The Daily Beast’s Rick Outzen is like a dog with a bone. Rick (along with a legion of other self-imagined experts on the ‘net) is getting a lot of mileage out of the notion that an acoustic switch (see diagram below the fold) might have averted disaster on the Deepwater Horizon:

We know that the Deepwater well lacked the remote-control, acoustical valve [sic] that experts believe would have shut off the well when the blowout protector [sic] failed. The acoustic trigger costs about $500,000.  [emphasis added]

“Experts believe”? Link, please?

The blind/shear rams, the ‘business end’ of the BOP failed, presumably jammed; how would an alternate switching device have closed them? We have all seen the video of the ROV attempting to operate the rams manually (well, sort of) to no effect. Does your “acoustical valve” work by magic?

As far as I can tell, the acoustic switch has only been tested in simulation, never in a real emergency. All deepwater contractors use redundant shut-in systems on their rigs, a system that has worked many times.

The environmental lawyer in the linked video refers to the acoustic switch as a “fail-safe”. Ain’t no such thing, sport, and that’s the kind of thinking that gets people in trouble.

Cross-posted at RedState.com.

Bob Woodward, Meet the Press, Sunday, May 23

With great fanfare, President Obama dispatched Interior Department “S.W.A.T Teams” to all 29 active deepwater drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Their charge:

1. Perform a thorough, complete drilling inspection of each deepwater rig.
2. Key on the BOP [blowout preventer] test time frame, leaks and resolution, discrepancies, and repairs.
3. Make sure well control drills were performed as required by 30 CFR 250.462.

What’s that? You missed the results?

Well, you came to the right place.

From a May 12 press release:

MMS has completed its inspection of deepwater drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and no major violations were found. … The inspections of deepwater drilling rigs found Incidents of Non-Compliance (INC) on two rigs.  Those violations were corrected and no other violations were found.  To view the inspection report, click here.

[emphasis added]

I’ll recap to save you the trouble.

Twenty-nine rigs were inspected. Twenty-seven were INC-free. Evidence of the “cozy relationship”? No, I imagine that these inspectors went loaded for bear.

Two rigs received INCs; one of them received three.

The rig with one INC was the Development Driller II, one of the Transocean rigs drilling a relief well for BP at MC 252. Paperwork revealed that proper blowout preventer testing procedure was not followed. BOPs are tested every 14 days, and the tests should alternate between the main and the backup activation panel. DD II function tested the backup panel, but conducted the pressure test from the main twice in a row.

Not a trivial violation, but not one that should be ignored, especially under the circumstances. It’s what operators call a “good INC”.

The other rig:

The Transocean Nautilus working for Shell, received three Incidents of Non-Compliance:

• A warning INC for having some flammable material [I heard it was a paper coffee cup. – ed.] in the scrap metal bin of the safe welding area. Corrective Action Taken: the material was removed at the time of the inspection.

• A warning INC for having a 6-inch x 12-inch hole [in the deck grating] by the mud pump suction pipe. Corrective Action Taken: additional grating was place over the hole.

• A warning INC for having expired eye wash bottles. Corrective Action Taken: the eye wash bottles were replaced.

Few large-scale industrial operations could undertake the level of highly-charged scrutiny involved in these inspections and come away with such a clean bill of health.

Where are the news stories?

The ‘cozy relationship’ meme is a lie and a slur on the reputations of some good people – both in government and in the private sector.

Cross-posted at RedState.com.

Deepwater Well Construction 101

The Times-Picayune sketch above conveys quite a bit of information – most of it correct – about how the BP blowout well was constructed. It also gives a couple of hints as to possible failure mechanisms.

The key component of any well design is the pipe called casing, which functions to keep the hole from caving in and to keep wellbore fluids (and pressure) out. This cross-sectional view shows concentric strings of casing, one inside the other like an inverted wedding cake. As you drill deeper, the pipe sizes get smaller.

Casing is held in place by cement. Cement also functions as a seal to prohibit fluid migration outside the pipe in the annular area between the pipe and the borehole, or between the pipe and the next size larger pipe.

