Spill Baby Spill!

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Re: Spill Baby Spill!

Postby chump » Mon May 03, 2010 1:10 pm

If this was an accident, that is one thing; but as I was reading yesterday, and listening to that survivor's audio account, it occurred to me that it is almost more likely that it could have been done on purpose: Louisianna's quiet 911. The strangest, and largest false flag event ever. Most people don't even hardly know what happened! The devastation is yet to come. It has many of the red flag signatures of a gigantic scam. The signals are there. April 20th! What is it about that date? 11 men are missing and presumed dead. What is it about the number 11. Now I see this:

What I find most interesting in the oil patch? (curious?) is the coincidental timing of Dick Cheney's old outfit "Halliburton buys Boots & Coots" an oil & gas well control outfit for $240-million on April 12...then April 20 along comes the start of the current disaster. Repeat after me: "Coincidence....luck......."


which I linked to from here viewtopic.php?f=8&t=28071

http://www.thestreet.com/story/10722752 ... coots.html
Halliburton Buys Boots & Coots

HOUSTON (TheStreet) -- Halliburton(HAL) has reached a deal to acquire all of the outstanding stock of Boots & Coots (WEL) in a stock and cash deal worth about $240 million.

Boots & Coots shareholders will receive about $3 for each share of Boots & Coots they hold, consisting of $1.73 in cash and $1.27 in Halliburton stock, according to a statement from Halliburton.
Following completion of the transaction, a new product service line within Halliburton will be created to include Halliburton's existing coiled tubing and hydraulic workover operations and Boots & Coots' intervention services and pressure control business.

Boots & Coots' management will be retained to lead Halliburton's Boots & Coots product service line. Halliburton expects the acquisition to be accretive in the first full year of operation.
The transaction is expected to close in the summer of 2010, Halliburton said.


Am I being an idiot? There are now 3 threads going on this. I guess I'll pollute only one of them.
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Re: Spill Baby Spill!

Postby chump » Mon May 03, 2010 9:15 pm

http://www.drillingahead.com/forum/topi ... nt%3A99930

Reply by Garry Denke 55 minutes ago
Found this on Face Book
Weight 8.4, Viscosity 42

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... 223/Tony...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... -horizon...

Drums Elementary has completed study of 18 offshore oil well blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico for BP plc. Faculty and parents, the cause of all 18 oil well blowouts was gas cut (lightened / thinned) drilling mud. You see parents and faculty, when drilling through an oil bearing zone, the drilling mud often becomes gas cut lightened (mud weight reduced) and thinned (mud viscosity reduced). Defoamers are added to restore the drilling mud back to a safe, non-frothy, heavy weight and viscosity. But they do not work in extreme gas cut muds. The ONLY way to fix the problem is to circulate the oil well with NEW drilling mud, and dispose of the OLD gas cut mud (a costly process, its a toxic waste). BP plc, et al, in all 18 Gulf of Mexico oil well blowouts, Operators skipped that costly step. Schlumberger logged BP plc's blowout, Horizon ran production casing, and Halliburton pumped the cement, with frothy (like a head of beer) gas cut mud in the hole. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. AGAIN, it did not. BP Chief, next time, circulate NEW non-gas cut drilling mud. Defoamers fail in high concentrations of gas. Drums Elementary, Valley Chief, 1st Grade (6 year old)
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Re: Spill Baby Spill!

Postby chump » Tue May 04, 2010 6:13 pm

Oil spill?

We will never know what really happened to cause the recent oil spill off the coast of Louisianna. 11 men lost at sea. They will likely be the patsies. Unlike 9/11, the evidence is concealed, the crime scene intentionally buried in 5000' beneath the dirty water of the vast Gulf of Mexico.

Mr. Miller, whose firm has helped stop out-of-control wells across the world, faulted first-response crews for making a bad situation much worse.

When an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig ignited a massive fire on April 20, fire boats raced to put it out. Pictures show at least four vessels pumping massive streams of water onto the rig.

That was a mistake, Mr. Miller said.

“Why they put the fire out is beyond me,” he said. “Basically once it was burning it’s not going to get any worse. But when they pulled all those fire boats out there, the result was they sunk the rig by filling it full of water.”

He blames the oil leak on that act, since the sinking oil rig took with it the main connection to the well, which is located 1,500 metres below water. That allowed oil to leak out. Had the fire been left alone, the oil would have burned instead – a more palatable choice, he said.


Mistake!? At http://www.drillingahead.com/forum there is a discussion taking place among oil industry professionals about what might have happened. Most of them feel the operator didn't check his drilling mud; others believe it must have been the BOP. Could it have been on purpose? A manchurian candidate type suicide mission? Did somebody slip on board and then get away? Any environmentalists on board? Muslims? How easy is it to purposefully not change the drilling mud; or to open the BOP?. Who could have done that? Halliburton just closed that deal with Boots & Coots. How does that figure? How many other deals have gone down?

For some reason I can't get over the feeling that this is a continuation of a series of intentional, premeditated disasters since 9/11; inspired for the benefit of the corporations, to destroy the livelihood of humans and the creatures of the Earth. Even if this is truely an accident, the corporations will still come out ahead. Like a game of musical chairs, they take turns reaping the profit and never taking the blame. Like a swarming species unto themselves, the corporations are a plaque upon the planet, like a cancer disguising itself within the genetic makeup of it's host. Soon it will have to eat itself.

