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Government says removal of BP's blowout preventer delayed
HOUSTON |
HOUSTON (Reuters) - BP Plc's efforts to fish out pipe remnants inside equipment atop its blown-out Gulf of Mexico well delayed retrieval of a failed blowout preventer, the top official overseeing the oil spill response said on Wednesday.
"We probably took a 24- to 36-hour hit on the timeline," retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen said.
He had said BP aimed to recover the giant stack of pipes and valves on Thursday. Operations to first retrieve pieces of pipe inside the blowout preventer and other equipment were taking longer than expected, he said.
That pushes blowout preventer removal to Friday or Saturday, he said.
The blowout preventer is key evidence in criminal and civil investigations into the cause of the April 20 blowout that killed 11 men, sank the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and sprung the world's worst offshore oil spill.
Officials want to remove it and install a replacement before resuming drilling on a relief well that will intercept the Macondo well, pump in mud and cement, and kill the leak for good.
The intercept remains on track for shortly after the U.S. Labor Day holiday on September 6, Allen said on Wednesday.
(Reporting by Kristen Hays, editing by Jackie Frank)
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Read Admiral Allen’ last press conference.
He now says they tried fishing out the two small pieces of pipe and gave up on doing that.
When asked if the substance seen inside the BOP was hydrates or cement, he did not know. They tried antifreeze and wood alcohol to flush it out but seem to have not rechecked to see if it still there or is still there — or even if it is cement.
The good thing is that the camera inside did not show that a casing hanger — where one of the liners –had come loose from its casing seat and pushed up to prevent the cut off shear ram from closing. It shows is just drill pipe compressed with the drill pipe in the center of the bore. If a casing liner had pushed its hanger to that level the ram shear would cut hanger, as it is too thick.
As they were converting the well to production, then with the 3000 to 3500 feet of drill pipe still below the sea level, the ram failure is proven by the camera to be due to faulty equipment.
But why were they closing it?
With the drill pipe pulled up and the mud below cut with methane gas, the gas at that pressure is liquid methane and will expand into gas at lower pressures (above 5000 feet seawater depth).
As the liquid methane gets a little above the pressure at 5000 feet, it turns into gas and then starts “kicking” or pushing the fluid out of the drill pipe (which most likely at that point was flushed with only sea water). That kick accelerated as the gas expanded, and as the liquid methane rose it made many many millions of cubic feet of gas per day coming out the top of the well and the motor exhaust caught it on fire with the explosion and rig melt down.
Just knowing these errors would have prevented the blow out.
Because a casing liner was not seen by the camera pushed up, most likely the casing shoes are all still cemented and the present static kill cementing and squeeze have permanently killed this Macondo well. Certainly the 5000 feet of bottom cement is solid and never going anywhere. Now if the annulus at the level of the cement were proven this well is for sure — Declared Killed Twice.
How can they avoid the Relief Well to kill it TWICE — as the static kill only killed it ONCE.
I hope they remove all the pipe in the hole even though it is only 3000 to 3500 feet of it hanging on down to the drill bit. The drill bit would be hanging about 10,000 above the production zone — far far below.
Then they can simply lower a packer on large tubing down to just above the 5000 feet of cement in the bottom of the pipe the static kill left pumped inside the pipe. The cement it pumped out the bottom is most likely plugging the annulus also but needs tested.
They can then set the packer and run perforation equipment through it to perforate into the annulus and test it, as they worry might not be cemented solid enough.
Then using the safety of the packer (as insurance to prevent pressure coming up the casing pipe) pump squeeze another cement job into the annulus if it is not already cemented.
This is everything the relief well would ever do — only it is a simple standard procedure with very little danger compared to using a relief well.
Then with 5000 feet of hard cement in the bottom of the pipe and the annulus outside the pipe cemented — there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING left for the relief well to do.
Now suppose the relief well has the same problem with gas cut mud and blows out and its liner pushes up into its BOP. If its BOP still functions, it would still not cut off the pushed up thick casing hanger. The exact same thing as the Macondo Well will happen. On one earlier test of the BOP on the present relief well, found its kill switch would not work on its BOP.
They say they have it working now.
Suppose the relief well breaks into the annulus of the Macondo well and its mud goes into one of the already know lost circulation regions behind the casing of the Macondo well. Then the lost mud would allow the liquid methane to rise in the relief well and do the same trick as the Macondo well did.
I can think of many many things that could go wrong using a relief well that would be totally not needed and stupid to use if only the seal they lower annulus like I suggested above.
Abandon this relief well.
Chances are it might not do the same thing and blow out, and chances are it will not channel into a lost circulation zone — I don’t know?
Do Allen’s advisers know?
Does BP know?
Do you know?
Really smart people experimenting with the welfare of the Peoples of the Gulf.
Lets get this mess over with — safely — not with Allen’s (daily restated) “abundance of caution” experiments — whatever that statement might mean?
I would rather use something standard and proven by many many decades of Oil and Gas drilling experience.
Experiments — are for Particle Physicists using the Cern Switzerland Collider (praying the don’t discover a new type of Galactic Chain Reaction).
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