Much of the attention is focused on the blowout preventer, or BOP, the massive $15 million piece of equipment that is supposed to be the fail-safe mechanism to keep a well from blowing.
But, Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., the subcommittee chairman, said that documents provided by BP indicated that "the blowout preventer apparently had a significant leak. This leak was found in the hydraulic system that provides emergency power to the shear rams, which are the devices that are supposed to cut the drill pipe and seal the well." Stupak said that Cameron International, which manufactured the BOP, did not believe the leak was a result of the blowout itself because "every other fitting in the system was tight." Cameron President Jack Moore also testified Wednesday.
Further complicating matters, Stupak said that dead man's switch, which is designed to trigger the BOP if all else fails, is connected to two separate control pods in the BOP, but relies on battery power to make that connection.
"When one of the control pods was removed after the spill began, the battery was found to be dead," Stupak said. Stupak said that committee also learned that the BOP had been modified in ways that apparently left BP befuddled, slowing their efforts to try to activate it after the accident, though Transocean President Steve Newman said the modifications had been made at BP's request and expense.
At the time of the accident, BP was in the process of cementing the exploratory well, a job being done by Halliburton, which also was represented at Wednesday's hearing, in anticipation of announcing what appeared to be a fantastic oil find and moving toward drilling in earnest.
According to Waxman, just after midnight the morning of April 20, Halliburton finished cementing the well. Waxman said that James Dupree, the BP senior vice president for the Gulf of Mexico, told the committee staff that a 5 p.m. pressure test, to determine whether any gas was leaking into the well through the cement or casing, had an unsatisfactory result, and a second test also discovered a disturbing imbalance between pressure in the drill pipe and in the kill and choke lines.
Waxman said that while Dupree indicated that the well blew right after the second test, BP lawyers told the committee that additional tests were done and well operations resumed. Two hours later the well blew.
"The investigation will have to tear that apart piece by piece," said Lamar McKay, the president and president of BP America, of the discrepancy in the pressure tests...
Gulf Oil Spill At Least 10X Greater Than Thought: Expert 7:02 pm
May 13, 2010
By Frank James and Allison Richards
NPR's Richard Harris has learned that much more oil, 70,000 barrels a day or more than ten times the official estimate, is gushing into the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon pipe, based on scientific analysis of the video released Wednesday.
That's the equivalent of one Exxon Valdez tanker full every four days.
The U.S. Coast Guard has estimated that oil was gushing into the ocean at the rate of 5,000 barrels a day. But, again, NPR has been told that estimate is very low.
Others have estimated before now that oil was spilling at a much faster rate than the official Coast Guard rate of 5,000 barrels a day.
SkyTruth.org, for instance, had a post on May 1, May Day, which is apt since that's the call sign for calamity, that said the 11 million gallons spilled by the Exxon Valdez was surpassed by the gulf spill on that day. There are 42 gallons of crude oil in a barrel so 11 million gallons would equal about 261,904 barrels.
Assuming the flow rate has been steady since the gusher started on April 20, the gulf spill surpassed the Exxon Valdez in the first four days.
This Isn't a Rounding Error... Is BP being honest with us about what they know and how bad things are out there in the Gulf of Mexico? That's a good question. Soon after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sunk, it was estimated that about 1,000 barrels of oil were leaking daily. Then that estimate was raised to 5,000 barrels. Then SkyTruth.org, using satellite and radar date, made an estimate of 25,000 barrels/day, and now the latest reports are that there could be more than 70,0000 barrels leaking each day. But if BP had cameras down there almost from the start, why didn't they know this? Or did they?
Having just seen (as I write) the film of the larger of the two leaks under sea, I can say with my trained eye that the volume coming out of the hole is in the order of 4 barrels per second (around 350,000 barrels per day).
