Louisiana deep oil drilling disaster

[Ed Jewett]

“…this massive industrial accident couldn't have happened in a better location. Only a nation which sees one class of its own citizens as "untouchables" (compared to the highest class, which produces a religious variant of the elite that are referred to as "godmen") could be counted on to defend the corporations instead of the victimized poor, in an industrial travesty of this magnitude.”

Which massive industrial accident?


(Reuters) - BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg on Tuesday apologized for speaking "clumsily" by referring to those hurt by his company's oil spill as "small people."

[Peter Lemkin]

http://www.truth-out.org/how-bushs-doj-k...cials59648

How Bush's DOJ Killed a Criminal Probe Into BP That Threatened to Net Top Officials

Mention the name of the corporation BP to Scott West and two words immediately come to mind: Beyond Prosecution.

West was the special agent in charge with the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) criminal division who had been probing alleged crimes committed by BP and the company's senior officials in connection with a March 2006 pipeline rupture at the company's Prudhoe Bay operations in Alaska's North Slope that spilled 267,000 gallons of crude oil across two acres of frozen tundra - the second largest spill in Alaska's history - which went undetected for nearly a week.

West was confident that the thousands of hours he invested into the criminal probe would result in felony charges against the company and the senior executives who received advanced warnings from dozens of employees at the Prudhoe Bay facility that unless immediate steps were taken to repair the severely corroded pipeline, a disaster on par with that of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill was only a matter of time.

In fact, West, who spent more than two decades at the EPA's criminal division, was also told the pipeline was going to rupture - about six months before it happened.

In a wide-ranging interview with Truthout, West described how the Justice Department (DOJ) abruptly shut down his investigation into BP in August 2007 and gave the company a "slap on the wrist" for what he says were serious environmental crimes that should have sent some BP executives to jail.

He first aired his frustrations after he retired from the agency in 2008. But he said his story is ripe for retelling because the same questions about BP's record are being raised again after a catastrophic explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig killed 11 workers and ruptured an oil well 5,000 feet below the surface that has been spewing upwards of 200,000 barrels of oil per day into the Gulf waters for a month..

[Peter Lemkin]

Well, award-winning journalist and bestselling author Stephen Kinzer is out with a new book that looks back into history to make some sense of these shifting alliances in the Middle East and to chart a new vision for US foreign policy in the region. The former New York Times correspondent is the author of a number of books, including All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror and Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq. His latest book, out this week, is called Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America’s Future. Stephen Kinzer joins me now from Washington, DC.

Welcome to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us, Stephen.

STEPHEN KINZER: Great to be with you again, Amy. Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Actually, I want to start where you—descriptions and analysis you gave in your previous books, which you continue in Reset, and it has to do with BP. Before we get to Turkey and Iran and Israel currently, I wanted to go back in time. President Obama has gone down to Mississippi, and he’s going to be in the Gulf Coast for a few days. But there’s very little discussed about BP’s history, and I’m wondering if you could start with us there.

STEPHEN KINZER: The history of the company we now call BP over the last hundred years has really traced the arc of global transnational capitalism. This company began as a kind of a wildcatting operation in Iran back in the first decade of the twentieth century. It was very entrepreneurial and risk-taking, and they had a bunch of geologists running around in these very forbidding steppes and deserts, and finally they struck what was the greatest find up to that time in the history of the oil industry. They were the ones who discovered that Iran was sitting on an ocean of oil. And then they decided they would take it. Under a corrupt deal that they had struck with a few representatives of the old declining Iranian monarchy, all of whom had been paid off by the company, this concession, which later became known as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, guaranteed itself, or won the right to own, all of Iran’s oil. So, nobody in Iran had any right to drill for oil or extract oil or sell oil.

Then, soon after that find was made, the British government decided to buy the company. So the Parliament passed a law and bought 51 percent of that company. And all during the 1920s and 1930s and 1940s, the entire standard of living that people in England enjoyed was supported by oil from Iran. All the trucks and jeeps in Britain were being run on Iranian oil. Factories all over Britain were being funded by oil from Iran. The Royal Navy, which projected British power all over the world, was run 100 percent on oil from Iran. So that became a fundamental foundation of British life.

And then, after World War II, when the winds of nationalism and anti-colonialism were blowing throughout the developing world, Iranians developed this idea: we’ve got to take our oil back. And that was the general—the kind of national passion that brought to power Mohammad Mosaddegh, who was the most prominent figure in the democratic period of Iran during the late '40s and early ’50s. It was Mosaddegh's desire, supported by a unanimous vote of the democratically elected parliament of Iran, to nationalize what was then the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. They carried out the nationalization.

The British and their partners in the United States fiercely resisted this. And when they were unable to prevent it from happening, they organized the overthrow of Mosaddegh in 1953. So that overthrow not only produced the end of the Mosaddegh government, but the end of democracy in Iran, and that set off all these other following consequences. The Shah ruled for twenty-five years with increasing repression. His rule produced the explosion of the late '70s that produced the Islamic regime. So, it was to protect the interests of the oil company we now know as BP that the CIA and the British Secret Service joined together to overthrow the democratic government in Iran and produce all the consequences we've seen in Iran over the last half-century.

