Deepwater Horizon Well Failed Key Test (Twice!)

[saracat]

Deepwater Horizon Well Failed Key Test (Twice!)


According to Waxman during Senate hearings Haliburton failed to properly seal the wells!


Quote
At 5 p.m. on April 20—less than five hours before the explosion—workers on the Transocean rig ran a critical test to determine if the well had been properly cemented, according to Mr. Waxman's statement. The pressure inside the well was lowered to see if any gas was leaking through the cement.

By this time, the cement had been hardening for 16½ hours. If all had gone well, the cement should have set and secured the well. But BP's Mr. Dupree had told congressional investigators that the test result was not satisfactory. It appeared the cement job had not sealed off the well and gas was leaking into it.

A second "negative pressure" test was run. It showed pressure was mounting in the well. Mr. Dupree said the result "could signal" that flammable natural gas was building up inside the well.

BP told congressional investigators on Tuesday that additional tests were run. At 8 p.m.—less than two hours before the explosion—BP officials decided the additional tests "justified ending the test and proceeding," said Mr. Waxman.

BP said that after this test, it began to remove heavy drilling mud in the pipe and replace it with seawater that was about 50% lighter. The purpose of the mud is to weigh down any fluids or gas trying to push upward.

BP told investigators that "following the test, hydrocarbons were unknowingly circulated to surface while displacing the riser with seawater." As gas flowed up the pipe, it got warmer and expanded, pushing drilling mud and seawater ahead of it, and then burst through the top of the pipe.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703339304575240210545113710.html

[Uncle Joe]

1. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, saracat.

[malaise]

2. Get thee to the greatest

Rec for truth

[amborin]

3. and Salazar fought against court order to stop it:

"................Within days of the 2009 approval, the Center for Biological Diversity and its allies won a court order vacating the Bush Five-Year Offshore Drilling Plan. Rather than use the court order as a timeout on new offshore oil drilling to develop a new plan, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar filed a special motion with the court to exempt approved oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. He specifically identified BP’s operation as one that should be released from the vacature.

In July 2009, the court agreed to Salazar’s request, releasing all approved offshore oil drilling — including the BP operation — from the vacature.

3. BP. BP has the worst environmental and safety record of any oil company operating in America. Even after the 2005 Texas City Refinery blast that killed 15 people, BP has continued to rack up safety violations. Despite the dangerous nature of all offshore oil drilling and BP’s own egregious safety record, BP’s exploration plan downplayed possibility of a spill, repeatedly asserting that it was unlikely or virtually impossible. Amazingly, Secretary Salazar’s Minerals and Management Service approved BP’s exploration plan without any consideration of the environmental consequences of an oil spill. "


http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/public_land...


Obama chooses BP for safety award:

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/04/30/in-ironic-twist-bp ...

[Scuba]

10. If this is legit...

... and I have no reason to believe it's not, the President has some s'plainin' to do.

That said, for BP to proceed following a series of failed tests clearly shows they put their greed way ahead of any other concern. The result, predictable after Australia, etc., may be the death of the entire Gulf of Mexico for countless generations. That constitutes criminal negligence, at least to this prospective juror (please, call me!!!).

Indict these criminals now! Unlike China, I don't advocate the death penalty if they're found guilty. Life in Maximum Security should be sufficient. And no Ken Lay disappearing acts either!!!

[amborin]

11. that's what environmentalists are arguing

[Scuba]

24. which point please

[BreweryYardRat]

31. "Unlike China, I don't advocate the death penalty if they're found guilty."

Actually, the Chinese have the right idea on that one. The plutocratic mind's only concern beyond money is its own skin. Let them know we'll take their heads if they fuck up this badly, and they're liable to shape up. Don't let them rot quietly away while the people forget their crimes -- make a big, splashy example, live on national television. (Or make it pay-per-view and bring in some revenues for the government.)

Life in prison should be saved for wanna-be martyrs, like George Tiller or the guys behind the '93 WTC bombing.

[Scuba]

34. I could be convinced...

...but I really like the idea of them rotting behind bars, sharing a cell with a hard-core violent criminal. My brother-in-law is a guard at a max security prison and based on his rare, guarded comments, it's hell in there.

[harun]

4. Were they testing because this was a new well?

[Botany]

6. This was just a test well looking for oil not a production well.

The idea was to seal off the well and come back to it later.

[Botany]

5. I don't know if this is true or not but an ecologist sent me an email ...

... that said they had drilled to 25,000 feet and not the 18,000 feet which was the top of the oil deposit.
Much more pressure @ that depth and more natural gas (which caused the blow out). This along
with a dead battery in the blow out preventer sealed the deal.