As you look at this, it might seem like a small hole, and a small amount of oil. But bear in mind that the diameter of the pipe is 5 feet -- five feet wide! Those deep sea drilling rigs don't make small diameter holes like you might be used to seeing on land. Some of those huge drilling rigs, which make an aircraft carrier look like a toy boat in comparison, put down huge pipe. The rig that is on site now, Development-Driller-III, which is drilling a relief hole to reduce pressure from the hole dug by Deepwater Horizon, has a torque (drill twisting) rating of 78,450 ft-lbs. You who know torque will appreciate how huge that is. Yes, the hole opening is 5 feet in diameter, spewing approximately 4 barrels each second...
...Postscript
There is no way to get the size of this in mind. It is just too big to imagine. The slick is now as large as Maryland and growing. It will grow probably for 90 days or more. Even if contained tomorrow it will set the record for biggest in history.
Here is a fairly safe estimate of the economic damage to tourism, fisheries and the like in 3 US states. (AL, MS, LA) Over the next 10 years this will cost about $1 Trillion Dollars. BP will not pay this. This does not count damage to ports and trade generally. There is no way out now. What do Texas and Florida get ??? How about the east US Coast or even parts of Mexico? Does this go all the way damaging England and the northern EU? It certainly will not stop with just 3 states...
On edit: Correction posted to the article above:
Errata 5/16/2010: We originally reported that the main hole was 5 feet in diameter, spewing an estimated 4 barrels per second, with a possible total approaching 1 million barrels/day. The pipe is actually 21 inches in diameter; and the high end estimated total leakage is in the range of 3.4 million gallons/day (Ref.). We deeply regret the error.
Managers at oil giant BP PLC decided to forge ahead in finishing work on the doomed Deepwater Horizon rig despite some tests suggesting that highly combustible gas had seeped into the well, according to testimony released by congressional investigators and documents seen by The Wall Street Journal.
The move to start withdrawing heavy drilling fluid that prevents gas from escaping the well, despite some worrisome tests and before a final cement plug could be placed in the well, raises questions about the judgments made on the rig in the hours before an explosion erupted into the night air of April 20, killing 11 and eventually leaving oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico...
...Accounts from two contractors say drilling "mud" was withdrawn before placement of a final cement plug, which would have been one more safeguard against natural gas surging from the well. Once mud came out, the last safeguard, a giant set of valves called a blowout preventer, didn't do its job, possibly because of a defect such as leaking hydraulics or because it was jammed by debris from the well, documents produced by congressional investigators show. The rig was soon engulfed in flames.
A senior BP executive and the chief executive of rig owner Transocean Ltd. told lawmakers Wednesday that discrepancies in key pressure tests on the afternoon of the explosion should have raised alarms...
* For captain, first sign of trouble was rain of mud
* Green flash preceded explosion that rocked doomed rig
By Erwin Seba
KENNER, Louisiana (Reuters) - For the captain of the Damon B. Bankston, a ship anchored alongside the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig when it exploded, the first sign of trouble was a flood of mud that poured off the rig's drill deck like black rain.
In testimony Tuesday before a federal government panel investigating the explosion on the night of April 20 that claimed 11 lives, Alwin Landry also recalled a green flash that preceded the first explosion and a desperate effort to pull 115 survivors from the water.
It was a routine evening on the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, about 42 miles (68 km) off the Louisiana coast. The Damon Bankston was pumping heavy drilling mud from a three-mile deep well drilled by the rig through a hose. Landry was on the bridge catching up on paperwork.
Shortly after 9 p.m. CDT, "my mate advised there was mud coming off the rig. It looked like it was a black rain coming down," Landry said.
Swiss-based Transocean Ltd's Deepwater Horizon rig, under contract with BP, exploded and caught fire on April 20 while it was putting the finishing touches on a well about a mile (1.6 km) beneath the ocean surface. It sank two days later.
The accident has triggered a huge oil spill that is threatening an environmental and economic disaster along the U.S. Gulf Coast.