The ultimate outcome of this is so predictable that it'll make all of us sick. How many times have they have taken something created by nature that was beautiful and bountiful, and turned it into an uninhabitable wasteland. The corporations will get richer; and it will be at the expense of the tax payer, and the health of the Earth itself. Oil is gushing out of the earth at the rate of from 5,000-200,000 barrels a day. The ecological ramifications of this are mindboggling. Aquatic wildlife is already washing onto the Louisianna shores, and the oil is likely to contaminate the broad wetlands from Texas to Florida, not to mention the ocean itself. Peoples' livelihoods have been taken away. The bank will take their home, or boat, if they can't pay their mortgage. What are going to eat? Spam!

And Arnold Schwartzenegger gets to be the next President of the United States.

Has our military has been co-opted by a criminal syndicates who operate under the guise of the corporations? How many times has HAARP been used to create an economic advantage? The '04 tsunami? Haiti's Earthquake? China's? Irans? Hurricane Katrina (did they blow the levee)? How many false flag events have been staged by militaries and intelligence agencies around the world - just since 9/11? Was 9/11 was just a sign that the plan was a go? Is it any wonder that I just have to wonder?

Those who know, know how to take advantage of a disaster like this; and this disaster has the potential to be a biggie. And it was perhaps the easiest to pull off; so easy it could have been an accident. I don't know yet how the corporations are going to take advantage of this. Indeed, I'm beginning to wonder if the corporations are run by aliens.

The corporation would seem to be an entity unto itself; as determined by the courts. But I think it is more of a medium to shield liability from the living, breathing individuals who own them. Let those penny pitchin' corporacrats inhale the fruits of their labor. Let them go for a little midnight swim in oiley waters 45 miles offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. Make them wipe and clean rocks along the shoreline.

By the way, the rig lights went out and the tuna guys http://www.drillingahead.com/forum/topi ... rmen-watch , said their boat switchboard went black and they had no running lights, but the floodlights in back of boat worked? Would that indicate of some sort of EMP that could have knocked out the "dead man safety switch" on the BOP? Just asking?

Oh yeah. I'm talking to myself again. I've been reading some of the other threads around here. I quoted from Barracuda's post in the halliburton thread, but I don't dare say anything over there, and I'm the only one saying anything here. Whatever. Just going with the flow (ha). I feel like a kid who's been told to go sit in the corner for disrupting class. I guess I'm not bothering anybody. La dee dah dee dah.

Oop. Bell rang (the telephone, again!). Time to go. Reminds me of the old days.
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Re: Spill Baby Spill!

Postby Julia W » Tue May 04, 2010 7:02 pm

By the way, the rig lights went out and the tuna guys http://www.drillingahead.com/forum/topi ... rmen-watch , said their boat switchboard went black and they had no running lights, but the floodlights in back of boat worked? Would that indicate of some sort of EMP that could have knocked out the "dead man safety switch" on the BOP? Just asking?

Oh yeah. I'm talking to myself again. I've been reading some of the other threads around here. I quoted from Barracuda's post in the halliburton thread, but I don't dare say anything over there, and I'm the only one saying anything here. Whatever. Just going with the flow (ha). I feel like a kid who's been told to go sit in the corner for disrupting class. I guess I'm not bothering anybody. La dee dah dee dah.


I was wondering about the lights going out, too. FWIW, I've been reading your posts and checking out your links. Found them very informative. I've been reading all the other threads on this, too. I still don't know what to make of it all. The Halliburton angle and the Cheney visit to Saudi Arabia has me curious. This is bad on so many levels.
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Re: Spill Baby Spill!

Postby barracuda » Tue May 04, 2010 7:20 pm

It's worth keeping in mind that as fucked up as this is, even at 25,000 barrels a day this spill has a ways to go before it even gets near the top ten list of worst oil spills on record.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_spill# ... oil_spills

I realise that anything like this that happens in America is automatically a lot more important than if it were to happen anywhere else, but there it is.

I guess it's also worth keeping in mind that the worst spill on record was an purpooseful act of war.
The most dangerous traps are the ones you set for yourself. - Phillip Marlowe
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Re: Spill Baby Spill!

Postby DoYouEverWonder » Tue May 04, 2010 7:43 pm

Julia W wrote:
By the way, the rig lights went out and the tuna guys http://www.drillingahead.com/forum/topi ... rmen-watch , said their boat switchboard went black and they had no running lights, but the floodlights in back of boat worked? Would that indicate of some sort of EMP that could have knocked out the "dead man safety switch" on the BOP? Just asking?

Oh yeah. I'm talking to myself again. I've been reading some of the other threads around here. I quoted from Barracuda's post in the halliburton thread, but I don't dare say anything over there, and I'm the only one saying anything here. Whatever. Just going with the flow (ha). I feel like a kid who's been told to go sit in the corner for disrupting class. I guess I'm not bothering anybody. La dee dah dee dah.


I was wondering about the lights going out, too. FWIW, I've been reading your posts and checking out your links. Found them very informative. I've been reading all the other threads on this, too. I still don't know what to make of it all. The Halliburton angle and the Cheney visit to Saudi Arabia has me curious. This is bad on so many levels.



Edit: Never mind: The link is a joke I suppose.

Goldman Sachs Reveals it Shorted Gulf of Mexico
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Re: Spill Baby Spill!

Postby chump » Tue May 04, 2010 11:44 pm

Here are a couple the latest descriptions of what may have happened: Makes sense to me. Dang! They were having a party!
http://www.drillingahead.com/forum/topi ... 042&page=7
Reply by Garry Denke 3 hours ago
Mud Engineers Silence
*16ppg+ mud weight*

http://drillingclub.proboards.com/index ... profile&...

