This is an epic failure of huge proportion.. 210,000 gallons a day spewing into the ocean.. We cant even build an oil rig correctly, no emergency shut off valve, you would figure with the way those green people complained about off shore drilling and the effect it could have on the environment we would have at least got this right.. what a ******** mess.

we should just light the surface, I think it burns if off the water right..

There is actually a emergency shut off valve, the media has it wrong. It is called a blowout preventer. It is standard equipment for all oil drilling. There are 2 giant hydraulic rams on a BOP one to choke the well shut and prevent a leak when under operations, and a second ram to "kill" the well. The kill pretty much pinches the well shut and is like squeezing a coke can in half. These rams and the BOP are tested religiously twice a week sometimes more depending on operations as per MMS requirements. The problem is that the well bore pressure is around 25,000 psi. Fighting against that pressure the rams are useless. Right now the Enterprise and DD3 are in transit to drill an "relief" well to try to control the pressure so the well can be either choked or cemented shut. This kind of thing there was pretty nothing much you could do.

This kind of thing there was pretty nothing much you could do.

 

If you do some research, you understand the magnitude of this pressure and how this ^^ is correct. It is akin to attempting to prevent an earthquake. For all of our technology, we are merely fleas on this terrestrial ball.

some knuckle head from the co, was on the news this morning and said this rig does not have the safety shut off..

And if it does not work what good is it.. another engineering epic failure.. how could we know their is 25,000 lbs of pressure and install a valve that is not capable of closing it off..

 

That would be like wearing a plastic bag for a bullet proof vest.. it sounds better not having one than installing one not capable of doing the job..

I would trust Eric's opinion on this, considering he spends half his life on the rig. =P

 

So any word on actually what went wrong?

I do understand, and realize he works on a rig.. this will be an eye opener for these guy's who do work on them.. the pics he took during the storms were awesome.

we need to learn from our mistakes and this is a big one.. this should not have happened..

I do understand, and realize he works on a rig.. this will be an eye opener for these guy's who do work on them.. the pics he took during the storms were awesome.

we need to learn from our mistakes and this is a big one.. this should not have happened..

 

 

well do we know what actually happened yet?

 

Obviously we want to learn and prevent stuff from happening again, but something new is bound to happen.

 

Prior to this though, how many oil rigs had these massive issues?

Just read an article on comcast. can take up to 3 months to drill that relief hole..

 

http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-ge ... Explosion/

Some new technology is in order..

some knuckle head from the co, was on the news this morning and said this rig does not have the safety shut off..

 

What they are talking about is an Acoustic safety switch for the blowout preventer.

 

The wellhead most certainly had a blowout preventer.

 

It also had an active remote control that could be used in the rig to shut it off or if it loses connection, it has a dead-man's fail safe. What they are talking about is an additional back up. One that can remotely cause the blowout preventer to activate and shut down the well.

 

It's clear that the explosion took place in or around where the controls in the rig were. Once the rig controls were damaged or lost power, the fail safe should have kicked in and they apparently didn't. The other speculation I read is that when the rig sunk it damaged the well head.

Some new technology is in order..

 

The one I don't understand is why isn't there oil spill boats? Boats that run around scarfing up the oil on the surface. The oil floats so it's just a matter of sucking the oil and water into the boat, letting it settle some and decanting the water off the bottom.

 

I used to pump oil wells back in the 70s and 80s and draining the saltwater was just part of the routine maintenance.

 

Now I understand that the oil and water will be mixed and frothy but I'm sure there are ways to increase the separation. Once the boat is full, have a tanker near by that you offload into. Basically, run around scarfing up oil water.

I believe they are doing that, just not enough to make an impact on the amount coming out per day. not enough boats or using old technology.

Now I understand that the oil and water will be mixed and frothy but I'm sure there are ways to increase the separation. Once the boat is full, have a tanker near by that you offload into. Basically, run around scarfing up oil water.

 

Ditto - distillation too...

Interesting article up about this

 

Safety fluid(drilling mud) was removed before oil rig exploded in Gulf

 

http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill ... befor.html

 

There's a great PDF http://media.nola.com/news_impact/other ... 050710.pdf

 

 

The investigation into what went wrong when the Deepwater Horizon exploded April 20 and started spilling millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico is sure to find several engineering failures, from cement seals that didn't hold back a powerful gas bubble to a 450-ton, 40-foot-tall blowout preventer, a stack of metal valves and pistons that each failed to close off the well.