Drilling mud is poured down the drill pipe to control the powerful pressures within the underground hydrocarbon reservoir and prevent a "kick" of methane gas and oil from rushing up the drillpipe. It was unusual for the mud to be pouring out the well in an uncontrolled flood.
"I was advised they were having trouble with the well," Landry said, and workers on board advised him to disconnect the hose and move his vessel away. Landry said he registered concern in the rig worker's voice.
A GREEN FLASH
Landry said he heard something else that concerned him: the loud hiss of a high-pressure release of air and gas that lasted for 30 seconds or more.
According to accounts from rig workers reviewed by Robert Bea, a University of California Berkeley engineering professor, this was the sound of a surge of methane rushing up the drill pipe which engulfed the rig's deck in highly-flammable gas.
According to Landry, the explosion came at 9:53 p.m. (0253 GMT).
"I saw the green flash on the main deck of the Horizon to the aft of the derrick." About 10 minutes later, a distress call went out from the rig's radio -- "Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! The rig's on fire. Abandon ship," Landry said.
The fire enveloped the rig as workers scrambled to reach life boats and some plunged into the dark waters, he said.
The rig's two lifeboats made it clear of the burning rig but a smaller life raft was hung by a rope and couldn't get free as fire spread beneath the rig.
The Damon Bankston's rescue boat pulled alongside the hung-up life raft and passed its crew a knife, which they used to hack themselves free, Landry said.
According to Landry, the rig's captain, Curt Kuchta, said his crew had slammed a "kill switch" on the drill deck meant to activate an underwater blowout preventer that is designed as a fail-safe method of shutting off the well.
"He said they pressed the kill switch," Landry said. "They didn't know if it worked."
At about 11:05 p.m. cdt (0405 GMT) the Coast Guard issued its first alert. "Coast Guard has received a report of the ... Deepwater Horizon on fire," according to the radio alert, read by a Coast Guard official at the hearing. "All mariners are requested to maintain a sharp lookout, assist if possible." (Writing by Chris Baltimore; editing by David Storey)
Comment by Curtis 7 hours ago I just have 1 problem with this. What follows was sent to me in email as an account of someone that was on the platform at the time. I was somewhat skeptical when I received it, but since then what this person as told in the accout has been proven to be fact as it has since been released and we even see it in the IADC daily drilling report.
Here is his account
...They had set A 9-5/8 Tapered Production Liner, did their cement job, had positive tested, and also negative tested, they were going to set a balanced plug around 3000' below the well head which would be at about 8000', the senior company man wanted to set the balanced plug in mud, but the engineers wanted to displace with water prior to setting balanced plug, so they displaced from 3000' below mud line, and were getting ready to set plug. The derrickman called the driller and said he needed help, he had mud going everywhere, and about this time the drill floor disapeared, then there was an explosion, then a second explosion.
The flames are now going straight up allowing evacuation of men, then you know the rest.
The hands that are missing are the ones that were on the drill floor and pump room. You know the results of that. This all took place in less than a minute.
Rig was evacuated in about 25 minutes.
It is believed that the seal assembly at the well head gave up. If that is the case and they would have set the balanced plug in mud then displaced the riser, it would only have delayed what happened by a couple of hours.
Gas must have channeled through the cement job and up the back side of the 9-5/8 production casing.
This guy told us the size of the casing string and the depths at which they were displacing, etc..so I have to give the account credibility. In this account he says the derrickhand called the rig floor and said "The derrickman called the driller and said he needed help, he had mud going everywhere, and about this time the drill floor disapeared, then there was an explosion, then a second explosion."
Would the casing seal start as a leak and allow the pit gain for some time before the entire assembly gave way?
Sorry for so many questions-but I think there must be several low level guys like myself with the same questions that are following this discussion so i try and ask them for everyone. --- Comment by Horizon3 5 hours ago Curtis,
Your getting there, thanks for the patience, I am not the worlds greatest teacher.