In the BP well, an oil-bearing zone was discovered in the portion of the hole around 18,000 feet, measured from the drilling floor of the rig. Rather than plugging the hole as originally planned, BP decided to save it for future production. They ran the long string of casing called the production string (colored green in this diagram). It is 7 inches in diameter at the bottom, and tapers up to 9-7/8 inches at the top of the well. (In this detail, the diagram is misleading. I presume that the well would have fully penetrated the oil-bearing zone, with the casing set all the way to the bottom of the hole.)

As the diagram indicates, the choice of a long production string has come under criticism from some drilling engineers. Conservative engineering, given the high bottomhole pressures, would have called for a 7” liner, as opposed to a full string to the surface. A liner would have been “hung off” from the shallower 9-7/8” liner, around 17,000 feet. BP could then have performed positive and negative pressure tests on that liner top, before proceeding with a “tieback string” to complete the connection to the wellhead at the seafloor.

By running a full casing string, BP was exposed to the consequences of a poor cement job. In that case, the annular area, shaded orange in the diagram, has poor pressure integrity and offers an alternate flow path to the surface (indicated by the arrow), one that was never intended. Even though BP ran a seal assembly at the top to isolate that flow path (not shown in the diagram), that system may have failed.

“Poor cement job” is not shorthand for “it’s Halliburton’s fault”. Halliburton is responsible for the quality of the cement slurry that is pumped, but BP is responsible for the well conditions and the timing of pumping the cement job. BP may point to bad cement as a root cause of the accident; Halliburton might counter that the well conditions were not optimum for a good cement job if, for example, there were excessive gas in the mud prior to cementing.

On the other hand, BP has been criticized – as in the linked article – for not running a Schlumberger cement bond log to evaluate the condition of the cement. I’m no deepwater drilling expert, but I would have found it a little unusual for them to run this evaluation so soon after cementing the well.

While we’re on the subject, I found the 60 Minutes coverage of issues related to well construction and control to be confusing and misleading. For one thing, their diagrams depicted the well to be an open hole, as if the entire wellbore were open to the oil-bearing zone at all times. Not true: at the time of the accident, the well was fully cased an operations were underway to temporarily abandon the well.

Another misleading aspect was the discussion of the condition of the annular blowout preventer. Chunk of its heavy rubber bladder were found in the mud returns, an indication of damage. Professor Robert Bea of Cal-Berkeley asserted that this missing rubber would prevent a good seal and lead to misleading pressure test of the casing. On the contrary, a bad annular element, if it were leaking, would create a failed test and cause the BOP to be changed out at that point.

Cross-posted at RedState.com.

Only by being rational about assessing the environmental threat from the Deepwater Horizon spill can we be prepared to deal with the consequences.

Journalists, scientists, Congressmen and bureaucrats have been jockeying to see who can make the most calamitous prediction. As an engineer, I compulsively check their claims (because I know that the journalists are incapable of it, the environmentalists refuse to do it, and those in government are motivated by a power-grab).

From the Old Grey Lady:

Giant Plumes of Oil Forming Under the Gulf

Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given. …

The plumes are depleting the oxygen dissolved in the gulf, worrying scientists, who fear that the oxygen level could eventually fall so low as to kill off much of the sea life near the plumes. …

Given their size, the plumes cannot possibly be made of pure oil, but more likely consist of fine droplets of oil suspended in a far greater quantity of water, Dr. Joye said. She added that in places, at least, the plumes might be the consistency of a thin salad dressing.

Hmmm. Pass the balsamic vinaigrette. In the meantime, let’s check the math…

So just one of the plumes is 10 mi x 3 mi x 300 feet thick? That seems really big.

In fact, it’s 2.5 E+11 cubic feet, or 45 billion barrels of “salad dressing”.

Let’s take a third of that, to allow for thinning of this plume in all dimensions: that leaves 15 billion barrels of oil & sea water emulsion.

