Super Moderator
Location: essex ma
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there's finally some reason for guarded optimism concerning the containment of the oil from the leak itself....
Quote:
BP Says New Well Cap Installed
By HENRY FOUNTAIN and ALAN COWELL
NEW ORLEANS — As BP announced it had successfully attached a new cap on a runaway well in the Gulf of Mexico, the company prepared on Tuesday to test whether the gusher could be stopped completely.
For the duration of the test, which will be a minimum of 6 hours and could extend up to 48 hours,” a BP press release said, the cap will be closed, “effectively shutting in the well.”
“It is expected, although cannot be assured, that no oil will be released to the ocean for the duration of the test. This will not, however, be an indication that flow from the well bore has been permanently stopped,” the press release said.
It noted that the capping system has “never before has been deployed at these depths or under these conditions, and its efficiency and ability to contain the oil and gas cannot be assured.”
Earlier, Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer for exploration and production, said valves on the cap will be closed and for the first time since the disaster began in late April, the oil should stop leaking.
If the tests on the well show the pressure rising and holding — an indication that the well is intact, with no significant damage to the casing pipe that runs the length of the well bore to 13,000 feet below the sea floor — BP, working with government scientists, could decide to leave the valves closed, effectively shutting off the well like a cap on a soda bottle.
“The best-case scenario is that pressures rise to the point we anticipate they would,” Mr. Suttles said at a briefing on Monday. “We’d likely be able to keep the well shut in.”
On the other hand, the tests could show pressures that are lower than expected, Mr. Suttles said, an indication that the well is damaged. That could mean that oil and gas are leaking into the surrounding rock.
In that case, keeping the cap closed could damage the well further. The valves would have to be reopened, he said, and oil would start escaping from the well again, although much of it, and perhaps eventually all, would be funneled through pipes to surface ships.
A technician with knowledge of the operation said that it was unlikely that the well would be left shut beyond the test period, given the risk that the pressure could eventually cause problems within the well and given that with the new cap BP should soon be able to collect all the oil.
“Do I want to make that bet that there’s sufficient inherent strength in that well path to keep that well contained?” said the technician, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the work. “Why would we take that chance?”
Mr. Suttles said that engineers and scientists would evaluate risks based on the pressure results, and that the various collection systems — which would be shut down during the tests — would be on standby if it were decided to leave the well shut in.
“If we did discover a problem, we could resume containment operations,” he said.
If containment were resumed, either at the end of the test period or later, it would continue until the company could complete the relief well work — by the end of July or August at the earliest. Mr. Suttles said that even if the new cap was kept closed, the relief well work would continue “ultimately to make sure this well can never flow to surface again.”
It appeared that BP’s latest subsea engineering effort proceeded smoothly, with few of the hitches that marred some earlier attempts. Removal of the old, loose-fitting cap went quickly, and clearing the way for the new cap by removing six 50-pound bolts that held a stub of riser pipe was straightforward.
On Monday evening, video from the seafloor showed the cap being lowered onto a connector pipe that had been installed the day before. The cap’s latching mechanism had a sticker on the side that read, “THINK twice, act once!!”
Perhaps learning from previous frustrations, engineers had made plenty of contingency plans, including having another loose-fitting cap on standby in case there were significant setbacks with the tighter-fitting one. Backup tools were available to help get the pipe stub off if the first one, called an overshot tool, did not work. The additional tools were not needed.
Engineers had performed dry runs, on land, of the installation of the cap, a 75-ton assemblage of forged steel, with three hydraulic valves, or rams, that are much like those on the blowout preventer that failed when the blowout occurred April 20. An animated video was produced to show technicians at the well site, 40 miles off the coast of Louisiana, how the work would proceed, to help coordinate the movement of vessels and remotely operated submersibles.
The new cap was attached to the connecting pipe with a hydraulic latching device. Antifreeze was pumped around the latch in an effort to avoid the formation of hydrates, icelike crystals of methane and water that could affect the latching mechanism and that scuttled an earlier containment attempt.
The work crews did encounter minor delays in starting up a new collection system that could divert up to 25,000 barrels of oil a day to a surface ship, the Helix Producer, Mr. Suttles said. That system began operating on Monday, he said, and was expected to reach full capacity over several days.
The work on the new cap began on Saturday, when the old one was removed. That cap had been funneling about 15,000 barrels of oil a day. Since then, oil has been gushing largely unchecked from the top of the well.
If the pressure tests show that the well is damaged and the valves have to be reopened, full containment of the oil would probably not occur for several weeks, until one or two more ships could be brought in to handle more of the flow. That would raise total collection capacity to more than 60,000 barrels a day, the current high-end estimate of the well’s flow rate. Halting the gusher would then await the completion of the first relief well.