You can disregard mud wt on the chart it's reading the last thing they pulled out of the pits, which was a 16ppg slug for the drill pipe, they would have shut off the pit suction to the pumps and switched to seawater which doesn't go through a pit, its straight off the rigs deepwell pumps. into the suction manifold. Also you have to take main pit levels with a grain of salt, because they are off loading mud to a supply boat while all this is going on, the big spikes in the main pit level are from the derrickman running around swapping pits to keep the pit full going to the boat, while swapping returns to different pits to take the mud coming back from the riser, he was probably pretty darned busy.
Let me try to put an operational time-line to the chart. 20:00 the SPP is at around 2,200 because they had just displaced the choke and kill lines to seawater, it's at 2,200 because the casing and riser are still full of 14ppg mud. 20:02 the SPP goes to 0 because they line up the valves to pump down the kelly or top drive whichever they are using to pump down the drill pipe. 20:04 they fire up the mud pumps and start displacing the hole to seawater. If you notice the flow out of the riser is not moving, but the flow rate back to the pits is., that because the flow line flow gauge is flapper type, it hadn't moved in the best part of a day because the trip tank pump flow is not enough to move it and it was probably just stuck down from dried mud. 20:06 the gas reading starts going up, this not unusual for a riser full of mud that had up until a day prior had been taking returns from mud passing a production zone. and been basically idle except for pressure testing for a day, 60 units max is about a cow fart worth of methane. And if you notice it doesn't last very long then it goes back to just above background reading. 20:28 Notice the trip tank level dropping, this is most likely one of the hands draining the trip tank of mud, then filling it back up with seawater ( No sense in having a trip tank full of mud if the riser is full of seawater) 20:30 Happily going along displacing the riser to seawater, the SPP is dropping as it should as the riser is emptying of mud, the gas level is back to near normal. 20:50 Driller notices something is not quite right as his riser flow has not settled down to be close to flow in, he slows down the pumps and watches it. 21:00 This is where it starts to get interesting, the driller has slowed the pumps, but the flow on the riser out still stays several gpm ahead of the pumps. 21:08 Driller thinks things are just too out of kilter and stops the pumps. Notice the flow back to the pits is still flowing and the main pit level is still rising and the SPP has not dropped back to zero in fact it's going up. This is probably when he knows something is coming up the hole, and he had not pumped long enough to have displaced the riser to seawater. 21:10 He closes the pipe rams or annular you can see this by the bobbles on the WOB scale. the hook load goes up because he has kicked in the compensators, Lines up the choke manifold. The flow back to the pits has not dropped to zero, but that is probably just the shaker house draining down after the riser flow stopped, it's a straight line flow. Hand is filling the trip tank with seawater to wash it out? 21:12 for some reason he kicks the pumps back in? possibly thinking that he can push the gas back or at least fill up the hole behind it? 21:18 He stops the pumps again? to check for flow? or pressure? or both. 21:21 He starts the pumps back up again? flow out is zero because he is taking returns from the choke line. Is the trip tank empty because a hand is still washing it out? or did he get called back to the floor and forgot to close the drain? Flow out of the riser is going up but where is it going, not to the pits and not to the trip tank, so Driller must have gone to the overboard diverter line, or has the choke line lined up to go to the overboard diverter line through the gas buster. 21:30 driller shuts down the pumps. 21:40 the SPP has been fluctuating is the driller or toolpusher working the choke? or with the rams closed is the well kicking a mix of oil and gas under the rams. 21:42 the gas bubble that was working its way up the riser gets to a low enough pressure to really start expanding and empties the riser. 21:47 gas explodes shorting out the sensors and cutting off the satellite transmission.
If you think I missed anything or have another idea about it chime on in. I am never too old to learn something new. ----- Comment by Will Riddle 52 minutes ago Horizon3,
That's the most plausible account I've seen yet. It fits with a ton of unofficial reports I've read that were purported to be eyewitness accounts. There's still a few things I cannot get my head wrapped around.
