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Politics : Rat's Nest - Chronicles of Collapse -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: T L Comiskey who wrote (10452)	5/7/2010 11:06:54 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Respond to of 24231

"After all, that carbon we're seeing poison the Gulf was headed into the planetary ecosystem anyway, through tailpipe emissions. "That's part of the irony of all this, is it just took a shortcut," Steiner said. "This carbon took a shortcut into the environment from what it normally does, and it's obvious to people what the problem is here." == ROCKMAN on May 6, 2010 - 10:09pm FOR ALL One of our TOD cohorts asked a question earlier today that made me realize there may have been a big hole (pun intended) in our ongoing conversation. Those of us here with oil patch experience didn’t think to offer the obvious because it was just that to us: obvious. Backing up some and talking about the potential for a blow out in an offshore drilling well, it occurred to me that many think the circumstances leading to such events are uncommon and thus our technology isn't really geared to such “mini Black Swans”. Far from it. While drilling a well the potential for the well to “kick” (oil/NG come up the hole in a dangerous manor) or come all the way to the surface isn’t considered an uncommon possibility but is planned for. There are a number of parameters that can indicate a well “coming in” (taking a kick). There are several different jobs on the rig that are responsible for monitoring for these indicators. As a pore pressure analyst my primary job was to recognized conditions that could lead to a kick. My job was to do nothing but look for kick indicators. Each drilling operation has a “kill sheet’ that shows the sequence of events required to handle kick or actual well flow. Activating the BOP is actually the last step in the process. The first is to shut off all the flow back routes the oil/NG might take. And if you can’t shut them off quick enough you can divert to the flare boom: a steel tube that directs the oil/NG away from the rig. And when you go “on flare” you actually ignite it. Much safer to let it burn then for an explosive cloud to build around the rig. So when you take a kick and “go on choke” the common response is pump a ”kill pill” (very heavy mud) down to apply more backpressure to make the reservoir stop flowing. Of course it can take a few hours for the pill to reach the bottom of the hole. But eventually you can “circulate the kick out” and regain control of the well. And then you adjust your mud parameters and get back to “making hole”. I’m sure many will not get much comfort to realize that taking a kick and having a well come in on you is not an unexpected event. Happens all the time. About 25 years ago I had a deep well outside of small Texas town come in on me at 8 o’clock on a Saturday night. My engineer refused to believe me when I warned him. So all the mud was blown out of the hole and we had a 100’ NG flare roaring like a jet. We were eventually able to get control by pumping a kill pill down. The state troopers had to shut the highway down next to the rig. Not because of the flare. Because the whole town was parked on the highway (with beers in hand, of course) waiting to see the rig blow up and men die. But it didn’t. So no CNN choppers overhead, no Wild Well Control hands rushing to the drill site, not even a story on page 32 of the local paper. I’m not trying to act blasé about the incident…did rattle me some. And everyone else on the rig. But that’s the nature of the job. You just call the family, tell them you love them and then you get back to work. The point I’m making is that all the technology on the rig is designed for the LIKELY event of a well coming in on you. But the BP blow out occurred at a phase where few would anticipate the well coming in on you. Thus chances were taken that weren’t perceived as really risky. And much of the defensive system was probably turned off or at least not monitored for the same reason. Kind of like pulling into a parking spot, taking your seat belt off and then getting hit by another car and suffering brain damage because you didn’t have your seat belt on. I know…a silly comparison but perhaps a lot closer to the circumstances of the BP blow out then many would want to believe. == ROCKMAN on May 7, 2010 - 8:44am You're welcome WP. But I hope folks got the point: safety is constantly on the minds of the offshore hands. They train constantly and maintain equipment that is specifically designed to deal with such possibilities. One more bit of insider trivia: a rig is always noisy but after a few days you stop noticing it. Until there is a break in the rhythm or an odd "bump" in the night. If it happens when you're in your bunk the response is always the same: you roll onto one elbow, cock your ear and listen. While you wait for more strange sounds you remind yourself of the route to the escape capsule. You remember where you put your car keys. And when no more odd come you lay back and go sound to sleep. Thus the origin of the answer to "How was your night?" Answer: "It was a two elbow night". The type of incident BP suffered is always in the back of everyone's mind. So despite all the promises by the companies and the gov't that safety will be much better in the future thanks to tech improvements, there really isn't much potential on that basis IMHO. But improvements in procedures and, more importantly their strict enforcement, could significantly reduce (but never eliminate) the possibility of similar spill. I can't say it's an intentional misdirection, but many folks would more readily accept the potential of tech improvements to solve the problem than changing human nature. False comfort IMHO.