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ThatDamnedPanda -> RE: Oil flow stopped!? (7/15/2010 4:38:42 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: SL4V3M4YB3
Perhaps with the cement plug they can maintain a backpressure as they drill whereas with plain drilling they don't typically do so?
Nah, because the relief well is just plain drilling. It's just a regular well that taps into the existing borehole, then they pump mud through the relief well into the original borehole until the weight of the mud becomes greater than the pressure of the upflowing oil. Only at that point is the cement brought into play, many hours - perhaps even days - after the relief well taps into the original casing.
quote:
ORIGINAL: SL4V3M4YB3
We know it's basically make it up as you go along because if they had a plan it wouldn't have taken 80 plus days to fix it.
No argument from me, bro. It's utterly mind-boggling to me that nobody in any capacity, either in the industry or the government, anticipated this possibility. In my opinion, people need to go to prison over this. For long periods of time.
quote:
ORIGINAL: SL4V3M4YB3
Are they going to incorporate this cap with 'partial relief values' on all future drilling expeditions? Seems like a pretty straightforward idea to gradually increase the pressure, why it wasn't incorporated to the original BOP is uncertain.
In this case, it wouldn't have done any good, because it would have been destroyed or badly damaged by the blowout itself. The only way they could get this thing attached was to unbolt the damaged original riser pipe and bolt the new contraption on. If it had already been on there, this would have been the damaged pipe. One thing that I think will be different in the future, though, is that if (god forbid) anything like this ever happens again, this will be Plan A, instead of being Plan Three Months And 225,000,000 Gallons After The Fucking Thing Blows Up.
quote:
ORIGINAL: SL4V3M4YB3
The original BOP design operation was to clamp down and crush the pipe stopping the flow immediately. If it had occurred to them at the time that the leaky hosepipe analogy would have been an issue then I don't see how this would have been the ideal design operation of the BOP.
You've touched on an issue that I think is going to get a lot of discussion going forward, as we move past the "quick put out the fire!!!" phase and into the "thank god that's over, how do we keep this from happening again" phase.
I don't think anyone seriously considered the possibility that a major blowout could damage the casing so badly, throughout the entire length of the borehole, that a blowout preventer could do more harm than good. They're going to have to consider it now, though, because there's a very real possibility that had the blowout preventer worked as intended - and slammed the pipe shut instantaneously - the well could have been so badly damaged by the backpressure that they might never have been able to shut it off with a relief well.
They're obviously going to have to fundamentally reconsider everything they thought they knew about deepwater drilling, including the possibility that they may never be able to do it safely at all. The pressure in the Macando formation is around 25,000 psi, which is very high by conventional standards, but nothing compared to some of the huge deepwater reservoirs that the industry is hoping to drill in the coming years - some of which exceed pressures of 35,000 psi. It may very well be that we simply do not have the technology to safely tap into those pressures. Certainly we don't know now, which is why we haven't drilled them, but it may well be that we'll never be able to. We shall see.
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