1) Although most reports continue to assume a satisfactory negative pressure test, the "official" reports are that there was a 1400psi differential between the drill pipe pressure and the choke and kill lines during the negative pressure test, following WOC for 16 hours, and that the negative tests were not satisfactory. I should note that the attorney for BP has since reported that they subsequently did get a satisfactory negative pressure test. Of course, one report or the other is not accurate.
2) The well flow doesn't seem to match a micro annulus conduction. Sure there's a lot of pressure pushing it, but differential pressure in that location, shouldn't be enough to push 5k bbls/day through a micro annulus. I get the picture of nearly open hole, impeded only by damaged or otherwise partially closed rams....which brings me to #3.
3) If the driller closed the rams or the hydril, (I'm thinking rams though), on the pipe when he saw trouble and I can see where the report jives with your assessment, so I believe he did, why did he open them. The more I look at the report, the more I think that maybe he didn't. For some reason, it looks like he was working his pipe, which I know y'all worry about that in open hole but in cased hole it shouldn't be a problem. (right?). Anyway, at 21:41 it looks like he tried to pull a tool joint through the rams, to me. Am I reading that wrong?
Last edited by chump on Sun May 16, 2010 1:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
There is no me. There is no you. There is all. There is no you. There is no me. And that is all. A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of this universe is love. -- Propagandhi
Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given.
“There’s a shocking amount of oil in the deep water, relative to what you see in the surface water,” said Samantha Joye, a researcher at the University of Georgia who is involved in one of the first scientific missions to gather details about what is happening in the gulf. “There’s a tremendous amount of oil in multiple layers, three or four or five layers deep in the water column.”
The plumes are depleting the oxygen dissolved in the gulf, worrying scientists, who fear that the oxygen level could eventually fall so low as to kill off much of the sea life near the plumes.
Dr. Joye said the oxygen had already dropped 30 percent near some of the plumes in the month that the broken oil well had been flowing. “If you keep those kinds of rates up, you could draw the oxygen down to very low levels that are dangerous to animals in a couple of months,” she said Saturday. “That is alarming.”
The plumes were discovered by scientists from several universities working aboard the research vessel Pelican, which sailed from Cocodrie, La., on May 3 and has gathered extensive samples and information about the disaster in the gulf.
Scientists studying video of the gushing oil well have tentatively calculated that it could be flowing at a rate of 25,000 to 80,000 barrels of oil a day. The latter figure would be 3.4 million gallons a day. But the government, working from satellite images of the ocean surface, has calculated a flow rate of only 5,000 barrels a day.
BP has resisted entreaties from scientists that they be allowed to use sophisticated instruments at the ocean floor that would give a far more accurate picture of how much oil is really gushing from the well.
“The answer is no to that,” a BP spokesman, Tom Mueller, said on Saturday. “We’re not going to take any extra efforts now to calculate flow there at this point. It’s not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort.”
The undersea plumes may go a long way toward explaining the discrepancy between the flow estimates, suggesting that much of the oil emerging from the well could be lingering far below the sea surface.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started. They could still get him out of office. But instead, they want mass death. Don’t forget that.
By RUSSELL GOLD About 11 hours before the Deepwater Horizon exploded, a disagreement took place between the top manager for oil giant BP PLC on the drilling rig and his counterpart for the rig's owner, Transocean Ltd., concerning the final steps in shutting down the nearly completed well, according to a worker's sworn statement.
Michael Williams, a Transocean employee who was chief electronics technician on the rig, said there was "confusion" between those high-ranking officials in an 11 a.m. meeting on the day of the rig blast, according to a sworn statement from Mr. Williams reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Williams himself attended the meeting.
The confusion over the drilling plan in the final hours leading up to the explosion could be key to understanding the causes of the blowout and ultimately who was responsible.
