stupid oil well question.....maybe?

[Broondog]

i was just reading and article about BP fixin to do the static kill thing on the oil well to make sure that it's plugged up and won't leak. the article also said that they were still going ahead with the intercept well and were going to do a plug thing down deep in the ground.

my question is this.....if they are going to the trouble to drill an intercept well, why don't they just siphon off the oil from deep down thus causing the pressure to be relieved at the broken well head? it seems like it would be a win/win situation. the pressure would be relieved, hence less chance of any future leaks, and they could continue to get oil from an already viable well.

am i off base here or does that sound like something reasonable? :wondering:

[chiak47]

i was just reading and article about BP fixin to do the static kill thing on the oil well to make sure that it's plugged up and won't leak. the article also said that they were still going ahead with the intercept well and were going to do a plug thing down deep in the ground.

my question is this.....if they are going to the trouble to drill an intercept well, why don't they just siphon off the oil from deep down thus causing the pressure to be relieved at the broken well head? it seems like it would be a win/win situation. the pressure would be relieved, hence less chance of any future leaks, and they could continue to get oil from an already viable well.

am i off base here or does that sound like something reasonable? :wondering:

From what I understand is that the pressure at this well is over 100,000PSI and there is nothing man has that can sustain that kind of pressure.

[Broondog]

From what I understand is that the pressure at this well is over 100,000PSI and there is nothing man has that can sustain that kind of pressure.

granted i have not researched all the scoop on this well but from what i have heard it was faulty safety equipment that was the major cause of the disaster.

if the equipment was in correct working order why would there really be a problem? how long was the well operational before it took a shit?

[mriddick]

The relief well I believe is suppose to siphon off oil to take some of pressure off. It also keeps the well operating.

[HDR]

if the equipment was in correct working order why would there really be a problem? how long was the well operational before it took a shit?

Supposedly the valve would have prevented the problem. IMO, the well took a shit because the valve was rebuilt in China instead of the US.

[Broondog]

The relief well I believe is suppose to siphon off oil to take some of pressure off. It also keeps the well operating.

that's not what the article i read said. they want to kill it altogether. this is not the article i read last nite but it basically says the same thing.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/07/30/national/main6728699.shtml


The static kill involves pumping heavy mud into the busted well from the top. Then comes the bottom kill, where the relief well will be used to pump in mud and cement from the bottom; that process will take days or weeks, depending on the effectiveness of the static kill.

to me it just doesn't really make sense. going to the trouble to drill down to meet the other hole and plug it there too? just siphon it off and recoup some losses.

[Broondog]

Supposedly the valve would have prevented the problem. IMO, the well took a shit because the valve was rebuilt in China instead of the US.

damned Chinese!

but yeah, a valve in good working order on the relief well would make more sense than plugging it entirely.

[Uncle Scary]

i was just reading and article about BP fixin to do the static kill thing on the oil well to make sure that it's plugged up and won't leak. the article also said that they were still going ahead with the intercept well and were going to do a plug thing down deep in the ground.

my question is this.....if they are going to the trouble to drill an intercept well, why don't they just siphon off the oil from deep down thus causing the pressure to be relieved at the broken well head? it seems like it would be a win/win situation. the pressure would be relieved, hence less chance of any future leaks, and they could continue to get oil from an already viable well.

am i off base here or does that sound like something reasonable? :wondering:

I dunno if anybody else on the forum works in the industry, but I'm an Oil and Gas Engineer for the state of California. I'll throw in my 2 cents. The worst thing you can do is have a well that you have no control over. You want to have the capability to shut that well in (totally cut off the flow of oil to the surface) whenever it's necessary. You don't want to let a well just go full out like this one has been doing. It may flow for years before it depletes the energy (hydrostatic pressure) of the oil reservoir. Reservoirs with enough pressure to push oil up to the surface are to be treasured and protected, because more than one well is drilled into this reservoir, and if this well depletes the all the pressure, there is none left for the other wells. Allowing this well to run until there is no pressure left is not safe, responsible, and certainly not fair to the other oil companies who are tapping this reservoir. If the cost of lifting the oil to the surface is too high, everybody will walk away from this oil field and leave millions of barrels of oil in the ground because it's not cost effective to extract. Even drilling that side well is a dangerous proposition. It could create another point for oil to leak out of if done incorrectly.

BTW, there's no oil at 100,000 psi, it must be a typo. A well would have to be more than 20 miles deep to access oil at those pressures, and the deepwater Gulf wells are about 7,000-8,000 feet below the ocean floor from what I heard. Even if there was a well that deep, I don't believe that there is materials science/technology to control that kind of pressure. It would fracture the plugging material and burst the well casing.

[Uncle Scary]

granted i have not researched all the scoop on this well but from what i have heard it was faulty safety equipment that was the major cause of the disaster.

if the equipment was in correct working order why would there really be a problem? how long was the well operational before it took a shit?

