Tempers Flare Between Feds and BP Over Oil Seep and “Undetermined Anomalies” at Well Head
Things are now getting very dicey between BP and the government. They have found a methane leak, and BP is saying they don’t want to comply with federal demands. Push has come to shove.
NEW ORLEANS — A federal official says scientists are concerned about a seep and possible methane near BP’s busted oil well in the Gulf of Mexico
Both could be signs there are leaks in the well that’s been capped off for three days.
The official spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity Sunday because an announcement about the next steps had not been made yet.
The official is familiar with the spill oversight but would not clarify what is seeping near the well. The official says BP is not complying with the government’s demand for more monitoring.
I’ve just received a copy of this forceful letter from Thad Allen, the National Incident Commander for Deepwater Horizon Response, to Bob Dudley of BP, regarding a seep that has been detected a distance from the well and “undetermined anomalies at the well head.”
You can see a .pdf of the letter HERE
Full text below
*****************************
July 18, 2010
National Incident Commander
Deepwater Horizon Response
2100 Second Street, S.W
Washington, DC 20593-0001
Staff Symbol: NIC
Bob Dudley
Chief Managing Director
BP Group
501 West Lake Park Boulevard
Houston, Texas 77070
Dear Mr. Dudley,
My letter to you on July 16, 2010 extended the Well Integrity Test period contingent upon the completion of seismic surveys, robust monitoring for indications of leakage, and acoustic testing by the NOAA vessel PISCES in the immediate vicinity of the well head. Given the current observations from the test, including the detected seep a distance from the well and undetermined anomalies at the well head, monitoring of the seabed is of paramount importance during the test period. As a continued condition of the test, you are required to provide as a top priority access and coordination for the monitoring systems, which include seismic and sonar surface ships and subsea ROV and acoustic systems. When seeps are detected, you are directed to marshal resources, quickly investigate, and report findings to the government in no more than four hours. I direct you to provide me a written procedure for opening the choke valve as quickly as possible without damaging the well should hydrocarbon seepage near the well head be confirmed.
As the National Incident Commander, I must remain abreast of the status of your source control efforts. Now that source control has evolved into a period beyond the expected 48 hour interval of the Well Integrity Test, I am requiring that you provide me a written update within 24 hours of your intentions going forward. I remain concerned that all potential options to eliminate the discharge of oil be pursued with utmost speed until I can be assured that no additional oil will spill from the Macondo Well.
You may use your letter of 9 July as a basis for your update. Specifically, you must provide me your latest containment plan and schedule in the event that the Well Integrity Test is suspended, the status and completion timelines for all containment options currently under development, and details of any other viable source control options including hydraulic control that you are considering. You should highlight any points at which progress along one option will be impacted by resource trade-offs to achieve progress along another option. Include options for and impacts of continued twice-a day seismic testing versus once a day testing.
As you develop the plans above, note that the primary method of securing the source is the relief well and this effort takes precedence. Therefore, I direct you to provide a detailed plan for the final stages of the relief well that specifically addresses the interaction of this schedule and any other activity that may potentially delay relief well completion.
Have your representative provide results on the monitoring efforts and source control requirements described above during today’s BP and Government Science Team call at 8:00 PM CDT.
Sincerely,
THAD W. ALLEN
intersting story on Rachel tonite about BP trying to buy up the Gulf area scientists, with the premise that they wouldn’t be able to testify against BP in lawsuits that are coming their way….
intersting story on Rachel tonite about BP trying to buy up the Gulf area scientists, with the premise that they wouldn’t be able to testify against BP in lawsuits that are coming their way….
Increasingly, I perceive that BP is trying to corner the government into returning to capture
instead of shutting in. In the simplest possible terms they are willing to gamble once again
that the cheapest route to a good outcome is the best.
We have already seen that the courts are prejudiced in favor of corporate rights over human
rights. The decision to reduce the compensation for the exxon valdise by an order of magnitude
was a pretty clear signal.