What is known from drilling records and congressional testimony is that after the morning meeting, the crew began preparations to remove from the drill pipe heavy drilling "mud" that provides pressure to keep down any gas, and to replace this mud with lighter seawater.
Ultimately, the crew removed the mud before setting a final 300-foot cement plug that is typically poured as a last safeguard to prevent combustible gas from rising to the surface. Indeed, they never got the opportunity to set the plug.
Mr. Williams declined to be interviewed.
In his sworn statement, he described the meeting as including ranking personnel from BP, Transocean and Halliburton Co., a contractor that dealt with cementing the well.
According to Mr. Williams's account, Transocean's rig manager, Jimmy Wayne Harrell, was discussing the plans for the next few hours' work, including taking out the drilling mud and running a test to make sure gas wasn't seeping into the well. Mr. Harrell explained in the meeting that he had received the plans from BP.
Then, according to Mr. Williams's statement, the top-ranked BP employee assigned to the rig, Donald Vidrine, disagreed and said "that was not the correct procedure."
A Transocean driller in charge of the crew, Dewey Revette, tried to ease the tension. "We'll get it worked out. Let's get up there and go to work," he said, according to Mr. Williams's statement. Mr. Revette, 48 years old, was among 11 workers who died on the rig.
At about this point in the meeting, according to Mr. Williams's attorney, Scott Bickford, all other employees were asked to leave the room so that Messrs. Vidrine and Harrell could talk in private. Mr. Williams's statement doesn't include a reference to asking others to leave.
It's not clear what position either BP's Mr. Vidrine or Transocean's Mr. Harrell took on when the drilling mud should be removed. Mr. Williams's statement said only that the disagreement concerned taking out the mud, running a "negative pressure" test on the well, and dealing with a piece of equipment called a seal assembly.
It also isn't clear whether Mr. Vidrine or Mr. Harrell won the day.
Typically well owner BP would have final say, since it was paying roughly $1 million a day to lease the rig and pay for services from 12 companies that had people on the rig.
What is clear is that workers soon began displacing the mud. Later that afternoon a pressure test provided ambiguous readings, a possible sign of gas seeping in, according to what Rep. Henry Waxman says a BP executive told House investigators. Eventually, in the evening, after further tests, BP made a decision to carry forth in removing more drilling mud. The rig blew about 10 p.m.
A BP spokesman, asked about the account in Mr. Williams's statement, said: "We're simply not going to comment on that sort of detail or speculation about causes." BP's Mr. Vidrine couldn't be reached for comment.
A Transocean spokesman said the company couldn't provide details of the meeting's discussion. A woman who answered the phone at the residence of Transocean's Mr. Harrell, and who identified herself as his wife, said he had no comment.
The largest of a set of enormous oil plumes deep in the Gulf of Mexico that suggests that leakage from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than the government and BP originally thought.
Not only does oil in the water cake marine life with a toxic black goo, it literally suffocates the ecosystem as the oil depletes oxygen in the water. —J
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started. They could still get him out of office. But instead, they want mass death. Don’t forget that.
BP says tube successfully inserted back into Gulf leak
(CNN) -- Oil company BP says it has resumed pumping oil to a ship on the surface after a weekend setback that halted efforts to siphon off the crude spewing from a damaged well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.
Crews re-inserted the tube into the well's riser stack Sunday. The 4-inch pipe is now connected to a ship on the surface, 5,000 feet above the sea floor, and is pumping oil back to the surface, BP spokesman Mark Proegler told CNN.
If successful, the technique will capture most of the oil that is pouring out of the well. The well has been spewing up to 210,000 gallons of light sweet crude a day into the Gulf since the sinking of the drill platform Deepwater Horizon in late April.
The system was able to capture some of the leaking oil and pipe it aboard a drill ship on the surface overnight and burned off some of the natural gas released in the process, according to a statement from the joint BP-Coast Guard command center leading the response to the oil spill.
The test was halted when the tube came out, but it was soon re-inserted and pumping resumed, the company said.
