A thought on the BP oil crises

On Thu, 17 Jun 2010 19:21:40 -0700, "Artemus" wrote:

Here is a slightly different story copied from an e-mail I received from a drilling guy of my acquaintance, who received it from someone else so take it for what it is worth.

Quote:

This well had been giving some problems all the way down and was a big discovery. Big pressure, 16ppg+ mud weight. They ran a long string of

7" production casing - not a liner, the confusion arising from the fact that all casing strings on a floating rig are run on drill pipe and hung off on the wellhead on the sea floor, like a "liner".

They cemented this casing with lightweight cement containing nitrogen because they were having lost circulation in between the well kicking all the way down. The calculations and the execution of this kind of a cement job are complex, in order that you neither let the well flow from too little hydrostatic pressure nor break it down and lose the fluid and cement from too much hydrostatic. But you gotta believe BP had 8 or 10 of their best double and triple checking everything.

On the outside of the top joint of casing is a seal assembly - "packoff" - that sets inside the subsea wellhead and seals. This was set and tested to 10,000 psi, OK. Remember they are doing all this from the surface 5,000 feet away. The technology is fascinating, like going to the moon or fishing out the Russian sub, or killing all the fires in Kuwait in 14 months instead of 5 years. We never have had an accident like this before so hubris, the folie d'grandeur, sort of takes over. BP were the leaders in all this stretching the envelope all over the world in deep water.

This was the end of the well until testing was to begin at a later time, so a temporary "bridge plug" was run in on drill pipe to set somewhere near the top of the well below 5,000 ft. This is the second barrier, you always have to have 2, and the casing was the first one. It is not known if this was actually set or not.

At the same time they took the 16+ ppg mud out of the riser and replaced it with sea water so that they could pull the riser, lay it down, and move off. When they did this, they of course took away all the hydrostatic on the well. But this was OK, normal, since the well was plugged both on the inside with the casing and on the outside with the tested packoff. But something turned loose all of a sudden, and the conventional wisdom would be the packoff on the outside of the casing.

Gas and oil rushed up the riser; there was little wind, and a gas cloud got all over the rig. When the main inductions of the engines got a whiff, they ran away and exploded. Blew them right off the rig. This set everything on fire. A similar explosion in the mud pit / mud pump room blew the mud pumps overboard. Another in the mud sack storage room, sited most unfortunately right next to the living quarters, took out all the interior walls where everyone was hanging out having - I am not making this up - a party to celebrate 7 years of accident free work on this rig. Seven BP bigwigs were there visiting from town.

In this sense they were lucky that the only ones lost were the 9 rig crew on the rig floor and 2 mud engineers down on the pits. The furniture and walls trapped some and broke some bones but they all managed to get in the lifeboats with assistance from the others.

The safety shut ins on the BOP were tripped but it is not clear why they did not work. This system has 4 way redundancy; 2 separate hydraulic systems and 2 separate electric systems should be able to operate any of the functions on the stack. They are tested every 14 days, all of them. (there is also a stab on the stack so that an ROV can plug in and operate it, but now it is too late because things are damaged).

The well is flowing through the BOP stack, probably around the outside of the 7" casing. As reported elsewhere, none of the "rams", those being the valves that are suppose to close around the drill pipe and / or shear it right in two and seal on the open hole, are sealing. Up the riser and out some holes in it where it is kinked. A little is coming out of the drill pipe too which is sticking out of the top of the riser and laid out on the ocean floor. The volumes as reported by the media are not correct but who knows exactly how much is coming?

Two relief wells will be drilled but it will take at least 60 days to kill it that way. There is a "deep sea intervention vessel" on the way, I don't know if that means a submarine or not, one would think this is too deep for subs, and it will have special cutting tools to try to cut off the very bottom of the riser on top of the BOP. The area is remarkably free from debris. The rig "Enterprise" is standing by with another BOP stack and a special connector to set down on top of the original one and then close. You saw this sort of thing in Red Adair movies and in Kuwait, a new stack dangling from a crane is just dropped down on the well after all the junk is removed. But that is not 5,000 ft underwater.

One unknown is if they get a new stack on it and close it, will the bitch broach around the outside of all the casing??

