THIS IS FROM BOBBY CHRIST, WHO OWNS A LARGE ROV (REMOTELY OPERATED VEHICLE) SUBMARINE COMPANY, THAT SERVICES THE OIL INDUSTRY BASED IN ROBERT, LOUISIANA (THE SAME PLACE WHERE THE BP COMMUNICATIONS PEOPLE ARE LOCATED).
OK - everyone is asking for my "politically charged email" that I shelved - so if I insult anyone, well, feel free to kick me in the shin at the next family gathering. I have checked the attachments to verify that there are no embedded vulgarities (I know that you'll be happy about that, Julie). Hi Lydia,
Well, you shouldn't have asked... But since you did, the quick answer is that Dad and I plan on salvaging the U-166 and driving it over to the leak to send a torpedo down the drill bore hole to plug it. But in the mean time, here's the long answer (perhaps better described as a 'diatribe'):
1) Transocean is the biggest drilling company in the world. They know what they are doing and they have procedures upon procedures to stop this kind of thing from happening. In my opinion, this accident (as I'm sure the final i nvestigation will prove) was 100% human error brought on by economic incentives to cut corners. I am pretty sure that Transocean was on a day-rate contract; therefore, the pressure was obviously coming from BP. Everyone I speak with in the drilling industry, quite frankly, was surprised that it only killed 11 people. A blowout of this proportion usually kills everyone on the drill floor (there are usually over 20 people on the drill floor during drill operations). Blowouts are violent events.
2) The reason BP was drilling at that location is there is a lot of oil and gas in that formation. It is under very high-pressure and is not easily contained. From some insiders, I understand that the gasket sealing the blowout preventer from the drill string (or pipe) was damaged several weeks before the explosion and the crew knew about it when they got pieces of the gasket at the surface through drilling fluid return to the surface (don't quote me on this, though, as I got that from one of the drill techs that had just left the rig a few days before it blew up). So, the cement plug was improperly set, there was what is called a 'kick' (i.e. a burp of gas) that cleared the heavy drilling fluid from the well bore that removed all impediments from the oil & gas getting to the surface (other than the BOP) then the BOP didn't close - probably because the gasket debris was caught in the valve thus blocking it [again, this may or may not be accurate - but this isn't a court of law - Stephanie and Chris, please analyze this for evidentiary standards...]. I believe that when the accident investigation comes out we will find that the alarm was raised by the troops that the subsea pressures were not steady (i.e. the formation plug was not holding), but that the decision was made to keep on going (i.e . there will be a 'fall guy', but the real culprit is lax safety compliance [the proper regulations are already in place] due to economic pressures and lack of proper MMS oversight). "It will be all right" (because most times it is). But when all of the screw-ups align concurrently, "Boom".
3) It is extremely difficult to cap a high-pressure well on the surface. It is darned near impossible to do it at 5000 feet depth of seawater.
4) BP has the best and most experienced well control team in the world on this project. They are from Wild Well Control and I know most of the team of engineers that are on that project. They are throwing everything they have at the project. But the only realistic means of stopping the flow of oil from this formation is through a relief well. What they are attempting right now is simply 'containment'. Transocean, upon the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon, moved two rigs over the site immediately. They know the score. It could have been worse - the rig could have landed on top of the BOP.
5) The structure (oil sands) that are driving this blowout are 18,000 feet below the sea floor. It takes a drill bit a long time to penetrate the Earth that far for the relief well. It is measured in feet per day - and is slow going.
6) These high-profile attempts at capping, in my opinion, were/are more for show to the public that BP was/is doing something than are for practical means of capping. But as my old gray-haired Dad always says [as the airplane is going down in flames], "Do something - even if it's wrong".
7) In the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, microbes quickly consume the oil (which is naturally occurring anyway). The reason the Exxon Valdez spill stayed around so long was due to it being in cold water. Nature will return to normal - it will take less than five years. And by the way, oil leaks around here all the time. See the attached pictures: A) I worked the DBL-152 spill South of Port Arthur in November 2005 - 1.7 million gallons of #6 fuel oil which never [or minimally] made the press. B) Picture I took [I am omitting my customer's name] in January 2007 after taking off from that vessel - note what is coming from the sea floor and that didn't make the press [that went on for 2.5 years before plugging]. C) Picture I took South of Grand Isle from a turned over platform that fell on top of the wells [that went on for 5 years and just got plugged last year]. There was a real doozy in the Main Pass Area East of SE pass in mid-2007 that consumed the entire platform and buried it 300 feet in the mud and sand (the gas was bubbling over 16 feet high at the surface at one point - and it wasn't coming from the borehole, the ground was literally erupting with Gas!). I have a great 3D sonar point cloud mosaic we took two weeks ago of a bubbling well South of Grand Isle from a platform destroyed by Gustav. All of these, however, were from low-pressure production wells. I could go on and I have gigabytes worth of pictures/video. Oil s eeps naturally into our lakes and streams and always has. It's part of nature.
The real problem is the marsh grass. The US Army Corp of Engineers has been diverting the Mississippi River for about 100 years essentially sinking the remainder of South Louisiana East of the Atchafalaya River to prop up New Orleans (more people means more votes). So, if the marsh grass is dead and gone [due to the oil spill] then there will be nothing stopping the Gulf waters from driving North to the Mississippi River and Dad will have waterfront property in Houma (I don't, however, think it will increase his property value).
9) When an airplane crashes, the FAA finds out what was the problem and fixes it. It doesn't stop air commerce. Shutting down drilling is not the answer - it only sends oil producers to a more regulation-friendly area outside of US waters and kills our oil-based economy. And it makes a bad economic situation here in Southern Louisiana even worse for no reason other than ignorance and "We are doing it because I said so...".
10) Steve and I had five [very profitable] jobs scheduled (including a drill job off of the coast of Alaska for Shell - which the White House shut down!) when the DH blew up. These jobs have delayed one-by-one as the oil companies are scared of the knee-jerk reaction coming out of Washington: "Airplane blow up. Airplane Bad. Ground all Airplanes." "Car blow up. Car bad.& nbsp; Stop cars from driving." "Railway car derail spilling chemicals. Railway car bad. Stop railway car." "Drilling rig blow up. Drilling bad. Stop drilling." "Drill rig blow up in deep water in Gulf of Mexico? I know - Stop shallow water drilling in Alaska! No skin off of my back and give me good ratings at polls. And I can tell Larry King I'm a tough guy."
The Obama Administration rescinded a shallow water drilling permit today. That accomplished nothing except putting people out of work and spiking oil prices.
[and here is my enflaming politically charged message] If President Obama were from Louisiana, he would know how to react to this in our stoic Southern way. "Plug the well, birm up to stop the oil from hitting the marshes then clean up. Bill BP then eat crawfish while the oysters regenerate." But he isn't. He is from Chicago. I believe that he doesn't know and he doesn't care that he doesn't know. But now he is in charge of the oil spill. And it will take months for the EPA to analyze the environmental impact of building sand birms [to stop the oil] and then weigh it against the possible impact of the oil incursion. The oil is already here. But guys in Washington need something to do...
We know how to drill safely. This is a human problem - not a technology problem. Tighter inspections and oversight are the answer - until nuclear and env ironmentally-friendly alternative fuels take over from fossil fuels (which is the obvious long-term solution). But that ain't happening in my lifetime. It's going to be G3's problem.
In the mean time, rebook your beach vacation to California - or take along a bottle of detergent to the beach.
Huff.... Now I feel better.
Bobby