The effort was dealt a setback Friday night, when the frame holding the insertion tube shifted and prevented the surface vessel from connecting to it, said Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer for exploration and production.
The slick from the spill has spread across much of the northern Gulf of Mexico, with bits of oil washing up periodically onto the shores of Louisiana's barrier islands.
As authorities try to bring the gushing oil under control, Suttles said the application of underwater dispersants -- a tactic approved for use Friday -- appeared to be working.
"The oil in the immediate vicinity of the well and the ships and rigs working in the area is diminished from previous observations," he said after flying over the area Saturday.
The Coast Guard and the Environmental Protection Agency said Friday that the decision to use subsea dispersants is an "important step" aimed at reducing potential damage from the spill, because dispersants can be more effective underwater than on the ocean's surface.
Oil dispersants are chemicals that can break the oil down into small drops and prevent it from reaching the surface or the shore. Dispersants are generally less harmful than the oil itself, which is highly toxic, and they biodegrade more quickly, the Coast Guard said.
The underwater gusher began after an April 20 explosion aboard the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon. The explosion and subsequent fire caused the Deepwater Horizon to sink two days later, prompting oil to begin spilling from the well. BP was leasing the rig from Transocean.
On Saturday, the Department of Homeland Security released a letter from Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar addressed to BP's chief executive, Anthony Hayward, calling on the company to state its "true intentions" for compensating those affected by the spill.
"The BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill may prove to be one of the most devastating environmental disasters this nation has ever faced," said the letter, which was dated Friday. "As one of the responsible parties for this event, BP is accountable to the American public for the full clean up of this spill and all the economic loss caused by the spill and related events."
The letter also asks BP to confirm it will not "seek reimbursement from the American taxpayers, the United States government or the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund for any amount."
Nice to see .gov laying down the law. We'll see how that goes though, won't we? What's the word on the coastline as of today btw? Has the oil totally reached it yet?
On edit: Sorry, Pele's, I couldn't get to the story at the Washington Post without registering. Hence the crossposting.
There is no me. There is no you. There is all. There is no you. There is no me. And that is all. A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of this universe is love. -- Propagandhi
By RUSSELL GOLD About 11 hours before the Deepwater Horizon exploded, a disagreement took place between the top manager for oil giant BP PLC on the drilling rig and his counterpart for the rig's owner, Transocean Ltd., concerning the final steps in shutting down the nearly completed well, according to a worker's sworn statement.
Michael Williams, a Transocean employee who was chief electronics technician on the rig, said there was "confusion" between those high-ranking officials in an 11 a.m. meeting on the day of the rig blast, according to a sworn statement from Mr. Williams reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Williams himself attended the meeting.
The confusion over the drilling plan in the final hours leading up to the explosion could be key to understanding the causes of the blowout and ultimately who was responsible.
What is known from drilling records and congressional testimony is that after the morning meeting, the crew began preparations to remove from the drill pipe heavy drilling "mud" that provides pressure to keep down any gas, and to replace this mud with lighter seawater.
Ultimately, the crew removed the mud before setting a final 300-foot cement plug that is typically poured as a last safeguard to prevent combustible gas from rising to the surface. Indeed, they never got the opportunity to set the plug.
Mr. Williams declined to be interviewed.
In his sworn statement, he described the meeting as including ranking personnel from BP, Transocean and Halliburton Co., a contractor that dealt with cementing the well.
According to Mr. Williams's account, Transocean's rig manager, Jimmy Wayne Harrell, was discussing the plans for the next few hours' work, including taking out the drilling mud and running a test to make sure gas wasn't seeping into the well. Mr. Harrell explained in the meeting that he had received the plans from BP.
Then, according to Mr. Williams's statement, the top-ranked BP employee assigned to the rig, Donald Vidrine, disagreed and said "that was not the correct procedure."