Alvis via Burenye - "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. 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 know 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 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. 7 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."

BP plc Gas Cut Drilling Mud weight: 8.4
BP plc Gas Cut Drilling Mud viscosity: 42

http://energytopic.nationaljournal.com/ ... -to-test...

Closed Door Meetings
*16ppg+ mud weight*
-------------------------------------
Reply by Douglas Campbell 2 hours ago
Im pretty sure it was Weatherford casing, I work for TRS out of Fort Worth and we have had 2 tourqe turn guys from Lafayette who had barely gotten off the rig. From my guys story is they were done with casing and pumping cement we had 2 mechanized hands on the rig at the time. Weatheford lost all equipment power units tongs computers etc.

------------------
Also at that sight is a video remembering the 11 victims
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Re: Spill Baby Spill!

Postby DoYouEverWonder » Wed May 05, 2010 6:28 am

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. 7 BP bigwigs were there visiting from town.



7 years accident free?

Ah, not according to this report -

Rig had history of spills, fires before big 1
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Re: Spill Baby Spill!

Postby Occult Means Hidden » Wed May 05, 2010 7:24 am

barracuda wrote:It's worth keeping in mind that as fucked up as this is, even at 25,000 barrels a day this spill has a ways to go before it even gets near the top ten list of worst oil spills on record.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_spill# ... oil_spills

I realise that anything like this that happens in America is automatically a lot more important than if it were to happen anywhere else, but there it is.

I guess it's also worth keeping in mind that the worst spill on record was an purpooseful act of war.


No, it's already the second largest spill in history. The second largest was 480,000 tons/ 7.33= 65,484 barrels according to the link provided (this, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ixtoc_I says 75k).

Meanwhile:

"Drill more": Fox News figures respond to environmental catastrophe by calling for more drilling
http://mediamatters.org/research/201005040043
Rage against the ever vicious downward spiral.
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Re: Spill Baby Spill!

Postby barracuda » Wed May 05, 2010 7:50 am

Occult Means Hidden wrote:[No, it's already the second largest spill in history. The second largest was 480,000 tons/ 7.33= 65,484 barrels according to the link provided (this, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ixtoc_I says 75k).


You've got ypur math wrong there. You don't divide the tonnes to get the number of barrels, you have to multiply, because there are 6.841 barrels in each tonne.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonne_of_oil_equivalent

This is not the second largest spill. Not even close - yet.
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Re: Spill Baby Spill!

Postby DoYouEverWonder » Wed May 05, 2010 8:27 am

barracuda wrote:
Occult Means Hidden wrote:[No, it's already the second largest spill in history. The second largest was 480,000 tons/ 7.33= 65,484 barrels according to the link provided (this, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ixtoc_I says 75k).


You've got ypur math wrong there. You don't divide the tonnes to get the number of barrels, you have to multiply, because there are 6.841 barrels in each tonne.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonne_of_oil_equivalent

This is not the second largest spill. Not even close - yet.

It might not be the biggest, yet. The problem is timing and location.

At the moment, the Gulf Stream has moved up and is within 10 miles of the spill. If it hits the GS, Florida is fucked.

This is way so many of us down here have fought for years against offshore drilling here. We have one of the most important ecosystems on the planet and we provide a lot of food for a lot people and animals.

You better get your fill of shrimp cocktail now, while you can still afford it.
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Re: Spill Baby Spill!

Postby chump » Wed May 05, 2010 3:58 pm

Why did the lights go out on the rig and the tuna guys boat? For the same reason, because of the gas? Good article here.

Oil rig survivors recall a hiss before the blast
By ERIC NALDER and LINDSAY WISE
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
May 4, 2010, 10:03PM

Minutes before the Deepwater Horizon exploded in fire, workers on the deck heard a thump, then a hissing sound. Gas alarms sounded and the rig shook.

Seawater and mud containing gas from the well spewed up through the crown of the derrick and rained down on the drilling floor; fumes reportedly moved into the “safe zones” where the electric generators are located. The generators raced out of control as they sucked gas into the air intakes.

When the electric power surged, light bulbs exploded, computers and other electric systems were destroyed, leaving the rig in darkness except for the light from fires and explosions that ripped apart walls, according to accounts derived from interviews with attorneys representing survivors, missing rig workers and their families, as well as experts in the field of offshore drilling operations.

Before the blowout, the rig's crew had been replacing heavy and valuable drilling mud with lighter salt sea­water in the top section of pipe known as the riser — the purpose being to extract the mud so they could remove the riser, several sources said. While doing so, they had to secure the wellhead to keep oil and gas from blowing out.

But blow out it did.

Kevin Eugene, a steward on the rig, said he was in his bunk watching TV about 10 p.m. when a “big old loud boom” and an alarm went off “almost simultaneously.”

The lights went out. The platform began shaking.

“I thought the place was falling in the ocean, that the whole rig was collapsing,” said the father of four from Slidell, La.

Ceiling tiles, dust and debris rained down from overhead. Clad only in his pajama pants and undershirt, he scrambled down a hallway toward an exit to a stairwell that would lead to a lifeboat up on deck. He heard more explosions, but can't remember how many.

When he got onto the deck, he felt a blast of heat and saw flames about 200 yards away.

“I mean it was the hugest, biggest fire I've ever seen,” Eugene said. “It was just a big old ball of fire up there on the derrick. The whole derrick was on fire. The fire was shooting from out the well over there that the derrick was connected to and you could hear the gas gushing out.”

The deck was covered with oily mud.