 

There was, however, a simpler protection against the disaster: mud. An attorney representing a witness says oil giant BP and the owner of the drilling platform, Switzerland-based Transocean Ltd., started to remove a mud barrier before a final cement plug was installed, a move industry experts say weakens control of the well in an emergency.

 

When the explosion occurred, BP was attempting to seal off an exploratory well. The company had succeeded in tapping into a reservoir of oil, and it was capping the well so it could leave and set up more permanent operations to extract its riches.

 

In order to properly cap a well, drillers rely on three lines of defense to protect themselves from an explosive blowout: a column of heavy mud in the well itself and in the drilling riser that runs up to the rig; at least two cement plugs that fit in the well with a column of mud between them; and a blowout preventer that is supposed to seal the well if the mud and plugs all fail.

 

In the case of the Deepwater Horizon, Scott Bickford, a lawyer for a rig worker who survived the explosions, said the mud was being extracted from the riser before the top cement cap was in place, and a statement by cementing contractor Halliburton confirmed the top cap was not installed.

 

Mud could have averted catastrophe

 

If all of the mud had still been present, it would have helped push back against the gas burping up toward the rig, though it might not have held it back indefinitely.

 

oil-cause-050710.jpgClick to see a full size PDF file about what happened on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.When the gas got to the sea floor, the third defense - the blowout preventer -- also failed, and it has continued to fail for weeks as unmanned submarines have tried to get it to engage.

 

BP declined to answer questions about exactly how far along they were in the process of closing the well head 5,000 feet below the Deepwater Horizon rig when the explosion occurred.

 

But Halliburton said in a statement that it had completed pouring cement that lines the well 20 hours before the blowout. After that cement lining is done, the federal Minerals Management Service requires at least two prefabricated cement plugs to be placed at the bottom of the well and farther up, with mud packed in between. Halliburton's official statement shows there was still one more cement plug to be inserted.

 

"Well operations had not yet reached the point requiring the placement of the final cement plug which would enable the planned temporary abandonment of the well, consistent with normal oilfield practice," the Halliburton statement said.

 

Lawsuit disputes Halliburton statement

 

But Bickford's client, who was working immediately next to the drill floor at the time of the explosion, claims the rig operators had already started pumping mud out of the riser. Bickford said his client, whose identity he wants to protect for now, will allege human error in the decision to start removing the mud barrier before the well was totally capped.

 

Bickford said his client is the survivor of the rig explosions who called into the April 29 "Mark Levin Show," a nationally syndicated talk show out of WABC in New York, and gave perhaps the most detailed witness description available so far of what was taking place at the time. He used the assumed name "James" on the show.

 

oilspill-blowout-preventer.JPGBP photoThe bottom of the damaged and leaking marine riser sits atop the failed blowout preventer on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. The main tube of the riser guides the drill pipe into the well, while the other pipes carry hydraulic fluid to operate the blowout preventer.

 

"We had set the bottom cement plug," the caller said. "At that point the BOP stack, the blowout preventer, was tested. I don't know the results of that test. However, it must have passed because at that point they elected to displace the marine riser from the vessel to the sea floor. They displaced all the mud out to the riser preparing to unlatch from the well two days later. So they displaced it with sea water."

 

Bickford's client went on to say that the crew opened a valve on the well head, allowing a huge kick of gas to push the seawater out the top of the marine riser and all the way to the top of the rig tower, 240 feet in the air. The resulting explosion probably instantly killed his colleagues who were in the path of the gas, "James" said.

 

Explosion doomed oil rig

 

Crew members were caught off-guard by a gas-bubble kick that spewed watered-down mud and an invisible plume of heavy gas onto the rig, igniting a fiery explosion that killed 11 crew members and doomed the rig.

 

Bickford said his client saw mud being pumped out of the riser and onto boats that normally collect the mud in tanks. Another lawyer, Stuart Smith, said he represents fishermen who witnessed the explosion and saw the mud being extracted beforehand.

 

BP spokesmen have declined to confirm or deny these descriptions of events, saying the details will come out as a result of the ongoing investigation.

 

Other lawsuits by rig workers paint a similar picture. Bill Johnson, a Transocean deck pusher with 35 years of experience on oil rigs, was injured in the explosion and has sued his employer, BP, Halliburton and others in Galveston County, Texas. Johnson's attorney, Kurt Arnold of Houston, said Johnson had a meeting with a BP supervisor about 10 hours before the explosion and was told "things were plugged in the well and good to go. He thinks in retrospect the company man was not following procedure."