A Transocean driller in charge of the crew, Dewey Revette, tried to ease the tension. "We'll get it worked out. Let's get up there and go to work," he said, according to Mr. Williams's statement. Mr. Revette, 48 years old, was among 11 workers who died on the rig.
At about this point in the meeting, according to Mr. Williams's attorney, Scott Bickford, all other employees were asked to leave the room so that Messrs. Vidrine and Harrell could talk in private. Mr. Williams's statement doesn't include a reference to asking others to leave.
It's not clear what position either BP's Mr. Vidrine or Transocean's Mr. Harrell took on when the drilling mud should be removed. Mr. Williams's statement said only that the disagreement concerned taking out the mud, running a "negative pressure" test on the well, and dealing with a piece of equipment called a seal assembly.
It also isn't clear whether Mr. Vidrine or Mr. Harrell won the day.
Typically well owner BP would have final say, since it was paying roughly $1 million a day to lease the rig and pay for services from 12 companies that had people on the rig.
What is clear is that workers soon began displacing the mud. Later that afternoon a pressure test provided ambiguous readings, a possible sign of gas seeping in, according to what Rep. Henry Waxman says a BP executive told House investigators. Eventually, in the evening, after further tests, BP made a decision to carry forth in removing more drilling mud. The rig blew about 10 p.m.
A BP spokesman, asked about the account in Mr. Williams's statement, said: "We're simply not going to comment on that sort of detail or speculation about causes." BP's Mr. Vidrine couldn't be reached for comment.
A Transocean spokesman said the company couldn't provide details of the meeting's discussion. A woman who answered the phone at the residence of Transocean's Mr. Harrell, and who identified herself as his wife, said he had no comment.
--Vanessa O'Connell contributed to this article
The truth is slowly coming out. Generally, BP has the final word on anything that was done on the Horizon job, since they were the operator. However, the US Coast Guard deems the toolpusher (Harrell) a captain of the vessel, so he had the authority to refuse performing any work that he would consider unsafe. This very rarely happens in practice.
Without traversing the edges, the center is unknowable.
The word annular shows up in the DrillingAhead notes in chump’s May 15 post, above. I hadn’t been sure where an annular was or what it looked like, but I found out.
Monday evening, May 17, Maddow reports include the 60 Minutes Deepwater Horizon rig update televised on Sunday, May 16. The update shows in the video below, an animation beginning at marker 2.00, where an annular is located. I liked the visual.
In that CBS 60 Minutes report, an interviewee said the BP representative pressured Transocean’s rep to plug the well in a way that would eventually accelerate extracting oil from the well by a forthcoming production rig.
A hundred miles further off shore from the Horizon is the rig Atlantis, which is presently drilling 2,000 ft deeper than was Horizon. Maddow reports that BP did not review the final design documents for systems and equipment on Atlantis. Food and Water Watch has sued for the shut down of Atlantis until BP proves Atlantis is safe.
It was incorrectly identified as an annular. The technical term is annular preventer. It is used for shutting the well in for low pressure kicks and is necessary for valid pressure testing. It was damaged when hydraulic pressure was not released and a tool joint was pulled or pushed through it. Oil well personnel call it a "Hydril" because the manufacturer Hydril dominated the market for so many years (like Kodak or Frigidaire).
What I didn't know was that this well was a sidetrack. That makes the success of a relief well far more difficult, since finding the bottom hole location will be far trickier.
I strongly recommend that people watch the 60 Minutes video (Williams' story of his harrowing escape from death is not to be missed). It clearly shows what I have been posting about this on these two topics: BP is fully to blame for this disaster. One could point a finger at TransOcean for not having a backbone and standing up to BP's demands to take shortcuts, namely, ignoring damage and maintenance issues with the BOP stack, and displacing the mud from the hole before the plugs were in place and correctly tested. It's the Titanic all over again.
Without traversing the edges, the center is unknowable.
![\<]](./images/smilies/confused0044.gif "confused")
