jet, low and slow. I looked down at the metro areas below me which were small gray blotches spread sparsely amongst a sea of greens, browns, and yellows. Entire cities were just scabs on smooth valley floors surrounded by majestic hills and mountains.
If everyone in the whole state were to paint their roofs white, I really don’t think you’d notice a bit of difference 10,000 feet in the air.
And if you can’t visually tell the difference at 10,000 feet, then I think the atmosphere would scarcely notice too.
As for the conspiracy theories, I seriously doubt a private FOREIGN energy company would be so much in bed with Obama that they’d destroy a rig, kill their workers, and delay a clean up to the tune of more than $50 billion plus equity losses.
“Never attribute to conspiracy that which can be adequately be explained by incompetence.”
But no, it’s not incompetence either. That hole is pretty damned deep. Drilling is the easy part. If you want an analogy as to how hard this capping mission is, consider what it would take to raise the Titanic. I’m surprised it was done this quickly.
Let’s not play the liberals’ game of the Fallacy of the Omnipotent Government. Obama was no more able to squat down and crap a solution to this problem any more than he can create and economic recovery, reform health care, save Social Security and Medicare, and end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Presidents are not gods or emperors and we should stop treating them as such. Frankly, I would have been impressed if Obama had said, “There’s not a damned thing I can do about this. It will be fixed when it’s fixed. So shut up and grab your paper towels and dish soap.”
We never should have been drilling so deep anyway since there were so many shallow wells to be dug. Drill deep and far off-shore – yeah, that will protect the environment!
Seriously, could they hire a senior VP with a more confusing name?
Another case of the name making the man. I had a college friend who used to point these out all the time — climatology textbooks by Dr. Wind, jewelry stores owned by Mr. Gold, et cetera. An oil company VP named Mr. Wells is just one more instance of the phenomenon.
Obama is hailed as hero in 3, 2……
Obama – peace be upon him – kicked some ass and God allowed the problem to be fixed. The BP engineers’ estimated of having this problem resolved by August is a coincidence.
Ask anyone who works in a crisis environment and they will tell you that the #1 priority is to stabilize the situation not work on the cure first. Obama – peace be upon him – and his gang have tried to implement their cure since the crisis happened.
Well, it is obvious that BP screwed up by the numbers when drilling. So even if on the repair they were about as competent as you could expect in a difficult situation (not including the booms and cleanup ships that were denied because of politics), it wouldn’t have been a problem in the first place if they had followed industry rules.
The States have a problem when they cannot effectively deal with safety violations on something this dangerous.
The BP-CFB Suffield connection
Capping flow was a calculated risk that relies on pressure relief channels being dilled in time. The main concern is not the oil flow but the Gulf ocean floor rupturing due to the subterranean methane gas freed by the deep hole fracture crumbling softer upper strata. “leading to a calamity no human has ever seen”
http://tinyurl.com/29kq2cr
“The Omega plan
At a super-secret security base-CFB Suffield-located in southern Alberta, Canada, area reports indicate that high level engineers, physicists and military scientists are feverishly working to complete an ‘explosively pumped flux compression generator’ (EPFCG).
According to published scientific papers [see sources below] an EPFCG generator can be powered by a very small, controlled fusion explosion-in other words, a tiny nuclear bomb.
Why the UK based BP has set up operations at CFB-Suffield is obvious: The company already runs three oil rigs on the base, have worked with Canada’s chemical and biological efforts on and off for almost 40 years, and have strong ties to the Commonwealth’s infrastructure.
According to engineers familiar with the technology, the devices can generate plasma arcs hotter than the surface of the sun that will melt and fuse materials in nanoseconds.”
Thank Obama ! Now he can finally take the wife and kids on a well deserved vacation at Acadia National Park in Maine.I hope the well holds as the man must be exhausted.
The great OBumble saves the day as “WE stopped the leak….”
The ego-centric teleprompter does it again, his arrogance knows no bounds…..but that’s no surprise, ET pegged it very long ago…
The oil stopped?
They must’ve gave the well a wedding ring, so it stopped putting out.