Blowout preventer failed
All these things — the mud, the alarms and the job that was being done that day — will be key in determining why the Deepwater Horizon exploded, and ultimately sank, killing 11 and causing one of the nation's worst oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico.

Alarms designed to detect escaping gas sounded on the drilling floor minutes before the eruption, said attorney Ronnie Penton of Bogalusa, La., whose client, a rig worker, escaped by jumping off the rig and whose job included maintaining the alarms.

When the alarms go off “you shut it down,” said Daniel Becnel, an attorney from Reserve, La., who has filed lawsuits on behalf of fishermen, oystermen and other Louisiana residents claiming damages from the spill. “They've got panic switches all over the place.”

Those switches are supposed to activate a blowout preventer on the ocean floor, a huge and complex tower of valves and pipe crimpers designed to shut down a well in an emergency. It didn't work.

Although it had been tested beforehand, BP now says robot submarines have discovered at least one problem with the blowout preventer, though it is unclear whether it caused the malfunction.

“We have found that there are some leaks on the hydraulic controls,” said Bob Fryar, senior vice president of BP's exploration and production operations in Angola, in southwestern Africa.

Investigations will be done by the Minerals Management Service, the U.S. Coast Guard, plaintiffs' attorneys, BP and others. The probes likely will focus in part on whether all safety standards were followed, or whether any critical shortcuts were taken.

Daren Beaudo and David Nicholas, spokesmen for BP, said any comment on the circumstances prior to the blowout would be “premature.”

Guy Cantwell, spokesman for drilling rig owner Transocean, also declined to go on record, saying: “At this time we cannot get ahead of ourselves with respect to the facts of this incident, and to do so would be speculation.”

It wasn't an ordinary day
On April 20, at 11 a.m., the day's procedures were laid out at a crew meeting on the rig, according to Penton, and it wasn't going to be an ordinary workday.

BP was temporarily abandoning the well. The Deepwater Horizon was being detached from the well to be moved to another location, as soon as the next day. And the well was being capped.

Experts say well-capping poses special hazards. One arose that day as crews were replacing the mud with seawater in pipes going from the ocean floor to the rig.

Deep gases exert astounding upward pressure on a well. “Drilling mud,” a heavy fluid used to lubricate the drill and bring up bits and pieces of rock, is used as the main line of defense against the upward pressure, or a disastrous eruption of gas.

The mud was being displaced so the riser could be detached from the rig and the wellhead, and the well could be capped with a final cement plug. But seawater is much lighter than mud. The pressure the riser was applying to the well would have lessened by as much as 38 percent, experts said.

That could prove significant.

Investigators likely will be considering whether the drill hole and the casing pipe were secured properly with cement a day earlier.

“The big question is how confident were they in the casing cementing job,” said Elmer “Bud” Danenberger, who recently retired as chief of offshore regulatory programs for the Minerals Management Service. “They shouldn't have begun this (riser) operation until they were confident in that.”

Cementing job tested
Cementing problems have caused other blowouts, including a major one last August in the Timor Sea and up to 18 in the Gulf of Mexico since 1992, documents show.

Directed by BP, Halliburton had cemented the well below the Deepwater Horizon 20 hours before the blowout, presumably enough time for the cement to properly set. Halliburton said in a written release that it had properly tested the effectiveness of the cement job, but it did not reveal those test results.

Questions are being raised about those tests, and about everything from the nature of the fluid used to push down the plug to the chemistry of the cement itself.

Also at issue will be other plugs in the well. Halliburton said the final cement plug at the top of the well had not been installed because “operations had not yet reached the point” requiring it.

Penton said his client told him that the “seal assembly” — an important plug down in the well — had been set less than a half hour before the blowout.

“This was a modern marvel,” said attorney Richard Arsenault of Alexandria, La., referring to the high-tech Deepwater Horizon, built in 2001 and insured by Transocean for $560 million. “If that kind of technology can't prevent this kind of disaster, that's very troubling.”

ernicnalder@hearst.com
lindsay.wise@chron.com


http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/art ... QD9FG8J0G1

...Rig workers seriously injured in the explosion were taken to hospitals by helicopter, Arnold said. But others were made to wait on the lifeboats despite suffering injuries and severe stress. Some didn't make it home until 40 hours after the rig blew up and were required by company officials to first give statements at a hotel in Kenner, La., about what they witnessed, he said.

Watson was on the rig's deck, according to the lawsuit, "when suddenly mud came out of the hole at alarming speeds. The power went out and then the explosions occurred. Watson suffered smoke inhalation and other injuries, such as post-traumatic stress "from watching many of his friends get severely injured and die" in the disaster...


It seems that BP's safety record as well as the BOP's reliability are in question. That Blow Out Preventer is a monster!
http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=10561628
Did Oil Industry Ignore Problems with Equipment Meant To Stop Spills?
Government Report Warned Underwater 'Blowout Preventers' Might Not Stop Massive Spill
By MATTHEW MOSK, AVNI PATEL and RHONDA SCHWARTZ
May 5, 2010 —
Oil industry insiders are awash in theories about what caused the massive explosion and spill that continued to spoil the Gulf of Mexico Wednesday, but increasingly they are harboring fresh doubts about a once-trusted fail-safe of offshore drilling.

Known as a blowout preventer, or BOP, the five-story-tall, 900,000-pound concrete contraption has always served as a critical backstop for oil rigs. Rig operators believed that if something went wrong, and oil started gushing from an open well, the blowout preventer's giant hydraulic pistons and shears would clamp shut a gushing well.