The extreme high end of the rate of spill is 80,000 barrels per day (not that I believe that). Over 28 days, that’s 2.24 million barrels of oil to date.

If all the oil from the biggest spill estimate were in this single plume, crude oil accounts for less than 0.00015 of the volume (that’s 0.015%, or 150 parts per million). That’s about three drops per liter of sea water.

Even given all the most conservative possible assumptions, that’s a mighty weak salad dressing.

We know it’s not right. Much of the oil has made it to the surface, and a lot of that has evaporated. Some has been burned, some has been recovered. You have to question whether oil in water in such a dilute concentration would have the oxygen-depleting effect described in the article.

Folks, this is good news. It means the dispersant is working, breaking up the oil into tiny droplets and dispersing them widely. Mother Nature handles dispersed oil all the time, oil from the natural seeps that account for well over half the oil in the marine environment.

Another thing to remember is that agricultural runoff creates a life-choking anoxic “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico every summer. The size of these oxygen-depleted zones is usually compared to a Northeastern state (usu. Connecticut or New Jersey, for some reason). The oxygen depletion is a result of too much algae, which is a result of too much nitrogen fertilizer being used in the Midwest, which is a result of our government’s misguided insistence on using food as a motor fuel – corn-based ethanol.

But that’s the topic of another diary.

Cross-posted to RedState.com.

It’s a lie, a gross distortion or a paranoid delusion. Take your pick.

In a Daily Beast article, blogger Matthew Yglesias does his best to shoehorn a few bits of truth into the Obama gang’s favorite narrative: “It’s Bush’s fault!”

In making his argument that the blowout and spill resulted from lax enforcement by the Minerals Management Service, Yglesias focuses on a program known as Royalty-in-Kind.

The saga starts back in 1997 when, under Bill Clinton, the government cared about doing things properly. At this point in time, MMS responded to evidence that energy interests were underpaying royalties to the federal government by proposing a more stringent rule to collect Royalties in Value (RIV), i.e., money from drillers and miners. Industry didn’t like that and countered instead with a proposal to pay Royalties in Kind (RIK), i.e., oil or gas that they thought would be cheaper.

The truth is, Royalty-in-Kind is eminently fair, and the cleanest royalty payment method, both for the producer and the royalty owner. It only makes sense for a royalty owner that is big enough and sophisticated enough to market his own production. A large royalty owner like the Federal government ($12 billion or so a year) should wield considerable clout in the market.

With cash transactions, the royalty owner has to be concerned about whether they are paid the correct amount. The biggest issue is price: if a producer sells to an affiliated pipeline or refinery, has he received a true market price? All this takes an army of accountants, auditors and lawyers.

With RIK, the Feds took control of the product and either marketed it to refiners or pipelines, or stored the oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Notice how Yglesias elides over the details in asserting that RIK was a built-in profit maker for oil companies:

But it was steadily expanded each and every year of the Bush administration because statutory requirements aside, RIK was great at achieving the president’s objective of letting oil companies make more money. By September 2009, a new team was in charge and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced the program would be terminated. [Emphasis mine.]

Jack takes six buckets of water from his well on Jill’s property. Jack owes Jill one bucket in consideration. They can either debate the value of a bucket of water, or Jack can simply give Jill one of his six buckets. Jill is free to use the water or sell it. In what way, exactly, does such a transaction achieve Jill’s objective of letting Jack make more money when he sells his water?

As Yglesias points out, the GAO was critical of the RIK program, questioning whether it was successful at maximizing government revenue. It should have been fairly easy to measure if the production had merely been sold to the highest bidder. But it wasn’t. Some RIK was bid on the open market, but many barrels went to the SPR and some oil was allocated to smaller and less competitive refiners. So the RIK program evolved into missions other than maximizing revenue; with SPR oil and occasional withdrawals of same, a lot of the program’s financial performance would depend on how you accounted for it (LIFO? FIFO?).

Inexplicably, Yglesias leaves out the part of the story that’s usually proffered as evidence of MMS’s “inappropriately cozy” relationship with the industry it regulates. In 2008, a salacious scandal rocked the MMS RIK office in Denver.

