Super Moderator
Location: essex ma
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more information about the run-up to the deepwater horizon disaster, a run-up which is becoming increasingly bizarre:
Quote:
Before rig explosion, BP pumped chemical mixture into well, contractor says
By David S. Hilzenrath
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 20, 2010; 9:47 AM
KENNER, LA. -- In the hours before the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded, BP pumped into the well an extraordinarily large quantity of an unusual chemical mixture, a contractor on the rig testified Monday.
The injection of the dense, gray fluid was meant to flush drilling mud from the hole, according to the testimony before a government panel investigating the April 20 accident. But the more than 400 barrels used were roughly double the usual quantity, said Leo Lindner, a drilling fluid specialist for contractor MI-Swaco.
BP had hundreds of barrels of the two chemicals on hand and needed to dispose of the material, Lindner testified. By first flushing it into the well, the company could take advantage of an exemption in an environmental law that otherwise would have prohibited it from discharging the hazardous waste into the Gulf of Mexico, Lindner said.
The procedure mixed two substances. "It's not something we've ever done before," Lindner said.
A BP specialist said using the two substances together would be okay. Nonetheless, the night before the rig exploded, Lindner was busy conducting an improvised chemistry experiment to double-check. He mixed a gallon of one of the substances with a gallon of the other and observed their reaction.
When the well became a gusher on April 20, a fluid that fit the general description of the mixture rained down on the rig.
Stephen Bertone, chief engineer on the rig, said in testimony earlier in the day that part of the rig was covered in an inch or more of material that he said resembled "snot."
Ronnie Penton, an attorney for one of the rig workers, said in an interview after the hearing that the double-sized dose of spacer fluid, also known as a "pill," skewed a crucial test of pressure in the well just hours before the blowout. Based on the test, BP concluded it was safe to continue displacing the heavy mud from the well in favor of much lighter sea water.
"That large pill skewed the testing," Penton said.
The alleged departure from standard practice came despite a series of complications in the attempt to complete work on the well.
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washingtonpost.com
a speculative point---it seems to me that the petroleum industry and all those who benefit from it--erm support it in principle--have at this point every interest in painting up the deepwater horizon fiasco and bp/transocean/halliburton as having acted in a peculiar/particular way as a means of basically--and i hate this expression--throwing bp under the bus.
this is not to say that i doubt these stories which are coming out of the govt appointed panel hearings in louisiana. i just find the emphasis on the particularities interesting.
meanwhile, bp continues scrambling to raise capital, selling off assets:
Quote:
BP sells $7 billion in oil and gas assets to Apache Corp.
By Steven Mufson
Wednesday, July 21, 2010; A09
BP has sold oil and gas properties in the United States, Egypt and Canada to Houston-based Apache Corp. for $7 billion as part of the oil giant's effort to raise cash to cover oil spill expenses and bolster its financial position, the two companies announced Tuesday.
The sale takes BP most of the way toward its goal of raising $10 billion over the next year by selling exploration and production assets. Those asset sales would cover half of the $20 billion BP has pledged to put in an escrow fund to cover claims resulting from the spill.
The deal includes oil and gas reserves in Texas and southeastern New Mexico, natural gas reserves in western Canada, and the Western Desert business concessions and East Badr El-din exploration concession in Egypt.
"It is a win-win situation. BP is a motivated seller, and Apache is an opportunist. Both are happy with the deal," said Fadel Gheit, an oil analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. Gheit said the transaction involved "marginal assets for BP but core business areas for Apache."
He said Apache paid "reasonable prices" of $18 per barrel of proven reserves of oil or the natural gas equivalent.
"I think Apache got a fair deal," said Pavel Molchanov, an oil analyst at Raymond James. "But it is not a fire-sale price. Far from it."
BP shares had fallen 1.5 percent to close at $35.20 before the announcement but recovered most of that ground in after-hours trading.
This is the fourth deal between the two companies in the past six years, Gheit said.
Apache said it would acquire the equivalent of 385 million barrels of oil reserves, which Molchanov said was about 2 percent of BP's proven reserves. The properties currently produce 28,000 barrels of oil and 331 million cubic feet of gas a day.
The purchase price includes $3.1 billion for 10 areas in West Texas's Permian Basin, an oil and gas region where Apache already has substantial production. G. Steven Farris, Apache's chief executive, said in a statement that they were "under-exploited assets." The package also includes $3.25 billion for gas and unconventional gas properties in western Canada. The rest covers concessions for exploration and some infrastructure in Egypt.
BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg said in a statement that "over the last two months the Board has considered BP's options for generating the cash necessary to meet the obligations likely to arise from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill." He said that the company sought "to divest assets which are strategically more valuable to other parties than they are to BP."
Apache's Farris said that "this is a rare opportunity to acquire legacy positions from a major oil company." He added: "We seldom have an opportunity like this in one of our core areas, let alone three."
The deal did not include a share of BP's Alaska holdings, which sources close to the company said might be sold. A failure to reach agreement on Alaska might explain why the package fell short of the $10 billion to $12 billion figure that had been widely reported.
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washingtonpost.com
and indicating that tony hayward, who i seem to remember was characterized as the greastest ceo of all time by some eccentric earlier in this fiasco, is likely to step down in october:
BP's Tony Hayward 'set to step down' | Business | guardian.co.uk
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it make you sick.
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