[QUOTE=company man 1;36425]Sorry, but I have a few issues with this post. The article refered to said there were 39 blowouts inthe GOM since 2007. Can the author of said article back that up with places & times? The MMS is not a wholly owned subsidiary of the oil & gas industry. I have had to deal with them many times & can factually dispute that. Was there a possibility of graft & corruption between someone at BP & someone in the MMS office who approved their changes ? That is a definite possibility that needs to be investigated in the daylight. Overall, blaming the MMS for not stopping a catastrophe like this before it occurs is no different than blaming the police for not stopping all crime before it occurs. If there is a criminal minded individual that wishes to subvert the law, he will do it & get away with it until he is caught. Well we have a criminal in the net now. As far as stopping deepwater drilling goes, the fact is if BP had followed industry standards & their own policies they wouldn’t have put us in this mess. I do agree that prevention is the only solution & have said so more than once in this thread. However, prevention begins with each & every one of us taking personal resposibility for our own actions. Once again someone without any real knowledge of personal responsibility, commenting on how it’s all the industry’s fault, the government’s fault, & society’s fault because of one negligent party that showed every intention to break as many rules as necessary to get their way. This kind of whacko thinking is the kind of reaction which is just as dangerous to the future of our country as the irresponsible acts leading up to 4/20/10.[/QUOTE]
I have to disagree. MMS, are in place to sanction or reject applications from Operators. They sanctioned this one. The highest Authority in the offshore industry sanctioned this well design conversion. What does this entail?
BP, wanted to run a production casing string from Reservoir to WH. For MMS to sanction it, I assume they made stipulations and looked at the worst case scenario before approving the change of plan. I would like the detail of this agreement to find out what the highest offshore Authority had to say.
For example; assuming the case where casing is set and circulation has begun. Let’s say that after 20 mins of circulation a pack-off tendency was seen, what would MMS require in such circumstances. What would BP want to do? I believe BP would go straight to cementing. And, they’d elect to do a CBL for sure in this case. But, we may have circulated gas up the Annulus in exactly the same circumstances as occurred on the DWH.
From there on, we have the exact same situation confronting us today, if the same steps were followed.
Or, if TO managed to shut in the well, we’d possibly develop a leak through the Glass plug, and therefore, flow from around the WH area.
Did MMS understand the consequences of approving a single completion string as opposed to a lower and upper completion?
Why did the chief of MMS quit? He may have much to hide.