Eco-Friendly Garden Decor

First it was hoisted to the surface.

Note the actual size of the Deepwater Horizon Blowout Preventer as it is held just above the support frame, after having been raised through the moon pool of the Q4000. Compare the size of the folk standing around. (The BOP is the large frame with the yellow legs on the corners, being held just above the red platform with the four vertical bracing columns).

And then it was lowered and latched into place on the red platform, that can help to move it and support it.

Meanwhile the LMRP that sat above the BOP is still on its way to the surface.

A press briefing was held earlier on Saturday. The BOP transferred from the second relief well has now been put in place. It can withstand 15,000 psi of pressure. With the new BOP in place, all threat of discharge has been eliminated. According to Admiral Allen,

. . . we basically have secured this well as we would any well that was under production and then being closed out with a kill. . . we have essentially eliminated the threat of discharge from the well at this point.

With Tropical Depression Bonnie dissipating, the slow process of getting all of the boats back in place and workers back to work is now beginning. Much of the discussion at Admiral Allen's press conference on Saturday, however, was about the expected impact of the Bonnie. NOAA Administrator Dr. Jane Lubchenco was present to explain the impacts. She indicated she expected a number of positive benefits of the storm:

• It will spread the surface slick out and thereby lower oil concentrations.
• It's expected to break tar patches and tar mass into smaller tar balls which means faster weathering and faster natural biodegradation.
• It will also cause more natural dispersion again lowing the concentration of oil in the water and making it more available to the natural bacteria that are in the water that do this natural biodegradation.
• Some waves generated by Bonnie may act to flush the beaches and redistribute oil and tar balls that are on the beaches. Some of those tar balls may be dispersed, some may move back out to sea. In some cases, the beaches may look cleaner as a result of this redistribution.

Dr. Lubchenco wouldn't quite go as far as say that she expected the storm to be a net benefit, though. She said it would depend on where you are. Some places might be better, but others might be worse. In some places, oil might be pushed farther inland, although with little storm surge, this would be a relatively smaller problem. The storm wouldn't have any impact on the deep oil mixed with the water.

Admiral Allen mentioned that it had been possible to keep two vessels on the scene, so they were able to be with the ROVs overnight. Thus, they were able to continue monitoring pressure readings. Pressure readings continue to slowly rise (6,891 psi at midnight last night), showing evidence of integrity at the well head.

New Oil Spill Containment System Planned by Chevron, Conoco Phillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell

I thought I would shift gears and show some information about the new oil spill containment system that the four other major oil companies are working on, which you have probably read about in the news.

The information I am quoting and the image are from the Containment System Fact Sheet. Further information is available on a Press Release.

According to the Overview:

This system offers key advantages to the current response equipment in that it will be pre-engineered, constructed, tested and ready for rapid deployment in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico. Its primary objective is to fully contain the oil with no flow to the sea. The system will be flexible and adaptable. It will be responsive to a wide range of potential scenarios, deepwater depths up to 10,000 feet, weather conditions and flow rates exceeding the size and scope of the current spill. Once constructed, the system components will be fully tested to ensure functionality and will be maintained in a state of continuous operational readiness. In the event of a future incident, mobilization to the field will start within days and the system will be fully operational within weeks.

Subsea components:

• A newly designed and fabricated subsea containment assembly will create a permanent connection and seal to prevent oil from escaping into the water.

• The assembly will be equipped with a suite of adapters and connectors to interact with various interface points such as the wellhead, blowout preventer stack, lower marine riser package and casing strings, including any well design and equipment used by the various operators in the Gulf of Mexico.

• The assembly will be designed to prevent hydrate formation and blockage.

• Capture caisson assemblies will also be built for use if required to enclose a damaged connector or leak outside the well casing. Once installed, these assemblies will create a seal with the seabed to prevent seawater from entering the system.

• The oil would be captured by the subsea containment assembly and flow through flexible pipe to a riser assembly. Riser assemblies are made of a seabed foundation, vertical pipe, buoyancy tanks and a flexible pipe specifically configured to connect to the capture vessels.

• The subsea system will be supplied with the necessary hydraulic / electric controls and chemical injection (such as hydrate inhibitors) through an umbilical.

• A manifold will distribute the oil from the subsea containment assembly to multiple riser assemblies if more than one capture vessel is necessary.

• Riser assemblies and umbilical will be designed to quickly disconnect from capture vessels so that all subsea equipment stays in place in the event of a hurricane. An additional system component will be available to inject dispersant into the subsea containment assembly if required.

