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24.118.119.182
Call me naive, but here's what I'm wondering:
BP says the oil spill was caused by a faulty blowout preventer, and the main two causes for that failure (from what I have read) are a leaky hydraulic system, and a failed/dead battery. If so, given the technology we've seen so far, why can't they repair the hydraulic leak, and replace the battery? Yes, this may seem overly simplistic, and I would think there's a logical reason why this cannot, and has not, been done, but for the life of me I can't find out the reason(s) why.
Anyone?
Jim
My Rock-Ola Blog
Follow Ups:
Brian Walsh
No Brit would be likely to EVER resort to purchasing the "nacho cheese crap" mentioned... :o)
We do have our standards, you know... :o)
Marmalade is one of the many features of English society and culture for which English devotees owe a debt of gratitude to their sometimes unfriendly and resentful neighbours, the Scots... :o)
Winston Churchill, during WWII, laid a great deal of stress on ensuring that adequate quantities of Seville oranges reached British shores to maintain the nation's requirements... :o)
Wily old bird, he felt that repeated bombing would not break the resolve of Brits, and in practice would do far less significant damage to the nation's morale than having the nation being routinely deprived of it's breakfast marmalade... :o)
Bill.
That's about right!
Oh, the video was hilarious. I never knew corporate executives could be so cute.
___
"If you are the owner of a new stereophonic system, this record will play with even more brilliant true-to-life fidelity. In short, you can purchase this record with no fear of its becoming obsolete in the future."
Circumstances have put me in a place where I have a rather unique opportunity with regards to my future lifestyle, and one consideration is doing just that: not driving my car. I may not be able to give it up all together, or at least not yet, but I have about a year with which to consider this, and along with sufficient motivation and ability.....
Jim
My Rock-Ola Blog
BP just stopped the oil leak. They put a wedding ring on the pipe and it quit putting out.
Jim
My Rock-Ola Blog
I only dated one woman who really lived by that book.
it is always cause by a series of compounded miscalculations and coupled with bad decisions. The problem started when the senior drilling engineer decided to go ahead with the drilling completion even though there were some evidence that the well had developed a problem when the BOP failed. Perhaps it was a case of egos flying around or a case where they had to make their deadline for the well to produced to meet next month's quota. I'm not sure.BTW, I was talking to a colleague of mine who used to work for BP prior to joining us. He told me that BP does have the expertise to deal with well containment especially in the offshore environment as they have extensive off shore productions experiences around the world including Canada and Norway.
Originally, the BOP was invented as a device to stop oil from gushing to the surface with incredible pressure, which was dangerous and costly to contain.
Normally BOP is in place during drilling as part of the safety measure to contain the well blowout if the reservoir pressure suddenly reacts erratically as most of them do during the course of the drilling period.
If a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing well
(Proverb)
Edits: 06/11/10
Where are these people who made these decisions? Surely not all of them perished. I've seen interviews with some of the survivors, and to a man all of them have been "workers" (for lack of a better, more "proper", term). Why haven't we seen an interview with the Managers and/or Engineers?
Jim
My Rock-Ola Blog
to mitigate these things from happening, however, as I said before, if someone made a bad decision on the top it will usually compounded down the line.
Also, you have to remember that this project was jointly owned by BP, ConocoPhillips as well as 2 other companies and on top of that the drillers who drilled the well was a subcontractor. So, somewhere down the line there was a breakdown in communications in how to proceed with the well after it was compromised.
To be honest with you if that was me heading the project, I would never go ahead with the well completion if there were some evidence that the well was being compromised. Not only that, it is not a good engineering practice, when you're playing with people's lives. Besides, our safety engineer would skinned my hide in a jiffy if he smells any gas dilution in the atmosphere.
If a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing well
(Proverb)
Neil E. and I were discussing jobsite safety training programs at Ribfest, and now that you bring this up, given the lengthy safety training programs I've had to endure just to get onto a storage/staging site , let alone near anything even remotely dangerous, how the Hell could they have let this happen? I had to spend two days in a Safety Training program just so that I could get into the gate at the Koch Refinery just SE of The Twitties here, and I was only there to service a small chiller that was nowhere near anything hazardous or dangerous. Two days. Imagine the safety training these platform workers and drillers must go through....
I know this was all being done by a consortium, and that communication is difficult, but how the Safety Engineer could let "Money Talks" take precedence over "Safety First" is beyond me.
You be safe out there, Lito.
Jim
My Rock-Ola Blog
As in my line of work safety is foremost and it's embedded in our culture of how we do business within and outside our company.
