Posted on 07/14/2010 2:43:41 PM PDT by Comrade Brother Abu Bubba
Ken Salazar on Monday directed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEM) to issue new suspensions of deepwater drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), including the Gulf of Mexico and Pacific regions through Nov. 30 of this year.
The new drilling suspensions marks Salazar and BOEM's second effort to suspend deepwater drilling operations in the U.S. Gulf in response to the BP oil spill. The first moratorium, issued in late May, was lifted by a district judge on June 22; a panel of federal district judges refused BOEM's appeal to reverse the lower court's decision.
The new suspensions would apply to drilling operations that use subsea blowout preventers (BOP) or surface BOPs on floating facilities. Secretary Salazar has further directed BOEM to cease the approval of pending and future applications for permits to drill wells using subsea or surface BOPs on a floating facility.
While the May 27 moratorium suspended drilling activity by water depths, the new moratorium would not suspend activity based on water depth, but on the basis of drilling configurations and technologies.
"While the new version is effectively the same as the old one, it appears the DOI's legal team used the new version as a rebuttal to the recent legal proceedings, with more evidence to address the deficiencies of the old moratorium," said Jefferies & Co. Inc. Analyst Judson E. Bailey in a recent report. Bailey described the new moratorium as the "same package wrapped in different paper." [the "old moratorium" was stricken down by a competent federal judge]
Salazar said the latest suspensions are based on new evidence regarding safety concerns, blowout containment shortcomings within the industry, and spill response capabilities that are constrained by the BP oil spill. Salazar also said this information indicated that allowing new deepwater drilling to commence would pose a threat of serious, irreparable, or immediate harm or damage to the marine, coastal and human environment.
"More than eighty days into the BP oil spill, a pause on deepwater drilling is essential and appropriate to protect communities, coasts, and wildlife from the risks that deepwater drilling currently pose," said Secretary Salazar. "I am basing my decision on evidence that grows every day of the industry's inability in the deepwater to contain a catastrophic blowout, respond to an oil spill, and to operate safely."
In a decision memorandum to BOEM Director Michael R. Bromwich, Salazar said that a temporary pause on deepwater drilling will provide time to implement recent safety reforms and for:
•The submission of evidence by operators demonstrating that they have the ability to respond effectively to a potential oil spill in the Gulf, given the unprecedented commitment of available oil spill response resources that are now being dedicated to the BP oil spill;
•The assessment of wild well intervention and blowout containment resources to determine the strategies and methods by which they can be made more readily available should another blowout occur; and
•The collection and analysis of key evidence regarding the potential causes of the April 20, 2010 explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig, including information collected by the Presidential Commission and other investigations. In his decision memo, Secretary Salazar said that the inspection of blowout preventers on the new Macondo relief wells identified unexpected performance problems. During ROV hot stab testing, the Lower Marine Riser Package disconnect function was unsuccessful because of a leaking shuttle valve.
Inspections also found that a failed shuttle valve caused an unsuccessful test of the All Stabs Retract function; a failure of the dead-man test was found because a shuttle valve was installed that should not have been; and a broken solenoid connection was encountered on the blue pod that prevented that pod from closing the casing shear rams.
In this period, the Department and BOEM will also be issuing and implementing interim safety rules in accordance with recommendations in the 30-Day Safety Report that Secretary Salazar submitted to the President on May 27, 2010.
The new decision by the Secretary also establishes a process through which BOEM will gather and analyze new information from the public, experts, stakeholders, and the industry on safety and response issues, which could potentially provide the basis for identifying conditions for resuming certain deepwater drilling activities.
"I remain open to modifying the new deepwater drilling suspensions based on new information," said Secretary Salazar, "but industry must raise the bar on its practices and answer fundamental questions about deepwater safety, blowout prevention and containment, and oil spill response."
Shallow water drilling activities that use different technologies do not present the same type or level of risks as deepwater drilling operations and can continue to move forward if operators are in compliance with all safety and environmental requirements, including new safety and environmental requirements implemented through recent Notices to Lessees. Production activities in federal waters of the Gulf are not affected by the deepwater drilling suspensions.
BOEM has been tracking shallow water drilling permit requests and well modification permit requests that are required to include the information outlined in NTL-N05 (Safety NTL) and/or NTL-N06 (Environmental NTL).
For those applications required to comply only with NTL-N05, 16 applications have been approved and 16 are pending. For those applications required to comply with NTL –N05 and NTL-N06, 12 requests are pending.
In addition, since June 8, BOEM has approved 18 other shallow water permits, and 4 others are pending, to which there were no permit-specific requirements in either NTL. However, the applicants had to comply with NTL-N05's general (company-wide) certification requirements before these applications could be processed.
Bailey said the new moratorium to halt drilling will result in continuing uncertainty on offshore drillers and Gulf of Mexico-centered offshore supply vessel companies as the moratorium does not provide a meaningful likelihood of deepwater activity resuming before early 2011.
Although a tie back on the bottom 7" liner would have been a better design for the casing program, the disaster still could have been averted if the BP Drilling Supervisor and BP Superintendent on the beach had utilized some common sense as well as exercised sound established oil industry (spelled CONSCIENTIOUS) practices.
