BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is far from over.
The government has estimated that 600,000 to 1.2 million gallons a day are leaking from the bottom of the sea. Source: BBC.
Of course how much is being contained is questionable.
Coast Guard Adm Thad Allen said in a press conference on Wednesday that the containment operation was now catching up to 630,000 gallons (2,864,037 litres) daily.
He said he hoped the existing containment structure would soon be able to hold 1.17 million gallons per day.
“We’re only at 15 [15,000 barrels] now and we’ll be at 28 [28,000 barrels] next week. We’re building capacity,” said Adm Allen. Source: BBC.
Which really leaves us none the wiser – is oil still leaking into the gulf? Of course it is – how much? No one is saying – When will it stop? Now there’s a question?
Over at The Oil Drum a comment by dougr describes what we hope is a worst case scenario.
Before reading have a look at this diagram – click it to enlarge.
This diagram relates to an investigation of Deepwater’s cement linings but gives you a good of the design, equipment and workings of the Deepwater oil well.
Diagram source: Nola.com.
As you have probably seen and maybe feel yourselves, there are several things that do not appear to make sense regarding the actions of attack against the well. Don’t feel bad, there is much that doesn’t make sense even to professionals unless you take into account some important variables that we are not being told about. There seems to me to be a reluctance to face what cannot be termed anything less than grim circumstances in my opinion. There certainly is a reluctance to inform us regular people and all we have really gotten is a few dots here and there…
First of all…set aside all your thoughts of plugging the well and stopping it from blowing out oil using any method from the top down. Plugs, big valves to just shut it off, pinching the closed, installing a new blow out preventer (BOP) or Lower Marine Riser Package (LMRP), shooting any epoxy in it, top kills with mud etc etc etc… forget that, it won’t be happening… it’s done and over. In fact actually opening up the well at the subsea source and allowing it to gush more is not only exactly what has happened, it was probably necessary, or so they think anyway.
So you have to ask WHY? Why make it worse? There really can only be one answer and that answer does not bode well for all of us. It’s really an inescapable conclusion at this point, unless you want to believe that every Oil and Gas professional involved suddenly just forgot everything they know or woke up one morning and drank a few big cups of stupid and got assigned to directing the response to this catastrophe. Nothing makes sense unless you take this into account, but after you do…you will see the “sense” behind what has happened and what is happening. That conclusion is this:
The well bore structure is compromised “Down hole”.
That is something which is a “Worst nightmare” conclusion to reach. While many have been saying this for some time as with any complex disaster of this proportion many have “said” a lot of things with no real sound reasons or evidence for jumping to such conclusions, well this time it appears that they may have jumped into the right place…
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They will never cap the gusher after the wellhead. They cannot…the more they try and restrict the oil gushing out the BOP…the more it will transfer to the leaks below. Just like a leaky garden hose with a nozzle on it. When you open up the nozzle…it doesn’t leak so bad, you close the nozzle…it leaks real bad, same dynamics. It is why they sawed the riser off…or tried to anyway…but they clipped it off, to relieve pressure on the leaks “down hole”. I’m sure there was a bit of panic time after they crimp/pinched off the large riser pipe and the Diamond wire saw got stuck and failed…because that crimp diverted pressure and flow to the rupture down below.
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What is likely to happen now?
Well…none of what is likely to happen is good, in fact…it’s about as bad as it gets. I am convinced the erosion and compromising of the entire system is accelerating and attacking key structural areas of the well, the blow out preventer and the surrounding strata holding it all up and together. This is evidenced by the tilt of the blow out preventer and the exposed well head connection. What eventually will happen is that the blow out preventer will literally tip over if they do not run supports to it. I suspect they will run those supports as cables tied to anchors very soon, if they don’t, they are inviting disaster that much sooner.
Eventually even that will be futile as the well casings cannot support the weight of the massive system above without the cement bond that is being eroded away. When enough is eroded away the casings will buckle and the BOP will collapse the well.
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All of these things lead to only one place, a fully wide open well bore directly to the oil deposit…after that, it goes into the realm of “the worst things you can think of” The well may come completely apart as the inner liners fail. There is still a very long drill string in the well, that could literally come flying out…as I said…all the worst things you can think of are a possibility, but the very least damaging outcome as bad as it is, is that we are stuck with a wide open gusher blowing out 150,000 barrels a day of raw oil or more. There isn’t any “cap dome” or any other suck fixer device on earth that exists or could be built that will stop it from gushing out and doing more and more damage to the gulf. While at the same time also doing more damage to the well, making the chance of halting it with a kill from the bottom up less and less likely to work, which as it stands now?….is the only real chance we have left to stop it all.
It’s a race now…a race to drill the relief wells and take our last chance at killing this monster before the whole weakened, wore out, blown out, leaking and failing system gives up its last gasp in a horrific crescendo.
We are not even 2 months into it, barely half way by even optimistic estimates. The damage done by the leaked oil now is virtually immeasurable already and it will not get better, it can only get worse. No matter how much they can collect, there will still be thousands and thousands of gallons leaking out every minute, every hour of every day. We have 2 months left before the relief wells are even near in position and set up to take a kill shot and that is being optimistic as I said.
Over the next 2 months the mechanical situation cannot improve, it can only get worse, getting better is an impossibility. While they may make some gains on collecting the leaked oil, the structural situation cannot heal itself. It will continue to erode and flow out more oil and eventually the inevitable collapse which cannot be stopped will happen. It is only a simple matter of who can “get there first”…us or the well.
We can only hope the race against that eventuality is one we can win, but my assessment I am sad to say is that we will not.
The system will collapse or fail substantially before we reach the finish line ahead of the well and the worst is yet to come.
Sorry to bring you that news, I know it is grim, but that is the way I see it….I sincerely hope I am wrong.
We need to prepare for the possibility of this blow out sending more oil into the gulf per week then what we already have now, because that is what a collapse of the system will cause. All the collection efforts that have captured oil will be erased in short order. The magnitude of this disaster will increase exponentially by the time we can do anything to halt it and our odds of actually even being able to halt it will go down.
The magnitude and impact of this disaster will eclipse anything we have known in our lifetimes if the worst or even near worst happens… Source: The Oil Drum.
Is dougr right? He’s certainly made a very plausible argument but let’s hope not – because with that much oil in the sea where else will it turn up? It could be carried by the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic drift to European shores – somehow a beach holiday might not be so appealing and we can forget eating seafood it’ll be dead or polluted.
Hat Tip: Madam Miaow.