Feds Sue BP and Eight Others for Macondo Blowout

Finally someone got off the dime in DC and started filing a civil lawsuit against the corporate monsters who ruined the ecosystem in the Gulf of Mexico this past April.

From Fuel Fix:

“The civil lawsuit asks that the eight companies be held liable without limitation for all removal costs and damages caused by the oil spill, including damages to natural resources. They include BP, Anadarko, Transocean, Moex (a division of Mitsui) and two related entities and QBE underwriting (a division of Lloyd’s of London that insures Transocean).”

Halliburton, the company that cemented the casing, is so far not on the civil suit list. Halliburton is the company that did the cement job on the well. A cement job that ran awry when there was a failure to test the integrity of the cement job – a textbook procedure that anyone with 2 weeks experience on a drilling rig knows that you do this.

“The suit alleges the companies failed to take the necessary precautions to secure BP’s Macondo well before it blew out, failed to use the safest technology to monitor conditions and failed to use all available equipment to ensure the environment and workers were protected.”

Said Attorney General Eric Holder:

“These violations caused or contributed to the massive oil spill and the defendants therefore are responsible  . . .  for government removal costs (and) economic penalties.”

You know, I can see where they are going to go with this. Now that the beaches are open and evidence of further pollution is no more, the companies are going to say “Huh? What damage?”

So it is timely that we hear of recent deep sea submersible investigations in the deepwater of the Gulf Coast. There are now reports of large accumulations of oily sludge at the bottom of the Gulf. A mass that is turning a normally ecologically diverse deep sea floor with luxuriant deep sea biota into a sea floor resembling a barren lunar landscape.

From WBEZ:

“We see this brown stuff on coral fans, hit like pine trees along a dusty dirt road. More slimy brown stuff hangs over some of the odd formations of frozen natural gas here half a mile below the surface. Crabs here normally pick at worms that actually live in this methane ice.”

What do you call BP executives and those of 8 other oil service companies buried up to their necks in deepwater sediments soaked with Macondo oil?

A good start.

John Culberson (R- Houston) Is Factually Challenged

I know. I’m not supposed to use the L-word. Saying someone is a liar is fighting words in some parts. So in saying that Congressman John Culberson is “factually challenged” I have exercised some restraint in rhetoric, but I leave no doubt – John Culberson intentionally said something he knows not to be true. I’m sorry to report it, but John Culberson was simply lying when he said this, as quoted in the Houston Chronicle:

“There have been 50,000 wells drilled offshore and this is the first blowout. It is a catastrophe. It is a tragedy. But it is like an airplane falling out of the clear blue sky. You don't ground all airplanes.”

That’s simply not true.

First, let’s assume that in using the term “offshore” Culberson was referring to the offshore Gulf of Mexico. First because the numbers are right when you limit it just to the Gulf. Worldwide, there are much more than 50,000 offshore wells that have been drilled.

In the Gulf of Mexico, BP’s Macondo well was not the first ever to suffer a blowout.

The honor of being the first rig to suffer an offshore blowout in the Gulf of Mexico actually goes to the C.P. Baker Drilling Barge. In June of 1964, in drilling on an offshore location in Block 273 of Eugene Island, a tract operated by the Pan American Petroleum Corporation the well blew out. A short summary of the incident, found here, follows:

“The crew were preparing to run the 20" conductor and BOPs when, at around 0300 hours in the morning, the water around the vessel began to bubble, boil and eventually geyser up with some force between the hulls of the C.P Baker. Water entered the the vessel through open doors on the main deck and electric power was soon lost. Members of the on-duty crew attempted notify the off-duty crew of the blowout but an explosion occurred about five minutes after the blowout was first noticed. The explosion and fire was described as encompassing the whole vessel, and covered an area up to 100 feet around the vessel.”