In the Royalty in Kind division, “between 2002 and 2006, nearly one-third of the staff socialized with, and received a wide array of gifts and gratuities from, oil and gas companies,” with whom those workers were conducting business, one report said.

Gifts included ski and golf trips, tickets to sporting events, a jaunt to a party in New Orleans, dinners, drinks and a paintball outing.

Devaney said investigators found “a pervasive culture of exclusivity, exempt from the rules that govern all other employees of the federal government.”

The employees also used marijuana and cocaine with energy company workers, the report said.

RIK was not a regulatory function. It was in no way a reflection of MMS’s dealings with industry in its normal capacity as a regulator. The oil companies the RIK office dealt with inappropriately were customers, a vastly different relationship than that of regulated companies.

That the RIK office in Denver was out of control was a management failure. In hindsight, it was a mistake to expect a government office to try to act like the marketing department of an oil company.

Nice try, Matt. Cool narrative you’ve got there. Sucks that there’s not a scrap of truth in it.

Cross-posted at RedState.com.

Yesterday FoxNews.com carried an opinion piece written by your humble correspondent: “We Can’t Stop Drilling Off America’s Shores”.

It’s sort of a rewrite of a RedState piece from a couple of weeks back: “Q: Why Was BP Drilling in 5,000 Feet of Water.”

Some of the comments are a hoot.

Wow, that’s weird… someone who makes all of their money by offshore drilling is trying to convince us that we need to continue offshore drilling! While I appreciate the honesty of this author, he’s overlooking the fact that A. Alternatives to these highly polluting procedures exist and B. Our high dependence on these procedures is based on the fact that a more aggressive move toward renewables has yet to take place.

Well, I don’t actually make all my money from offshore oil and gas. We also drill on land. I also have a hobby which provides me a nice side income for just a few hours a month: clubbing baby harp seals!

</ snark>

Then there’s this:

Nice, impartial article about how safe off-shore drilling is written by an energy executive. LMFAO

Well, sir, if you would pull your H(ead) out of your FA for just a second, we can discuss that point. Can’t do it? That’s OK, we’ll proceed.

Virtually every soul in this country who knows anything about the energy business either draws a check from it or regulates it. Both groups are currently under attack. Where to turn?

The alternative chosen by some of the esteemed members of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources was to turn to someone who knows nothing at all about the energy business. This week they listened to testimony from Sam Waterson (Wasserman? Waterston?), that out-of-work actor who does the TD Ameritrade ads on TV. Sam believes that we should just shut down offshore drilling altogether. (Sam and Ted Danson are board members of Oceana, a radical environmentalist outfit that famously predicted back in the’80s that the oceans were going to run out of fish in 10 years.)

But I’m still sensitive about being considered a single-minded energy shill. I’ve criticized BP in the past, naming them in a tie for #6 on the list of Top 10 Energy Whores. If it turns out that they were a negligent operator on the Deepwater Horizon, or operating outside their permit, I hope they’re hung out to dry. (I’ll be floored if that’s the case.)

I endorse the policies I endorse because I think they’re best for the country. It’s an opinion that’s informed by my education and my experience. I have blogged favorably about opening ANWR, opening access to the OCS, the Marcellus Shale, the Haynesville Shale and hydraulic fracturing. None of these issues will benefit me or my company in any way; if anything, by encouraging supply in other areas decreases the price of our product and hurts our income. It’s a commodity business, remember?

In fact, I’ve had a running discussion with my boss (the VP of Exploration) for some time. He observes that if the Sam Waterstons of the world get their way, we’re bound to benefit, because it will inevitably drive up product prices while driving out competition. It’s true that the biggest oil boom in my career happened during & just after the Carter years, the time of maximum government involvement. (The worst time was after price decontrol, under Reagan, a policy I endorse.)

So, choose your expert. It will probably work out for me either way.