[TransitJohn]

9. Less natural gas.

Gas tends to be on top of oil because of it's lower specific gravity (it's less dense). Fluids in reservoirs stratify over geologic time.

[Blue Owl]

7. Hellaspurtin can go fuck themselves

They tampered in God's domain, and their greed has created a monster that can't be stopped.

[TransitJohn]

8. Just to nitpick

I work in the industry and seeing this mistake over and over is jarring. The Deepwater Horizon was the rig. The well had a name assigned by BP. Call it the BP well.
:hi:

[amborin]

12. thanks for this tidbit; but then how differentiate it from, say, BP's Atlantis project?

:hi:

[ProSense]

13. This is clearly the President's fault

How the hell could he have allowed BP to allow Halliburton to cement a well, test it and proceed knowing it wasn't safe?

If I were the CEO of BP, I'd demand the Obama administration pay for the cleanup.

[saracat]

14. One trick pony. This is about an issue. I guess post #3 doesn't bother you?

Salazar is really okay to you? If anything you should be mad at how much he has embarassed the president since he seems to be the only part of this event you seem to consider important. The OP is NOT about the President.
amborin (1000+ posts) Wed May-12-10 10:06 PM
Response to Original message
3. and Salazar fought against court order to stop it:
Edited on Wed May-12-10 10:07 PM by amborin
"................Within days of the 2009 approval, the Center for Biological Diversity and its allies won a court order vacating the Bush Five-Year Offshore Drilling Plan. Rather than use the court order as a timeout on new offshore oil drilling to develop a new plan, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar filed a special motion with the court to exempt approved oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. He specifically identified BP’s operation as one that should be released from the vacature.

In July 2009, the court agreed to Salazar’s request, releasing all approved offshore oil drilling — including the BP operation — from the vacature.

3. BP. BP has the worst environmental and safety record of any oil company operating in America. Even after the 2005 Texas City Refinery blast that killed 15 people, BP has continued to rack up safety violations. Despite the dangerous nature of all offshore oil drilling and BP’s own egregious safety record, BP’s exploration plan downplayed possibility of a spill, repeatedly asserting that it was unlikely or virtually impossible. Amazingly, Secretary Salazar’s Minerals and Management Service approved BP’s exploration plan without any consideration of the environmental consequences of an oil spill. "


http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/public_land ...


Obama chooses BP for safety award:

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/04/30/in-ironic-twist-bp ...

[ProSense]

15. Yeah, the issue

is that Halliburton and BP screwed up in a castatrophic way. That didn't stop some people from spewing RW talking points about "Obama's Katrina."

[saracat]

16. The issue is Salazar let them do it and continues to.

But I guess you believe Salazar. Okay Dokey.

[ProSense]

17. Salazar was responsible for Halliburton cementing the well?

WTF?

[saracat]

18. Don't be obtuse. You know what he is responsible for. All the links

are in this thread. And their content has even been reiterated several times. I am sure you can read then even if they are not blue.

[ProSense]

19. Bullshit. n/t

[ProSense]

20. And here is a little history lesson for

for all who choose to spew RW bullshit.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Sex, Lies and Oil Spills

A common spin in the right wing coverage of BP's oil spill is a gleeful suggestion that the gulf blowout is Obama's Katrina.

In truth, culpability for the disaster can more accurately be laid at the Bush Administration's doorstep. For eight years, George Bush's presidency infected the oil industry's oversight agency, the Minerals Management Service, with a septic culture of corruption from which it has yet to recover. Oil patch alumnae in the White House encouraged agency personnel to engineer weakened safeguards that directly contributed to the gulf catastrophe.

The absence of an acoustical regulator -- a remotely triggered dead man's switch that might have closed off BP's gushing pipe at its sea floor wellhead when the manual switch failed (the fire and explosion on the drilling platform may have prevented the dying workers from pushing the button) -- was directly attributable to industry pandering by the Bush team. Acoustic switches are required by law for all offshore rigs off Brazil and in Norway's North Sea operations. BP uses the device voluntarily in Britain's North Sea and elsewhere in the world as do other big players like Holland's Shell and France's Total. In 2000, the Minerals Management Service while weighing a comprehensive rulemaking for drilling safety, deemed the acoustic mechanism "essential" and proposed to mandate the mechanism on all gulf rigs.