Right now, BP is doing everything they can to create the impression that if they are directed to go
back to containment and production the onus is on the government because they are so sure of
their engineering that a worse blowout will not occur. Of course we have to remember that the
original blowout occurred because BP took deliberate steps to save money. In that instance only
millions were at stake, now they are confronted with billions in costs. In my humble opinion, they cannot be trusted to be acting in any fashion except what is best for their own self interest.
I am thinking your humble opinion is spot on,
Increasingly, I perceive that BP is trying to corner the government into returning to capture
instead of shutting in. In the simplest possible terms they are willing to gamble once again
that the cheapest route to a good outcome is the best.
We have already seen that the courts are prejudiced in favor of corporate rights over human
rights. The decision to reduce the compensation for the exxon valdise by an order of magnitude
was a pretty clear signal.
Right now, BP is doing everything they can to create the impression that if they are directed to go
back to containment and production the onus is on the government because they are so sure of
their engineering that a worse blowout will not occur. Of course we have to remember that the
original blowout occurred because BP took deliberate steps to save money. In that instance only
millions were at stake, now they are confronted with billions in costs. In my humble opinion, they cannot be trusted to be acting in any fashion except what is best for their own self interest.
I am thinking your humble opinion is spot on,
Thank you all. I just came here after reading. Isn’t three days the crucial test? I am not educated enough in this. 72+ hours?
Would someone please post a link to somewhere I can go to learn more? I can’t seem to find a valid site discussing the three-day problem. I know I read it somewhere, but can no longer find it.
Thanks again!
Try theoildrum.com This is an excellent site that KN refers to. It is fairly easy to understand even if you don’t know about oil wells. Although, I must admit, I get my husband to help me interpret sometimes for the sake of time.
Thanks! I will go there now.
Thank you all. I just came here after reading. Isn’t three days the crucial test? I am not educated enough in this. 72+ hours?
Would someone please post a link to somewhere I can go to learn more? I can’t seem to find a valid site discussing the three-day problem. I know I read it somewhere, but can no longer find it.
Thanks again!
Try theoildrum.com This is an excellent site that KN refers to. It is fairly easy to understand even if you don’t know about oil wells. Although, I must admit, I get my husband to help me interpret sometimes for the sake of time.
Thanks! I will go there now.
I have just come from the oil drum site to follow up on my post of last night and found this new thread.
There is no evidence as of this writing that the “seep” supposedly detected is methane. There is no direct evidence so far that there even really is a seep. There do appear to be some devious political games going on between BP and Incident command regarding whether to leave the well shut in or not and the initial reports of this event, so far as I have been able to ascertain were from anonymous sources and reported by Associate Press, so back to the salt lick for a good old dose of skepticism.
There has been some fantastic speculation about what might or could be going on in the GoM including oil volcanos, lakes of oil, methane bubbles etc. etc. etc. None of it is credible.
The reality of the situation is that it is possible that the well casing has been damaged at depth due to the initial blowout. If so, it is also possible that hydrocarbon is being released into the formation at that depth and over the past three days of the so called integrity test and migrated upwards and found a path to the sea floor. If such a path to the sea floor exists, it will gradually increase in size and continue to erode *unless* containment of the well is resumed thus decreasing the confining pressure. Once containment is resumed virtually all of the hydrocarbon will follow the path of least resistance which is up the well bore and into the containment.