In order for a disaster of this magnitude to happen, more than one thing has to go wrong, or fail. First, a shitty cement job. The wellhead packoff / seal assembly, while designed to hold the pressure, is just a backup. And finally, the ability to close the well in with the BOP somehow went away.

A bad deal for the industry, for sure. Forget about California and Florida. Normal operations in the Gulf will be overregulated like the N. Sea. And so on.

Unquote: The following is the Drilling guy's comments and can be taken at face value:

I hope this satisfies your curiosity for while. It is written slanted in favor of the oil company maybe, but not pointing fingers at anyone with the drilling contractor or the third party service contractors. With Obama hollering that BP is going to pay for everything is just another bunch of bullshit that someone in congress has told him to say. Means nothing. But there is going to be a lot of new regulations put in place whenever that bunch figures out what else can be regulated and how/who can create a good business providing for the new rules. Any oil company operating in the USA deals with governmental regulations, similar to Indonesia but much more stricter. They have to be a bona fide company to acquire a lease to explore on. PT Holeinthewall would definitely get turned down. Then before they drill, they have to submit their plans to a government body called MMS (Mineral Management Service). It used to be the USGS (United States Geological Service) but MMS was created about 1982, when I was in the US taking in some seminars in Texas and Louisiana. Although they have a lot of dead beats working for them, much like any government department, that drilling program is well screened and scrutinized before an oil company can start drilling. Any changes to that drilling program has to be approved first. During the drilling, MMS does 'surprise' helicopter trips to rigs to check to see if the required casing, BOP, drilling equipment has been tested before it's tested expiry dates. They are serious! I done a well control school in Lafayette and a lot of the questions on the exam pertained to US rules and regulations. Didn't mean anything to me because I was never going to work in the USA, but I had to memorize them to pass. Then, just as anywhere else, the oil company takes out insurance on the well they are drilling in case it is lost. That insurance is probably thu one outfit that has sold options to a dozen other insurance companies. They will be paying lawyers good money to find someone at fault.

Cheers,

John D. Slocomb (jdslocombatgmail)

Reply to
J. D. Slocomb
Loading thread data ...

Did you look them up?

The first is violations of the Clean Water Act. It's been around since the

1970s. Lots of companies have been convicted under the act.

The second concerns lying to government officials. According to some lawyers who are following events, they've violated this one, too.

Of course, the one under which Exxon was found guilty -- negligently killing wildlife -- also applies.

Do you have a problem with these laws? Or should corporations be allowed to foul the water, kill wildlife, and lie to the goernment with impunity?

Just askin'. Some people seem to think that powerful corporations are exempt.

Jeez. They elect some weird dudes in Florida, but I didn't realize they'd elected Caesar!

formatting link
They do write some broadly worded laws. But tell us seriously -- and this is a sanity test -- do you really think they're going to arrest someone for saying they have a can of bug spray? Do you think a court would convict a person for it?

Allowing for Florida's legal weirdness, can you say they would and keep a straight face?

The Times Square nut clearly approached his task with intent to kill people. Do dufuses get off because they're incompetent murderers?

You are one interesting dude yourself, Richard. Paranoia seems to be the order of the day for the righties.

Reply to
Ed Huntress

John is the messenger.

LOL, yeah... Who would have thought there would be oil at the end of the Mississippi? We should get some foreign company to show us where our oil is and then make a profit selling it back to us. Also can't imagine it being simple with brand new sediment on top.

Sorry , I just think they should take a bit more care drilling in water. Hey I've scrapped lots of Campeche oil off the soles of my feet and pretty sure it wasn't good for life in the water. Hey, where's my money from Mexico for not ever catching a Tarpon ! And, for all that '70's shag carpeting that go ruined from the others who where to lazy to clean their feet?

SW

Reply to
Sunworshipper

Yes, certainly. I am personally involved in two Florida cases where it has happened. Please do not insult me with your "sanity test" mockery. Talk to any Florida criminal defense lawyer and see if he doesn't have many such stories as these.

In one, an unarmed, mentally disturbed man on the street holding a fishing tackle box plea bargained to a "hoax weapon of mass destruction" felony, because he told police, while in custody and under interrogation, that the box was a "rhetorical bomb" and contained a "snuke" (cf South Park). He received "leniency" which consists of 5 years felony probation for this, currently being served.

