• There seems to be an up tick in Political commentary in recent months. Those of us who are long time members of the site we know that Political and Religious content has been banned for years. Nothing has changed. Please leave all political and religiours commentary out of the fourms.

    If you recently joined the forums you were not presented with this restriction in the terms of service. This was due to a conversion error when we went from vBulletin to Xenforo. We have updated our terms of service to reflect these corrections.

    Please note any post refering to a politicion will be considered political even if it is intended to be humor. Our experience is these topics have a way of dividing the forums and causing deep resentment amoung members. It is a poison to the community. We apprciate compliance with the rules.

    The Staff of SOH

  • Server side Maintenance is done. We still have an update to the forum software to run but that one will have to wait for a better time.

RE: Oil in Gulf; Oh Man, another Titannic/Challenger scenario.

aeromed202

aeromed202

SOH-CM-2014
RE: Oil in Gulf; Oh Man, another Titannic/Challenger scenario.

Just watching 60 Minutes on the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. Even if half true it is truly disgusting how BP managed that, and probably all other wells. Warning signs brushed off by management, damaged equipment approved for use, pressure to drill faster and faster, and a knowledge that any spill recovery cost would be capped by law so they apparently just did what they wanted to maximize profits and viewed any ecological disaster as just the 'capped' cost of doing business.

As usual with these kinds of events, if even one concern was taken seriously or given the respect it deserved there would likely have been no loss of life or polluted and toxic ocean. And where, I would like to know, is the cry for all oil platforms to be inspected now? This one was one of the newest so the others must be even older and worse off. I sure don't trust them.
 
Well, I'm not sure I totally trust “60-Minutes” to not produce a “hit piece” for the purpose of generating ratings, and oil companies have always been a "ratings favorite", but that's another story...

I am fascinated by the engineering challenge here. And lets face it, the only people who have the skills to fix this is the oil company. The EPA, Homeland Security, HUD, and whatever other useless government agency is 100% clueless here, their chest-beating and finger pointing notwithstanding. It's 5000 feet down. How the heck are they going to stop it? It's going to make an interesting Discovery Channel program one day, when they air the “How They Stopped The Gulf Oil Leak” program, but we'll have to wait a while for that one, I'm afraid.
 
That's why I said 60 Minutes. They're usually pretty on the mark but everybody has an opinion. Apparently the technology is there, it just wasn't used right and limits were unreasonably passed. I'm not surprised, just depressed another notch. And you're probably right, the ones who did this are the ones who might know how best to fix it. Now I'm really depressed..
 
60 minutes is a shadow of it's former self.A dressed up version of the enquirer.Do your own research and never take any one source at face value,they have a lot to lose unless they can dig up some scandal or another to feed the slobbering masses.There is very little real journalism left in this country.

Don't get me wrong,this is a bad deal but the technological challenges are huge.And this is not in any way a personal reflection on you so please don't take it that way.
 
Disclaimer: I have worked in the oil and gas industry for 30 years.

In fact, working on the oil rigs as a roustabout paid my way through college. So I am prejudiced toward the O&G industry. I am also believe I am more knowledgeable than anyone at CBS.

I am not going to deny the claims of 60 Minutes. I never watched the episode so I don't know what they said. I will tell you what I have heard from discussions with friends, including one ex-BP engineer, whom I worked with years ago. I don't think cutting corners had a lot to do with this accident. It was one of those "Because a nail fell out, the shoe was lost..." accidents. I will also say that this was not an "if" but a "when". Sooner or later an accident of this proportion was bound to happen. The CEOs of Chevron, Shell, Apache, etc. are all sending thanks to their gods that it wasn't them.

The three companies evolved, Transoceanic, Halliburton and Cameron were the ones upon the accident happened. BP was the well owner but they had contracted the three companies to drill the well.

You must understand that drilling a well 5000 feet below an ocean's surface is no easy feat, under the best of conditions. It is more like NASA putting a man on the moon than anything else. Everything has to be done using remotely guided vehicles. Think of men sitting on a surface ship guiding robots to connect and disconnect things 5000 feet below. that is what happens.

No one knows yet what really happened. The finger pointing was not really far off. It could have been any of them. No one is going to accept guilt without proof. What MAY have happened is a series of events that, if only one had been stopped, the accident would not have happened.

Petroleum engineers and geologists have a pretty good idea of where the oil and gas can be found. The amount is harder to predict. Oil and gas go together. It is the gas below the oil that pushes it to the surface. The pictures of the old gusher wells, spraying oil were due to the gas in the well.

When a well is drilled it is cemented then capped with a series of valves called a christmas tree. Later the cement is drilled out, a line is connected and the valves are opened to allow the well to flow for a period of time. This test tells the engineers what the amount of hydrocarbons or "pay" is. The accident happened when they were trying to cap the well.

Evidently a gas bubble came up the well as they were trying to either cement or cap it. I have heard both. A gas bubble is a very dangerous thing. The engineer has to judge what the maximum pressure he can expect will be. (BP) He tells this to the cementing engineer (Halliburton) who makes sure the weight of the cement he is using is heavy enough to contain the well bore pressure.

Either the well bore was higher than the BP engineer expected or the cement selected by Halliburton was too light OR this gas bubble was so large it overwhelmed the weight of the mud. (The mud engineer from Halliburton was from a town 25 miles away and he was one of the 11 deaths) and the well had a blowout.

