BP says failed blowout preventer off Gulf well
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HOUSTON (Reuters) - BP Plc removed a failed blowout preventer from atop its ruptured Gulf of Mexico oil well on Friday afternoon, a company spokesman said.
"The Deepwater Horizon BOP stack was successfully detached" from the Macondo well shortly after 1 p.m. CDT (2 p.m. EDT), spokesman Daren Beaudo said.
"There is no oil coming from it," he said of the well.
One of several live feeds of the procedure from underwater robots showed a cloudy brown substance coming from the well. Beaudo said the "trailing brownish material" was residual drilling mud pumped into the well in earlier operations.
A blowout preventer is intended to shut off a well if oil or gas uncontrollably rushes to the top. It failed to do so in the case of the Macondo well.
BP will replace the 50-foot (15-m) stack of valves and pipes with a working blowout preventer and then resume drilling a relief well to plug the leak for good, the company said.
Retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the top U.S. official overseeing the spill response, said officials are monitoring the slow lifting process.
"We will continue to closely monitor progress as the BOP, which along with the latching device weighs approximately 1 million pounds, is lifted to the surface in the next 24-36 hours," Allen said in a statement.
The company said earlier on Friday that, weather permitting, BP expects the relief well to intersect the Macondo well near its bottom about 13,000 feet beneath the seabed in mid-September.
BP will then pump mud and cement into the well to ensure the leak is dead, the company said.
BP and government officials did not expect oil to leak from the well once the failed blowout preventer was lifted off. The company pumped cement into the well from the top on August 5, which officials believe sealed off the well from the reservoir.
The failed blowout preventer is critical evidence in various investigations into the April 20 blowout that led to an explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and killed 11 men.
Officials removed it before finishing the relief well to preserve its value as evidence and ensure a working blowout preventer was on the well to handle any pressure increases when drilling resumes.
(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
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Watched the Macondo 262 BOP on the live camera as they pulled it off the Well Head today at 1:20 + 30sec CST and lightened some of the screen captures to try and see the Drill Pipe hanging below the Well Head.
I could see none — could you?
Seems all I saw was smokey stuff falling out of the old failed BOP after they raised it (possibly old residual mud).
Highlight and paste the picture in your Browser to see this:
http://i1000.photobucket.com/albums/af122/alkanalkan/Pull%20off%20BOP/Pull-Off-BOP.jpg?t=1283559544
With no drill pipe showing — or falling just as they pulled off the BOP? — that pipe should NOW be fished out and Cement Bond Logs run to check the lower annulus and the bottom of the well viewed before any opening in the annulus is made.
You would not let BP do major surgery on your brain before running some scans and tests.
Allen and BP would be total fools not to do expensive “diagnostic tests” before opening the annulus (not knowing what their surgery might find).
I sure don’t want anyone experimenting on me and operating on me without knowing what is available to study — and the results of that study.
Suppose they fish out this fallen drill pipe and the logs show perfect cement bonding outside the lower casing in the annulus.
The entire purpose of the Relief Well is to seal the annulus to prevent hydrocarbons from the Monster Zone below.
There would be 5000 feet of rock hard cement in the lower casing that is impossible to leak by and only the annulus could possibly leak something.
If they find that annulus cement on the diagnostic test to be perfectly sealed the well is perfectly declared sealed and must be declared forever dead.
Why use any experimental surgery to do what already is cured.
However if they find weak cement or any place in the lower annulus near the 5000 foot plug in the bottom of the casing, then it must be sealed.
At that point there are two possible ways to repair the annulus.
1.) Run large tubing with a packer on it so nothing can pass it coming up the casing once it is set — and set the packer.
Then have Haliburton use a wire line through the tubing and through the packer to the spot the diagnostic tests show cement is needed and perforate holes through the pipe into the annulus.
The packer protects against anything coming up the casing that might come in from the annulus holes.
Then pump a “cement squeeze job” into the annulus to repair it — totally protected by the packer with tubing up to the ship.
This is all standard procedure tested by many many years of O&G experience.
The let the cement set.
Remove the packer and re-log the well to prove it is Killed Forever. Show the logs to Allen and let Haliburton engineers explain this to him and his so called science team.
Then officially declare the well — Killed Twice — and forever DEAD.
2.) Finish the Relief well and run the risk of the identical problem of a liquified methane rising and forming a bubble as it turns to gas and flow over the top of the relief well to re-create this whole mess. Suppose that does not happen and they only open up the annulus to blow out up the annulus where there is no pipe –creating a blow out impossible to repair. Suppose any one of a miriad of other accidents happen. Dudley admits this is a rate thing to experiment with a Relief Well at this 18,000 foot Depth below 5000 foot of sea water and thinks it should be done to learn about what can be done and whatever new dangers lurk. He seems to think it is a great experiment.
Allen wants it because early on he stated that the relief well will be used for the final KILL. His science team seems to go along with BP.
Method 1.) is the standard very very safe way to kill this well twice.
Just abandon 2.) and plug the relief well.
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