As we gather more information about the blowout of BP's Mississippi Canyon 252 well, conflicting accounts are emerging about the cause, who's to blame, and exactly what happened. The picture being painted of the final moments before the loss of the Deepwater Horizon became clearer last night as Mike Williams, an electronics technician on the rig told his story on 60 Minutes. Here it is, in 2 parts:
One of the Last Off Alive - An Interview Worth Watching
Categories:
10 Comments
Leave a comment
Featured
Follow us on Twitter
The Hall of Fame Index
Who should be in the baseball Hall of Fame? Find out in The Hall of Fame Index
Find us on Facebook
Disaster on the Horizon
Bob's new book, Disaster on the Horizon, is now available on Amazon. Coming shortly to your favorite local bookseller.
Tag Cloud
Recent Comments
- lomamonster commented on PolitiFact New Jersey | Chris Christie slams health care reform as "a government takeover of health care": With Perry
- Shortstuff commented on Breaking Down the Job Market: Congratula
- Shortstuff commented on The Difference Between Occupy and the Tea Party: Y'all are
- lomamonster commented on A Wrist Slap for Citigroup: Ah! And t
- cobbo commented on A Wrist Slap for Citigroup: Remember t
- Scott Barzilla commented on Herman Cain's 9-9-9 Plan in One (Really Long) Graph: Come on pe
- lomamonster commented on A Wrist Slap for Citigroup: If were ar
- lomamonster commented on A Wrist Slap for Citigroup: Des, I'm a
- Desperado commented on A Wrist Slap for Citigroup: I'm with y
- carguy commented on A Wrist Slap for Citigroup: I won't ho
Blogroll
- FOK News Channel (Keith Olbermann's Blog)
- Daily Kos Gulf Watchers
- Crooks and Liars
- The Daily Beast
- FiveThirtyEight
- Juanita Jean's The World's Most Dangerous Beauty Salon
- Talking Points Memo DC
- MediaMatters
- Brad Blog
- Orcinus
- Wonkette
- First Read
- Pollster
- Talking Points Memo
- The Huffington Post
- Newshounds
- Here's What I Think
- Donklephant
- They gave us a republic
- Politico
- The Moderate Voice
Guest Bloggers
Recent Entries
- PolitiFact New Jersey | Chris Christie slams health care reform as "a government takeover of health care"
- By Bob Cavnar | Comments (1)
- A Wrist Slap for Citigroup
- By Desperado | Comments (9)
- Breaking Down the Job Market
- By Scott Barzilla | Comments (2)
- Herman Cain's 9-9-9 Plan in One (Really Long) Graph
- By Desperado | Comments (6)
- The Next Bailout?
- By Desperado | Comments (4)
- The Difference Between Occupy and the Tea Party
- By Desperado | Comments (11)
- A Report From Occupy Houston
- By Neil Aquino | Comments (1)
- I Need A Haircut
- By Neil Aquino | Comments (0)
- The Fight for Equality from MLK to Occupy Wall Street | this small planet
- By Bob Cavnar | Comments (0)
- Ghetto Physics
- By Voice | Comments (1)
Categories
- 2008 Election (7)
- 2012 Election (17)
- Abortion (6)
- Barack Obama (168)
- Bill White (8)
- Blogs (42)
- Campaign Finance (9)
- Childhood Obesity (4)
- Clinton (8)
- Congress (174)
- Conservatives (210)
- Cooking (1)
- Debt Limit (12)
- Economy (200)
- Education (89)
- Election 2008 (47)
- Election Politics (89)
- Eliminationist (1)
- Energy (233)
- Environment (37)
- Fox News (70)
- Free Speech (21)
- Funny (12)
- Gay Rights (2)
- George W. Bush (39)
- Great Lives (3)
- Haiti Earthquake (3)
- Health Care (197)
- Houston (64)
- Hurricane Ike (2)
- Hurricane Irene (5)
- Issue Framing (102)
- John McCain (6)
- Keith Olbermann (19)
- Kennedy (9)
- McCain (43)
- Media (103)
- Music (25)
- Occupy Wall Street (3)
- Politics (676)
- Progressives (59)
- Racism (64)
- Religion (49)
- Religious Right (40)
- Republicans (16)
- Rick Perry (3)
- Right Wing Extremism (12)
- Sarah Palin (63)
- Science (13)
- Social Justice (3)
- Taxes (22)
- Tea Party (11)
- Terrorism (61)
- Texas (92)
- Uncategorized (295)
- Union Busting (5)
- Video Entries (19)
- Voting (34)
- White Supremacists (16)
- global warming (7)
- hate speech (68)