I don’t think I have mentioned this before but many people have a grave misconception of what a petroleum reservoir is. It is not a large void or cavern under some miles of rock overburden that contains a pool of oil. It is a solid rock, composed of small particles, in this case, sand size particles. The oil occurs in the intersticies between these particles, called pore space or when measured for the whole rock, porosity. The extent to which the pore spaces within the rock communicate with each other and allow fluids to move from pore space to pore space is called permeability. In the case of this particular oil reservoir I have no specific knowledge of either of these two factors but I am quite sure they fall within a well established range for such formations sampled on a world wide basis for more than 100 years. The rock itself is not particularly compressible. Under extreme pressures such as it might experience with 20 or 30 miles of rock above it, it would begin to deform and undergo what we call in geology dynamic metamorphism. There is no dange at all that some great rift will open in the sea floor due to some collapse of the reservoir rock. Over 50 million years or so yes the rock might become much more compact and metemorphose into a low grade quartzite with very low porosity and very low permeability and virtually zero hydrocarbons. In addition, to achieve such high pressures as would be capable of deforming the sand grains that make up the rock, the overall temperature of the rock would have to increase as well since as one samples at greater and greater depths there is a geothermal gradient, temperature increases with depth. These gradients are well known. The temperature of the rock at pressures high enough to cause deformation would be far above the boiling points of any contained hydrocarbons. There might be a residuum of carbon compounds that would quickly be reduced (due to the lack of oxygen) to graphite.
This is not to say that there are not implications for the ultimate killing of the well if in fact hydrocarbons are escaping to the sea floor from some point in the well, but in the grander scheme of things, they would be unimportant. The 16 3/4″ diameter well bore near the surface if a far better path to low pressure for fluids than any channels developed in unstable soft sediments. Resuming containment and production of the well to the surface would significantly lower the pressure in the well and effectively choke off the “seeps”.
There is a certain amount of gamesmanship going on here between BP and the Incident command and I think this latest development is a response on the part of Incident command to counter the public perception that BP was trying to create that this event is over and make arguments from ambiguity about what their ultimate culpability will be. On the other hand, if the seeps are real and pose some danger of becoming significant, the path to ameliorate them as outlined above is available and should be invoked.
From all that I have been able to understand so far, the bottom kill of the well is still at least 3 to 6 weeks from completion so there is a risk to personnel at surface if containment and production is resumed. So far those risks have been managed responsibly and no further fires and deaths have occurred on the fleet of ships trying to contain this well.
There is another factor involved here. It has been speculated by some over at TOD that BP would prefer NOT to have the well returned to containment because it would result in a quantitative measurement over time of how much oil was being produced from the reservoir, a number that could be quantitatively back calculated to the beginning of the release and give a solid empirical measure of the total liability of BP at a punitive fine rate of some $4000+ per bbl of oil released. To understand this situation all we have to do is look at some simple numbers.
Let us assume that BP claims the flow rate of the well was only 1000 bbl per day, at the $4000 rate of the fine that would be a liability of $340,000,000. With profits exceeding $6 billion per quarter that is small change to BP. On the other hand, if was determined that a flow rate of 60,000 bbl per day was the mean for the course of this event, then the obligation to BP would be $20 billion more and change. If that is not a motive, I don’t know what is.
I have to get to work so I won’t be checking back tonight but I will be interested in the responses to this post.
Based on all the underhanded activities, lies and diversions that BP has been guilty of throughout this process, the possibility that BP’s refusal to set up the containment (and therefore be able to get an accurate measurement of the oil already spilled) is solely to protect their bottom line, seems rather likely.
From the beginning, they seemed to brashly underestimate the amount of oil being spewed into the Gulf, and clearly had no plan or ability to deal with a spill of this magnitude. The corner-cutting and disregard for safety measures that seems to have led to the explosion was apparently common practice within the company.
Add to that the new question about whether their support for the release of the Lockerbie bomber is directly connected to a 900 million dollar oil contract with Libya and they have a severe lack of credibility.
My short reply to your comment is “yup”, or perhaps “cosign”.
I remain cautiously optimistic that this letter supports the idea that the government, as personified by Admiral Allen, has acquired sufficient in-house expertise to actively participate in the decision-making process.
It’s a sad thing to suspect that BP’s primary interest during the last 90 days has been to obfuscate the actual flow rate of the blowout, so as to minimize the related fines and other possible penalties. Unfortunately, the corporation’s behavior seems to point this way. If this is the case, there are dozens or hundreds of middle managers — actual human beings — who have been complicit. I wonder how they will handle it.
