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Page added on May 13, 2015
Drilling Begins 3 Miles From BP Oil Spill
Just 3 miles from the catastrophic BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a Louisiana company is seeking to unlock the same oil and natural gas that turned into a deadly disaster.
Drilling has begun in the closest work yet to the Macondo well, which blew wild on April 20, 2010, killing 11 people and fouling the Gulf with as much as 172 million gallons of crude in the nation’s worst oil spill. Federal regulators gave their blessing last month to LLOG Exploration Offshore LLC. to drill the first new well in the same footprint where BP was digging before.
The resumption of drilling at the former BP site comes as the oil industry pushes into ever deeper and riskier reservoirs in the Gulf. It reflects renewed industry confidence — even as critics say not enough has been done to ensure another disaster is avoided.
“Now that five years have passed it seems that some of the emotions are less raw,” said Pavel Molchanov, an energy analyst with the investment firm Raymond James in Houston.
If anything, drilling into BP’s Macondo reservoir may be safer now, he said.
“Just because there was a spill there doesn’t mean it’s more dangerous,” he said. “It could make it less dangerous considering how much the seabed there has been studied.”
Paul Bommer, a petroleum engineer at the University of Texas at Austin and a member of national panels investigating the BP disaster, said it was only a matter of time before drilling would resume there.
There is just too much money at stake.
Yet LLOG’s own exploration plans provide a window into the potential risks.
In September exploration plans, LLOG estimated its worst-case scenario for an uncontrolled blowout could unleash 252 million gallons of oil over the course of 109 days. By comparison, the BP spill lasted 87 days and resulted in as much as 172 million gallons of oil pouring into the Gulf.
“Our commitment is to not allow such an event to occur again,” said Rick Fowler, the vice president for deep-water projects at LLOG.
Fowler said the shallow part of the well has been drilled and that the deeper section will be completed later this year.
LLOG’s permit to drill a new well was approved April 13 by the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, which oversees offshore oil and gas drilling operations.
Lars Herbst, the agency’s regional director, said in a statement that LLOG had demonstrated it could be trusted.
“In order to obtain a permit to drill LLOG had to meet new standards for well-design, casing, and cementing which include a professional engineer certification,” he said.
But Liz Birnbaum, former director of the Minerals Management Service, the former agency that oversaw oil drilling at the time of the BP spill, said allowing drillers to go after that oil is cause for concern because regulations covering well-control are not in effect and years away from being mandatory.
Five years ago, BP, its contractors and federal regulators struggled to contain the blowout and kill the out-of-control well. In all, the federal government calculated that about 172 million gallons spilled into the Gulf. BP put the number much lower, closer to 100 million gallons.
Richard Charter, a senior fellow with the Ocean Foundation and a longtime industry watchdog, said drilling into that reservoir has proved very dangerous and highly technical, and it raises questions about whether LLOG has the financial means to respond to a blowout similar to BP’s.
The shallow part of the well was dug by the Sevan Louisiana, a rig owned by Sevan Drilling ASA, a large international drilling company based in Oslo, Norway. Another rig, the Seadrill West Neptune, will complete the well.
Since 2010, LLOG has drilled eight wells in the area in “analogous reservoirs at similar depths and pressures,” Fowler said. The company has drilled more than 50 deep-water wells in the Gulf since 2002, he said.
The company already has drilled three wells in the vicinity that tap into the same reservoir BP was going after in 2010. He said those wells were drilled without problems.
He said the company has studied the investigations into the Macondo disaster and “ensured the lessons from those reports are accounted for in our design and well procedures.”
BP spokesman Brett Clanton said an area even closer to the well, owned by BP, is an “exclusion zone” where oil and gas operations are off-limits both “out of respect for the victims” and to allow BP “to perform any response activities related to the accident.”
11 Comments on "Drilling Begins 3 Miles From BP Oil Spill"
rockman on Wed, 13th May 2015 10:49 pm
“It could make it less dangerous considering how much the seabed there has been studied.” If that’s really what he said then we should take anything else he says with a grain of salt: the condition of the sea floor planned no part what so ever in the BP blow out.
“The resumption of drilling at the former BP site comes as the oil industry pushes into ever deeper and riskier reservoirs in the Gulf.” Misleading hyperbole: the reservoir that blew out was not particularly difficult to drill. In the world of deep high pressure reservoirs the blow out occurred in a rocks that were just moderately over normal pressure. Hundreds of much higher pressure reservoirs have been safely drilled in both the deep and shallow water areas of the GOM.
The blow out was the result of a risky procedure that was not monitored properly. Had they followed the standard protocol that nearly all other offshore wells have followed there would not have been a blow out.
GregT on Thu, 14th May 2015 12:51 am
Rock,
Would you care to go into more detail? As usual the media reports are probably mostly incorrect. Faulty BPV, too high pressures etc. I for one would really like to hear an explanation from somebody that actually knows what he is talking about.
Thanks
Apneaman on Thu, 14th May 2015 12:54 am
“out of respect for the victims”?
FUCK OFF
rockman on Thu, 14th May 2015 5:34 am
Greg – This will probably irritate you…and it should you and everyone else. Forget about failed cement. forget about a failed BOP (didn’t help, of course).
