Posted on 05/07/2010 9:29:45 PM PDT by The Magical Mischief Tour
ON THE GULF OF MEXICO -- The deadly blowout of an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico was triggered by a bubble of methane gas that escaped from the well and shot up the drill column, expanding quickly as it burst through several seals and barriers before exploding, according to interviews with rig workers conducted during BP's internal investigation.
While the cause of the explosion is still under investigation, the sequence of events described in the interviews provides the most detailed account of the April 20 blast that killed 11 workers and touched off the underwater gusher that has poured more than 3 million gallons of crude into the Gulf.
Portions of the interviews, two written and one taped, were described in detail to an Associated Press reporter by Robert Bea, a University of California Berkeley engineering professor who serves on a National Academy of Engineering panel on oil pipeline safety and worked for BP PLC as a risk assessment consultant during the 1990s. He received them from industry friends seeking his expert opinion.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Sounds like a mud problem.
Damn whales.
The rig was destroyed by a fart.
The earth farted and it was Bushes fault?
Is it true, or a dumb rumor, that the rig was being inspected 2 hours before the explosion?
Wait just a damn minute here. I’ve been told that cows and other livestock fart and destroy the world.
Now I’m told that the earth basically farted when we drilled into some deep structure, but that was OK (including the 11 dead), and I should be more concerned with some bird getting gummed up from landing in the slick.
Just so I have that straight.
Bird in the slick > Earth’s destruction > cow farts > 11 dead > earth farts.
You can't make up this stuff.
No, the blowout was caused by some idiots who failed in their cementing and idiots who took the mud out of the hole.
guess it wasn’t a little fart....
Sad. You cannot make mistakes on these rigs. RIP.
The mud is what temporarily helps keep the blowout from the gas or oil?
Clathrate! I was gonna say clathrate. But how was this such a surprise?
Based on the interviews with rig workers, none of those safeguards worked.
The whole scenario reminds me of the big LHC ( Large Hadron Collider ) meltdown. I attended a talk on that a month or so ago. There was a whole system in place to handle a "quench" of a superconducting magnet, an event that suddenly creates a huge current surge. When it actually happened, the system was grossly inadequate for the occasion. The speaker remarked that nobody really expected it to happen.
Nope. Tempting fate: “Seven BP executives were on board the Deepwater Horizon rig celebrating the project’s safety record, according to the transcripts.”
What’s the difference between an elephant fart and a saloon?
A saloon is a bar.
An elephant fart is a barrooooom!
LOL
They used SEAWATER to backfill the downhole before starting to cement the well.
Didn’t work, eh?
Haliburton screwed the pooch
I ripped this off of The Businessinsider blog (www.businesinsider.com)
Here’s the nut of it:
From Halliburton’s presentation (large pdf), page 10, last November (my bold):
Challenges
• Shallow water flow may occur during or after cement job
• Under water blow out has happened
• Gas flow may occur after a cement job in deepwater environments that contain major hydrate zones.
• Destabilization of hydrates after the cement job is confirmed by downhole cameras.
• The gas flow could slow down in hours to days if the de- stabilization is not severe.
• However, the consequences could be more severe in worse cases.
Page 13 lists the design objectives but then concedes they can’t all be met at once:
Deepwater Well Objectives
• Cement slurry should be placed in the entire annulus with no losses
• Temperature increase during slurry hydration should not destabilize hydrates
• There should be no influx of shallow water or gas into the annulus
• The cement slurry should develop strength in the shortest time after placement
Conditions in deepwater wells are not
conducive to achieving all of these
objectives simultaneously
Gas Hydrates that deep are bad news.
They were using synthetic oil based mud to drill which is undersaturated. They claimed that they were having problems with gas and kicking in this well.
When they were cementing they must have taken a kick and not seen it as the gas went into saturation into the oil based mud. They should have seen the pressure on the marine riser increase but apparently noone noticed it. This would have been an indication that the pressure was high in the riser and evidence of a kick.
Then they displaced the marine riser to seawater over the BOP and opened up the annulars. Then it blew out. It was associated gas which is generally 94% methane.
Mud of various weights is used in the entire drilling process as it lubricates the bit, flushes shale and keeps the pressures in check.
Well, at least we know, but I still want to know why Omgbama sent SWAT teams. Want to know why he’s so damn jumpy.
bttt
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