I have just come from the oil drum site to follow up on my post of last night and found this new thread.
There is no evidence as of this writing that the “seep” supposedly detected is methane. There is no direct evidence so far that there even really is a seep. There do appear to be some devious political games going on between BP and Incident command regarding whether to leave the well shut in or not and the initial reports of this event, so far as I have been able to ascertain were from anonymous sources and reported by Associate Press, so back to the salt lick for a good old dose of skepticism.
There has been some fantastic speculation about what might or could be going on in the GoM including oil volcanos, lakes of oil, methane bubbles etc. etc. etc. None of it is credible.
The reality of the situation is that it is possible that the well casing has been damaged at depth due to the initial blowout. If so, it is also possible that hydrocarbon is being released into the formation at that depth and over the past three days of the so called integrity test and migrated upwards and found a path to the sea floor. If such a path to the sea floor exists, it will gradually increase in size and continue to erode *unless* containment of the well is resumed thus decreasing the confining pressure. Once containment is resumed virtually all of the hydrocarbon will follow the path of least resistance which is up the well bore and into the containment.
I don’t think I have mentioned this before but many people have a grave misconception of what a petroleum reservoir is. It is not a large void or cavern under some miles of rock overburden that contains a pool of oil. It is a solid rock, composed of small particles, in this case, sand size particles. The oil occurs in the intersticies between these particles, called pore space or when measured for the whole rock, porosity. The extent to which the pore spaces within the rock communicate with each other and allow fluids to move from pore space to pore space is called permeability. In the case of this particular oil reservoir I have no specific knowledge of either of these two factors but I am quite sure they fall within a well established range for such formations sampled on a world wide basis for more than 100 years. The rock itself is not particularly compressible. Under extreme pressures such as it might experience with 20 or 30 miles of rock above it, it would begin to deform and undergo what we call in geology dynamic metamorphism. There is no dange at all that some great rift will open in the sea floor due to some collapse of the reservoir rock. Over 50 million years or so yes the rock might become much more compact and metemorphose into a low grade quartzite with very low porosity and very low permeability and virtually zero hydrocarbons. In addition, to achieve such high pressures as would be capable of deforming the sand grains that make up the rock, the overall temperature of the rock would have to increase as well since as one samples at greater and greater depths there is a geothermal gradient, temperature increases with depth. These gradients are well known. The temperature of the rock at pressures high enough to cause deformation would be far above the boiling points of any contained hydrocarbons. There might be a residuum of carbon compounds that would quickly be reduced (due to the lack of oxygen) to graphite.
This is not to say that there are not implications for the ultimate killing of the well if in fact hydrocarbons are escaping to the sea floor from some point in the well, but in the grander scheme of things, they would be unimportant. The 16 3/4″ diameter well bore near the surface if a far better path to low pressure for fluids than any channels developed in unstable soft sediments. Resuming containment and production of the well to the surface would significantly lower the pressure in the well and effectively choke off the “seeps”.
There is a certain amount of gamesmanship going on here between BP and the Incident command and I think this latest development is a response on the part of Incident command to counter the public perception that BP was trying to create that this event is over and make arguments from ambiguity about what their ultimate culpability will be. On the other hand, if the seeps are real and pose some danger of becoming significant, the path to ameliorate them as outlined above is available and should be invoked.
From all that I have been able to understand so far, the bottom kill of the well is still at least 3 to 6 weeks from completion so there is a risk to personnel at surface if containment and production is resumed. So far those risks have been managed responsibly and no further fires and deaths have occurred on the fleet of ships trying to contain this well.