"I think that's what's bothering everybody," said Randall Luthi, the former director of the U.S. Minerals Management Service, who now serves as president of the National Ocean Industries Association. "Why didn't the blowout preventer work the way it was supposed to work?"

The failure of the blowout preventer after last week's explosion on the BP-leased Transocean Horizon deepwater rig could turn a tragic, but manageable incident into one of the worst spills in U.S. history, Luthi said.

While the oil industry has always touted the blowout preventer as a key to its ability to drill offshore without great risk to the environment, Senator Maria Cantwell, D.-Wash., says that BP's portrayal of this kind of failure as unprecedented does not stand up to examination.

"There is clear evidence that the oil industry has been well aware for years of the risk that blowout preventers on offshore rigs could fail," said Cantwell in a statement to ABC News on Wednesday.

Cantwell, the chairwoman of two key Senate Commerce and Energy Committee subcommittees with oversight over the offshore drilling, said her staff has found extensive documentary evidence demonstrating the problems with blowout preventers.

"Despite frequent failures, industry assumed the preventers were fail-safe and, as a result, had no back-up plan for responding to a catastrophe like the one now unfolding in the Gulf."

ABC News has learned of several incidents suggesting that the devices could not always be trusted to perform.

After a 2000 spill, federal regulators became alarmed when a blowout preventer failed to work as intended. They issued a safety alert in March 2000, advising oil rigs "to have reliable back-up systems" to trigger the equipment if for some reason it failed to shut down a well on the first attempt. BP appeared to recognize this was a problem. In June of 2000, BP issued a notice of default to Transocean saying the preventer on another rig - the Discover Enterprise - "did not work exactly right" and was unable to operate for an extended period of time, according to a recent report in The Sunday Times.

In 2003, a Transocean official helped present a research paper that looked at reliability issues with blowout preventers - and identified as a reasonable goal for the industry one BOP failure for every 10 years a rig is operating. Minimizing BOP problems was an important goal, the paper said, because shutting a rig down to address the failure of one of the devices could cost the operator $1 million per event.

"Floating drilling rig downtime due to poor BOP reliability is a common and very costly issue confronting all offshore drilling contractors," the paper said. The paper also stated that "root-cause analysis of the failures" was often not performed because of pressures to get the rig back into production.

In 2004, another study was commissioned by the Minerals Management Service. It found that the company making the blowout preventers had used a faulty formula to determine how much force would be needed for the device to slam down on a pipe and clamp it shut. "It provided shear forces lower than required or desired in many cases; in other words, there was little safety factor built in," the study said.__The research also noted that the failure of a blowout preventer helped lead to the second largest oil spill on record - a 1979 disaster off the Yucatan Peninsula that emptied an estimated 140 million gallons into the ocean.

If the devices were not strengthened, the report warned, the dangers of another large spill would escalate, the report said.

"As smaller operators with limited appreciation of the risks venture into ever deeper water, the industry's risk increases. It appears that at least some of the rigs currently in operation have not considered critical issues necessary to ensure that their shear rams will shear the drill pipe and seal the wellbore."

BP did not respond to emailed questions about blowout preventers, and could not be reached by phone. Transocean spokesman Guy Cantwell (no relation to the senator) declined to speculate about why the blowout preventer did not work last week. But he told ABC News Wednesday that the company had had no reason to believe it would not.

"Everyone wants to know about the cause," Cantwell said. "We're going to wait for the facts before we reach any conclusions. But I can tell you, this rig had a very good safety and environmental record."

Elmer Danenberger, a former chief of Offshore Regulatory Programs for the Minerals Management Service, told ABC News that regulators require the rigs to test the blowout preventers every two weeks, and there had been a test on the Deepwater Horizon within hours of the explosion.

Danenberger said it was possible that "some kind of violent flow after the BOP test might have done some damage," and rendered it inoperable. But that "is just speculation," he said.

"To be honest, I can't remember an offshore blowout where the BOP totally mis-functioned like this," he said. "There are going to be a lot of people waiting to hear what happened here -- wanting to know why didn't this safeguard work?"


What was the largest spill?
http://www.oilrigdisasters.co.uk/

Sedco 135F - IXTOC I

Rig: Sedco 135F Triangular Semi-Sub
Date: 03 June 1979
Location: Bahia de Campeche, Mexico
Operator: Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX)

Summary
In 1979, the Sedco 135F was drilling the IXTOC I well for PEMEX, the state-owned Mexican petroleum company when the well suffered a blowout. The well had been drilled to 3657m with the 9-5/8" casing set at 3627m. Reports then state that mud circulation was lost (mud is, in essence, a densely weighted drilling fluid used to lubricate the drill bit, clean the drilled rock from the hole and provide a column of hydrostatic pressure to prevent influxes) so the decision was made to pull the drill string and plug the well. Without the hydrostatic pressure of the mud column, oil and gas were able to flow unrestricted to the surface, which is what happened as the crew were working on the lower part of the drillstring. The BOP was closed on the pipe but could not cut the thicker drill collars, allowing oil and gas to flow to surface where it ignited and engulfed the Sedco 135F in flames. The rig collapsed and sank onto the wellhead area on the seabed, littering the seabed with large debris such as the rig's derrick and 3000m of pipe.