Henry Fountain reported from New Orleans, and Alan Cowell from London.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/us...ef=global-home
though there's alot more of this optimism business at the start of the article than there is by the end, and this a function of the pressure testing that is required before the new cap is sealed, testing which may answer the question of whether there is damage further down in the well or not. there's been alot of speculation about this. now i suppose someone will know.
meanwhile, the presidential commission appointed to find out what happened (again) opened hearing and was told about one of those fine rational pushmepullyou dynamics that capitalism can set into motion except of course the outcomes aren't always so great:
Quote:
BP oil spill: Barack Obama's investigation hears of 'friction'
• Commission told Transocean should have shut well
• Inquiry on rig blast starts with effects of disaster
A commission appointed by Barack Obama to uncover the cause of America's worst environmental disaster turned its sights today on the clash of wills between BP and the operator of the doomed Deepwater Horizon rig.
In the high-stakes world of offshore drilling, there was in-built conflict between oil companies, such as BP, and rig operators, such as Transocean, the commission was told on the opening day of public hearings at a New Orleans hotel.
"There is natural friction between safety and caution and meeting schedules," said Larry Dickerson, who is the chief executive of Diamond Offshore Drilling, Transocean's main rival. "Our customers push us."
But he said the rig operator – in this case, Transocean – should have exercised its power to shut down BP's well operation before the blowout. "The drill company is sitting there with its hands on the brake," he said. "They have the responsibility to do that."
With the spill entering its 13th week, BP said it had successfully fitted a tighter cap over the well, a step towards a containment system that could potentially trap all the leaking oil.
The oil company will test the cap and pressures in the well for much of Tuesday, before determining whether it can begin capturing more oil.
Kent Wells, a senior vice-president for BP America, told the hearing it would take two or three days to determine the effectiveness of the seal.
Bob Graham, the former Democratic senator who is co-chair of the commission, opened the hearings by promising to press hard to shed light on oil industry safety practices as well as government oversight. "Was the Deepwater Horizon an oil rig that operated outside the normal standards of safety, or was it representative of other rigs?" he said.
The commission was almost swept off course by the controversy over Obama's efforts to put a stop to new drilling projects in the Gulf. Many are furious at Obama for seeking a six-month ban on new deepwater drilling. The administration issued a new, more limited ban today.
Members of Congress and oil executives argued that the administration had gone too far in restricting drilling, and that the catastrophe in the Gulf was a one-off caused by BP's recklessness. "The Macondo well was a highly unstable and volatile well even before the blow-out," said Steve Scalise, a Republican member of Congress.
However, Cynthia Sarthou of the Gulf Restoration Network noted that Chevron and Exxon had a similar history of safety violations, and Chevron had been fined more than $1.2m in the last 10 years
The commission has until 15 December to produce a definitive account of the causes for the explosion, and offer recommendations to prevent a repeat.
Graham said he would not be satisfied with a nuts-and-bolts explanation. "There is almost a cultural issue in the industry and in the government agencies responsible for monitoring industry," he said.
William Reilly, the commission's other chairman, who was head of the Environmental Protection Agency when the Exxon Valdez tanker ran aground in Alaska 20 years ago, also promised a far-ranging investigation. "We will follow the facts wherever they lead and determine the cause and the root cause of the event."
Other commission members said today the team had deliberately opted for a softly-softly launch to the investigation, hoping to draw attention to the economic and environmental consequences of the spill.
That approach won over some locals. Sal Sunseri, owner of a century-old oyster firm, appeared at the commission to say his business was facing ruin. "What I am focused on is capping the well … cleaning it up," he said. Determining the causes of the explosion came second.
But members of the public were not so easily satisfied. At the end of the day, dozens lined up to demand BP pay up for business losses, a sweeping ban on oil exploration, and for the governent to undertake largescale restoration projects.
Drew Landry, a fishermen who said he had been turned away when he volunteered to help with the clean-up, brought a guitar to sing a song he wrote about the spill.
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BP oil spill: Barack Obama's investigation hears of 'friction' | Environment | The Guardian
so there's a number of conflicts already at play---structural problems that the oil industries and folk who rely on them want minimized---a very real problem of the ongoing disaster and inadequacy of clean-up operations---alot of entirely unanswered questions about the dispersants, where most of the oil is going if its moving around too far beneath the surface to evaporate and what that'll mean---problems that follow from the emphasis on managing appearance (shareholder value uber alles)....folk who want bp to do more than say it's going to pay---people whose lives are fucked up because of this disaster---and bad songs.
of course things aren't so simple for folk affected:
washingtonpost.com
and there's no single trend or narrative to latch onto. is there?
meanwhile, the folk at the oil drum are monitoring the progress of the capping undertakings.
The Oil Drum | BP's Deepwater Oil Spill - Capping Stack Installed - and Open Thread
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
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