AMY GOODMAN: And that involved both Dulles brothers—people often fly into Dulles Airport—John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and also Teddy Roosevelt’s grandson.

STEPHEN KINZER: Yeah, history is kind of winking at us from that episode. It’s quite an interesting quirk that Theodore Roosevelt, who essentially brought the United States into the regime change era around the very beginning of the twentieth century, wound up having a grandson who began the modern age of intervention. Bear in mind that Iran was the first country where the CIA went in to overthrow a government. When Teddy Roosevelt was overthrowing governments, there was no CIA. So each of them opened a chapter in the history of American interventionism.

AMY GOODMAN: And why—before we move forward now, why did the US intervene on behalf of a British company, what later became British Petroleum, or BP?

STEPHEN KINZER: There were several reasons for it. Part of it had to do with the desire for transatlantic solidarity. But I really think there were two key reasons. One was that the Americans persuaded themselves that they had to fight communism somewhere in the world. That was the idea with which Dulles and Eisenhower came into power in 1953, that they would no longer stick with the strategy of containment of communism, but they were going to a new strategy of rollback. But once they got into power, they were thinking, "How are we going to roll back communism? We can’t invade the Soviet Union. We’re not going to bomb China."

And here is where the other piece came in. The British were very eager to overthrow Mosaddegh in order to get back their oil company. But when they presented the plan to Dulles and Eisenhower, the agent who they sent to Washington, who has later written his memoirs, did something very clever. He decided it’s not going to work if I tell the Americans, "Please overthrow Mosaddegh so we can have our oil company back." The Americans won’t respond to that. They won’t care enough. They’ll be afraid of the precedent of a government taking over a corporation that produces a resource in a poor country. That’s a bad precedent for John Foster Dulles and Americans, just as much as it is for the British. But what the Americans are really concerned about at this moment in the early '50s is communism, so let's tell them that Mosaddegh is leading Iran toward communism. Now, Mosaddegh was an elderly aristocrat who despised all socialist and Marxist ideas, but that was just a detail. He was able to be portrayed as a person who was weak enough so that later on his fall might produce an attempt by communists to take over in Iran.

So it was this combination of wanting to make sure that the example was not given in the world that nationalist governments could just nationalize companies owned by rich countries, and secondly, anybody who could come into the American scope as being possibly not even sympathetic to communism, but creating a situation in which, after he was gone, there might be instability that could lead to a communist government, would wind up being a target of the US.

[Ed Jewett]

http://www.truthout.org/how-bushs-doj-ki...cials59648

.

Link does not work.

[Peter Lemkin]

http://www.truthout.org/how-bushs-doj-ki...cials59648

.

Link does not work.

Try this one
http://www.truth-out.org/how-bushs-doj-k...cials59648

[Ed Jewett]

Many thanks; wanted to pass it on. :driver:

[Keith Millea]

This was posted on the EF by Douglas Caddy(thanks Douglas).I'm sorry,but this will scare the Holy Crap out of you.If you are a religious person Pray.Pray Hard........

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6593/648967
70 comments on Deepwater Oil Spill - A Longer Term Problem, Personnel - and Open Thread 2

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dougr on June 13, 2010 - 3:17am Permalink | Subthread | Comments top
[B]Editors' note for first-time visitors: What follows is a comment from a The Oil Drum reader. To read what The Oil Drum staff members are saying about the Deepwater Horizon Spill, please visit the front page. (Were the US government and BP more forthcoming with information and details, the situation would not be giving rise to so much speculation about what is actually going on in the Gulf. This should be run more like Mission Control at NASA than an exclusive country club function--it is a public matter--transparency, now!)[/B]