The well was initially flowing at a rate of 30,000 barrels per day (1 barrel = 42 US gallons = 159 litres), which was reduced to around 10,000 bpd by attempts to plug the well. Two relief wells were drilled to relieve pressure and the well was eventually killed nine months later on 23 March 1980. Due to the massive contamination caused by the spill from the blowout (by 12 June, the oil slick measured 180km by 80km), nearly 500 aerial missions were flown, spraying dispersants over the water. Prevailing winds caused extensive damage along the US coast with the Texas coast suffering the greatest. The IXTOC I accident was the biggest single spill ever, with an estimated 3.5 million barrels of oil released.
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Re: Spill Baby Spill!

Postby chump » Thu May 06, 2010 3:16 pm

I don't know who's fault this is, or whether it was done on purpose or not. Either way, it could well be the biggest blowout ever, and the most tragic.

Mother of all gushers could kill Earth's oceans

The original estimate was about 5,000 gallons (note: gallons, or barrels?) of oil a day spilling into the ocean. Now they're saying 200,000 gallons a day. That's over a million gallons of crude oil a week!

I'm engineer with 25 years of experience. I've worked on some big projects with big machines. Maybe that's why this mess is so clear to me.

First, the BP platform was drilling for what they call deep oil. They go out where the ocean is about 5,000 feet deep and drill another 30,000 feet into the crust of the earth. This it right on the edge of what human technology can do. Well, this time they hit a pocket of oil at such high pressure that it burst all of their safety valves all the way up to the drilling rig and then caused the rig to explode and sink. Take a moment to grasp the import of that. The pressure behind this oil is so high that it destroyed the maximum effort of human science to contain it...

...If we can't cap that hole that oil is going to destroy the oceans of the world. It only takes one quart of motor oil to make 250,000 gallons of ocean water toxic to wildlife. Are you starting to get the magnitude of this?...

Response by Paul Noel
for Pure Energy Systems News

I really do think that the situation is getting further and further out of hand.

By yesterday morning, the nature of the crude had changed, indicating that the spill was collapsing the rock structures. How much I cannot say. If it is collapsing the rock structures, the least that can be said is that the rock is fragmenting and blowing up the tube with the oil. With that going on you have a high pressure abrasive sand blaster working on the kinks in the pipe eroding it causing the very real risk of increasing the leaks.

More than that is the very real risk of causing the casing to become unstable and literally blowing it up the well bringing the hole to totally open condition. Another risk arises because according to reports the crew was cementing the exterior of the casing when this happens. As a result, the well, if this was not properly completed, could begin to blow outside the casing. Another possible scenario is a sea floor collapse. If that happens Katie bar the door.

Possible Fix

I do not see any good possibilities from humans further fracturing the rock particularly at higher levels. That is the cap rock that is holding the deposit together.

I do see a possible use of explosives for favorable outcome. If a properly sized charge were applied in a shaped fashion around the drill pipe at some distance from it say 5 feet or so it is entirely possible that an explosive charge could pinch the pipe off similar to a hydraulic clamp. The resulting situation would vastly reduce the spill. Once you clamped off the pipe much more substantially say down to 1 foot or less opening the resulting pipe could be charge cut above the location and a tapered pipe fitted to it to collect any leaking oil. The end result would be to contain the spill and dramatically control any leaks because drill mud could then be entered into the pipe fitted to the exterior. In the end, the pipe could be controlled that way. The size of a charge to do this would be a few pounds not megatons.

A nuclear detonation carries the real risk of giving us the full doomsday scenario on this well. I just don't like doing that. There is no coming back from the brink when you do that one. If it works, which I see as unlikely, great. If it doesn't work, there is now a maybe a hole 1/4 mile across leaking oil. That looks worse than any possible outcomes otherwise.


Oil Deposit Capacity

The BP people are not talking, but this well is into a deposit that easily could top 500,000 barrels production per day for 10 or 15 years. Letting that all go in one blast seems more than foolish.

The deposit is one I have known about since 1988. The deposit is very big. The central pressure in the deposit is 165 to 170 thousand PSI. It contains so much hydrocarbon that you simply cannot imagine it. In published reports, BP estimated a blow out could reach near 200,000 Barrels per day (165,000) They may have estimated a flow rate on a 5 foot pipe. The deposit is well able to surpass this.


The oil industry has knowledge of the deposit more than they admit. The deposit is 100 miles off shore. They are drilling into the edge of the deposit to leak it down gently to be able to produce from the deposit. The deposit is so large that while I have never heard exact numbers it was described to me to be either the largest or the second largest oil deposit ever found. It is mostly a natural gas deposit. That is another reason not to blast too willy nilly there. The natural gas that could be released is really way beyond the oil in quantity. It is like 10,000 times the oil in the deposit.

It is this deposit that has me reminding people of what the Shell geologist told me about the deposit. This was the quote, "Energy shortage..., Hell! We are afraid of running out of air to burn." The deposit is very large. It covers an area off shore something like 25,000 square miles. Natural Gas and Oil is leaking out of the deposit as far inland as Central Alabama and way over into Florida and even over to Louisiana almost as far as Texas. This is a really massive deposit. Punching holes in the deposit is a really scary event as we are now seeing.


Rig and Pipe Info

The pipe is a fairly rigid pipe and sticks up out of the Blow out prevention device for some distance before it bends over and kinks off. The distance is not long but is enough to do what I suggested. Explosive forming of metals is a standard technology and under water it is easier. The charge focuses very predictably.

Imaging a long straw that is 1 mile long and has kinked over in several locations. This is about what you have. I have seen the submarine photos from early on. Just a really big straw. It has about a 1.5 or 2 foot diameter drill pipe in the center with about a 10 inch hole down the center. I am not exactly sure on the drill pipe size. The casing here is very thick steel. It has to handle massive pressures.