“Most survivors evacuated the vessel by jumping from the port bow, after which the two support vessels pulled away from the burning C.P. Baker and began picking up survivors from the water. As a result of erupting water entering the hulls through open doors, the vessel began to heel aft and, after around 30 minutes, C.P. Baker sank by the stern. Gas continued to erupt and burn for the following 13 hours, with limited gas release continuing for the following month.”

Eight men died, 13 were missing and presumed dead, and 22 were injured.

But according to John Culberson, that never happened.

Then there was the Sedco 135F semi-submersible rig that blew out in 1979. The Ixtoc-1 well. Oh, but that was in the Mexican offshore Gulf of Mexico, so maybe that doesn’t count. Or maybe it does, considering that it was the merger of two Schlumberger subsidiaries, Sedco and Forex in 1999 that produced a company that was renamed “Transocean Sedco Forex,” later shortened to just “Transocean.”

The Ixtoc well blew out in June 1979 with initial flow rates estimated at 30,000 barrels of oil per day. Flow was cut to a mere 10,000 barrels per day until it was finally killed 9 months later after having released 3.3 million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf, a lot of which ended up washing onto Texas’ shoreline.

The cause of the blowout? BOP failure. Same as the Deepwater Horizon.

Or what about the Ensco 51 jackup rig that was drilling a well on that same block as the C.P. Baker Drilling Barge, Eugene Island Block 273, when on March 1st 2001, the well blew out resulting in a fire that consumed the rig causing the derrick to collapse onto the platform. The Ensco 51 rig was subsequently repaired in 2002 and has been drilling in the Asia-Pacific regions since then.

But according to John Culberson, that blowout never happened, either.

So contrary to History According to Culberson, the Transocean Deepwater Horizon blowout is not the first time this has happened in the Gulf of Mexico. Nor is it the second or third time. It’s the fourth such incident.

And of the four, the worst of the four.

One would think that we would learn from one blowout to another, and that our record of blowouts in terms of their prevention and emergency response policies would improve with time. But clearly, the reverse is true.

Taking me back to John Culberson’s analogy between the Deepwater Horizon blowout and an aircplane disaster. Just because one plane falls out of the sky, Culberson reasons, is not justification enough to ground all aircraft.

No, not all aircraft. No one is proposing that. Not all offshore oil rigs, either. Just the few tens of rigs that are drilling in the same deepwater environment that the Macondo well was spud in.

OK, so according to Culberson’ analogy, one plane fell out of the sky. And to-date, we don’t have all the answers to why that happened. But according to Culberson, we can’t jeopardize the jobs of pilots, flight attendants and ground crews just because one plane falls out of the sky. Even if we don’t know why it happened.

My only question to Culberson then is this: how many need to fall out of the sky before we need to stop and ask why that happens? Obviously, it’s not one.

Two?

But more to the point, how many millions of barrels of oil do we allow to flow into the Gulf before we are allowed by economics and concerns about jobs in the oil industry to stop and ask how we can prevent that from ever . . . ever . . . happening again?

Cornyn and Olson Set to Decry Deepwater Moratorium

I was reading a short blurb in FortBendNow, you can read it here, that Texas Senator John Cornyn and my CD-22 congressman, Pete Olson, are setting up to attack the Obama Administration’s 6-month deepwater oil drilling moratorium.

They plan to visit a semi-submersible drill ship that is currently standing at idle in the Texas deepwater, and then a local Stafford family-owned drilling tool maker.

It’s painfully transparent that this investigative tour to “take a look at the impact the Obama Administration’s deepwater drilling moratorium is having on local small businesses, jobs, the local economy, and our nation’s energy security” is nothing more than an exercise in the “politics of No” for local consumption.

“Following the rig tour, Cornyn and Olson will visit Stafford small business Sunbelt Machine Works Corp., which manufactures tools for the oil and gas industry and stands to suffer layoffs and significant setbacks due to the moratorium. Family-owned Sunbelt Machine Works currently employs a staff of 70. Sunbelt has already been forced to cut back hours and productivity as a result of the moratorium, according to a Cornyn and Olson.”