There are also surface vessels, which I won't describe. The fact sheet indicates that the initial investment is expected to be approximately $1 billion. The new system is targeted for completion within 18 months. ExxonMobil has been designated to lead the engineering, procurement and construction of the system components. The companies behind this endeavor will form a new non-profit organization, the Marine Well Containment Company (MWC), to operate and maintain the system.

Becasue of the number of comments, this is a second copy of this thread. Prior thread can be found at http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6734.

The picture that everyone has long been waiting to see became available after 3:25 pm (Eastern) yesterday afternoon, when BP closed the choke lines on the 3-ram stack, and oil stopped flowing into the Gulf.

The process started on Wednesday evening, after a delay during which the Admiral gave permission for the process to start, and held the press conference that I reported on yesterday.

It was followed by the Kent Wells' conference, which had been delayed, in which he noted that the relief well had finished a gyro survey to locate its position, and prepared the site for the casing to be set this weekend. Then the drill pipe etc. was pulled back into the casing while the integrity test was run. It was left in the well so that, in case there was any passage created between the two wells during the test (they are only just over four feet apart), then heavy mud could be immediately pumped down the RW to kill the risk of any additional problems. (The drill has 30 ft to go to reach the casing point, but is at the desired 2 degree angle).

One of the changes to the plan from that originally conceived was to add four ROVs that would be stationed around the well to alleviate the fears of those who had become worried by the continuing plethora of stories of a breached well casing. Although many of these stories have been discussed, and their invalidity shown, nevertheless in order to keep everyone happy (particularly those with political prominence), four ROVs were set around the well to watch the seabed and ensure there were no leaks.

This is one example of the results – the seabed is stable, with no oil and gas bubbling up from non-existent leaks. (BOA ROV 2)

Had there been any leakage from the well it would likely have come up around the casing of the well at the bottom. Here is the shot (BOA ROV 1) of the mud-line of the well. (The point where the well breaks through the mud to the sea bed).

As you can see, there is none. (The well casing with the BOP above it are just to the right of the lights of the illuminating ROV.)

The other change that Secretary Chu apparently imposed was that there be a conference every six hours during the test (which is scheduled to run 48 hours).

The initial plan was to close the rams sealing the well (which happened before I wrote the post yesterday) and then to close the kill line (the two ports that produced the vertical jets I showed last evening) and then to slowly (over a few minutes) close the choke, monitoring the pressure, until the flow ceased.

There should also be a little clarity in the discussion at this point. There are two sets of valves and circuits involved in this process. The first of these are the circuits on the original blowout preventer (BOP) . The kill and choke lines attached to those circuits were modified so that oil and gas are fed through them to the vessels on the surface which are either collecting or burning off the fuel. The second set of kill and choke valves are on the new stack that was mounted above the BOP, and it is these new valves that are being opened and closed. When the stack valves are open, the oil flows out into the water, rather than into directed lines, and so they are not the same circuits. At the beginning of the test the BOP valves were closed, so that all the flow went up to the stack where it can flow out through either the drill pipe at the top, the kill lines to the side, or the choke line – which is the curved yellow pipe at the top of the well. The drill pipe flow was first closed, using the central ram in the stack.

As the test began (and as Kent Wells noted in the morning briefing Thursday) that there was a leak.

. . . we noticed a leak on a hub on the choke line. And so when we saw that, that would have precluded us from properly doing the test, we needed to get that fixed. Fortunately, as everything, we always plan so we had a second choke on surface. So we disconnected that choke and hub system. Took it up, brought the other one down, landed it this morning and we’re once again going through the process of positioning ourselves to do the well integrity tests.

There were in fact two trips to the surface before the choke line was fully in place.

The well was then ready to ramp up for the test, and this was the schedule that Kent Wells reported in the afternoon briefing Thursday:

At 10:30 this morning we closed the kill line and since we had already had the middle ram of the capping stack closed that meant the only flow at that point was going out through the choke line and what was also being collected through the Q4000 and the helix producer.

Then between 10:30 and 12:30 we shut down the Q4000, we shut down the helix producer and that meant only flow was going up through the choke line and then at 12:30 we started to close the choke, we would do it a half a turn at a time to just slowly start to close the well in.

And at about 1:15 this afternoon we issued that the integrity test was starting. The official time of the choke being fully closed, which meant the well was fully shut in is approximately 2:25 this afternoon and as of that time there is no flow of oil going into the gulf of Mexico. So obviously this is an encouraging point of time. Remember this is the start of our test.