 

Another one of Arnold's clients, roustabout Nick Watson, said mud came back up the hole so suddenly before the explosion that he was trying to wipe it away from his eyes on the deck when the power went out and the first explosion came, Arnold said.

 

'Mud weight is the first round of defense'

 

If the final cement plug wasn't in place yet, removing the mud would be at odds with "good oil-field practice" outlined in 2003 by the federal Minerals Management Service. The MMS report, prepared by WEST Engineering Services, warns against single-point failures -- counting on one mode of protection -- by saying that "mud weight is the first round of defense against a kick, followed up by" the blowout preventer. Removing the mud left the blowout preventer as the only failsafe.

 

"To displace mud above the position of the upper plug with water before setting the upper plug means that you are relying on one barrier for the duration; this is not good," said a deepwater drilling expert who did not want to be identified because he does business with BP. The expert is not involved in the Deepwater Horizon project.

 

While the mud could have given workers more time to react to the blowout, the accident itself and the oil spill originated in the failure of the cement and the failure of the blowout protector.

 

Blowouts often related to cement problems

 

Blowouts are not unprecedented, and often they are caused by cementing failures. An MMS study found that half of 39 blowouts on offshore rigs from 1992 to 2006 were related to cement problems.

 

Cement has two roles in oil exploration: It seals the pipe lining the well from the bedrock around it, and it is used to seal wells on the inside before abandoning them. It's not known which of the two cementing jobs was the culprit in the BP accident.

 

Even with the problems with cement seals and the weakening of the mud barrier, the blowout preventer, or BOP, a contraption built by Cameron International, still could have blocked the oil gusher. Unfortunately, those devices, too, have had documented troubles. Transocean Chief Executive Officer Steve Newman reported "a handful of BOP problems" during a call with stock analysts last year, although he said "they were anomalies."

 

According to internal BP documents obtained by The Times-Picayune, the preventer on the Deepwater Horizon's well head had a series of six valves and "pipe rams" that are activated by hydraulic pistons and constrict around the drill pipe to close off the well. BP said those valves failed to close the well before the rig was abandoned. In addition, there's a last-ditch mechanism, called a shear ram, that is supposed to use high pressure to slice clear through the drill pipe and shut off the whole opening.

 

But shear rams have a weakness. They are not engineered to cut through tool joints, the knuckles where sections of the drill pipe are connected every 30 feet. That means that about 10 percent of a pipe is made up of tool joints that a shear ram isn't strong enough to penetrate, said Per Holand, a drilling expert from Norway who has advised the MMS.

 

"If they do not know the exact location of the tool joint, they would normally close a pipe ram and lower the drillpipe until it stops against the pipe ram to ensure that the shear blind ram does not hit a tool joint," Holand said. "This may of course be difficult if you have a crisis on the rig."

 

The removal of the mud could have limited the amount of time the crew had to work through the process Holand described.

 

The shear ram is activated by a button on a control panel on the drill ship. An MMS safety alert in 2000 urged drill operators on the Outer Continental Shelf to have a backup method for activating the blowout preventer.

 

Blowout preventer backup not required

 

But the United States does not require the acoustic backup system that must be used in Norway, Canada and Brazil. Holand said such an acoustic system could have helped avert such a massive spill from the Deepwater Horizon well if the section of pipe inside the blowout preventer was normal-sized. But if there were tool joints inside the preventer, an acoustic trigger system "may not have worked" anyway, Holand said.

 

Robots on the seafloor have been unable to activate the shear ram using a manual switch.

 

Even if a tool joint wasn't in its way, the shear ram may not have been strong enough to cut through the pipe under the intense conditions at the bottom of the sea, where fluid inside the well bore may be as hot as 400 degrees and the water on the seabed outside can be just above freezing. The shear rams are rarely, if ever, put to the test in real-life emergencies.

 

Because the shear rams are the prevention method of last resort and would destroy any drill pipe if used -- costing oil companies a tremendous sum of money -- they are tested on location just to see if they move, without any pipe getting cut. The standards for manufacturing them with enough force to actually cut a drill in two at the bottom of the sea are all based on formulas.

 

In a September 2004 study for the MMS, researchers from WEST Engineering found that BOP manufacturers were not using the best models for calculating the necessary force and were not adjusting the force according to different types of pipes.