It’s a pretty stunning thing to say that cutbacks in the hours and productivity of a local family-owned business should be given the same weight and consideration as the issue of uncertainty of whether the major oil companies have a plan on what to do when a deepwater well blows out. It should be very clear to all of us by now that they haven’t had a plan, still don’t have a plan, and we don’t know when or whether they will have a workable plan in the future.

Russian Roulette is a game of chance played with one live round and six empty chambers, and that is the game that Cornyn and Olson want us to play with the 11th largest body of water on the face of the earth. Truth is, we now know that it was only a matter of time that a blowout on the order of the Deepwater Horizon’s blowout would occur.

I would also remind Olson that even his congressional leader, John Boehner, agrees that “maybe there is a reason there to pause till we know what happened and we can make sure we can prevent it again.”

Yes he did say that.

How long should the “pause” be? To my mind, 6 months is too arbitrary, and to put a finite time limit to it at this stage of the game seems unreasonable. How long should the “pause” be? It should be long enough to come to correct conclusions on the cause of the blowout, formulation of reasonable contingency plans should one occur again, with once more being too many, and engineering and manufacture of blowout preventers that can reliably operate in high pressure low temperature conditions in a failsafe manner. Currently blowout preventers, the ultimate well control device, are not 100% reliable in the most benign environment, and less so at extreme water depths and pressures. Indeed, one thing that can be predicted as an offshoot of this disaster is that blowout preventers will be redesigned as predicted by Paul Bommer, a UT petroleum engineering professor quoted here:

“…one thing is fairly certain. The Gulf oil spill will probably result in a "re-design" of BOPs, said UT's Bommer, as well as an overhaul of how they're tested and activated”

Leaving us with the plight of businesses that deal exclusively with deepwater oil exploration and production. What lessons should they take from this? Simply this: if your business depends on a special area of the oil business like the Gulf of Mexico deepwater, that is, if you put all of your eggs in one basket, take a lesson from the words of a great American, Mark Twain:

“Put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket.”

But the Republican plan seems to be to “watch that basket” by letting oil companies resume deepwater drilling before anyone is ready.

And that serves no one but the demagogues and lapdogs of the oil industry.

Tony Hayward Gets His Life Back

Ancient Chinese Curse: May you receive what you ask for.

Tony Hayward has his life back now. He also has renewed anger from those in the Gulf who don’t have a yacht. From those who think that boats are for catching seafood with, and not for catching a gust of breeze.

Here is a video clip from the UK covering American anger at Hayward’s holiday watching his yacht race around the Isle of Wight this weekend.



OK, they say, cut the guy some slack. It’s Father’s Day, they say. [It is, the UK celebrates Father’s Day today]. The question then becomes this: This guy is somebody’s father?

Poor kid.

Sky TV: Tony Hayward Given the Sack

Just a few minutes ago, Sky TV a UK-based satellite TV company reported that Tony Hayward, the new former head of BP America has been given the sack. In an exclusive interview with Sweden’s Carl-Henric “Small People” Svanberg, the worldwide BP CEO, Svanberg announced that Tony Hayward was being replaced by Bob Dudley.

“Mr Svanberg also told [Sky TV’s Jeff] Randall that comments by Mr Hayward have had detrimental effects as the company seeks to control the fallout from the disaster.”

“‘It is clear Tony has made remarks that have upset people,’ Mr Svanberg said.”

“Mr Svanberg admitted that the disaster is turning from an industrial accident into a much broader concern and he will now expand his own involvement.”

Svanberg “will expand his own involvement.” Well that should fix things.

Svanberg should be somewhat of an expert in making people upset, having done so himself in some rather insensitive remarks that he made in his statement that he made immediately following his visit with Barack Obama on Wednesday, calling the hard-working people whose livelihoods have been disrupted by his company’s malfeasance “small people.”