OK let's get real about the GOM oil flow. There doesn't really seem to be much info on TOD that furthers more complete understanding of what's really happening in the GOM.
As you have probably seen and maybe feel yourselves, there are several things that do not appear to make sense regarding the actions of attack against the well. Don't feel bad, there is much that doesn't make sense even to professionals unless you take into account some important variables that we are not being told about. There seems to me to be a reluctance to face what cannot be termed anything less than grim circumstances in my opinion. There certainly is a reluctance to inform us regular people and all we have really gotten is a few dots here and there...
First of all...set aside all your thoughts of plugging the well and stopping it from blowing out oil using any method from the top down. Plugs, big valves to just shut it off, pinching the pipe closed, installing a new bop or lmrp, shooting any epoxy in it, top kills with mud etc etc etc....forget that, it won't be happening..it's done and over. In fact actually opening up the well at the subsea source and allowing it to gush more is not only exactly what has happened, it was probably necessary, or so they think anyway.
So you have to ask WHY? Why make it worse?...there really can only be one answer and that answer does not bode well for all of us. It's really an inescapable conclusion at this point, unless you want to believe that every Oil and Gas professional involved suddenly just forgot everything they know or woke up one morning and drank a few big cups of stupid and got assigned to directing the response to this catastrophe. Nothing makes sense unless you take this into account, but after you do...you will see the "sense" behind what has happened and what is happening. That conclusion is this:
The well bore structure is compromised "Down hole".
That is something which is a "Worst nightmare" conclusion to reach. While many have been saying this for some time as with any complex disaster of this proportion many have "said" a lot of things with no real sound reasons or evidence for jumping to such conclusions, well this time it appears that they may have jumped into the right place...
TOP KILL - FAILS:
This was probably our best and only chance to kill this well from the top down. This "kill mud" is a tried and true method of killing wells and usually has a very good chance of success. The depth of this well presented some logistical challenges, but it really should not of presented any functional obstructions. The pumping capacity was there and it would have worked, should have worked, but it didn't.
It didn't work, but it did create evidence of what is really happening. First of all the method used in this particular top kill made no sense, did not follow the standard operating procedure used to kill many other wells and in fact for the most part was completely contrary to the procedure which would have given it any real chance of working.
When a well is "Killed" using this method heavy drill fluid "Mud" is pumped at high volume and pressure into a leaking well. The leaks are "behind" the point of access where the mud is fired in, in this case the "choke and Kill lines" which are at the very bottom of the BOP (Blow Out Preventer) The heavy fluid gathers in the "behind" portion of the leaking well assembly, while some will leak out, it very quickly overtakes the flow of oil and only the heavier mud will leak out. Once that "solid" flow of mud is established at the leak "behind" the well, the mud pumps increase pressure and begin to overtake the pressure of the oil deposit. The mud is established in a solid column that is driven downward by the now stronger pumps. The heavy mud will create a solid column that is so heavy that the oil deposit can no longer push it up, shut off the pumps...the well is killed...it can no longer flow.
Usually this will happen fairly quickly, in fact for it to work at all...it must happen quickly. There is no "trickle some mud in" because that is not how a top kill works. The flowing oil will just flush out the trickle and a solid column will never be established. Yet what we were told was "It will take days to know whether it
worked"...."Top kill might take 48 hours to complete"...the only way it could take days is if BP intended to do some "test fires" to test integrity of the entire system. The actual "kill" can only take hours by nature because it must happen fairly rapidly. It also increases strain on the "behind" portion and in this instance we all know that what remained was fragile at best.
Early that afternoon we saw a massive flow burst out of the riser "plume" area. This was the first test fire of high pressure mud injection. Later on same day we saw a greatly increased flow out of the kink leaks, this was mostly mud at that time as the kill mud is tanish color due to the high amount of Barite which is added to it to weight it and Barite is a white powder.
We later learned the pumping was shut down at midnight, we weren't told about that until almost 16 hours later, but by then...I'm sure BP had learned the worst. The mud they were pumping in was not only leaking out the "behind" leaks...it was leaking out of someplace forward...and since they were not even near being able to pump mud into the deposit itself, because the well would be dead long before...and the oil was still coming up, there could only be one conclusion...the wells casings were ruptured and it was leaking "down hole"
They tried the "Junk shot"...the "bridging materials" which also failed and likely made things worse in regards to the ruptured well casings.
"Despite successfully pumping a total of over 30,000 barrels of heavy mud, in three attempts at rates of up to
80 barrels a minute, and deploying a wide range of different bridging materials, the operation did not overcome the flow from the well."
http://www.bp.com/genericarticle.do?categoryId=2012968&contentId=7062487
80 Barrels per minute is over 200,000 gallons per hour, over 115,000 barrels per day...did we seen an increase over and above what was already leaking out of 115k bpd?....we did not...it would have been a massive increase in order of multiples and this did not happen.
"The whole purpose is to get the kill mud down,” said Wells. “We'll have 50,000 barrels of mud on hand to kill this well. It's far more than necessary, but we always like to have backup."
Try finding THAT quote around...it's been scrubbed...here's a cached copy of a quote...
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/se...clnk&gl=us
"The "top kill" effort, launched Wednesday afternoon by industry and government engineers, had pumped enough drilling fluid to block oil and gas spewing from the well, Allen said. The pressure from the well was very low, he said, but persisting."
"Allen said one ship that was pumping fluid into the well had run out of the fluid, or "mud," and that a second ship was on the way. He said he was encouraged by the progress."
http://www.houmatoday.com/article/20100527/ARTICLES/100529348
Later we found out that Allen had no idea what was really going on and had been "Unavailable all day"
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/05/27/interview_with_coas...
So what we had was BP running out of 50,000 barrels of mud in a very short period of time. An amount far and above what they deemed necessary to kill the well. Shutting down pumping 16 hours before telling anyone, including the president. We were never really given a clear reason why "Top Kill" failed, just that it couldn't overcome the well.
There is only one article anywhere that says anything else about it at this time of writing...and it's a relatively obscure article from the wall street journal "online" citing an unnamed source.
"WASHINGTON—BP PLC has concluded that its "top-kill" attempt last week to seal its broken well in the Gulf of
Mexico may have failed due to a malfunctioning disk inside the well about 1,000 feet below the ocean floor.
The disk, part of the subsea safety infrastructure, may have ruptured during the surge of oil and gas up the well on April 20 that led to the explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig, BP officials said. The rig sank two days later, triggering a leak that has since become the worst in U.S. history.
The broken disk may have prevented the heavy drilling mud injected into the well last week from getting far enough down the well to overcome the pressure from the escaping oil and gas, people familiar with BP's findings said. They said much of the drilling mud may also have escaped from the well into the rock formation outside the wellbore.