So the well is currently shut-in, though the results have not been all that had been hoped for. Admiral Allen has already issued a terse comment:

"We're encouraged by this development, but this isn't over. Over the next several hours we will continue to collect data and work with the federal science team to analyze this information and perform additional seismic mapping runs in the hopes of gaining a better understanding on the condition of the well bore and options for temporary shut in of the well during a hurricane. It remains likely that we will return to the containment process using this new stacking cap connected to the risers to attempt to collect up to 80,000 barrels of oil per day until the relief well is completed."

Part of the problem, apparently, is that the well pressure has not reached the 8 - 9,000 psi level that it was hoped it would reach, but instead it is reported to have fallen slightly shy of 7,000 psi. While this is below the expectation, it is higher than the 6,000 psi that Admiral Allen had set as the target below which they would assume a loss in integrity, and restart the flow of oil to the surface vessels.

To try and add a little context to this, at the beginning of the leak, the pressure of the oil and gas in the rock at the bottom of the well was measured at 11,900 psi. When the oil and gas fill the well that fluid column has a certain weight that balances some of the rock pressure, and the difference should be the pressure at the top of the column (which is where the BOP and stack sit). That gives the 8 – 9,000 psi range.

If the well pressure at the BOP is measured, however, at just shy of 7,000 psi then there are two possibilities. The first is that there has been so much flow of fluid out of the well that the driving pressure of the fluid in the rock has fallen by the 1,500 psi or so that brings the pressures down to those seen.

While that is a possibility, it may be unlikely because, at the time that the Top Kill was tried and as the Admiral noted just the other day, the well pressure could not be raised above 6,000 psi as they pumped in mud, even though at one stage they stopped the flow of oil out of the well.

What this could indicate is that there is a possibility of crossflow at the bottom of the well. What this means that the oil and gas that are flowing out of the reservoir into the bottom of the well, are, under the pressure in the well, now flowing into a higher reservoir of rock, now that they can't get out of the well. Depending on where that re-injection flow is, this may, or may not, suggest that the casing has lost integrity. This is a topic that has been covered in the comments at The Oil Drum, where fdoleza has noted:

Exactly. I believe the flow will be coming out of the bottom sand and going into the upper sand. It would not be a leak, but it would tell them why their pressure data ain't a classical surface buildup. And I sure hope they're modeling temperatures and so on, because this is a very interesting case. They don't have downhole gauges, so they'll have to take the way the oil cools down as it sits to get a better idea of the way things are moving down below.

If there are questions whether there is still flow in the formation or from the original formation into surrounding rock, then it is possible that the relief well (RW) is close enough to the original well (WW) that putting a set of very sensitive microphones down the RW might allow some triangulation to estimate where such a flow might be occurring. It might make it easier that the well hasn’t been finally cased yet. But the test has 2 days to run, and will be evaluated every 6 hours. With time some of these questions may be answered as the test continues. (If there is no flow anywhere, after a while all the readings should become quite stable).

Oh, and just as this started to look like a little good news, there is this from the National Hurricane Center:

The windows of opportunity are not likely to remain open long. It is encouraging, however, that there may now be an answer if these do turn into hurricanes.

Because of the number of comments, this is a copy of this post, with a new comment thread.

The recent take-up of oil through the cap and the LMRP to the Drillship Enterprise was at a daily rate of 15,400 bd.

For the last 12 hours on June 11 (noon to midnight), approximately 7,835 barrels of oil were collected and 15.7 million cubic feet of natural gas were flared.

• On June 11, a total of approximately 15,550 barrels of oil were collected and 31.2 million cubic feet of natural gas were flared.

• Total oil collected since the LMRP Cap containment system was implemented is approximately 104,300 barrels.

• Operations were stable..

The Loch Rannoch is on its way, as, possibly, is the Toisa Pisces.

This latter is a Well Testing Service Vessel (WTSV) Dynamic Positioning ship, which has systems for the reception and processing of fluids from well completion, stimulation and repair. For those interested in well flow rates, that measuring capability is among its capabilities.

• Reception of the products from the well via flexible hoses connecting the well to the production system installed on the ship.

• Process and separate water, wasted and un-wasted chemicals, gas, crude oil and solids. The water will be stored in the WTSV’s tanks and later re-injected into industrial waste well or offloaded to a processing facility onshore.

• The crude and gas will be measured in quantity and quality. The combination may be returned to the export line, or if this last is not available, the gas will be flared and the crude stored in the WTSV’s tanks to later be exported to an onshore or an offshore offloading terminal.