Then, between January and March of 2001, incoming Vice President Dick Cheney conducted secret meetings with over 100 oil industry officials allowing them to draft a wish list of industry demands to be implemented by the oil friendly administration. Cheney also used that time to re-staff the Minerals Management Service with oil industry toadies including a cabal of his Wyoming carbon cronies. In 2003, newly reconstituted Minerals Management Service genuflected to the oil cartel by recommending the removal of the proposed requirement for acoustic switches. The Minerals Management Service's 2003 study concluded that "acoustic systems are not recommended because they tend to be very costly."

The acoustic trigger costs about $500,000. Estimated costs of the oil spill to Gulf Coast residents are now upward of $14 billion to gulf state communities. Bush's 2005 energy bill officially dropped the requirement for the acoustic switch off devices explaining that the industry's existing practices are "failsafe."

more

[saracat]

21. So? How does this exonerate Salazar for his own actions?

Cannot he also be wrong? It isn't as though this makes Salazar innocent because the Bush Admin is guilty. Or maybe you think it is RW Bull that Salazar even went to court? What do you think he was fighting for?

[ProSense]

22. "Cannot he also be wrong? "

"It isn't as though this makes Salazar innocent because the Bush Admin is guilty."

Good grief.

[saracat]

26. You don't understand that each person is culpable for their own actions?

[JeffR]

23. I've read that piece, and it's a good one. But I don't see how that gets

Salazar off the hook for some bad decisions.

[Forkboy]

25. It doesn't, but the blue links were pretty.

[JeffR]

27. That's true

[ProSense]

28. Here:

Bush's 2005 energy bill officially dropped the requirement for the acoustic switch off devices explaining that the industry's existing practices are "failsafe."

First, that was the law that allowed BP to skip the device.

Second, the action in April 2009 was made by people in the MMS, and most of these agencies are staffed with carreer civil servants.

Third, the administration was in the process of overturning the exemption rules.

"There are a lot of layers in the NEPA review process," one administration official said, pointing out that it's a five year process that began for BP in 2004.

In 2004 and 2007 most of the decisions were made regarding the federal government granting the "categorical exclusion."

Then, the official said, "somebody buried deep in MMS made a determination in 2009 that this particular well could qualify for what was already an established routine action."

Officials from the president's Council on Environmental Quality believe that these categorical exclusions may be granted too readily, so in February 2010 they informed agencies "that they need to review how we're issuing categorical exclusions. That guidance is currently out for comment."

more

Looking at the OP article, which clearly shows that the actions within a one-day period (cementing, testing and proceeding) led to the explosion, it's absolutely ridiculous to lay the blame at the administration's feet.

The Salazar witchhunt is fun, but this is ridiculous.

[JeffR]

29. If the MMS was this stupid and/or corrupt in April of last year

then Salazar should have done something about it long before now. I'll grant that he manages a much larger portfolio than just MMS, but it is in his purview. I wasn't happy about Salazar's appointment to begin with. This debacle vindicates my misgivings. What you call a witchhunt could be more accurately described as legitimate concern over a cabinet secretary who just might not be up to the job.

[ProSense]

30. "legitimate concern over a cabinet secretary who just might not be up to the job."

There are legitimate concerns about Obama's entire cabinet based on criticism. Concerns or not, it is beyond a stretch to claim that Salazar could have prevented this accident, which appears to be the result of the cementing.

[JeffR]

33. Had this well not been given a categorical NEPA exclusion in April '09

then Salazar might indeed have prevented this calamity. BP's track record amply indicates that the NEPA exclusion was a stupid move. The blame here belongs to predatory corporations, but it's Salazar's job to safeguard the public interest. The exclusion should never have been made. I can't vouch for the info in response #3 since the link leads nowhere, but if it's accurate, Salazar's ass is hanging out there.

[ProSense]

35. Again,

the exclusion was the culmination of a process that began several years earlier. The exclusion should never have been made.

Still, the events that triggered the explosion were centered in a one-day period, beginning with the cementing. BP is solely responsible for its day-to-day operations. Halliburton was brought in to cement the well, which was then tested and it failed. They proceeded anyway.

[saracat]

36. Funny your suddenly being an admirer of RFK Jr. I though he "defended the indefensible"

according to you.

[ProSense]

37. I loved his

piece on the stolen election. What gave you the impression that I'm not an admirer?


What does any of this have to do with the current point?

[saracat]

39. The Primary.LOL. But I guess you have forgiven him.Thats nice.

[BreweryYardRat]

32. Right. Find the specific "BP officials" responsible and take a few heads.

See my post above for the reasoning on this.

[RedCloud]

38. Will they lower the standards and pretend it passed?