As a result, BP wasn't able to get sufficient pressure to keep the oil and gas at bay. If they had been able to build up sufficient pressure, the company had hoped to pump in cement and seal off the well. The effort was deemed a failure on Saturday.
BP started the top-kill effort Wednesday afternoon, shooting heavy drilling fluids into the broken valve known as a blowout preventer. The mud was driven by a 30,000 horsepower pump installed on a ship at the surface. But it was clear from the start that a lot of the "kill mud" was leaking out instead of going down into the well."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870487560457528013357716426...
There are some inconsistencies with this article.
There are no "Disks" or "Subsea safety structure" 1,000 feet below the sea floor, all that is there is well bore. There is nothing that can allow the mud or oil to "escape" into the rock formation outside the well bore except the well, because it is the only thing there.
All the actions and few tid bits of information all lead to one inescapable conclusion. The well pipes below the sea floor are broken and leaking. Now you have some real data of how BP's actions are evidence of that, as well as some murky statement from "BP officials" confirming the same.
I took some time to go into a bit of detail concerning the failure of Top Kill because this was a significant event. To those of us outside the real inside loop, yet still fairly knowledgeable, it was a major confirmation of what many feared. That the system below the sea floor has serious failures of varying magnitude in the complicated chain, and it is breaking down and it will continue to.
What does this mean?
It means they will never cap the gusher after the wellhead. They cannot...the more they try and restrict the oil gushing out the bop?...the more it will transfer to the leaks below. Just like a leaky garden hose with a nozzle on it. When you open up the nozzle?...it doesn't leak so bad, you close the nozzle?...it leaks real bad,
same dynamics. It is why they sawed the riser off...or tried to anyway...but they clipped it off, to relieve pressure on the leaks "down hole". I'm sure there was a bit of panic time after they crimp/pinched off the large riser pipe and the Diamond wire saw got stuck and failed...because that crimp diverted pressure and flow to the rupture down below.
Contrary to what most of us would think as logical to stop the oil mess, actually opening up the gushing well and making it gush more became direction BP took after confirming that there was a leak. In fact if you note their actions, that should become clear. They have shifted from stopping or restricting the gusher to opening it up and catching it. This only makes sense if they want to relieve pressure at the leak hidden down below the seabed.....and that sort of leak is one of the most dangerous and potentially damaging kind of leak there could be. It is also inaccessible which compounds our problems. There is no way to stop that leak from above, all they can do is relieve the pressure on it and the only way to do that right now is to open up the nozzle above and gush more oil into the gulf and hopefully catch it, which they have done, they just neglected to tell us why, gee thanks.
A down hole leak is dangerous and damaging for several reasons.
There will be erosion throughout the entire beat up, beat on and beat down remainder of the "system" including that inaccessible leak. The same erosion I spoke about in the first post is still present and has never stopped, cannot be stopped, is impossible to stop and will always be present in and acting on anything that is left which has crude oil "Product" rushing through it. There are abrasives still present, swirling flow will create hot spots of wear and this erosion is relentless and will always be present until eventually it wears away enough material to break it's way out. It will slowly eat the bop away especially at the now pinched off riser head and it will flow more and more. Perhaps BP can outrun or keep up with that out flow with various suckage methods for a period of time, but eventually the well will win that race, just how long that race will be?...no one really knows....However now?...there are other problems that a down hole leak will and must produce that will compound this already bad situation.
This down hole leak will undermine the foundation of the seabed in and around the well area. It also weakens the only thing holding up the massive Blow Out Preventer's immense bulk of 450 tons. In fact?...we are beginning to the results of the well's total integrity beginning to fail due to the undermining being caused by the leaking well bore.
The first layer of the sea floor in the gulf is mostly lose material of sand and silt. It doesn't hold up anything and isn't meant to, what holds the entire subsea system of the Bop in place is the well itself. The very large steel connectors of the initial well head "spud" stabbed in to the sea floor. The Bop literally sits on top of the pipe and never touches the sea bed, it wouldn't do anything in way of support if it did. After several tens of feet the seabed does begin to support the well connection laterally (side to side) you couldn't put a 450 ton piece of machinery on top of a 100' tall pipe "in the air" and subject it to the side loads caused by the ocean currents and expect it not to bend over...unless that pipe was very much larger than the machine itself, which you all can see it is not. The well's piping in comparison is actually very much smaller than the Blow Out Preventer and strong as it may be, it relies on some support from the seabed to function and not literally fall over...and it is now showing signs of doing just that....falling over.
If you have been watching the live feed cams you may have noticed that some of the ROVs are using an inclinometer...and inclinometer is an instrument that measures "Incline" or tilt. The BOP is not supposed to be tilting...and after the riser clip off operation it has begun to...
This is not the only problem that occurs due to erosion of the outer area of the well casings. The way a well casing assembly functions it that it is an assembly of different sized "tubes" that decrease in size as they go down. These tubes have a connection to each other that is not unlike a click or snap together locking action. After a certain length is assembled they are cemented around the ouside to the earth that the more rough drill hole is bored through in the well making process. A very well put together and simply explained process of "How to drill a deep water oil well" is available here:
http://www.treesfullofmoney.com/?p=1610
The well bore casings rely on the support that is created by the cementing phase of well construction. Just like if you have many hands holding a pipe up you could put some weight on the top and the many hands could hold the pipe and the weight on top easily...but if there were no hands gripping and holding the pipe?...all the weight must be held up by the pipe alone. The series of connections between the sections of casings are not designed to hold up the immense weight of the BOP without all the "hands" that the cementing provides and they will eventually buckle and fail when stressed beyond their design limits.
These are clear and present dangers to the battered subsea safety structure (bop and lmrp) which is the only loose cork on this well we have left. The immediate (first 1,000 feet) of well structure that remains is now also undoubtedly compromised. However.....as bad as that is?...it is far from the only possible problems with this very problematic well. There were ongoing troubles with the entire process during the drilling of this well. There were also many comprises made by BP IMO which may have resulted in an overall weakened structure of the entire well system all the way to the bottom plug which is over 12,000 feet deep. Problems with the cementing procedure which was done by Haliburton and was deemed as “was against our best practices.” by a Haliburton employee on April 1st weeks before the well blew out. There is much more and I won't go into detail right now concerning the lower end of the well and the troubles encountered during the whole creation of this well and earlier "Well control" situations that were revieled in various internal BP e-mails. I will add several links to those documents and quotes from them below and for now, address the issues concerning the upper portion of the well and the region of the sea floor.
What is likely to happen now?
