BP Live View

[crybdr]

All politics and developing environmental disaster aside... the live BP view has at times been fascinating to watch.

It is NOT a static camera simply showing the oil spewing into the gulf. It has shown, depending upon when you watch, some of the intricate 'remote surgery' being done a mile below the sea. At times, it is frustrating watching robotic hands manipulating tools that jerk uncontrollably. I've seen bolts being unscrewed, steel cables being threaded, etc. I check in once and a while and the view has always different.

http://www.cnn.com/video/flashLive/live.html?stream=3

This post is simply about the video feed (not about the positives or negatives of offshore drilling, or the ongoing spill). The video shows much more than most realize about what is going on down there and how far removed humans are from the actual problem source.

I just wanted to let interested people know that there's more to the live feed than just a view of the gushing oil.

[Skip C]

Interesting timing! I had not seen this before. My son is captain of a 400' ship in the Gulf carrying the liquid mud and cement to use for the 'Top Kill'. It is scheduled to start at 6 AM CDT (30 min ago) if last nite's tests were satisfactory. I have not seen the news yet this AM to see if they are on schedule or not. Let's hope that it is successful!

Skip

[germdoc]

I hope it is successful too!

[natausch]

Hoping it is successful as well and glad that BP is finally moving forward with plans that focus only on correcting the problem.

So far, in my opinion, their solutions appear to have been focused on being able to maintain the existing infrastructure for future use.

[germdoc]

There is some interesting video on CNN right now--hard to figure out exactly what they're doing...

[chopnhack]

This whole disaster makes me ill...first to the families who lost loved ones, my sympathies, to the wildlife and beaches harmed my apologies....but for what reason did we not call in the military to demo that well before it caused this much harm?

[Alex Franke]

Skip -- very cool that you're so close to the action. I sure hope it works!!!

but for what reason did we not call in the military to demo that well before it caused this much harm?

Does the military know how to do that?

[crybdr]

I've been working at the kitchen table and have been checking the feed here and there. CNN has the main feed and an additional 'multi-screen' feed (clickable on the right side).

I'm no oceanic engineer, but from what I have seen, it seems like they might be having some trouble. Praying I'm wrong.

Hopefully they can figure it out and get this thing stopped. The 'top kill' is the solution everyone is crossing their fingers for.

[Skip C]

It is difficut to know what is going on at this time. On the10 PM news in Boston everything was reported to be OK. But i don't think that the news industry is getting 'real time' news. I think that BP may be taken down by this , but we don't hear any news about the rig operator or about Halliburton who (I undertand) built the inferior automatic shutoff valve.

Living near important fishing grounds and marshes on the NE coast, I understand how devastating this is going to be to the coastal wildlife and ecomnomy of the Gulf area. Let's hope it doesn't get worse than it already is.

Skip

[crybdr]

'chonpnhack' - I've wondered about the military 'demolition' solution also. But at these depths and pressures, I'm not sure that anyone knows what would happen. I'm sure that there are people crunching the numbers.

I had always thought that the explosive 'above ground' solution was done to extinguish the fire (the explosives eat up the available oxygen and extinguish the fire) so that crews could get closer to the now 'non-burning' gusher and seal the well. If anyone knows more about how explosive well control is conducted, I'd love to learn more about it. It seems like a mix of science and 'black art' - only a few people seem to be good at doing it.

Maybe a big explosion would create enough of a sub-sea collapse to cover and obstruct the free flow, but maybe not. Could a sub-sea explosion make it worse? It's beyond me and I hope that the smarter folks are staying up late to figue it out.

The 'top kill" seems to be the best publicly disclosed solution so far for a short term solution. Fingers crossed...

[LCHIEN]

It is difficut to know what is going on at this time. On the10 PM news in Boston everything was reported to be OK. But i don't think that the news industry is getting 'real time' news. I think that BP may be taken down by this , but we don't hear any news about the rig operator or about Halliburton who (I undertand) built the inferior automatic shutoff valve.

Living near important fishing grounds and marshes on the NE coast, I understand how devastating this is going to be to the coastal wildlife and ecomnomy of the Gulf area. Let's hope it doesn't get worse than it already is.

Skip

Leaseholder and well operator was BP (primarily).
Drillship/Rig owner and Operator was Transocean.
BOP stack was made by Cameron Iron Works (not Halliburton as you stated)
Cementing Company was Halliburton

The BOP was not inferior in terms of design, but there were maintenance issues (not everything was working correctly despite Weekly tests that were "passed") and questions of wherther the BOP was sized correctly for the drill pipe used. Also some modifications were made with BPs authorization that affected the redudancy of some of the BOP systems.

The Halliburton cement job certainly failed in some way allowing gas to escape. Not sure at this point if Halliburton used faulty materials (not to spec) and practices, or if they used materials and procedures unsuited for the job but specifically requested by BP.

Todays news was that there were a bunch of warning signs in the hours before the explosion that the well should have been shut in and heavy mud circulated into the hole preventing a kick. But instead they kept on removing mud and that allowed the kick to happen resulting in the blowout and loss of the rig - 11 lives, and a Billion dollar rig should have been the extent of the loss at that point, a significant loss to be sure, but then the BOPs failed to do the job and untiold billions in environmental and economic damage are done. The big question in my mind is whether the Transocean people or the BP people are at fault - One scenario in my mind is that BP was in a rush to complete the job and move to another drilling site (because the rig cost somewhere between 500,000 and a million dollars a day to operate) and therefore pushed to fiinish by the original plan rather than spend the time to take care of the blowout potential and repair the cement job. For example Mud systems are normally a closed system and excess returning mud is a sign of impending blowout. But they were transferring mud off the drill ship in preparation of a move so they lost track of how much mud they were taking back in to the return tank and may not have noticed the excess mud return.