• The solids are stored in containers to be disposed to shore.

• Crude ranges are from low to high (12 to 43 °) API. Pressures up to 10,000 psi at the well head.

It has been suggested that it might arrive on site on the 19th June. The Loch Rannoch should arrive a few days earlier, releasing the Drillship Enterprise, which, I suspect, has other things that it might now be doing.

The Toisa Pisces was formerly a cable-laying vessel, and is not a Floating Production, Storage and Offloading unit (FPSO).

My main topic for this post, however, is not the possible change is the fleet over the well, but rather some thoughts on how to avoid this happening again. There were likely a cascade of several errors, each of which alone would not have led to the disaster, but cumulatively they did. So how do we stop it happening again?

In some ways the problem is similar to that the Mining Industry faces after more than twice the number of deaths (29) at the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia in April. In both cases, there were safety concerns reflected in the numbers of citations that the companies had received relative to other companies. So how does one install a different attitude in those who work to produce the fuel that we all need? To a degree, it has to be done through the imposition of regulations that enforce the concept of safety in daily working life. Included in those regulations should be the appropriate recommended practices for carrying out different tasks in the operation.

But even with those regulations in place, they are only as good as the enforcement of them. If my memory serves, you could not become an Inspector of Mines in Britain during the National Coal Board years, unless you had a First Class Certificate of Competency (which is the examination that allows you to manage a mine). The standards of education and training for inspectors must be high, and they need to require a reputable image.

The problems, in part, for both industries, are that the fossil industry historically has been cyclic in nature. Often driven by the price of oil, when that price is high, there are lots of jobs, and both coal and oil boom. The price falls, times get tight, and lots of folk get laid off. It has happened more than once in my career, as we have students go from having many job offers, to students coming back for graduate degrees because there was no work in the industry. The employees that are laid off go find work in other, less cyclic industries.

And so when the next boom comes around, they are no longer available. Furthermore, the teaching departments at the Universities have closed. It is as a result of this boom and bust cycle that there is a dearth of middle management in many companies that work in the fossil fuel business. For many years, they were not hiring, and the folk that they now need as long-time trained and experienced individuals do not exist in large numbers.

The number of both mining and petroleum engineering schools have fallen, and student enrollments, until the recent rise in the price of oil (the $140 one) were bringing other departments closer to that action. At one time, for example, Leeds University in the UK had one of the largest mining departments. At that time, it was housed in a building that was funded by those in the Industry in 1928. That building is now occupied by the Art Department and somewhere – not quite sure where (this from the alumni office and the secretary in the building that houses the remaining odd faculty member) – there is still someone that teaches the odd course (he was out). There is only one other Mining School in the UK, and it studies hard rock mining at Exeter (used to be Cambourne School of Mines).

It is hard to criticize University leaders, who must look to where the students are, and which faculty hire will bring the best return to the University. In recent years that has not been within the ability of the fossil fuel departments, and so they are closing – though the demand for their product is now rising again.

It is one of those interesting items to note that the latest reviews of world oil supply are beginning to suggest, increasingly, that the world is approaching if not past the point of peak global oil production. That will require more mining and petroleum engineers, though at places like Leeds (my alma mater), they will likely only be able to produce the modern version of Thomas Hair, to record the modern version of his “Art of Mining,” rather than the subjects of that art.

So what does all this have to do with regulation and responsibility? Well, it is very difficult to maintain high quality folk in industries that go through severe manpower cycles. When regulations are severely enforced under one administration and then almost neglected in another, either because the industry is in disfavor, or the apple of the administration’s eye, it is hard to keep the regulatory inspectorate that is a vital part of running a safe industry. The regulations should be fair, be strict, and must be enforced by individuals that have been properly trained to a high level of understanding as to both the technology that they are reviewing and the consequences of error.

Historical evidence is clear that Universities cannot be left alone to provide that education, and supply those individuals. The National Mine Health and Safety Academy at Beckley is a start in the right direction for the mining industry, but there are other changes that must be made, in the investment in research into new technology, in the general attitude to those who work to provide the fuels that we need (and will continue to do so).

Treating the industries and those who work in them as pariahs is not the way to solve this problem.

Oh, and not to get anyone excited, but for the first time in the recent past there is some earthquake activity under the Myrdalsjokull glacier in Iceland, the home of the Katla volcano. The map shows the age of recent earthquakes. Eyjafjallajokull is the site of the currently active volcano.