Well...none of what is likely to happen is good, in fact...it's about as bad as it gets. I am convinced the erosion and compromising of the entire system is accelerating and attacking more key structural areas of the well, the blow out preventer and surrounding strata holding it all up and together. This is evidenced by the tilt of the blow out preventer and the erosion which has exposed the well head connection. What eventually will happen is that the blow out preventer will literally tip over if they do not run supports to it as the currents push on it. I suspect they will run those supports as cables tied to anchors very soon, if they don't, they are inviting disaster that much sooner.
Eventually even that will be futile as the well casings cannot support the weight of the massive system above with out the cement bond to the earth and that bond is being eroded away. When enough is eroded away the casings will buckle and the BOP will collapse the well. If and when you begin to see oil and gas coming up around the well area from under the BOP? or the area around the well head connection and casing sinking more and more rapidly? ...it won't be too long after that the entire system fails. BP must be aware of this, they are mapping the sea floor sonically and that is not a mere exercise. Our Gov't must be well aware too, they just are not telling us.
All of these things lead to only one place, a fully wide open well bore directly to the oil deposit...after that, it goes into the realm of "the worst things you can think of" The well may come completely apart as the inner liners fail. There is still a very long drill string in the well, that could literally come flying out...as I said...all the worst things you can think of are a possibility, but the very least damaging outcome as bad as it is, is that we are stuck with a wide open gusher blowing out 150,000 barrels a day of raw oil or more. There isn't any "cap dome" or any other suck fixer device on earth that exists or could be built that will stop it from gushing out and doing more and more damage to the gulf. While at the same time also doing more damage to the well, making the chance of halting it with a kill from the bottom up less and less likely to work, which as it stands now?....is the only real chance we have left to stop it all.
It's a race now...a race to drill the relief wells and take our last chance at killing this monster before the whole weakened, wore out, blown out, leaking and failing system gives up it's last gasp in a horrific crescendo.
We are not even 2 months into it, barely half way by even optimistic estimates. The damage done by the leaked oil now is virtually immeasurable already and it will not get better, it can only get worse. No matter how much they can collect, there will still be thousands and thousands of gallons leaking out every minute, every hour of every day. We have 2 months left before the relief wells are even near in position and set up to take a kill shot and that is being optimistic as I said.
Over the next 2 months the mechanical situation also cannot improve, it can only get worse, getting better is an impossibility. While they may make some gains on collecting the leaked oil, the structural situation cannot heal itself. It will continue to erode and flow out more oil and eventually the inevitable collapse which cannot be stopped will happen. It is only a simple matter of who can "get there first"...us or the well.
We can only hope the race against that eventuality is one we can win, but my assessment I am sad to say is that we will not.
The system will collapse or fail substantially before we reach the finish line ahead of the well and the worst is yet to come.
Sorry to bring you that news, I know it is grim, but that is the way I see it....I sincerely hope I am wrong.
We need to prepare for the possibility of this blow out sending more oil into the gulf per week then what we already have now, because that is what a collapse of the system will cause. All the collection efforts that have captured oil will be erased in short order. The magnitude of this disaster will increase exponentially by the time we can do anything to halt it and our odds of actually even being able to halt it will go down.
The magnitude and impact of this disaster will eclipse anything we have known in our life times if the worst or even near worst happens...
We are seeing the puny forces of man vs the awesome forces of nature.
We are going to need some luck and a lot of effort to win...
and if nature decides we ought to lose, we will....
Reference materials:
On April 1, a job log written by a Halliburton employee, Marvin Volek, warns that BP’s use of cement “was
against our best practices.”
An April 18 internal Halliburton memorandum indicates that Halliburton again warned BP about its practices,
this time saying that a “severe” gas flow problem would occur if the casings were not centered more carefully.
Around that same time, a BP document shows, company officials chose a type of casing with a greater risk of
collapsing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/us/06rig.html?pagewanted=1&sq=at_issue...
Mark Hafle, the BP drilling engineer who wrote plans for well casings and cement seals on the Deepwater
Horizon's well, testified that the well had lost thousands of barrels of mud at the bottom. But he said models
run onshore showed alterations to the cement program would resolve the issues, and when asked if a cement
failure allowed the well to "flow" gas and oil, he wouldn't capitulate.
Hafle said he made several changes to casing designs in the last few days before the well blew, including the
addition of the two casing liners that weren't part of the original well design because of problems where the
earthen sides of the well were "ballooning." He also worked with Halliburton engineers to design a plan for
sealing the well casings with cement.
http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/05/hearings_bp_ce...
graphic of fail
http://media.nola.com/news_impact/other/oil-cause-050710.pdf
Casing joint
http://www.glossary.oilfield.slb.com/files/OGL00001.gif
Casing
http://www.glossary.oilfield.slb.com/files/OGL00003.gif
Kill may take until Christmas
http://preview.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-02/bp-gulf-of-mexico-oil-leak-...
BP Used Riskier Method to Seal Well Before Blast
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/27/us/27rig.html
BP memo test results
http://energycommerce.house.gov/Press_111/20100512/Internal.BP.Email.Reg...
Investigation results
The information from BP identifies several new warning signs of problems. According to BP there were three flow
indicators from the well before the explosion.
http://energycommerce.house.gov/documents/20100525/Memo.BP.Internal.Inve...
BP, what we know
http://energycommerce.house.gov/documents/20100512/BP-What.We.Know.pdf
What could have happened
1. Before or during the cement job, an influx of hydrocarbon enters the wellbore.
2. Influx is circulated during cement job to wellhead and BOP.
3. 9-7/8” casing hanger packoff set and positively tested to 6500 psi.
4. After 16.5 hours waiting on cement, a negative test performed on wellbore below BOP.
(~ 1400 psi differential pressure on 9-7/8” casing hanger packoff and ~ 2350 psi on
double valve float collar)
5. Packoff leaks allowing hydrocarbon to enter wellbore below BOP. 1400 psi shut in
pressure observed on drill pipe (no flow or pressure observed on kill line)
6. Hydrocarbon below BOP is unknowingly circulated to surface while finishing displacing
the riser.
7. As hydrocarbon rises to surface, gas break out of solution further reduces hydrostatic
pressure in well. Well begin to flow, BOPs and Emergency Disconnect System (EDS)
activated but failed.
8. Packoff continues to leak allowing further influx from bottom.
Confidential
http://energycommerce.house.gov/documents/20100512/BP-What.Could.Have.Ha...
T/A daily log 4-20
http://energycommerce.house.gov/documents/20100512/TRO-Daily.Drilling.Re...
Cement plug 12,150 ft SCMT logging tool
SCMT (Slim Cement Mapping Tool)
Schlumberger Partial CBL done.
http://energycommerce.house.gov/documents/20100530/BP-HZN-CEC018441.pdf
Schlum CBL tools
http://www.slb.com/~/media/Files/production/product_sheets/well_integrit...
Major concerns, well control, bop test.
http://energycommerce.house.gov/documents/20100530/BP-HZN-CEC018375.pdf
Energy & commerce links to docs.
http://energycommerce.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=articl...
well head on sea floor
http://nca-group.com/bilder//Trolla/A.%2...%20(2).jpg
Well head on deck of ship
http://nca-group.com/bilder//Trolla/DSC_0189.JPG
BP's youtube propoganda page, a lot of rarely seen vids here....FWIW
http://www.youtube.com/user/DeepwaterHorizonJIC
http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message1097505/pg1

