On their website, BP released another of their instructional videos that explains sort of what they are planning, leaving out key hows and whys and throwing in just enough oil speak so as to be distracting from the otherwise good illustration. This one, done by BP's Kent Wells, Senior Vice President of Exploration and Production (and in a Steve Jobs style mock turtle), is a short video, narrated by him, along with a recorded in-house training video that gives a good illustration of the kill well technique but not quite fit for general consumption. First have a look at the video:
Some terms they used with translation to English:
Casing Shoe - At the bottom of each success string of casing is a "shoe". It is made up of a device or "sub" that is usually rounded on bottom to allow easier running into the hole. The shoe and casing are cemented in place; after giving time for setting up, the shoe is then drilled out and pressure tested to make sure it can hold expected pressures and mud weight necessary to keep the well safe.
BHA - Bottom Hole Assembly, which is usually made up of the bit, it's crossover sub, any MWD or Measured While Drilling tools and other tools such as stabilizers and hole openers. There's a wide variety of tools that are used, but are call the BHA when made up together.
MD - Measured Depth. Pretty simple; how much hole did you drill measured. Varies from TVD or True Vertical Depth, a necessary measure when you are drilling highly deviated or angled hole. MD is measure along the hole itself. TVD is calculated straight down from the surface. The are focused on MD here.
Ranging - They are using a magnetic tool that is capable of "seeing" or sensing other metal pipe nearby. By measuring strength of the response, they know how close they are and at which angle to drill.
Hole opener assembly - Simply a tool that reams out the hole to make running the next string of casing more assured of success.
It sounds as though they intend to intercept the blowout well towards the bottom of the 9 7/8" liner, which is just outside the 7" production casing. Recall that I believed early on, and continue to believe, that the blowout is coming from between the 9 7/8 liner and the 7" production string, a backside blowout. It's also possible that subsequent damage has allowed it to now flow up the 7", but it would have to come in above the cement plug set at 12,000' below the mudline.
Hopefully, this explanation is more helpful tha confusing. Even I had to watch the video a couple of times to catch some of the detail that they are blowing by.
With 900' to go, one more string of pipe, and a handful of ranging runs, I'm calling the week of July 12 as kill week, assuming no real hole trouble. With the drilling records of the blowout No. 1 well as a guide, they should be able to avoid a lot of the loss circulation and kick zones by being prepared for them.
We'll see how close my guess is.
More on The Daily Hurricane Energy page.
Some terms they used with translation to English:
Casing Shoe - At the bottom of each success string of casing is a "shoe". It is made up of a device or "sub" that is usually rounded on bottom to allow easier running into the hole. The shoe and casing are cemented in place; after giving time for setting up, the shoe is then drilled out and pressure tested to make sure it can hold expected pressures and mud weight necessary to keep the well safe.
BHA - Bottom Hole Assembly, which is usually made up of the bit, it's crossover sub, any MWD or Measured While Drilling tools and other tools such as stabilizers and hole openers. There's a wide variety of tools that are used, but are call the BHA when made up together.
MD - Measured Depth. Pretty simple; how much hole did you drill measured. Varies from TVD or True Vertical Depth, a necessary measure when you are drilling highly deviated or angled hole. MD is measure along the hole itself. TVD is calculated straight down from the surface. The are focused on MD here.
Ranging - They are using a magnetic tool that is capable of "seeing" or sensing other metal pipe nearby. By measuring strength of the response, they know how close they are and at which angle to drill.
Hole opener assembly - Simply a tool that reams out the hole to make running the next string of casing more assured of success.
It sounds as though they intend to intercept the blowout well towards the bottom of the 9 7/8" liner, which is just outside the 7" production casing. Recall that I believed early on, and continue to believe, that the blowout is coming from between the 9 7/8 liner and the 7" production string, a backside blowout. It's also possible that subsequent damage has allowed it to now flow up the 7", but it would have to come in above the cement plug set at 12,000' below the mudline.
Hopefully, this explanation is more helpful tha confusing. Even I had to watch the video a couple of times to catch some of the detail that they are blowing by.
With 900' to go, one more string of pipe, and a handful of ranging runs, I'm calling the week of July 12 as kill week, assuming no real hole trouble. With the drilling records of the blowout No. 1 well as a guide, they should be able to avoid a lot of the loss circulation and kick zones by being prepared for them.
We'll see how close my guess is.
More on The Daily Hurricane Energy page.
Thanks.
Can you clarify for me? I've heard many different figures. How deep is this well BELOW the sea floor? I've heard from 1,600 to 16,000 feet. If 16,000, that's one mile under water and then three more miles of drilling to get to the reservoir.
OTOH, do I understand that this well is 5-6 years old and had been operating without incident until now?
Carguy - as you can see if things go wrong, even if they do so one time out of 3300, the consequences are catastrophic.
statistics are often misleading. 1 in 3300 may sound like a good record. but what about the dolphins and other endangered marine and plant life which will take years to recover? what about smaller sub sea organisms and eco systems which we know NOTHING about and which may be completely annihilated due to the humongous quantities of oil and dispersant in the water.
so as has been advocated ad nauseum on this blog, when it comes to Deep Sea Drilling, there is simply zero room for failure.
eljefe - in your copious spare time, could you review this X-box game on plugging BP's disaster to see if it should be forwarded to them:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/gulf-oil-gusher-the-xbox-game/
guess this was inevitable.
"Hopefully, this explanation is more helpful than confusing"
Mission accomplished! The video and animation aren't bad, but the glossary clarifies a lot. Once again, you are "Best in Show." Hope you're working on a book, it would sell.
I've been watching this youtube of the water this morning. Very disturbing.
very interesting. this morning on the national geographic channel we watched a program about the exxon valdez oil spill in alaska in '89 which reminded me of this. i came to the conclusion that the channel is a corporate lap dog of sorts, the re-enactments and conclusions were too supportive of exxon. the general tone of the program was that exxon did a "heckof a job" and it was just a coincidence that otter population is way down even 20yrs later. btw, did you come up with any explanation about diamond filing a lawsuit to continue drilling, showing on their website that their rig "ocean confidence flotel" was rated at 10,000 ft? i cannot understand why a rig would be rated at 10,000 when we have a disaster of epic proportion at half the amount. what does "rated" mean and rated by whom? diamond's website is quite interesting, under the "employee" tab you can look at all rigs, both jack up's and semi-submersible. i browsed several energy trade publications and found articles about these rigs, mostly bragging about how high tech they are, how much money they make and how they finesse the govt to gloss over regulations. one article stated BP signed a 5yr contract in 2000 to manage the ocean confidence for diamond which seemed odd since BP uses transocean to run its own rig which currently is spewing. it's clear to see how much support the industry enjoys from the shareholders down to the contract labor employee who will not abide a word against them. clearly an uphill battle, to ever regulate any part of this crooked, corrupted industry.
July 12....huh.....Hurricane "Office Pool" anyone?
If I understand you, we do NOT need Admiral Nelson, Captain Crane and the "Seaview" to be standing by, just in case????
One last question. I understand there are and have been, on average, 3,300 offshore drilling rigs operating each year and every year since the 1979 Ixtoc blow out in the Bay of Campeche. THis is the only BIG spill I recall since that one. I do not want to minimize this thing, but isn't that a prety good safety record, on the whole?