When I do my project I usually scope it first to make sure that I covered the head to toe of the whole situation from which I'll generate the design memorandum. Then project charter will go to our project sponsors (stakeholders) to make sure that the project justifications have been meet (ROI) after all at the end of the day it has to make money. Then it goes through a series of checks and balances, to make sure that asset management, regulatory compliance, environmental mitigation and safety measure are in place. Then it goes out for bid. BTW, the lowest bid could mean that the bidder doesn't fully comprehend the enormity of the project, similarly the highest bid could mean that the bidder is over compensating for the mistakes that he will make in the later stages of the project.
On the other note, depending on the business of your visit in one of our facilities, make no mistake about it you will go through a series of safety measures, compliance and due diligence training before you set foot on one of our plants.
Unlike other oil sands operation, we mined the oil sands underground (InSITU) employing the SAGD (Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage) technology to produced oil. Having said that, we produced steam of which we inject into the reservoir a process we use to free the oil from the sand, so we can pump it up to the surface.
If you want to know more regarding the SAGD technology topics please e-mail me.
If a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing well
(Proverb)
I don't know Jack about drillin' wells but my first thought is along the lines of try replacing a valve stem on a tire that's constantly under pressure, times some huge number for complexity, environment, etc. I'm guessing the BOP and it's systems were in place before pressure, oil & gas were present (controlled relaese)? A BOP do over w/all that stuff goin' on is impossible.
But starting from the premise of "BP says..." as a basis for plausibility is fraught w/peril...
And that's my biggest fear, that we've opened-up some sort of Pandora's box that we (literally) can't shut. Drilling relief wells may sound all fine and good, but my itty-bitty brain tells me that there is still going to be some pressure on this well once the other(s) are in-place, and then what?
And, yeah. I could have re-worded the post, but I'm trying to keep this thread positive (or, at least, not overly negative....).
Jim
My Rock-Ola Blog
I didn't intend a scolding of your language, sorry if if came out that way. In addition, my bias is rather extreme in that we have a 2nd home on the Alabama coast and retirement dreams are taking a beating.
Again, not as expert but trying to keep up as best I can while not suffering from over exposure...my take on the relief wells is that they are both targeted at the pipe installed initially at a location below existing damage (two chances to 'hit' the existing pipe). Assuming that's successful, they'll fill the initial pipe with concrete, back out of the relief wells and do the same with them. If not successful, it'll bleed oil till it runs dry. Pandora's box indeed.
I understood where you were coming from completely, and I "got" your meaning.
I'm over a thousand miles away from this whole mess, but that doesn't mean I'm not mad, sad, and frustrated as hell that we can't seem to solve this. I can't imagine what the end result of all of this will be, but I hope, for your and everyone else's sake, that someone comes up with something, and soon.
Jim
My Rock-Ola Blog
From what I gathered on 60 Minutes several Sundays ago, there was also a rubber gasket around the pipe in the BOP and due to an improper pipe manuever, it was destroyed. Will
So even if they were able to repair the hydraulics, and the dead battery, this destroyed gasket could prevent it from closing?
Just trying to get the gist of it, Will.
Jim
My Rock-Ola Blog
According to the BP technician who was on board the rig when all Hell broke loose, he stated that during several tests the solenoids' battery system had failed on half the system......redundant system.....and the hydraulic system also had problems. He then stated that a rubber seal/gasket which surrounds the pipe was damaged when an operator inadvertantly jogged the pipe upward for several feet. This discovery was made when pieces of rubber came to the surface with the mud slurry. All remarks from management on board regarding these systemic failures were "not to worry, everything is OK." It was at this point that the gas plume rushed to the surface and the explosion occurred. Based on these remarks, it seems that the BOP was never operational from the beginning. Will
...made a decision - against the protestations of the rig's managers - to substitute something lighter for the heavy mud used in the rig.
At least according to the report I saw on 60 Minutes from a survivor on the rig.
The blowout preventer gasket shredded, the battery had failed, one of the arms on it didn't work and yet he forced them to go on.
When the blowout and explosion happened, much of the underwater apparatus was destroyed.
The streaming videos of the oil gushing from the pipe into the water are 5000 feet down at the bottom of the ocean.
Mike, I watched the show and was amazed at what was said. I think CBS should re-run that interview. Will
(Checking, checking.....)
Jim
My Rock-Ola Blog
And I'll watch them both today (spending a quiet day today, taking it easy on myself).