I used to cover the energy business (oil, gas and alternative) here in Texas, and the few experts in the oil field -- including geologists, chemists, etc. -- able or willing to even speak of this BP event told me early on that it is likely the entire reserve will bleed out. Unfortunately none of them could say with any certainty just how much oil is in the reserve in question because, for one thing, the oil industry and secrecy have always been synonymous. According to BP data from about five years ago, there are four separate reservoirs containing a total of 2.5 billion barrels (barrels not gallons). One of the reservoirs has 1.5 billion barrels. I saw an earlier post here quoting an Anadarko Petroleum report which set the total amount at 2.3 billion barrels. One New York Times article put it at 2 billion barrels.
If the BP data correctly or honestly identified four separate reservoirs then a bleed-out might gush less than 2 to 2.5 billion barrels unless the walls -- as it were -- fracture or partially collapse. I am hearing the same dark rumors which suggest fracturing and a complete bleed-out are already underway. Rumors also suggest a massive collapse of the Gulf floor itself is in the making. They are just rumors but it is time for geologists or related experts to end their deafening silence and speak to these possibilities.
All oilmen lie about everything. The stories one hears about the extent to which they will protect themselves are all understatements. BP employees are already taking The Fifth before grand juries, and attorneys are laying a path for company executives to make a run for it.