The rig is quite some distance away from the well. It may be a 1/4 mile or more away. It sort of bent over and then kinked the pipe as it went down.

I guess the size here sort of bends the imagination. This rig has a deck area of about 3 to 4 acres. It had a crew quarters on board that had about 120 people in it. (Imagine a big hotel here.) The hotel on the rig was about 4 stories high. You just cannot imagine until you see these rigs how big they are. If you want to see one go to Mobile Bay. Gulf High Island 2 and other rigs in the area can be seen clearly for 90 miles from Pensacola Florida. The towers go up 1100 feet. You can take the ferry right between two rigs if you go from Fort Morgan to Dauphin Island. There is no comparison to these rig anywhere in the world. They are the biggest ever built bar none.

Controls That Should Have Been In Place

By the way, I am not against drilling it, I am just against doing so without proper controls.

The rig that was drilling was not a US Flagged rig. That means US Inspectors were not allowed on board the rig to inspect it. As a matter of National Security under the GATT the USA has a right to demand US Only in various technology. The USA should never allow a foreign flag vessel to drill for oil in the US Economic Zone (200 mile limit).
Acoustic automated shut of devices should be required.
I think US Federal Inspectors should have to be resident on and inspecting rigs like this 24/7.
I think that the drilling should be required to do some smaller holes that deliberately miss the main deposit that test the structure before main drilling operations happen.
Careful procedures should be in place to set up wells before they hit the main deposit. The well casing should have to be inserted well before the drill hits the deposit and it should have to be cemented in at least 2 weeks prior to finishing the hole down to the oil or gas. This is to give the cement time to set. The casing should have ridging to make this cement have a tight wedged grip on the miles of rock around it. This is required because the lift pressure on a pipe in this case could easily reach 20 million pounds of lift. This is an insane amount of up pressure. Even at 70,000 psi it would lift about 140 million pounds. (almost 64,000 long tons!)


This assessment of the reserves somewhat vindicates what I said before about "Peak Oil".

I still don't if Goldman shorted the Gulf or not? First they did, then they didn't, and now they did again?
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Re: Spill Baby Spill!

Postby chump » Fri May 07, 2010 5:44 pm

TV is worthless (as usual) so I've been searching the Internet trying to find out what I can. The video is about what Florida is anticipating from the blowout. I am finding it difficult to find a more recent satellite photo. I'm must not be looking in the right place.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhqcEvOe ... _embedded#!

------------------------------
Apparently, BP writes their own rules - using a categorical extension, such as would be used for an "outhouse or hiking trail". Apparently there is no need to do an environmental impact study because these operations are so safe.

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/7/go ... tal_review

Government Exempted BP from Environmental Review
Newly-released documents show government regulators exempted BP from a comprehensive environmental review of the project that resulted in the spill. The Minerals Management Service granted BP a “categorical exclusion” from a full review before approving the project just over a year ago. We speak with Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity...

KIERAN SUCKLING: Well, when a federal government is going to approve a project, it has to go through an environmental review. But for projects that have very, very little impact like building an outhouse or a hiking trail, they can use something called a categorical exclusion and say there’s no impact here at all so we don’t need to spend energy or time doing a review. Well, we looked at the oil drilling permits being issued by the Minerals Management Service in the Gulf, and we were shocked to find out that they were approving hundreds of massive oil drilling permits using this categorical exclusion instead of doing a full environmental impact study. And then, we found out that BP’s drilling permit—the very one that exploded—was done under this loophole and so it was never reviewed by the federal government at all. It was just rubber-stamped.


JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, according to the Washington Post article, in one of its assessments of the agency “estimated that a large oil spill from a deep platform like the Deepwater Horizon would not exceed a total of 1,500 barrels and that a deepwater spill occurring off the Intercontinental shelf would not reach the coast.” Obviously, both of those—both of those assessments have proven dramatically off the mark. As many as 250-400 waivers a year for drilling in the Gulf?


KIERAN SUCKLING: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It’s also important to note that when the government says it’s very unlikely this spill will occur, it’s unlikely the spill will reach shore, those aren’t even the government’s own assessments. They’re just repeating what BP, Exxon, and other oil companies put in their drilling applications. And since there’s no environmental impact study, the government never actually does an independent review. So everyone is just repeating the industry’s statements as they rubber-stamp the approvals. ...


Although, I don't know how anybody is getting ahead in this deal, the notion that it was intentional won't go away. At the very least, this "blowout" is criminally negligent. The problem is, if indeed this is an accidental blowout, and the oil and gas blew out the past the BOPs, you can bet that there is a hell of a lot more oil and gas blasting out of there than is being reported. I realize Wayne Madsen has been known to be wrong, but this report may be closer to reality than what we are seeing on TV. It is substantiated in the discussion by the engineers up above, and the images that I have seen. It's a lot of oil.


Crude Politics and the Looming Environmental Mega-disaster
http://oilprice.com/Environment/Oil-Spi ... aster.html

WMR has been informed by sources in the US Army Corps of Engineers, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and Florida Department of Environmental Protection that the Obama White House and British Petroleum (BP), which pumped $71,000 into Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign -- more than John McCain or Hillary Clinton, are covering up the magnitude of the volcanic-level oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and working together to limit BP's liability for damage caused by what can be called a "mega-disaster."