But I’ve saved my favorite comment for last:

We should be going toward the first fuel Ford [Henry? Gerald? Whitey? -ed.] wanted to implement until oil and chemical companies forced the turn toward crude oil. Hemp could save us. Not medicinal smoking, wth are we even talking about recreational use when we should be talking industrial first and foremost. We perpetuate rogue nations to becoming a military threat by using all their oil and we need off of it now. All of you do your homework on industrial hemp and its history and then comment.

Dude.

Cross-posted at RedState.com.

Day #8 of wildlife rescue response to the BP oil spill, and Oiled Bird #2 has been rescued.

That’s not to imply that there’s no threat to the bird population, however. It’s nesting season in the refuge. In response to the threat, the Deepwater Horizon Unified Command issued the following press release:

Due to heightened interest in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, media aircraft have been conducting low flights and landings on Breton National Wildlife Refuge’s Chandeleur Islands. These flights and landings threaten the very birds that the media are covering and that the public is concerned about.

Federal regulation prohibits flights and landings that disturb wildlife on refuges. …

The flights and landings frighten the birds, which include brown pelicans, reddish egrets and terns, many of whom are in their nesting season. This causes them to leave their nests, which exposes their eggs to predators such as sea gulls, and upsets the delicate ecological balance that the refuge is charged with maintaining. In some cases the birds become so upset they abandon their nests.

Then there’s the turtles. Twenty-three of them, mostly endangered Kemp’s Ridley turtles, washed ashore on the beach in Mississippi. To the chagrin of the journos and the enviros, necropsies failed to pin the blame on the oil spill. A local news article suggests the possibility of another man-made source of their destruction:

Dozens of dead young sea turtles have washed up on clean beaches, without any sign of oil on their bodies or in their bellies or lungs. Officials are investigating whether they drowned in shrimp nets.

A little background is in order: when the scope of the oil spill became apparent, officials opened the shrimp season a few days early so that shrimpers would have a chance to catch a few shrimp before the season had to be suspended. All shrimpers are required by law to have TEDs – turtle excluder devices – as part of their rigging, to prevent the endangered turtles from being hung up in their nets. The shrimpers believe that the TEDs limit their catch, so there would be a temptation to ditch the TED if one thought this might be the last chance to shrimp for a while. A drowned turtle in a shrimp net is of no use to anyone, and a significant liability to the shrimper without a TED. So the critter’s carcass goes overboard, and washes up on the beach.

And the oil company gets blamed, as per usual.

Cross-posted at RedState.com.

Don’t bogart that joint … of drill pipe, I mean.

Straight from the Gaian People’s Republic of Boulder comes this fresh idea for stopping the flow of oil from the BP blowout in the Gulf of Mexico: meditation!

“The basic concept is to try and get as many people to visualize that the valve is actually functioning and is working and closing,” said Carl Fuermann, a staff member in the University of Colorado’s Registrar Office. …

“I’m very known for fixing things and making things work,” Fuermann said, adding that he believes his meditation helped fix a friend’s Flip video camera. “I visualize things working and hold the belief that they actually work.”

I must admit, I find this idea … intriguing. This guy fixed a Flip phone; why not an oil well flowing 5,000+ barrels per day one mile straight down in the Gulf of Mexico.

Stranger things have happened. Why, just last week, my Blackberry was acting funny, so I shut it off. I removed the battery and meditated over it for about five minutes. Then I put the battery back in and turned the Blackberry back on: it was as good as new, thanks to the power of meditation!

More constructive advice:

Bourgoyne did have a piece of advice for the meditators, however, and that is to focus their visualization efforts on a process called “sanding out,” which can happen when the unconstrained flow of oil weakens the rock around the well bore. The rock can break apart and enter the well as sand, which eventually blocks the oil leak.

“If the meditators are seeking a common image upon which to focus,” he said. “I suggest they visualize tiny cracks spreading in the rock.”

Oh, no! Don’t do that! That’s hydraulic fracturing!

H/T LOGABoy

Cross-posted at RedState.com.