There is another factor involved here. It has been speculated by some over at TOD that BP would prefer NOT to have the well returned to containment because it would result in a quantitative measurement over time of how much oil was being produced from the reservoir, a number that could be quantitatively back calculated to the beginning of the release and give a solid empirical measure of the total liability of BP at a punitive fine rate of some $4000+ per bbl of oil released. To understand this situation all we have to do is look at some simple numbers.
Let us assume that BP claims the flow rate of the well was only 1000 bbl per day, at the $4000 rate of the fine that would be a liability of $340,000,000. With profits exceeding $6 billion per quarter that is small change to BP. On the other hand, if was determined that a flow rate of 60,000 bbl per day was the mean for the course of this event, then the obligation to BP would be $20 billion more and change. If that is not a motive, I don’t know what is.
I have to get to work so I won’t be checking back tonight but I will be interested in the responses to this post.
Based on all the underhanded activities, lies and diversions that BP has been guilty of throughout this process, the possibility that BP’s refusal to set up the containment (and therefore be able to get an accurate measurement of the oil already spilled) is solely to protect their bottom line, seems rather likely.
From the beginning, they seemed to brashly underestimate the amount of oil being spewed into the Gulf, and clearly had no plan or ability to deal with a spill of this magnitude. The corner-cutting and disregard for safety measures that seems to have led to the explosion was apparently common practice within the company.
Add to that the new question about whether their support for the release of the Lockerbie bomber is directly connected to a 900 million dollar oil contract with Libya and they have a severe lack of credibility.
My short reply to your comment is “yup”, or perhaps “cosign”.
I remain cautiously optimistic that this letter supports the idea that the government, as personified by Admiral Allen, has acquired sufficient in-house expertise to actively participate in the decision-making process.
It’s a sad thing to suspect that BP’s primary interest during the last 90 days has been to obfuscate the actual flow rate of the blowout, so as to minimize the related fines and other possible penalties. Unfortunately, the corporation’s behavior seems to point this way. If this is the case, there are dozens or hundreds of middle managers — actual human beings — who have been complicit. I wonder how they will handle it.
I think that BP does not want to open the valves on the new cap because they would have to report the pressures as the oil is brought up to a ship. If the pressure can be accurately measured then it will be possible to figure out how much oil was spilling out. BP will have to pay a fine for every barrel that leaked so they are trying to minimize the number.
I concur in my following post.
I think that BP does not want to open the valves on the new cap because they would have to report the pressures as the oil is brought up to a ship. If the pressure can be accurately measured then it will be possible to figure out how much oil was spilling out. BP will have to pay a fine for every barrel that leaked so they are trying to minimize the number.
I concur in my following post.
My unfortunate prediction is the methane gas they believe may be escaping the pool of oil below will make its way from the pool to the sea floor and provide a channel for the oil to escape. I’m by far not an expert in this area, but I don’t understand why didn’t connected a pipeline from the cap to a ship above to capture oil inorder to lower the pressure on the cap. It would seem to me if they hade done this in the very begining, they would have lowered the pressure enough that the methane would not have the force behind it to work its way to the surface. The pathway the methane creates could very easily result in a larger spill than we had before. I sincerely hope I’m wrong.
My unfortunate prediction is the methane gas they believe may be escaping the pool of oil below will make its way from the pool to the sea floor and provide a channel for the oil to escape. I’m by far not an expert in this area, but I don’t understand why didn’t connected a pipeline from the cap to a ship above to capture oil inorder to lower the pressure on the cap. It would seem to me if they hade done this in the very begining, they would have lowered the pressure enough that the methane would not have the force behind it to work its way to the surface. The pathway the methane creates could very easily result in a larger spill than we had before. I sincerely hope I’m wrong.
Thanks AKM- had just read this;
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/us/19oilspill.html?_r=1&hp
and came here to find your posting of the letter.
Am thinking it is wonderful to be optimistic but it’s not over yet…
Thanks AKM- had just read this;
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/us/19oilspill.html?_r=1&hp
and came here to find your posting of the letter.
Am thinking it is wonderful to be optimistic but it’s not over yet…