Obama and his senior White House staff, as well as Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, are working with BP's chief executive officer Tony Hayward on legislation that would raise the cap on liability for damage claims from those affected by the oil disaster from $75 million to $10 billion. However, WMR's federal and Gulf state sources are reporting the disaster has the real potential cost of at least $1 trillion. Critics of the deal being worked out between Obama and Hayward point out that $10 billion is a mere drop in the bucket for a trillion dollar disaster but also note that BP, if its assets were nationalized, could fetch almost a trillion dollars for compensation purposes. There is talk in some government circles, including FEMA, of the need to nationalize BP in order to compensate those who will ultimately be affected by the worst oil disaster in the history of the world.

Plans by BP to sink a 4-story containment dome over the oil gushing from a gaping chasm one kilometer below the surface of the Gulf, where the oil rig Deepwater Horizon exploded and killed 11 workers on April 20, and reports that one of the leaks has been contained is pure public relations disinformation designed to avoid panic and demands for greater action by the Obama administration, according to FEMA and Corps of Engineers sources. Sources within these agencies say the White House has been resisting releasing any "damaging information" about the oil disaster. They add that if the ocean oil geyser is not stopped within 90 days, there will be irreversible damage to the marine eco-systems of the Gulf of Mexico, north Atlantic Ocean, and beyond. At best, some Corps of Engineers experts say it could take two years to cement the chasm on the floor of the Gulf.

Only after the magnitude of the disaster became evident did Obama order Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to declare the oil disaster a "national security issue." Although the Coast Guard and FEMA are part of her department, Napolitano's actual reasoning for invoking national security was to block media coverage of the immensity of the disaster that is unfolding for the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean and their coastlines.

From the Corps of Engineers, FEMA, the Environmental Protection Agency, Coast Guard, and Gulf state environmental protection agencies, the message is the same: "we've never dealt with anything like this before."

The Obama administration also conspired with BP to fudge the extent of the oil leak, according to our federal and state sources. After the oil rig exploded and sank, the government stated that 42,000 gallons per day was gushing from the seabed chasm. Five days later, the federal government upped the leakage to 210,000 gallons a day.

However, WMR has been informed that submersibles that are monitoring the escaping oil from the Gulf seabed are viewing television pictures of what is a "volcanic-like" eruption of oil. Moreover, when the Army Corps of Engineers first attempted to obtain NASA imagery of the Gulf oil slick -- which is larger than that being reported by the media -- it was turned down. However, National Geographic managed to obtain the satellite imagery shots of the extent of the disaster and posted them on their web site.

There is other satellite imagery being withheld by the Obama administration that shows what lies under the gaping chasm spewing oil at an ever-alarming rate is a cavern estimated to be around the size of Mount Everest. This information has been given an almost national security-level classification to keep it from the public, according to our sources.

The Corps and Engineers and FEMA are quietly critical of the lack of support for quick action after the oil disaster by the Obama White House and the US Coast Guard. Only recently, has the Coast Guard understood the magnitude of the disaster, dispatching nearly 70 vessels to the affected area. WMR has also learned that inspections of off-shore rigs' shut-off valves by the Minerals Management Service during the Bush administration were merely rubber-stamp operations, resulting from criminal collusion between Halliburton and the Interior Department's service, and that the potential for similar disasters exists with the other 30,000 off-shore rigs that use the same shut-off valves.

The impact of the disaster became known to the Corps of Engineers and FEMA even before the White House began to take the magnitude of the impending catastrophe seriously. The first casualty of the disaster is the seafood industy, with not just fishermen, oystermen, crabbers, and shrimpers losing their jobs, but all those involved in the restaurant industry, from truckers to waitresses, facing lay-offs.

The invasion of crude oil into estuaries like the oyster-rich Apalachicola Bay in Florida spell disaster for the seafood industry. However, the biggest threat is to Florida's Everglades, which federal and state experts fear will be turned into a "dead zone" if the oil continues to gush forth from the Gulf chasm. There are also expectations that the oil slick will be caught up in the Gulf stream off the eastern seaboard of the United States, fouling beaches and estuaries like the Chesapeake Bay, and ultimately target the rich fishing grounds of the Grand Banks off Newfoundland.

WMR has also learned that 36 urban areas on the Gulf of Mexico are expecting to be confronted with a major disaster from the oil volcano in the next few days. Although protective water surface boons are being laid to protect such sensitive areas as Alabama's Dauphin Island, the mouth of the Mississippi River, and Florida's Apalachicola Bay, Florida, there is only 16 miles of boons available for the protection of 2,276 miles of tidal shoreline in the state of Florida.

Emergency preparations in dealing with the expanding oil menace are now being made for cities and towns from Corpus Christi, Texas, to Houston, New Orleans, Gulfport, Mobile, Pensacola, Tampa-St.Petersburg-Clearwater, Sarasota-Bradenton, Naples, and Key West. Some 36 FEMA-funded contracts between cities, towns, and counties and emergency workers are due to be invoked within days, if not hours, according to WMR's FEMA sources.

There are plans to evacuate people with respiratory problems, especially those among the retired senior population along the west coast of Florida, before officials begin burning surface oil as it begins to near the coastline.

There is another major threat looming for inland towns and cities. With hurricane season in effect, there is a potential for ocean oil to be picked up by hurricane-driven rains and dropped into fresh water lakes and rivers, far from the ocean, thus adding to the pollution of water supplies and eco-systems.

This story contributed by the Wayne Madsen Report for Oilprice.com.


Wish us luck!
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Re: Spill Baby Spill!

Postby No_Baseline » Fri May 07, 2010 6:09 pm

At the very least, this "blowout" is criminally negligent.


Damn skippy.

Didn't the Supreme Court rule just this past January that corporations are to be considered 'personhoods' ? well then, time to start jailing the felons.
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