This is where Cameron comes in. As a final safey valve blowout preventors (BOPs) are placed on top of the well. Their job, if all else fails, is to crush and cut the pipe sealing the well bore. They too failed.

So, you have a massive gas bubble, which is impossible to predict, rushing to the surface. It pushes the heavy cement up toward the surface with it. The operators detect this and try to pump more cement down the well, to no avail. When they realize it will blow they activate the BOPs, which fail.

Who is at fault?
 
Thanks for your views jmig. Yeah sorry for the early comments but I was just fuming. As I said, if even half the story is true...
 
"This is where Cameron comes in. As a final safey valve blowout preventors (BOPs) are placed on top of the well. Their job, if all else fails, is to crush and cut the pipe sealing the well bore. They too failed."

A large part of my job involves working on improving how we do what we do. We refuse to "live with" something that is not right. To me this seems pretty clear that that "last ditch" system failed in an epic way. Why? Until that is answered anyone out there on a rig should be plenty worried! What is crucial is that the event is studied, the problems pinpointed, and solutions designed and implemented.

I won't go into the circus that was front row center on Capitol Hill this week...:rolleyes:
 
The Risky Hunt for the Last Oil Reserves:

Does Deep Sea Drilling Have a Future?

The oil catastrophe afflicting the Gulf of Mexico underscores just how dangerous offshore oil exploration can be. Oil companies are seeking to extract the planet's last remaining barrels by drilling from ever-deeper sites on the ocean floor that wouldn't even have been considered not too many years ago.
 
KOM.Nausicaa said:
The Risky Hunt for the Last Oil Reserves:

Does Deep Sea Drilling Have a Future?

The oil catastrophe afflicting the Gulf of Mexico underscores just how dangerous offshore oil exploration can be. Oil companies are seeking to extract the planet's last remaining barrels by drilling from ever-deeper sites on the ocean floor that wouldn't even have been considered not too many years ago.
Click to expand...

I think the alarms have been louder from this mishap than the actual problems it has caused. The Valdez mishap was a disaster due to the proximity to the shores. This one happened far enough out that the actual environmental impact is vastly more spread out.

It also seems that BP has finally managed to get a handle of the spill.

Name an industry and you'll find mishaps, many spectacular. I think the media have turned the petroleum industry into a whipping boy and this is done absent of smart economic considerations. Energy is the lifeblood of everyone's job. Reduce the supply and you literally put millions of people out of work very easily.

I think across the board there needs to be a lot less focus on ideals and more focus on sobering reality.

Ken
 
The fact that the impact will be more spread out is the scary part. The full impact of this event has yet to be seen, and may well spread to affect other countries. I think at this point it is too early yet to know what the ecological insult will be.
 
"Ecological insult?"

Did you mean to type "ecological impact?"

Anyway, we already know that vast amounts of oil and gas are released through the ocean floor naturally. I think nature is better at handling these things than we give credit for. Considering how many of these rigs are operating every day, and for how many years they have been operating, I think we should restrain urges to do rash things like shut them down or prevent their future use.

Their safety record remains pretty good. These folks in this industry are good people who work hard and are very intelligent and responsible. Mistakes happen.

Ken
 
Ken, I actually meant it as typed. In my line of work that is the phrase we use as we absolutely cannot allow that sort of thing to occur in my line of work. I guess it is just a phrase I am used to. Ultimately the meaning is the same.
 
Also,think about this.....WW 1&2.How many ships went down,full of fuel and what not.Look up the figures and do a bit of math and you will see that probably millions of gallons of petrochemicals of all kinds went down.The USS Arizona still leaks oil at Pearl Harbor.

This is not to say so what,but we learn from these types of things.And the planet goes on oblivious to our presence. We are fleas on a dog,when the dog scratches,we lose.The planet will be here long after we are gone.
 
N2056 said:
Ken, I actually meant it as typed. In my line of work that is the phrase we use as we absolutely cannot allow that sort of thing to occur in my line of work. I guess it is just a phrase I am used to. Ultimately the meaning is the same.
Click to expand...

OK, that's cool. I had just never head that term used before except in context of human-to-human interaction.

Ken
 

The planet is not now, and never will “suffer” anything. It's just a ball of atoms of various types. It is, as safn1949 pointed out, oblivious to our activities. When the sun goes nova, it won't matter if we failed to recycle out plastic bottles. It won't care, IOW, oblivious. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try to keep our home clean and habitable, but it, the planet, does not care. As for the Gulf Oil situation, I say we leave that to the people who have the ability to solve the problem. That would be BP, Haliburton, Exxon, Shell, etc. Everyone else is clueless.
 
...beams in before the lock...

Yeah humans might be like fleas on a dog, but somtimes the fleas on the dog can cause blood loss, trasmit parasites, diseases, bad things for the dog. Sure overall we are a relatively minor event in the entire history of the planet but we will leave our mark for sure. Kinda like the kid who carves his name in the park bench...'we were here'
 
Big Mess

The one thing I read which made me angry was that there is technology available for such pressures and depths that was mandated by Norway and Brazil but was not required for the Gulf. Plus it is now coming out that the rules in place were not being followed through lax enforcement. I'm not against oil-drilling but I'm against companies that do not work within the regulations. As we say in the aviation maintenance business "Them rules are written in blood".

Regards, Rob:ernae:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top