[Ed Jewett]

Thursday, June 17, 2010

BP's Largest Shareholder says Oil Spill Good for the Economy



JP Morgan says that the Gulf oil spill will help the economy.

This is an odd thing to say, given that the spill is our modern dust bowl, which could very well deepen and prolong our economic woes.

What might explain such an odd statement?
Well, JPM is apparently BP's largest shareholder. So happy talk meant to drive BP's share prices higher can only help JPM.
Then again, maybe JPM's prop desk is making a fortune shorting BP, just like Goldman famously shorted the CDOs it was selling like hotcakes.

######

Damaged Well Billowing Methane Into Gulf of Mexico

June 18th, 2010 Maybe this one deserves a re-read: Detonating Nuclear Bomb at BP Oil Spill Site… Might Produce a Bad Result.
Via: AP:
It is an overlooked danger in oil spill crisis: The crude gushing from the well contains vast amounts of natural gas that could pose a serious threat to the Gulf of Mexico’s fragile ecosystem.
The oil emanating from the seafloor contains about 40 percent methane, compared with about 5 percent found in typical oil deposits, said John Kessler, a Texas A&M University oceanographer who is studying the impact of methane from the spill.
That means huge quantities of methane have entered the Gulf, scientists say, potentially suffocating marine life and creating “dead zones” where oxygen is so depleted that nothing lives.
“This is the most vigorous methane eruption in modern human history,” Kessler said.
Methane is a colorless, odorless and flammable substance that is a major component in the natural gas used to heat people’s homes. Petroleum engineers typically burn off excess gas attached to crude before the oil is shipped off to the refinery. That’s exactly what BP has done as it has captured more than 7.5 million gallons of crude from the breached well.
A BP spokesman said the company was burning about 30 million cubic feet of natural gas daily from the source of the leak, adding up to about 450 million cubic feet since the containment effort started 15 days ago. That’s enough gas to heat about 450,000 homes for four days.
But that figure does not account for gas that eluded containment efforts and wound up in the water, leaving behind huge amounts of methane.
BP PLC said a containment cap sitting over the leaking well funneled about 619,500 gallons of oil to a drillship waiting on the ocean surface on Wednesday. Meanwhile, a specialized flare siphoning oil and gas from a stack of pipes on the seafloor burned roughly 161,700 gallons.
Thursday was focused on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers chastised BP CEO Tony Hayward.
Testifying as oil still surged into the Gulf at between 1.47 million and 2.52 million gallons a day, coating more coastal land and marshes, Hayward declared “I am so devastated with this accident,” “deeply sorry” and “so distraught.”
But he also said he was out of the loop on decisions at the well and disclaimed knowledge of any of the myriad problems on and under the Deepwater Horizon rig before the deadly explosion. BP was leasing the rig the Deepwater Horizon that exploded April 20, killing 11 workers and triggering the environmental disaster.
“BP blew it,” said Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., chairman of the House investigations panel that held the hearing. “You cut corners to save money and time.”
As for the methane, scientists are still trying to measure how much has escaped into the water and how it may damage the Gulf and it creatures.
The dangerous gas has played an important role throughout the disaster and response. A bubble of methane is believed to have burst up from the seafloor and ignited the rig explosion. Methane crystals also clogged a four-story containment box that engineers earlier tried to place on top of the breached well.
Now it is being looked at as an environmental concern.
The small microbes that live in the sea have been feeding on the oil and natural gas in the water and are consuming larger quantities of oxygen, which they need to digest food. As they draw more oxygen from the water, it creates two problems. When oxygen levels drop low enough, the breakdown of oil grinds to a halt; and as it is depleted in the water, most life can’t be sustained.
The National Science Foundation funded research on methane in the Gulf amid concerns about the depths of the oil plume and questions what role natural gas was playing in keeping the oil below the surface, said David Garrison, a program director in the federal agency who specializes in biological oceanography.
“This has the potential to harm the ecosystem in ways that we don’t know,” Garrison said. “It’s a complex problem.”
In early June, a research team led by Samantha Joye of the Institute of Undersea Research and Technology at the University of Georgia investigated a 15-mile-long plume drifting southwest from the leak site. They said they found methane concentrations up to 10,000 times higher than normal, and oxygen levels depleted by 40 percent or more.
The scientists found that some parts of the plume had oxygen concentrations just shy of the level that tips ocean waters into the category of “dead zone” — a region uninhabitable to fish, crabs, shrimp and other marine creatures.
Kessler has encountered similar findings. Since he began his on-site research on Saturday, he said he has already found oxygen depletions of between 2 percent and 30 percent in waters 1,000 feet deep.
Shallow waters are normally more susceptible to oxygen depletion. Because it is being found in such deep waters, both Kessler and Joye do not know what is causing the depletion and what the impact could be in the long- or short-term.
In an e-mail, Joye called her findings “the most bizarre looking oxygen profiles I have ever seen anywhere.”
Representatives of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration acknowledged that so much methane in the water could draw down oxygen levels and slow the breakdown of oil in the Gulf, but cautioned that research was still under way to understand the ramifications.
“We haven’t seen any long-term changes or trends at this point,” said Robert Haddad, chief of the agency’s assessment and restoration division.
Haddad said early efforts to monitor the spill had focused largely on the more toxic components of oil. However, as new data comes in, he said NOAA and other federal agencies will get a more accurate read on methane concentrations and the effects.
“The question is what’s going on in the deeper, colder parts of the ocean,” he said. “Are the (methane) concentrations going to overcome the amount of available oxygen? We want to make sure we’re not overloading the system.”
BP spokesman Mark Proegler disputed Joye’s suggestion that the Gulf’s deep waters contain large amounts of methane, noting that water samples taken by BP and federal agencies have shown minimal underwater oil outside the spill’s vicinity.
“The gas that escapes, what we don’t flare, goes up to the surface and is gone,” he said.
Steven DiMarco, an oceanographer at Texas A&M University who has studied a long-known “dead zone” in the Gulf, said one example of marine life that could be affected by low oxygen levels in deeper waters would be giant squid — the food of choice for the endangered sperm whale population. Squid live primarily in deep water, and would be disrupted by lower oxygen levels, DiMarco said.

