As the Los Angeles Times notes today:
A team of scientists from the Energy Department discovered a new twist: Their sophisticated imaging equipment detected not one but two drill pipes, side by side, inside the wreckage of the well's blowout preventer on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.While the DOE is only referring to drill pipe and not well casing, many experts have said that the well casing was destroyed also.
BP officials said it was impossible. The Deepwater Horizon rig, which drilled the well, used a single pipe, connected in segments, to bore 13,000 feet below the ocean floor. But when workers cut into the wreckage to install a containment cap this month, sure enough, they found two pipes.
The discovery suggested that the force of the erupting petroleum from BP's well on April 20 was so violent that it sent pipe segments hurtling into the blowout preventer, like derailing freight cars.
It also offered a tantalizing theory for the failure of the well's last line of defense, the powerful pinchers called shear rams inside the blowout preventer that should have cut the pipe and stopped the rising oil and gas from reaching the Deepwater Horizon 5,000 feet above. Drilling experts say those rams, believed to be partially deployed, could have been thwarted by the presence of a second pipe.
The doubled-up drill pipe joins a list of clues that is helping scientists understand the complexities of the Deepwater Horizon accident, and from that, craft changes in how deep-water drilling is conducted.
"We still don't really know what's in" the well wreckage, said Energy Secretary Steven Chu, whose team discovered the second pipe using gamma-ray imaging. He added: "If there were two drill pipes down there when the shear rams closed, or two drill pipes below, is it possible that in the initial accident … there was an explosive release of force?…Did it buckle and snap?…The more we know about this, the better we can know what to do next."
Indeed, the government is making back-up plans in case the relief wells don't work. As the New York Times reported yesterday:
BP and government officials are now talking about a long-term containment plan to pump the oil to an existing platform should the relief well effort fail. While such a failure is considered highly unlikely, the contingency plan is the latest sign that with this most vexing of engineering challenges — snuffing a gusher 5,000 feet down in the gulf — nothing is a sure thing.
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Experts said it was conceivable that the “kill” procedure would not be effective, particularly if only a single relief well was used and the bottom of the well bore was damaged in the initial blowout. Pumping large quantities of erosive mud into the well could even end up damaging the well further, hindering later efforts to seal it.
“I won’t say there haven’t been relief wells that haven’t worked,” said a technician involved in the effort.
There are questions about the damaged well’s condition, particularly near the point where the interception would take place, and whether it could affect the kill procedure.
“No human being alive can know the answers,” said the technician, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the work.
The Department of Energy DID NOT say segments of "oil well casing were violently ejected upwards into the blowout preventer". Their imaging equipment detected two drill pipes, side by side, inside the wreckage of the well's blowout preventer.
ReplyDelete"The discovery suggested that the force of the erupting petroleum from BP's well on April 20 was so violent that it sent pipe segments hurtling into the blowout preventer, like derailing freight cars."
You're confusing "well casing" with "drill pipe".
There is pretty strong evidence that the well casing is compromised which is why top kill was unsuccessful. I agree Chu's statement only confirms the drill pipe was hammered into the BOP. The big question is how far down is the well casing compromised and whether the relief wells will hit below that point...
ReplyDelete“A team of scientists from the Energy Department discovered a new twist”
ReplyDeleteDiscovery? That is old information that the DOE hasn’t divulged until now; they made the gamma ray scan months ago.
Rest of story, Hey, when BP cut into the pipe a month ago, they found pieces of another pipe, just like in the gamma ray survey!
Looks like a press release by DOE to imply they are actively involved with Science. What a Hoot!
Jamie, the top kill was unsuccessful because there has never, in the entire history of the oil industry, been a successful top kill of a flowing well. The only successful top-kills have been of wells that could be enclosed to keep the mud being pumped into the well from flowing out the top. That said, it is clear that their instrumentation of the top kill attempt implied that the well casing would not withstand crimping off the pipe on top of the wellhead to stop the flow. That does not necessarily rule out a bottom kill, since the anomalies they observed were in the casing immediately below the BOP (you might also notice that the BOP is leaning now), and that section of casing will have very little pressure on it with a bottom kill attempt. It does mean, however, that the BOP is in danger of snapping off entirely, at which point we have an entirely uncontained oil volcano at the bottom of the Gulf that won't stop gushing until the reservoir bleeds out, some 2 billion barrels of oil hence...
ReplyDelete