Link to source of cropped screenshot below.
Jim
My Rock-Ola Blog
But this rubber gasket thing is news to me.
Thanks, Will.
Jim
My Rock-Ola Blog
If you Wiki Blow Out Preventer and scroll down to "Types" there is an annular type which utilizes and steel reinforced rubber ring and the technicial felt certain that this had been compromised by an improper jogging of the drill pipe. He stated that after the pipe had been inadvertantly jogged upward, chunks of rubber flowed out of the mud backwash indicating that the ring had been torn up. Will
Right now I just came down a serious case of, "It's Friday, so I have to get this shit off my desk and onto Jim's for the weekend" disease.
Jim
My Rock-Ola Blog
I've read that these blowout preventers have had a checkered reliability history.
But I'm also getting the sense that BP was trying to cut every corner possible. Must preserve the shareholder's dividends, you know. It's pretty clear they were unprepared for a disaster of this nature which is probably why they didn't try to fix the leak, they thought nothing would ever happen.
Bill's Audio Cave
What I don't understand is, now that the leak is 50+ days old, and they have tried "this", and they have tried "that", given all the technology at their disposal, why can't they replace the pieces and parts that stopped it from working in the first place? In other words, why can't they repair the damn thing? Someone built it, so I would think someone should be able to fix it, but I've seen no mention of this anywhere, and I'm wondering why. What have I missed?
Jim
My Rock-Ola Blog
From Wikipedia article on BOP's
After the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion on April 20, 2010, the blowout preventer should have activated itself automatically to avoid an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Underwater robots were used to manually activate the mechanism's switch, to no avail. As of May 2010[update] it is unknown why it failed.[4] Chief surveyor John David Forsyth of the American Bureau of Shipping testified in hearings before the Joint Investigation[5] of the Minerals Management Service and the U.S. Coast Guard investigating the causes of the explosion that his agency last inspected the rig's failed blowout preventer in 2005.[6] BP representatives suggested that the preventer could have suffered a hydraulic leak.[7] X-ray imaging of the preventer conducted on May 12 and May 13, 2010 showed that the preventer's internal valves were partially closed and were restricting the flow of oil. Whether the valves closed automatically during the explosion or were shut manually by remotely operated vehicle work is unknown.[7]
The permit for the Macondo Prospect by the Minerals Management Service in 2009 did not require redundant acoustic actuation means.[8] Inasmuch as the BOPs could not be closed successfully by underwater manipulation, pending results of a complete investigation it is uncertain whether this omission was a factor in the blowout.
Here's also the Wikipedia article on the Deepwater Horizon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill
Bill's Audio Cave
Holy crap. I hesitate to imagine what things would be like if they were wide-open.
But closed or open, it looks like we've a lot to learn, but (and getting on my soapbox for a second here), have we learned our lesson?
Thanks Bill. I'll check out the link when I get home tonight.
Jim
My Rock-Ola Blog
Apparently not, Jim. In the most recent polls I'm aware of, a large majority of Americans still believe we should have offshore drilling. How about simply buying a car that gets 10% better gas mileage? Or does it take too many brains to figure that out?
They should pass a law requiring all citizens, voting and non-voitng, to watch "Soylent Green", and that includes all politicians. But even then people might not change their mind. I have very little hope for the human race. That reminds me: what are they racing toward? Self destruction?
Hey, can somebody help down off this soapbox? It's higher than when I was younger and I'm not quite as spry.
Not me. I think you're doing a fine job, sir.
Jim
My Rock-Ola Blog
Remember this whole mess started with an explosion... I'd bet those parts you're talking about are destroyed now.
Ok, but....
If this is so, why haven't they said this? I remember hearing they tried closing the blowout preventer but couldn't, and they pointed to the individual failures of both of these devices as explanations as to why they couldn't shut it off. I don't recall hearing that they were damaged, which leads me to believe they survived, and possibly unscathed.
Please understand I'm not trying to be disagreeable, but rather I'm just curious.
And pissed-off.
Jim
My Rock-Ola Blog
The whole platform fell over taking all that with it. Look at the videos-all that is left is a bent, broken pipe coming out of the ground spewing oil.
Jack
From what I understand that bent-over pipe is (or, "was") sitting on top of the blowout preventer, and has been subsequently cut-off and (somewhat) capped. The "cap" that BP is currently using is attached to the top of the old blowout preventer, and the video showing the pipe laying on the ground is what remained of the other end of that same (now non-functional) pipe.....
Jim
My Rock-Ola Blog
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