- technology (1)
- this small planet (8)
Monthly Archives
- October 2011 (33)
- September 2011 (45)
- August 2011 (50)
- July 2011 (57)
- June 2011 (48)
- May 2011 (54)
- April 2011 (64)
- March 2011 (55)
- February 2011 (53)
- January 2011 (67)
- December 2010 (71)
- November 2010 (54)
- October 2010 (47)
- September 2010 (63)
- August 2010 (104)
- July 2010 (97)
- June 2010 (91)
- May 2010 (86)
- April 2010 (56)
- March 2010 (45)
- February 2010 (35)
- January 2010 (65)
- December 2009 (69)
- November 2009 (79)
- October 2009 (85)
- September 2009 (93)
- August 2009 (95)
- July 2009 (15)
- June 2009 (27)
- May 2009 (33)
- April 2009 (33)
- March 2009 (27)
- February 2009 (21)
- January 2009 (38)
- December 2008 (30)
- November 2008 (34)
- October 2008 (46)
- September 2008 (43)
- August 2008 (47)
- July 2008 (22)
- June 2008 (27)
- May 2008 (32)
- April 2008 (34)
- March 2008 (37)
I can’t help but wonder if there was an MMS waiver issued for operating with a damaged control pod. It seems pretty farfetched that Transocean would keep something like that a secret given the potential consequences.
Is the drilling report on-line somewhere?
Old Man,
There's nothing on the drilling report that shows it was perforated. The ran casing, circulated, cemented, set the packoff and set the bottom plug. They came out of the hole, picked up about 20 something joints of tubing as a stinger on the drillpipe to 8,367' to set the top plug. After that, the report goes blank.
Yes, when I started on rigs we called it the Hydril because Hydril made most of the annulars in use. The annular on this BOP, however, was made by Cameron. I'm not sure about this whole getting rubber back. As you say, annular rubbers are designed to move drill pipe through, so I'm not sure what could cause that kind of damage.
You guys are all looking at this from a technical point of view. Fine.
What I hear from this interview is not complicated.
BP was past schedule, and over budget on this well.
It was a "finish it fast", (not necessarily safe situation.)
The guy from BP, and the guy from TransOcean got in a pissing match on the best method to be used on how to cap this well.
The guy from BP (the lease holder) prevailed....
Given that news reports today are saying that BP accounts for 97% of all the safety violations in the oil and gas industry... the outcome was not that big a surprise.
Neither is the fact that they are trying to lay the blame on others.
We are all better for the fact that this man was spared, and lived to tell his tale.
Bob, do you know for a fact that the well was not perforated, or is only standard procedure for the completion unit to do the perforating?
In my day the annular was called the "hydril" and I seem to remember it was common practice to pull drill pipe thru it when taking a kick. So I am not excited about the annular. Maybe my memory is gone with my youth.
Does the damage to the annular explain the "anomalous" pressure tests?
The casing was not perforated, nor do I think the cement plug(s) failed. The gas came up the outside of the casing to the packoff. The packoff failed, or the casing collapsed, allowing gas into the riser at casing head.
I believe the pressure was on the outside of the casing, under the casing head packoff. Even if they had set the cement plug inside the casing, I don't believe that it would have prevented a blowout when they displaced the riser to to pull off the riser and BOP.
listened to the 60 min thing again. It sounds like the well was perforated and the casing cement job was not bad. And, maybe the two temporary cement plugs did not hold after the mud was circulated out prior to setting the third plug. Comments?
I've got a question for Eljefebob, based on the 60 Minutes report of the annular seal being damaged. If the crew had left the mud in place and put in the top concrete plug would the production rig have had a blow out when they redrilled the well?
Russ Hass