 

With all of these potential Achilles' heels, it's amazing that oil companies and regulators haven't prepared for the possibility that all of the redundant protections could fail at once, said Mark Davis, director of the Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy at Tulane University Law School.

 

"It doesn't matter how many levels of sophistication there are in the blowout prevention device; if you have nothing to fall back on that's when a spill becomes catastrophic," he said. "We in New Orleans know, this is almost like building levees, you can build them with the expectation that they will hold in every event, but we know there's risk of something unknown and unprepared for. The risk of harm is so great, that's why we need a backup system on the two-to-three-day horizon, not 60-to-90 days."

Also, as I was googling a bit for more information I found this. A Marlin stuck in a blowout preventer.

 

This view should look really familiar for usnmars(Eric).

 

whoever is doing the flying in that video sucks. Too bouncy and not smooth enough!

First reports on the news is that it appears the "top kill" procedure is working.

 

Watch Liebama take credit once again for something he had nothing to do with.

 

Of course he hasn't done sh*t where his responsibilty lies, keeping the oil from reaching shore.

6 months, no work. Killing yet one more industry. Is this effing guy for real?

 

Let's just all sit in the cold because oil is dirty. Sheesh.

 

-----------

http://www.newser.com/article/d9fv4bv00 ... plans.html

 

AP source: Obama extends stop on deepwater oil wells, cancels Western Gulf, Va. drilling plans

 

 

Obama on Thursday will also announce delays in drilling off the coasts of Alaska and cancellations of pending lease sales off the Virginia coast and in the Western Gulf.

 

At a midday press conference, the president will direct new standards and steps to enhance safety, the aide said, speaking on condition of anonymity ahead of the event.

 

The announcements come after a 30-day safety review of offshore drilling conducted by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar at Obama's direction.

 

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

 

WASHINGTON (AP) _ President Barack Obama, stepping up his response to the Gulf oil spill, plans to announce new drilling restrictions while subjecting himself to the most intensive questioning yet on the subject before traveling to the stricken region.

 

As the five-week-old spill fouls Louisiana coastal areas and threatens political harm to his administration, Obama is rolling out a multi-pronged response: accepting and deflecting portions of the blame, adopting new safety standards and trying to reassure Americans that every possible step is being taken to cap the underwater gusher and clean up the spreading mess.

 

He'll face reporters Thursday, then travel to the Gulf Coast on Friday.

 

The administration on Thursday will also announce delays in granting permits to drill in the Arctic and in portions of the Gulf. Shell Oil is poised to begin exploratory drilling this summer on Arctic leases as far as 140 miles offshore.

 

For all his power to make such rules, however, the president must depend mainly on the company that was leasing the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig when the explosion occurred, killing 11 people. BP PLC began a new effort Wednesday to plug the mile-deep well with heavy drilling mud, a tactic never before tried at such depths.

 

Any early hint of success _ which conceivably could come Thursday _ would prove enormously welcome to the Gulf region, of course, but also to the White House, Congress, federal agencies and other institutions that share responsibility for oversight, regulation and what went wrong.

 

Obama has taken few public questions since the April 20 oil rig explosion. But he will conduct a full-blown news conference Thursday at the White House, aides said. He also will discuss highlights of a preliminary report from Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on lessons to be learned from the disaster. Recommendations include the slowdown on Arctic and Gulf drilling.

 

At the Capitol on Thursday, lawmakers will grill various officials at five congressional hearings. Topics will include the Gulf spill's environmental damage, the administration's response and the impact on small businesses.

 

On Wednesday, Salazar told the House Natural Resources Committee that lax oversight of oil companies dates to the administration of Republican President George W. Bush.

 

"Essentially whatever it is they wanted is what they got," Salazar said.

 

GOP Rep. Doug Lamborn of Colorado asked when Obama's team would stop blaming problems on an administration that left office 16 months ago. Salazar replied that the federal Minerals Management Service, while heavily criticized lately, is still not "the candy store of the industry, which you and others were a part of."

 

Salazar said a "relentless effort" is under way to combat the Gulf spill. It involves more than 20,000 people in the affected area and more than 1,000 ships and vessels "out there in the ocean trying to clean up the spill," he said.

 

TV images of oil constantly gushing from an underwater pipe have stoked public anger toward BP and a federal government that appears ill-equipped to deal with the fiasco.