Caution: Heads Exploding — especially the man with his boot on BP’s neck

After the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989, Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, warmly referred to as “OPA90”. OPA90 provided for an emergency spill fund so that response for a future spill could begin right away; established the US Coast Guard as the lead agency responsible for spill response; and for the first time required minimum insurance coverage and detailed spill contingency plans for operators of marine vessels, including operators of offshore oil and gas leases.

Another thing that OPA90 did, that seems to have escaped the notice of a legion of plaintiffs’ attorneys and potential claimants: it caps the commercial liability of those operators:

§1004 The liability for tank vessels larger than 3,000 gross tons is increased to $1,200 per gross ton or $10 million, whichever is greater. Responsible parties at onshore facilities and deepwater ports are liable for up to $350 millon per spill; holders of leases or permits for offshore facilities … are liable for up to $75 million per spill, plus removal costs.

There have been reports in the news media speculating as to BP’s liability, bidding up the amount each time: $1 billion, $3 billion, $8 billion, $14 billion…

I’m no lawyer, but with OPA90, that sounds a tad high to me.

OPA90 clearly holds BP responsible for the environmental cleanup. They could potentially be liable for personal injury claims related to the rig explosion and fire; injuries to personnel were not the result of the oil spill, after all. The liability for the loss of the rig by contract normally rests with the contractor, in this case Transocean, who is mostly insured for such events.

But claims of individuals and businesses affected by the spill are subject to the $75 million limit. This would include damages to fisheries, demurrage, business interruption, damage to the oil & gas resource, whatever you might imagine.

Oh, and you don’t have to believe me — three Democratic senators, all from coastal states opposed to offshore drilling, agree with me.

“[British Petroleum] says it’ll pay for this mess. Baloney,” says Florida Sen. Bill Nelson. “They’re not going to want to pay any more than what the law says they have to, which is why we can’t let them off the hook.”

Nelson has co-sponsored the bill with New Jersey Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Bob Menendez. According to their joint release, the law only requires the company responsible to cover all costs related to cleaning up an oil spill, but places a $75-million cap economic damages such as lost business revenues, damages to natural resources or lost local tax revenues.

“The bottom line is that oil spills can leave massive holes in the economy. If you spill it, you should have to fill it,” said Menendez, the bill’s primary sponsor. “There is no such thing as a ‘Too Big to Spill’ oil well, which is why we need this economic protection in place.”

[Emphasis added. Bob Menendez channeling Johnnie Cochrane in the original. – ed.]

The liability limit was originally put in the law, as I understand, to gain industry support (the maritime industry, as well as oil and gas) for passage of the law. Plus, it was a practical consideration. Lawmakers at the time realized that in the event of a large scale spill event effecting a major harbor, waterway, or coastal area, the only limit on damages is the creativity of lawyers being paid on contingency.

But the lawmakers also didn’t conceive of a spill of the magnitude of the Deepwater Horizon spill.

For its part, BP has begun the macabre dance of trying to shift as much blame as possible to other parties, mainly rig owner Transocean, at this stage:

Robert Wine, a BP spokesman in London, says the responsibility for the drilling on the Deepwater Horizon was entirely Transocean’s. “It was not appropriate to second-guess Transocean,” says Mr. Wine. “It’s not BP’s role to oversee the safety of the rig.” Like many of its peers, BP did not require Transocean to install the acoustic back-ups used in the North Sea to trigger the blow-out preventer in the Gulf, which is not required by American law. Past experience shows that BP’s erection of a smokescreen to shift the blame will not survive scrutiny. Retreating to comfort zones could prove to be unsustainable.

Transocean spokesman Guy Cantwell says the company is “continuing to coordinate with everyone involved” in the investigation, and that “Transocean has a recognized safety record.”

[Source. Link may require registration.]

This deal will take years to play out in the courts and will doubtless spur the legislative ambitions of other politicians. As for me, I’m just hoping that BP controls this well very soon, that the environmental damage is minimal, and that the legislative and regulatory damage is minimal, too.

Cross-posted at RedState.com.