1. What was the justification for only utilizing 51 Bbls. of Cement slurry (WITH NITROGEN?). Furthermore, why was there no plan to bring the annular cement column from outside the 7" Liner (@ 18,360 ft.) up to the bottom of the next casing string - 9 7/8" (@ 17,168 ft.)? This primary Cementing job on the bottom hole section was CRITICAL to seal off and isolate the oil and gas bearing formation with the 7" casing.
2. Also, only a total of 6 centralizers were reportedly utilized instead of the recommended 21 by Halliburton while Cementing the 7" Liner. NOTE: Centralizers DO NOT centralize the casing but prevent standoff of the pipe and formation. The additional Centralizers could quite possibly have helped to obtain a primary cement job on the CRITICAL bottom section of hole around the 7" Liner assuming sufficient Cement Slurry volume was utilized.
3. BP only waited 16? hrs on the cement to harden (insufficient time to allow the cement to set and bond to the formation and casing). No Cement Bond Log (CBL) was run. Furthermore, the test on the casing was suspicious or suspect as well according to a BP VP after the fact. Why did work continue without fixing the problem at the source?
4. Even after all the problems associated with the cementing program, then there was the fatal decision while Plugging and Abandoning (P & A) to displace the 14.0 ppg weighted mud in the well with water which could have collapsed the casing if the cement did not have time to set (this could present a problem in the future with cementing the Macondo blowout from one of the relief wells if the casing in the Macondo well is parted, i.e. the casing has no integrity?.) The well was static (did not flow) with 14.0 ppg mud in the well when the decision was made to displace the 14.0 ppg weighted mud with unweighted 8.4? ppg water and pump 3 separate Cement plugs.
I have a quotation which is also relevant to the subject from a textbook entitled, "Practical Well Planning and Drilling Manual" by Steve Devereux (PennWell Books 1998) from the Introduction:
Early in the 1990s, operators and drilling contractors slowed down or stopped their ongoing training programs. This was largely due to low oil prices and high drilling costs. With less activity, many skilled people left the industry. The accountants decided that funds spent on training should be assigned elsewhere (perhaps on recruiting more accountants?) and so the major sources of highly trained, well-rounded drilling people dried up. To continue operating, new contracting schemes transferred responsibility from the operators to the contractors. This led to an exodus of people from the operators to the contractors and into the consulting market, depleting those skills within the operators much faster than by natural attrition and without replacing them, except by employing consultants. Some operators may end up with no one to properly supervise the core business of drilling. This will expose them to risks associated with major incidents such as blowouts without being able to manage that risk. Even on a turnkey well, the operator still has risks...
Another clear trend is that many people planning and supervising wells do not have significant wellsite exposure. You can take the smartest person there is, put them through a degree program, and send them to all possible classroom courses. However, without the practical knowledge--the feel for drilling that comes from years on the rig--they are unlikely to become first class drilling people. They will tend to "use their PCs as a senior partner to make decisions for them rather than as a tool to help them make better-informed decisions themselves". and they will be unduly influenced by the people around them.
Profound and prophetic words.
The real ongoing tragedy will be compounded upon the American public, if the Obama administration is allowed to institute a 6 month moratorium on "deepwater" (> 500 ft.) in the Gulf of Mexico. The phenomena of Annular Gas Flow after Cementing can occur at any water depth or on land for that matter. There is no problematic correlation to water depth.
Bernstein Research reports that if a moratorium is allowed to occur for a year, it would cut global oil supplies by 500,000 Bbls/day between 2013 - 2017. It's nearly the margin right now between World Oil Production of 84.1 Million Bbls/day and World Consumption at 83.7 Million Bbls/day. (See PBS Nightly Business Report (transcripts), May 28th)
Salazar imposed the moratorium on oil shale and now drilling.
You can skip the excuses and the fine print, he is doing what he came there to do.
6 months of unemploymnet checks for the thousands purposely put out of work in the gulf by the decietful despicable criminal cabal.
They create dependents by way of Chicago thuggery. want your check, then you know who to vote for
I have a ?.
Can a Federal Judge put Salazar in jail for repeated attempts to violate a Federal Judge ruling.
If Sal doesn’t agree with a ruling isn’t an appeal the proper route?
What oil company will obey it? NONE.Its not enforceable, unless its by thug rule based not on law, but on political correctness.I hope all the oil commpanies enter into civil disobedience.
Salazar is going for the ‘Double Dog Dare’.
Soros apparently insisted to his puppet in the white house that the US not compete with his international oil investments.
How ‘bout knocking off abusing the Breaking and Frontpage sidebars...
If only you were correct. None of the oil companies will defy the Administration. They will wait for the legal cases to play out and the continued uncertainty about additional legal matters will prevent most or all of them from taking action until specifically authorized by the Interior Department. To do otherwise would lead to immediate shutdown by the Coast Guard and the Interior Department.
Did someone accuse this White House as anti-business?
I hate to see good capitalists have to knuckle under to a fascist junta.The other oil companies havedone nothing wrong, and the Saul Alinsky rule of leaving bo crisis unexploted to forward the fascist rule of environmentalists is in fuull effect. I heat my home with good old American Oak and hard rock maple. Eff all of them.Soon Americans will be paying 7 bucks a gallon for heating oil and the oil companes will be blamed, not these fascist D**K wads.
It has been said a number of times by individuals, but the most recent high profile statements are by the US Chamber of Commerce.
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