Unless the US Federal Government comes forward with very clear terms on exactly what must be done to restart and continue drilling this means nothing and the GOM will stay closed. If they do not do that soon the rigs will be gone and the industry will never return.
[QUOTE=OldHondoHand;37482]Here’s a comment from this thread on Day 2 :
· kwCharlie
Re: Transocean Deepwater Horizon is on fire
How did it happen? We do not know for certain, but according to our sources, the rig had recently set and cemented a tapered 7"x 9 5/8" tapered casing and were somewhere in the process of displacing the riser with seawater and subsequently setting a surface plug when the well blew out. According to one anecdote, the rig was probably less than 24 hours from leaving location when the blowout occurred.
• What caused it? From this analyst’s experience in the cementing industry, the incident appears as if it was either the product of annular gas migration through the cement sheath as it was setting or that the act of displacing the riser to seawater reduced the hydrostatic head enough that it caused the well to start flowing though cement that was not yet hard. With casing in the ground, these two possible explanations seem by far the most likely, although its impossible at this point not to rule out some other cause or contributing factor such as a blow out preventer or a casing integrity issue.
It unloaded, just like the 6000 pound overpressure at haley quinn allison back in 1981. Nothing could stop it.
I think they encountered pressures that even BOP could not handle. Rated 15,000 PSI. Unusual to get near a pound a foot, but not impossible. Saw those type pressures in Loving County back in 1981.
Here it is, in a nutshell, what the Congressional hearings are saying:
“…congressional investigators have identified several mistakes by BP in the weeks leading up to the disaster as it fell way behind on drilling the well.
BP started drilling in October, only to have the rig damaged by Hurricane Ida in early November. The company switched to a new rig, the Deepwater Horizon, and resumed drilling on Feb. 6. The rig was 43 days late for its next drilling location by the time it exploded April 20, costing BP at least $500,000 each day it was overdue, congressional documents show.
As BP found itself in a frantic race against time to get the job done, engineers took several time-saving measures, according to congressional investigators.
In the design of the well, the company apparently chose a riskier option among two possibilities to provide a barrier to the flow of gas in space surrounding steel tubes in the well, documents and internal e-mails show. The decision saved BP $7 million to $10 million; the original cost estimate for the well was about $96 million.
In an e-mail, BP engineer Brian Morel told a fellow employee that the company is likely to make last-minute changes in the well.
“We could be running it in 2-3 days, so need a relative quick response. Sorry for the late notice, this has been nightmare well which has everyone all over the place,” Morel wrote.
The e-mail chain culminated with the following message by another worker: “This has been a crazy well for sure.”
BP also apparently rejected advice of a subcontractor, Halliburton Inc., in preparing for a cementing job to close up the well. BP rejected Halliburton’s recommendation to use 21 “centralizers” to make sure the casing ran down the center of the well bore. Instead, BP used six centralizers.
In an e-mail on April 16, a BP official involved in the decision explained: “It will take 10 hours to install them. I do not like this.” Later that day, another official recognized the risks of proceeding with insufficient centralizers but commented: “Who cares, it’s done, end of story, will probably be fine.”
The lawmakers also said BP also decided against a nine- to 12-hour procedure known as a “cement bond log” that would have tested the integrity of the cement. A team from Schlumberger, an oil services firm, was on board the rig, but BP sent the team home on a regularly scheduled helicopter flight the morning of April 20.
Less than 12 hours later, the rig exploded.
BP also failed to fully circulate drilling mud, a 12-hour procedure that could have helped detect gas pockets that later shot up the well and exploded on the drilling rig.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/business/7065048.html[/QUOTE]