A quick course on drilling. All reservoirs are at some pressure higher then atmospheric…usually much higher. At the depth of the Macondo reservoir about 12,000 psi. So how does one drill without the pressure coming to see you? Easy: we use drilling mud which can be made as dense as needed. Got 12,000 psi reservoir pressure: use drilling mud such that the weight of the column of mud in the hole produces a higher pressure. The Macondo reservoir had an equivalent mud weight of about 12.5 ppg (pounds per gallon). So you drill it with 14 ppg mud and the reservoir doesn’t flow into the well bore. That’s how you drill without inducing a blowout: a simple matter of sufficient back pressure.
Once casing is run cement is pumped into the space between the casing and the rock. This isolates the reservoir pressure from the inside of the casing…a critical safety factor.
Cement failure: the seal between the casing and rocks doesn’t seal it. happens very often so equipment used to fix the problem (“squeeze the cement”) is kept on the rig 24/7. There was an argument on the rig as to whether they had a good cement job or not. Difficult test data to analyze sometimes. The “cement is OK” won the debate.
In my 40 years what they did next I’ve never seen done in a well at this stage of drilling: they put the well in an “unbalanced state”: they replaced some of the heavy drill mud with much lighter sea water. I’ll skip why they did it but the bottom line was to try to save a few $million. Now insufficient back pressure to keep the reservoir from flowing up the well bore. No problem if the cement had isolated the reservoir…but it failed and thus didn’t. So the reservoir started flowing oil/NG up the casing.
This is where it gets truly stupifying. When we’re drilling we always “check for flow”. A simple procedure: turn the pumps off that are pushing the mud down the inside of the drill pipe. The mud flowing out of the well should of course stop flowing when you turn the pumps off. If the mud keeps flowing out of the well obviously something downhole is pushing: the reservoir is flowing up the hole (called “taking a kick”). Till the day I die I’ll never understand why the engineer that argued the cement wouldn’t hold wasn’t closely watching the well for mud flow. Had he seen it he could have easily shut the well in and they could have raised the mud weight.
But someone did notice something wasn’t right: a ship captain tied up to the rig. They were pumping mud from the rig to his boat. He radioed the rig to stop pumping because his tanks were full. The rig told him he had to be wrong because they had not pumped enough mud. And that was the clue: the volume of mud flowing out of the well being pushed up by the oil/NG wasn’t taken into account. There should have been 2 or 3 different hands responsible for checking for flow…why weren’t they?
The rig was in the initial stages of shutting down. I’ve been there at such times and the hands are all trying to finish paperwork, get equipment off the rig and, most important, arrange to get their butts back to shore.
The entire column of salt water and drilling mud was pushed out of the casing and 100% oil/NG flowed up thru the well head. All it took was a spark and…boom. One of the 11 killed was the nephew of one of my cohorts who was just trying to overcome the grief of his adult son dying in a car crash just 2 weeks earlier. Now he had to try to comfort the boy’s mom…his sister. Naturally when you know some of the folks involved it becomes much more then a news headline.
In my 40 years I’ve only seen wells put into an “unbalanced state” when they were being completed and thus trying to get the reservoir to flow UNDER A CONTROLLED SITUATION.
And yes…the BOP failed. BOP failure isn’t that uncommon. If you have to activate your BOP it means you had already f*cked up somehow. Despite the MSM saying the BOP “is the last line of defense” no one in the oil patch thinks that way. For us the BOP is “the worst line of defense”…you don’t every want to use it.
So yes: the cement failed, the cement test failed and the BOP failed. But that wasn’t why the well blew out: it happened because they intentionally put the well in an unbalanced condition and failed to close monitor a KNOWN potentially dangerous situation.
It was caused by human error: the decision to put the well into an unbalanced condition to same a % or 2 of the total well cost.
It cost BP a whole lot more. And 11 families lost a loved one.
rockman on Thu, 14th May 2015 6:55 am
“…to save a % of 2 of the total well cost.
BTW I’ve looked but the fed regs are so difficult to navigate I’ve yet to see if they’ve banned this “underbalancing” procedure or not.
GregT on Thu, 14th May 2015 8:39 am
Thanks Rock!
shortonoil on Thu, 14th May 2015 9:56 am
Thanks Rock,
I’ve thought all along that may be what happened. One more question, do you think the casing could have failed part way up the string “before” the the well became unbalanced? There was flow seen blowing out of the sea floor a hundred yards from the well afterwards. Where did it come from?
rockman on Thu, 14th May 2015 10:47 am
shorty I That might have happen. The shallow cag should have been sufficient to handle the pressure but there’s no telling what happened when the BOP was knocked out of commission. In theory the oil might have gone down one of the csg multiple csg annuli tied into it and that pressure exceeded the specs because it should never have been exposed to such high pressure.
nony on Thu, 14th May 2015 11:02 am
I wonder to what 3xtent corporate culture at BP was an issue. They don’t seem as professional as ExxonMobil. And more office politics. Plus the whole beyond petroleum thing.
shortonoil on Thu, 14th May 2015 11:23 am
“no telling what happened when the BOP was knocked out of commission.”
When the tug captain radioed in that his tanks were full, that should have sent alarm bells off all over the place. The engineer watching the head pressure was evidently caught in a situation that no one expected, or foresaw. It was likely a combination of events that may not happen again for a 1000 years, but a 30,000 foot well at 12,000 psi is likely at the edge of the envelope! To try it again goes to show how desperate the industry is for high quality reserves.
Dredd on Thu, 14th May 2015 11:56 am
Ah, the POGO platform returns to ground zero (Why The Military Can’t Defend Against The Invasion).