[Ed Jewett]

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Zionist Kenneth Feinberg, 9/11 Cover Up Agent, to Administer BP's $20 Billion Claim Fund

Kenneth Feinberg, cover up artist par excellence for 'events' whose true nature must be kept hidden is handed the job of administering BP's $20 billion fund
for damage claims to economic victims of the Gulf oil spill.





Some background on Feinberg from Chris Bollyn...

Kenneth Feinberg was the Special Master of the 9-11 Victims Compensation Fund. He alone was responsible for distributing some $7 billion of taxpayer money to the families of the victims of 9-11. In this he was supported by some 30 lawyers from his law firm and his wife, Diane "Dede" Shaff Feinberg. Diane is also an executive member of the United Israel Appeal and the Jewish Federation of Washington. She also happens to be a member of the Board of Governors of the Jewish Agency - the parent organization of the Mossad.

The non-investigation of 9-11 was controlled by Michael Chertoff, the son of an Israeli Mossad agent and an orthodox rabbi. Chertoff oversaw the destruction of the thousands of tons of steel from the World Trade Center - crucial evidence that was shipped to Asian smelters and melted down. While Chertoff supervised the confiscation and destruction of the critical evidence, government appointed doctors "medicated" the grieving relatives with mood-altering Prozac, and Kenneth Feinberg began his war of attrition on the families of the victims of 9-11.


As the sole person responsible for distributing the money from the Victims Compensation Fund, Feinberg paid out nearly $7 billion to families in compensation - if they would sign the agreement not to sue the airlines or the Israeli airport security firm involved in 9-11 (Huntleigh USA/ICTS). More than 98 percent of the families accepted the money from the Feinberg-managed fund. The amounts of the payments and the amounts paid to Diane Feinberg and the 30 lawyers are not known. The American people deserve to know how the funds were used and who got paid.

Feinberg's actions were crucial to removing more than 98 percent of the families from the litigation process. Kenneth Feinberg and Alvin Hellerstein have waged a war of attrition against the 9-11 relatives. Of the thousands of families that could have used the courts to find justice and legal discovery for what happened on 9-11, Feinberg was successful in removing 98 percent. Of the 96 families that chose to go to court, all but one or two cases have settled out of court after enduring years of obstruction in the court of Alvin K. Hellerstein. Thanks to Feinberg and Hellerstein there may never be a trial for a single victim of 9-11.

Kenneth Feinberg is known for wearing expensive Brioni suits, smoking Cuban cigars, and driving his black Jaguar to his home in Bethesda, Maryland, where he has avoided paying taxes thanks to a few legal loopholes he knows about. Kenneth Feinberg was the co-chair (along with his wife) of a recent Zionist event in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, two prime suspects in the Israeli terrorism of 9-11, participated. Feinberg's role in covering up the truth about 9-11 is connected to his relationship to the state of Israel. Kenneth Feinberg wasn't working pro bono on the 9-11 victims fund out of compassion for the victims of 9-11, or for America. He was doing it to serve Israel and the murderous Mossad. {more}

Besides 9/11, other compensation 'events' that Feinberg resided over were the shootings at Virginia Tech, Hurricane Katrina, the original Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination, the Holocaust slave labor litigation, Agent Orange litigation, human radiation experiments, catastrophic nuclear accidents and was the 'Special Master' for TARP executive compensation.


It's increasingly becoming apparent that the BP 'spill' is more than an accident. Feinberg's task will be to see that there are no compensation cases brought to court that could expose any of the deep secrets of the disaster and to protect those at the top of the money pyramid.

Feinberg has a track record of success but even the best of criminal enterprises reach the limits of what they can pull off. This may be one of those times.

h/t Facts Not Fairies

Posted by kenny's sideshow at 11:02 PM
Labels: 9/11, cover up, criminal government

[Peter Lemkin]

This was posted on the EF by Douglas Caddy(thanks Douglas).I'm sorry,but this will scare the Holy Crap out of you.If you are a religious person Pray.Pray Hard........

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6593/648967
70 comments on Deepwater Oil Spill - A Longer Term Problem, Personnel - and Open Thread 2

.....lovely scenario...and one that i long have thought was likely.....I'm not a petroleum geologist, by far...but I am a scientist. The Gulf is fucked...and BP and the government are lying their asses off - as they usually do...but this time millions of humans will suffer greatly; and trillions of living sea creatures and coastal creatures will perish for their hubris, I fear. This will go on for years until all the pressure is gone alone with the oil in this BIG reservoir. The Gulf may well be dead by then and much of the Atlantic, as well.