Baby rescued from bathwater

A judge has blocked the deepwater drilling ban, which even

though I'm not a fan of judges doing anything other than say

guilty or not guilty, is a good thing. The blanket ban was a bad

idea because waiting six months just kicks the ball down the field

for 6 months, there's not much technology wise that is going to change,

and just deciding to stop drilling in deepwater is bad for everyone

involved (except maybe the pelicans)

I think that bp is guilty of stupidity and their design and operating decisions

probably caused this disaster, so there's some quick fixes that can allow

drilling to continue on most rigs:

- dual shear rams required on every bop

- Before every well is spudded, a joint of drillpipe needs to be sheared. (Before latching onto the wellhead, stop running riser, run drillpipe in the hole and shear off a chunk. repeat each well using the largest diameter drillpipe onboard)

- once per year all bop's tested on the surface. first test must happen within 90 days.

- test closure of bop's using the ROV's (apparently when they tried to close the shear rams after the blowout using the rov's the piping leaked. It was never tested.

- remote acoustic control of bop's required by 2012

- review all well designs so that they conform with standard best practice (it sounds like a lot, but there's only50 rigs drilling in deepwater)

-cement bond logs required over every section with hydrocarbons or with direct annular path to surface. Or just make it every section. Current law requires logs over the entire wellbore, just add a cbl.

- answer is no for all exemptions that are for saving operating time, eg changing riser mud out when the well is still live, using a single casing string instead of a liner with a tieback, etc.

Even if some of these requirements stop drilling for a little while, the current deepwater ban means they want us to wait 6 months while they make this list, then begin compliance with a list that will be similar. Start now. If the well is dead, pull and inspect all bop components and do a full bop test, install redundant shear rams and test their ability to cut drillpipe. If the bop doesn't pass then that rig is banned until it passes.

Oily pelicans

Watching videos of oil soaked pelicans I'm staring to get annoyed

with the response from both BP and the government. I realize the federal

government can do little now except clench jaws and shake fists, but

they could have allowed more berms to be build to protect the wetlands,

brought more booms in, etc. But that is the response I expect from the feds,

too slow, ponderous etc, and anyone that bets their lives or livelyhoods on

the federal repsonse is a fool. (doesn't matter which gang is in charge)

The thing that is pissing me off today is an article on the oil drum, which

always has interesting articles and commentary and has been following this

disaster in real-time. BP apparently had an incident back in 2003 where

the riser parted and the only thing seperating the well they were drilling and

a massive spill was the Blow-Out Preventers worked. They apparently didn't

learn anything from that and design and build any additional machinery

in case of a similar incident and a massive spill. So they learned nothing from

a very near miss.

In the end it will be a series of failures that caused this accident, bad planning

bad luck and finally the single point of failure, those "pinchers" failed and there

was no backup plan. The result will be we'll end up with the obamafication of the

bp portion of the deepwater production portfolo to pay for this disaster, to the

detriment of both the offshore oil industry in the US, and 3 or 4 years down the

line when we really need that production to prevent $200 oil prices the production

won't be there because it's being shut down and delayed by stopping the permitting

process now.

Deepwater Horizon and tuna fishing

The New York times has a good story based on eyewitness accounts to

the deepwater horizon accident. (If a story is non-political, they tend to do

a good job and I'll read it all day, on politcal stories they are slanted too far

to the left)

They have the same problem that all non-oilfield people have, they describe

the operation as:

The job of sinking the well had gone relatively smoothly — extending the well, pipe by pipe, until it punched through to the oil below. Then the crew shoved a final long stretch of pipe deep into the reservoir.

The problem with this description is it implies that the pipe is shoved

into the reservoir, like pushing a straw into mud. The reality is that

each hole section is drilled with a bit, then casing is run into the hole

then progressively smaller bits are used for the next section, followed

by smaller casing. Each string of casing is cemented by pumping cement

down the inside of the pipe, then up the annular space. The shallower

strings of casing have cement that goes all the way back up to the

wellhead on the seafloor. The deeper sections might only

have enough cement to isolate the openhole section of casing.

Then the times goes into the speculation that everyone is making,

and they start off with attacking the cementing company, which just

happens to be haliburton. They were using a foamed cement

that is normal practice for all cementing companies to use in deepwater,

because it is low enough in density to not fracture the formation while

being pumped. I wonder if they publish this speculation just because

it's haliburton, when it's been several years since haliburton sold off

Brown and Root, the object of liberal's ire.

A really interesting link to fishing forum with a post from an eyewitness

from a fishing boat. They witnessed something horrible, and tried to

help but were warned off by bigger boats, but in true coonass fashion:

We stayed a mile off the fire and searched/listened for missing ppl for 4 hours. We saw nothing. 20 or so commercial liners eventually brought Medics and oxygen for survivors. Helicopter came for search and transport. All the other facts you probably already know about; via News. The 11 missing people in 'mind' I hope slipped away in a safety boat, but in reality I doubt they are alive. This is a sad thing to say, but if you would have seen the explosions you wouldn't believe anyone of the 126 would have survived it! I pray for all of them and their families! We left at morning to make our way in, we were 60 miles offshore and gas was running low. We stopped at Elf on the way in and filled the ice chest.

The tuna were busting on top water and we couldn't resist. We left the half way point in hopes to make it home. The starboard motor ran out of gas at the very mouth of the river, but fortunately we had a spare gas tank on board! We made it to Venice at about 3pm on Wednesday and began cleaning the fish.

Deepwater Horizon and similarities to Katrina

I'm starting to see some calls in the blogosphere and the news that Obama

should have reacted sooner to the disaster in the gulf. There are some similarities

and some differences between this disaster and when Katrina hit, and in the

same waythat it was unfair how much blame Bush took for Katrina, maybe we

shouldn't throw too many stones at Obama.

For the It's Obama's fault side:

This was a disaster out at sea, in federal waters, no one else had any regulatory oversight

There was no collateral damage like Katrina where the major roads and interstates were

cut at multiple places, the feds had free access all the way to Venice, LA.

There was no raging storm blocking everything.

There was full information available, the people who knew best what was happening were

available for interviews after less than a day at sea.

For the it's not Obama's fault side:

The federal government does not have a magic wand to sooth all hurts instantly.

From where I sit, the leak didn't seem very bad for several days. At first it seemed

like the oil was coming from fuel onboard. (very similar to Katrina, where the storm passed

and everything seemed ok for several hours.)

BP was making noises very similar to the ones fema made before Katrina, 'we're

prepared, we've got miles of booms', etc.

Reading over my partial lists, the key difference here is that during Katrina there

was a bad ass storm that destroyed infrastructure from east of Baton Rouge to

Florida, short of dropping the 82nd airborne into N.O. there wasn't much more

that was possible and due to politcal problems the Governor of LA never asked

for help until later, a requirement for federal troops to come, so really it was a city

and state problem.

The deepwater horizon was a purely federal problem, the states have no input

to safety in federal waters, get only a small portion of money from the 8g fund

and aren't involved in licensing, safety reviews or inspections. The Feds have complete

authority over the operation, can stop drilling, intervene in well designs, after the

fire had full visual coverage of the disaster and had people on the ground while

the disaster was unfolding.

I'm changing my answer, it's Obama's fault.

(I joke, I joke, I kid, I kid, if I offend I'm sorry. I don't think he bears any more responsibility than bush did for the sloppy response to Katrina)