In another case, a young man still in high school, literally a choir boy, foolishly boasted on Facebook of having weapons, in a faux gangsta-rap style. Someone complained to the cops, the ATF raided his house like he was a terrorist. He had no weapons but they did find a lidded glass jar containing gasoline stored in his room. Under federal law this is equal to a felony incendiary device like a Molotov cocktail, and for this he pleaded and spent several months in a federal prison and is currently on probation.

The above incidents happened around the time of Virginia Tech, and prosecutors were eager to appear to be busting the next such perp prior to the event.

Yes. You are privileged to be ignorant of the despotism which has lately ruled our country. It does not extend to you, or perhaps to anyone you know, but I am quite serious in telling you: the idea that we are "ruled by laws and not by men" has turned to nonsense, because the laws have lately extended to make all of us guilty of felonies. The laws don't matter because the laws no longer discern between guilt and innocence.

You with your "straight face" response have the typical naive attitude that, "OK, maybe the law says everything is illegal, but it doesn't really mean that". But it *does* mean that whenever the state or the feds arbitrarily want it to. So we are ruled by men now, not by laws, because the laws the rule us literally make us all criminals, and it is then up to the lawmen who should be prosecuted.

This came about with the "tough on crime" and later the post-911 "tough of terrorists" political trends. Rational laws make it too hard to convict criminals, so the lawmakers make it easy to convict by making everything a crime, and then the prosecutors can convict all the bad guys. The assumption is that the cops and the prosecutors know who is bad. The problem is that every prosecutor wants to look tough and winds up treating innocent people as criminals, and there is no defense.

Do you have a gas can in the garage you lost the cap to? Did you stick a rag in the nozzle instead of the cap? That is literally and assuredly a felony in Florida. Your intentions or purposes do not matter. The possession of that item by definition is all that is needed to convict.

How about an inert pineapple grenade? Hoax bomb felony in Florida. No kidding. You go to jail for 20 years for having one of those, if the rulers should look your way. Read about it in Jon Gutmacher's excellent book on Florida weapons laws. Doesn't matter if you are a veteran, or hold a concealed-weapons permit, or are a sworn officer, etc.

The WMD law in Florida is just ludicrous. Any "biological agent" is literally a felonious weapon. But this law is putting people in jail. Yes, prosecutors are using it, and timid juries and judges are convicting.

Call it justice by Macguffin.

The young men in the two cases above had serious problems, but they were not criminals. They threatened no one and harmed no one. They were guilty of acting strange and vaguely scary. They were then victims of despotism.

$300 of vandalism is a felony in Florida. When I was a kid that was a typical Halloween night.

You miss my point. Casting this Times Square crime as involving a "weapon of mass destruction" is so obviously absurd as to prove my point. If the ruler says gasoline is a WMD, then we are ruled by men, not by laws, because we all possess a WMD and we all are criminals. Washington is mad, because they will not be satisfied with the obvious simplicity of some incompetent doofus trying to kill people with the ancient crime of arson, it has to be some transcendant crime involving "weapons of mass destruction". That the fullest force and highest office of the US federal government is being applied in such nonsense, is either madness or despotism in those controlling the force above all other forces.

Reply to
Richard J Kinch

(...)

formatting link

The L.A. guys on their barge working full tilt for the rest of their lives will cause the cleanup to be completed approximately 10 nanoseconds earlier than it would have otherwise, provided they don't get in anybody's way. :)

Deep Water Horizon survivor Mike Williams took the time to pull on a life jacket before taking his 10 - story plunge to survival. The surface of the ocean nearby was on fire. Would Williams have survived the swim without the jacket?

Had BP, Transocean and Halliburton paused to use good engineering judgment and safe work practices, this particular environmental disaster would not have occurred.

--Winston

Reply to
Winston

Maybe the Oh Bomb Us admin wants the oil spill? Doesn't want it resolved?

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

You don't seem to understand. Or course prosecutors are not interested in policing gasoline or bug spray possession. But if for any reason they

*want* to prosecute you, common items such as a container of gasoline are all they need to convict you of a felony. With the "hoax" laws, you don't even need the actual ordinary item, you simply have to say you have it. As one Florida cop explained it to me, uttering any container and any bad thing will do for a felony takedown.

