For all of you anxiously waiting for some news while the price drops From the Bakersfield News:
Renowned oil well firefighter to talk about
Lost Hills blowout
Filed: January 18, 1999
By Bill Rintoul
Slightly more than one year ago the saga of Argentina's largest blowout
was unfolded in Bakersfield and was well received as Larry Flak
recounted details of the battle to control the wild well while speaking at
a Thursday, Oct. 23, 1997, dinner meeting of the West Coast Chapter of
the American Association of Drilling Engineers at the Rice Bowl.
Flak was vice president of engineering for Boots & Coots International
Well Control Inc. of Houston, a company of oil well fire fighters and
blowout specialists. While best known for his work as manager of the
1991 Kuwait firefighting project, Flak had battled many more wild wells
around the world from Mongolia to the Far East, including in the past five
years five blowouts that had occurred in California.
Larry Flak will be the speaker this Thursday, Jan. 21, at the dinner
meeting of the West Coast Chapter of the American Association of
Drilling Engineers at the Rice Bowl. This time the topic will be "Deep
Well at Lost Hills." The well presumably will be the Bellevue No. 1, which
blew out recently with pressure that seems to be the forerunner of
development of a significant new discovery.
At AADE's Thursday dinner meeting, the timetable lists social
get-together at 5:30 p.m., dinner at 6:30 and speech by Larry Flak at 7.
For dinner reservations, call Pattie, of Halliburton, at 837-2971.
The battle in Argentina occurred in 1996, when Boots and Coots worked
on what Flak in his October, 1997, talk described as "the largest blowout
in Argentina that YPF Company ever had." The well was located in central
Argentina in a plains setting which from photographs taken by Flak was
not unlike that of desert parts of California.
"The well was on fire," Flak said of his arrival at the drill site. Gas was
flowing at a rate of about 200 million cubic feet per day accompanied by
oil at about 1,000 barrels per day. Drill pipe pushed out of the hole could
be seen in the fiery column of gas and oil escaping from the well. The
120-decibel noise could be heard from as far as five miles away.
In addition to gas flowing from the wild well, gas was bubbling out of the
ground near the drill site. A sheepherder, one of the few people in the
vast expanse, said when he started a small fire to brew tea the fire
would not go out.
At the well site, the first step for Boots & Coots was to remove the
damaged rig. Apparently rotary tables were hard to come by because that
was the main item the rig's owner anxiously asked them to save, which
they did. With removal of the rig, the fire was put out but the well could
not be killed because gas was escaping one-half mile east of the well.
Boots & Coots advised the next step should be to drill a relief well into
the well bore through which a mixture such as cement and sodium
silicate could be pumped to slow down the flow and set the stage to put a
plug in the well. One of the well's owners wanted first to try to kill the
well from the surface. Three attempts failed.
"We then drilled a relief well," Flak said, "and killed the well. The entire
job lasted 46 days. The cost of the entire control effort was $25 million."
Of well control efforts, Flak said, "Technology is remarkable. It's just a
matter of money."
Beyond the Thursday dinner meeting, AADE's Spring Symposium is set for
March 11 and 12.
Topics should be related to the theme: "Applied Technology in Well
Construction." Parties interested in making a presentation are asked to
contact Dave Pickens, (805) 395-5491, or Lonnie Kerley (805) 769-2358.
Speakers will be notified no later than Feb. 4. |