 

"We're going to bring every resource necessary to put a stop to this thing," Obama said Wednesday in California, where his stop at a solar energy plant was overshadowed by the latest efforts to cap the leaking oil well. "But a lot of damage has been done already."

We got shut down this afternoon. They aren't even letting us finish the hole we are drilling and we are almost done with it. This is going to kill the economy especially in la. Right now they are saying the people may get layed off and them send the rigs to Africa or brazil, why keep them just sitting there when they could be making money elsewhere. This sounds great for the economy and gas prices!

This sounds great for the economy and gas prices!

 

Exactly what I was thinking when I heard the "6 month" moratorium on drilling. I thought this idjit was supposed to get us off foreign oil.

Imagine what it will cost to heat your house this winter. Remember what happens to gas prices when a hurricane hits the gulf? That is just short term, this is going to be 6 mos. BOHICA!!!!!

Glad I heat with firewood. Wish I could power my car that way. Methinks the turbo would get all jammed up with the wood splinters.

what a dumbass..... the marlin, but the president too. =P

what a dumbass..... the marlin, but the president too. =P

 

 

:hope:

We got shut down this afternoon. They aren't even letting us finish the hole we are drilling and we are almost done with it. This is going to kill the economy especially in la. Right now they are saying the people may get layed off and them send the rigs to Africa or brazil, why keep them just sitting there when they could be making money elsewhere. This sounds great for the economy and gas prices!

 

 

It does suck but seen this coming, these co's need to learn to make repairs and keep their shit up to snuff...as we see this oil rig had many problems that needed to be addressed that were ignored by the co. to keep production rolling....they killed 11 workers on this rig and destroyed an ecosystem..

I do not know what to say anymore. I have never seen someone so intent on ruining our Country that was not a Foreign Despot as this President is. I truly believe they/he wants a seperation of classes, you are either rich or poor. And I believe they/he let this disaster get worse with lack of response to further erode our country and get there. I can not think of a logical explenation otherwise.

Some new technology is in order..

 

The one I don't understand is why isn't there oil spill boats? Boats that run around scarfing up the oil on the surface. The oil floats so it's just a matter of sucking the oil and water into the boat, letting it settle some and decanting the water off the bottom.

 

I used to pump oil wells back in the 70s and 80s and draining the saltwater was just part of the routine maintenance.

 

Now I understand that the oil and water will be mixed and frothy but I'm sure there are ways to increase the separation. Once the boat is full, have a tanker near by that you offload into. Basically, run around scarfing up oil water.

 

So my question gets answered.

 

http://www.hydro-international.com/news ... _Test.html

 

BP Approves Oil Separation Device Test

27/05/2010

BP has agreed to test Ocean Therapy Solutions' centrifugal processing device that separates oil from the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. John Houghtaling, CEO of Houghtaling and Williams (New Orleans, LA, USA), received word this afternoon after speaking with BP President Doug Suttles. Houghtaling partnered with movie star Kevin Costner and other local investors to promote the machines. Houghtaling and Costner formed Ocean Therapies in the wake of the Horizon oil spill in the Gulf.

 

"The machines are basically sophisticated centrifuge devices that can handle a huge volume of water and separate at unprecedented rates. They were developed from older centrifuge technology. Normal centrifuge machines are very slow and sensitive to different ratios of oil to water mixtures at intake," Houghtaling said. Costner has been funding a team of scientists for the last 15 years to develop a technology which could be used for massive oil spills.

 

British Petroleum viewed a demonstration of the device last Thursday afternoon.

 

The machines can be taken out into the spill area via barges, where they can separate the oil and water. The machines come in different sizes, the largest of which can clean water at a rate of 200 gallons per minute, more than 50 gallons faster than the well is leaking. One machine alone can clean up to 210,000 gallons of polluted water per day. Depending on the oil to water ratio, the machine has the ability to extract 2,000 barrels of oil a day from the Gulf. Once separation has occurred, the oil is stored in tanks. The water is then more than 99% clean of crude.

I do not know what to say anymore. I have never seen someone so intent on ruining our Country that was not a Foreign Despot as this President is. I truly believe they/he wants a seperation of classes, you are either rich or poor. And I believe they/he let this disaster get worse with lack of response to further erode our country and get there. I can not think of a logical explenation otherwise.

 

 

Worse yet - you will be considered RICH.

A consolidation page of all the ROV cams.

 

http://www.jtnog.org/