Now it is understandable that the legislature wanted to outlaw a terrorist making a movie prop that looked like a James Bond doomsday weapon and terrorizing a city. And that a terrorist possessing some anthrax in a jar could be prosecuted without having done anything with it and without having any intentions. But the definitions in the law are so utterly general as to include everything (literally in the law, any "biological agent", which is later defined to include pretty much everything biological, like ordinary mold, the mere possession of which without any intent is itself a felony). And of course the hoax extension of the law is intended to cover some terrorist standing downtown waving a bottle he says is doomsday stuff.

So your error is that we are governed-by-laws-not-men. The laws make virtually everything illegal, *not* that virtually everything is being prosecuted, *but* it takes only the attention and decision of some enforcer in the government to take any of us out without defense. So if you are a kid pulling a stupid, reckless, foolish, but ultimately harmless Facebook prank, you can go to federal prison for it should some feds so decide, such as they were wont to do after Virginia Tech.

Basically the current legal situation developed because (1) there are crazy people and foreign terrorists who want to harm us, (2) after 911 there was a sentiment that such threats having succeeded must mean that the laws were inadequate, (3) the laws were thus changed to be all- inclusive of evil and suggested evil but ended up being all-inclusive of normal things and activities ("biological agents"), (4) prosecutors absolutely love the ability to convict without having to prove any actual crime but merely by exhibiting the possesion of an outlawed thing or even the fleeting suggestion of it. In short, the law has ceased to be any restraint on prosecution.

Gutmacher, p. 133 in my old blue 1990s edition:

Another problem is "hoax bombs". Under federal law a dummy shell or grenade is not a destructive device or weapon -- it's just a dummy grenade. ... under Florida law -- they appear to be illegal due to some really crummy drafting of a statute, Florida Statute 790.165. [And the post-911 FS 790 is far "crummier" in this regard.] ... the real bad news is that it's a third degree felony to make these things, sell them, possess them, or deliver them ... we all know this law makes no sense ... I think the the statute would have a hard time withstanding a constitutional attack ...

The fact is there never was a constitutional test of this law in the

1990s, and instead after 911 the WMD laws were added with a similar "hoax" generalization, and generalization from grenades to WMDs defined as household items or even a cardboard box. And now these laws are used as a lever to force pranksters and kooks, guilty of at most a misdemeanor, to plead to felonies, with consequent ruin of their lives and futures, because it is so wretchedly easy, instead of prosecutors having to prove actual wrongdoing.
Reply to
Richard J Kinch

Just because a prosecutor "wants" to prosecute you for some broadly-worded infraction doesn't mean that courts or juries will buy it. Most people have some common sense.

This is a problem endemic to representative democracy, Richard. We wind up with lots of stupid laws. But courts usually are pretty good at separating legislative intent from frivilous attempts at prosecution.

But will it stick? Your examples are not convincing -- they smell like you are skipping over a lot of important facts. To prosecute a hoax, you need a hoax. If someone uses a hoax device to perpetuate a real threat or use it attempt coercion, that's justifiably a crime. After 9/11 some legislators got particularly jumpy about appearances and threats. So, we have some overly broad laws as a result.

And that's what the laws apparently are targeting.

I don't think I'm making an error here. We've always had some broadly worded laws that *could* be used against us for unjustifiable reasons. That doesn't mean they are.

You're talking about a weakness in the legislative process, not about a takeover by prosecutors. It's always been there.

So far, so good. But judges and juries are still going to use their heads.

In the terms you're describing, I don't think it ever was. But there are restraints on getting a conviction.

I'd like to know what he considers to be "pranksters" and "kooks," and to see examples of convictions he's describing.

My own feeling is that collecting inert grenades, for example, is harmless. Carrying them around to threaten hostages is not. We'd need to see the cases involved. I have no problem convicting a "kook" of a felony for brandishing a grenade in a public place.

Again, what you're really talking about is some overly broad laws, which have meaning only in their application. The proliferation of terrorism-related laws after 9/11 is a symptom of frustration and fear, but not, as far as I can tell, a qualitative change in the way laws are prosecuted and convictions achieved.

There are some things that we once considered kooky that we now consider to be much more serious. Being a victim of terrorism and threats will do that.

Reply to
Ed Huntress

That's why every developed country bailed out their banks -- except

Maybe there is something to be said for banking regulation. Australia didn't have to bail out the banks here either.