I heard a radio interview where they said exactly that. I'm sure that in light of what happened here, everybody knows that these wells are supposed to be equipped with a device called a blowout preventer. Blowout prevention equipment (commonly called BOPE) are a series of ram-driven gates that can close off pressure in the well by closing either with the drill pipe in or out of the hole. They have hard-rubber packing elements. I had heard a report that the drilling crew saw chunks of rubber in the drill cuttings that were returning to the surface. I recall hearing in the interview that somebody advanced the drill pipe with the annular preventer closed, and they damaged it, and proceeded with drilling anyway. The blowout preventers were on the ocean floor, and would have been a royal bitch to service, so they figured what the hell, and proceeded with drilling.

The BOPE equipment has many redundancies, and for all of them to fail at once shows some serious problems with lack of maintenance, and poor training and procedures.


Supposedly the valve would have prevented the problem. IMO, the well took a shit because the valve was rebuilt in China instead of the US.

I'm seeing more equipment being built in China. It's kind of weird seeing Chinese characters on levers and dials on various pieces of equipment. So far I've not heard any complaints.

[HDR]

damned Chinese!

but yeah, a valve in good working order on the relief well would make more sense than plugging it entirely.

One still gets what they paid for.

Why not relieve the pressure and get the oil also? 0bama will shut down US drilling putting more people out of work as it raises our dependence on foreign oil.

I guess we all should buy a $41K Chevy Volt? LOL

[Broondog]

thanks for weighing in on this Uncle Scary. i knew that somebody around here was in the oil production field and would be able to better explain this kind of thing than the MSM idiots.

i guess if there are other wells tapping this particular reservoir than all is not lost. my whole thinking was that if this was the only hole into that batch then why completely kill it. i suppose that i didn't think that this field may be thousands (or more) of square miles in size.

[gungorilla]

The main reason they won't siphon the gas off with the relief well is most likey due to the fact that they have no idea of the condition of the casing on the blown out well. Thus it makes more sense to them to cement the blown out one and start all over again at some point in the future, that is if they can.

As far as the bottom hole pressure it would be about 18k psi as a rough estimate, as it is my understanding they had 14.5 ppg synthetic mud in the hole. All the shit started going bad when the riser pipe was displaced from the mud to seawater. I reckon they knew something bad was about to happen when all that water from the riser started shooting out as the gas evacuated it.

[Mark Ducati]

100,000 psi?

I bet they meant 10K psi. They showed the well to be at 6000-8000psi currently.

Another question... what happens to the volumetric space that the oil was occupying? Is sea water simply filling in and thus pushing the oil to the top of the well?

Oil is lighter than water and thus floats...

What happens when ALL the oil is removed from this cavernous volumetric space? Will it cave in like a sink hole even if filled with sea water?

[chiak47]

BTW, there's no oil at 100,000 psi, it must be a typo.

That is the number I read. The well itself..not just the oil.

http://www.examiner.com/x-33986-Political-Spin-Examiner~y2010m7d8-BP-Gulf-disaster-Relief-well-progress-and-media-blackout-paint-a-grim-picture-Video-photos

Mississippi Canyon Block 252 in the Gulf of Mexico is a deep core monster. Seismic studies done in 2003 showed huge pockets of methane gas under volcanic pressure. "Some speculate as much as 100,000 psi — far too much for current technology to contain," said, Energy and Capital Editor, Christian DeHaemer.

[matshock]

That is the number I read. The well itself..not just the oil.

http://www.examiner.com/x-33986-Political-Spin-Examiner~y2010m7d8-BP-Gulf-disaster-Relief-well-progress-and-media-blackout-paint-a-grim-picture-Video-photos

I can see methane gas bubbles being pressurized to 100K inside of a large oil well. If one such bubble popped into the pipline you would get what happened to DH.

That's not to say that the well itself is at 100k, just a few of the gas bubbles inside it.

Thank the "out of sight, out of mind" liberals who forbid shallow water drilling vs. deep water. A more horizontal pipeline wouldn't suck up a methane bubble like DH did.

Environmentalists ultimately caused this, liberals and centrists enabled it and BP went along with it.

[Krupski]

From what I understand is that the pressure at this well is over 100,000PSI and there is nothing man has that can sustain that kind of pressure.

Ah then you've never seen a supercritical liquid nitrogen sphere....

[Krupski]

Why not relieve the pressure and get the oil also?

That would be kinda like holding a paint can upside down, spraying out all the propellant and then expecting to get paint out of the can.

[chiak47]

Ah then you've never seen a supercritical liquid nitrogen sphere....

No I have not and there is no way that whatever it is you mentioned is applicable in this type of field.

[Krupski]

No I have not and there is no way that whatever it is you mentioned is applicable in this type of field.

You said that "there is nothing man has that can sustain that kind of pressure" and I merely said you were wrong.

100K psi is one hell of a high pressure, but think of a steel or Inconel sphere 3 feet in diameter with 1 foot thick walls and a 1 foot spherical internal volume. That tank can easily hold supercritical liquid nitrogen or supercritical liquid helium at 100KPsi and higher.