The secondary question will be who's responsible for the BOP failures.

Loring, with 37 years in the petroleum exploration industry in Houston but not affiliated with those companies mentioned above. Supplier to BP, competitor to one of the above named companies.

[jackellis]

I won't claim to be an expert on oil wells, but I'm pretty certain all an intentional explosion would do is put out a fire, which is not a problem in this case. Oil is coming out of the wellhead under high pressure, and the only way to stop the flow is to oppose that pressure. That's what the mud is for. Once they get the flow stopped, then they can put some sort of cap on the well.

A million bucks a day certainly isn't chump change, but if someone from BP ordered shortcuts in order to move the rig quickly, this will go down in history as perhaps the most expensive case of being "penny-wise, pound foolish".

[LCHIEN]

I won't claim to be an expert on oil wells, but I'm pretty certain all an intentional explosion would do is put out a fire, which is not a problem in this case. Oil is coming out of the wellhead under high pressure, and the only way to stop the flow is to oppose that pressure. That's what the mud is for. Once they get the flow stopped, then they can put some sort of cap on the well.

A million bucks a day certainly isn't chump change, but if someone from BP ordered shortcuts in order to move the rig quickly, this will go down in history as perhaps the most expensive case of being "penny-wise, pound foolish".

Most explosives you see on TV, movies are to quench the fire allowing brave guys to go in under the falling oil and gas leaks to cap the well and try not to reignite the gas leaking out while they are doing it with non-sparking brass tools.

An explosive applied to a deep well in theory could crimp or cave in the well closing off the hole with enough force, but this is rather a risky deal, potentially it could also remove all restriction and open the hole bigger for even greater flow, as the well is partly choked off now by what remains of the plumbing and BOP stack.

Now this is my opinion - BP has had really tough luck in the past few years with plant explosions, corroding pieplines etc. So is it back luck when it keeps happening to someone or is there a systemic problem? Some are complaining that BP says they are a safe company - if you go to their offices, they tell you how to evacuate for fire, how to park your car and other safe stuff to the point of near ridiculous. Yet the knock on them is that they cut corners on the big stuff. My analogy is that they buy hard hats for everyone and make them wear them but they never reduce the overhead hazards which really make it dangerous and the hard hats really won't save your neck but looks good on paper/press handouts.

[LCHIEN]

I'm going to tell a couple of quick stories outlining safety in the pertroleum industry.

Case 1. In the early 90's i was in Venezuala. We were contracted to the Venezual natioanal oil companies doing seismic work, the location was in the middle of banana plantations. The banana workers were working right along side the seismic hands, all local labor. The banana hands arrive in the back of open stake bed trucks, standing and hanging onto the stake sides in ragged clothes and floppy shoes. The seismic workers arrived also in trucks, but the back of the truck was caged, there were rows of seats, the workers were seat belted to the seats and they wore hard hats, steel shoes and coveralls. Quite a contrast for basically the same conditions. The oil companies made us do it.

Case 2. One multi million dollar job we got kicked off. The President of the firm wrote every employee around the world a letter saying that abu-so and so in Egypt was killed on the job - he was taking a break-time nap under the large 30-ton vibrator truck (the only shade for miles around) and when break was over no one noticed him missing and they ran over him. The contracting oil company excercised their option that if anyone at all was killed on the job they could fire us. The pres went on to admonish us and say that everyone was responsible for fellow employees safety as job one. I still remember the tone of that letter.

case 3 2-1/2 weeks ago i was on a floating oil production platform about 50 miles west of the deepwater horizon accident. To get there, I had customer training course in safety. A helicopter crsh survival safety certificate. A Homeland security ID card. B4 boarding the copter another safety film. hearing protection, life vest. after arriving, another course in platform safety including lifeboat drill and emergency procedures. A film pointed out the prominent STOP buttons which I was told to push if i witnessed anything dangerous - it would shutin the BOPs for all 16 producing wells and cut off 100,000+ barrels per day production and take hours to restart - i figured pushing that button would cost them around $1M. They told me i had authority to stop any one from working if i thought it was dangerous in any way. I was not allowed to work more than 10 hours since rising in the AM because i could be fatigued. I filled out, reviewed with the company rep, and all signed a Job Safety analysis to describe all the possible pitfalls for my work inlcuding lifting, electrical, climbing, possible explosive gas etc hazards. I had to reauthorize work the next day as well. When ever outside the living quarters I had to wear Safety glasses with side shields, hard hat, gloves, and steel toe shoes. I also had to hold onto stair rails whenever climbing stairs. And people would point out to me if i failed to wear any of those items.

For the most part the oil field is a safe place considering all the hazards out there.

oner of the problmes BP may have had is too many redundant systems. If they think everything is redundant, they tend to care less when one breaks saying the redundant systems will take care of it. Oh, whatever happens, the BOP is the final safety device. With 4 or 5 of the listed problems they discovered, all the redundancy is shot.

[crokett]

Questions... the first solution BP tried was the 4-story 'top hat'. That failed because the gas spewing out of the well turned to buoyant ice crystals that made the top hat float too much. Now presuming the engineers working on this are smart and know that the gas does turn to ice at those depths....

1. Why wasn't this anticipated and dealt with?
2. If it wasn't anticipated, can it be dealt with? Or is it one of the hazards of working at 5k feet? AFIK the top hat is still sitting on the sea bed, so there has to be a reason they haven't tried that again.