Reply to
Grumpy

Agreed. All the monday quarterbacks seem to come out of the woodwork when THEY don't have any responsibility. If it was as easy as putting a cork in it, the job would have been done a month ago.

Reply to
Grumpy

No, my metalworking friend. What I have is experiences in life that go beyond your narrow liberal mind. I doubt you will be persuaded by my testimony of what the law really is, versus the abstractions we hear about, which are bad enough. I have fought the law, seen the innocent made guilty and the guilty innocent, and hence I know what you never will, barring your similar experiences, which experiences I do not wish upon you. My legal griefs are relatively limited, no Bonhoeffer or Solzhenitsyn, but enough to verify the essential cautions of American independence, which thinking conservatives maintain, and modern liberalism ignores.

The basic question is whether man's nature is evil or good. One's political opinions will merely elaborate that one postulate.

Myself, I'm with the founders: "absolute Despotism" is arrived at by "a long train of abuses and usurpations." The train lately grows longer.

Reply to
Richard J Kinch

Very very well said! Indeed!!

Gunner

One could not be a successful Leftwinger without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of Leftwingers, a goodly number of Leftwingers are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid. Gunner Asch

Reply to
Gunner Asch

I think your both right, in your own way. People will never believe unless they have seen it for themselves. Like bad cops are exemplar and not rogue. I'm to the point of everything is greased, must be a secret hand shake to see if they are willing to take and receive a bribe. Might as well teach bribery in school and get it over with. Hey, I paid off three teachers to get my diploma, one of them I had to spot weld Farris wheel seats for a number of evenings.

Try getting a law passed to listen in on the grand jury in your local area and see the shit fly or your ass flying into jail to prove it to yourself. Why would they care, say six months down the line?

SW

Reply to
Sunworshipper

So, your opinion is supported by facts known only to you. Ed asked for specifics of the cases you cited, and you did not provide them. Your only justification for your stance is, in essence, "You wouldn't understand." That, Richard, is the kind of argument one expects from a petulant teenager,

Reply to
rangerssuck

These are preposterous, as you've described them, Richard. They sound like set pieces set up to stroke the right-wing pathology.

If you have some reference to the actual cases, I'll be glad to look into them.

Reply to
Ed Huntress

Providing Ed with specifics would not change a thing. It would just mean a lot of typing to no end. I have seen police cover their badge numbers, take cameras, and harass people. I could provide specifics, but you could not check to see that I was telling the truth. There was nothing in the newspaper. I suspect those that were arrested were released the next day after spending the night in jail. So do not think there are any court records.

In short you either believe Richard or not. It makes no difference to me and I doubt if it matters to Richard.

Dan

Reply to
dcaster

I know of the inverse case. I read about it in the paper and never heard of anyone commenting on the subject. Thing is, is that the newspaper online goes back just a bit and I guess you'd have to pay to search for it. Some sort of parole officer with 25+ yrs. plows in the back of a city bus and bails leaving his car, gets a DUI. Year later same guy causes a bad accident and gets another DUI. Finally the court date comes around, the DA never shows up.

Ever see Mad Max? 'Someone's gonad have to sit on the Goose, nobody showed.'

SW

Reply to
Sunworshipper

=A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 Dan

Bullshit. Each of the two cases Richard referred to resulted in a felony conviction, one with a couple of months of time in a federal prison. There most certainly are records of these cases.

Do cops sometimes exceed their authority? Of course they do. I've been on the receiving end more times than I care to count. But for Richard to try to base an argument on unprovable "facts" known only to him is just plain bullshit.

Now, to be fair, let me say that Richard's seltzer making web site absolutely rules. Just last week, I had the milestone event of replacing my 20lb CO2 tank. That's a lot of bubbles that I wouldn't have had the pleasure of drinking had it not been for Richard's work.

Reply to
rangerssuck

I did not read the complete thread. From just reading Richards post on June 23rd, it sounded like Richard was referring to some experiences that he had not mentioned. I ought to read the whole thread, but I am not that interested.

Dan

Reply to
dcaster

Would it really change your mind if you see the public records and see that I am telling the truth? Or are you just being polemic? I suspect the latter; you would be of the same opinion with or without my truthfulness being verified.

Reply to
Richard J Kinch

PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.