The only difference between Svanberg’s statements, and Hayward’s is basically accent. Americans are unused to Swedish accents, but perceive those with British accents to be talking down to us. Svanberg, however, overcame that distinction by his incredibly poor choice of words.

Knowing how these things play out in oil and gas, it is evident to me now that Hayward knew his fate long before entering the congressional hearing room yesterday, schooled himself in deflection, earning himself a unified American outrage that then allowed BP to behead BP America, sending Hayward home as the scapegoat. BP used the oldest trick in the books, in other words, the old bait and switch.

Because now we have Bob Dudley to kick around.

Bob.

Dudley is a recently appointed director in BP Group for all of BP’s activities in America and Asia. So this is, what, a demotion? A trial by fire? Prior to that he was CEO of TNK-BP, the Russia-based operations of BP.

Dudley came up through the ranks through his employment at the former Amoco, a US-based company that was gobbled up by BP in the late 90’s.

That’s right. Bob Dudley is an American.

Solves the problem of the accents, doesn’t it?

Pete Olson Files Bill to Lift Deepwater Drilling Moratorium

Coming to me as no surprise, my congressman, Pete Olson has filed a bill in the House to lift the 6-month Deepwater drilling moratorium that has been ordered by President Obama.

Really, nothing new here.

Co-sponsored by a covey of “oil-soaked” congressmen, the moratorium would reauthorize drilling in the Deepwater of the Gulf OCS. A move that is completely irresponsible given what we now know about industry readiness to handle undersea blowouts in the deepwater.

Their reasoning? The moratorium will cost the industry untold losses in terms of revenue, jobs and rigs.

Drilling rigs will move to overseas locations if they are not allowed to drill in the Deepwater.

And America depends on offshore Gulf of Mexico oil for 30% of its energy.

Oh, but wait. The moratorium is only for wells drilled in the Deepwater. You know, the parts of the Gulf where oil companies still don't have a handle on well control should a blow out occur.

So really, lumping all Gulf offshore oil drilling into the President’s Deepwater moratorium is just a little disingenuous isn’t it? After all, Deepwater exploration and production does not account for 30% of America’s total dependency on oil, or anything close to it. But Olson and his cadre of “oil-soaked” congressmen are willing to fight for those dozens of jobs that will be lost due to the moratorium.

But guess what. Knowing the oil industry they are going to use this event to their economic benefit and lose some employees anyway. That’s what working 22 years in oil and gas exploration has taught me.

But OK, I’ll concede that there is one way we can turn this abomination of a bill filed by Olson into a silk purse. A win-win for everyone. Want to open up the Deepwater for exploration and development before studies have been completed as to what happened in the Deepwater Horizon blowout and what remedial procedures need to be adopted?

Fine.

All Olson needs to do is insert an amendment in his bill to require, require any Deepwater well be drilled simultaneously with a relief well. No catch-up well drilling. The two wells spud on the same day and keep up with each other. Then if one blows out the other kills the first.

That should ease concerns, shouldn’t it? And as a matter of fact, that should be a boon to the offshore rig count and to employment of drillers and service company workers, casing and equipment suppliers. It’s a new day for the oil and gas industry.

Oh, but then you ask what would happen if both wells blow out simultaneously?

Well, by that time BP should have it all figured out.

Right?

Neocons Use BP Blowout to Attack Unions (Too)

In the face of an ecological disaster whose effects will be felt for years, the neoconservatives, beginning with those at Fox News, have fired two volleys, one in further criticism that Obama isn’t doing enough to clean up BP’s mess, and another to help anti-unionists and cost American jobs.

It came out a few days ago with Fox News reporting that some foreign owned companies are not being allowed to help in the clean-up because it violates the Jones Act. The Jones Act, better known as the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, was implemented to support the US merchant marine industry by allowing only US flag ships to move cargo between US ports. It largely protects jobs and ensures that America not also outsource its ability to conduct interstate commerce in its own waters. It maintains the US shipbuilding industry as well.

But the upshot is that while America can (and has) accepted help from foreign governments to clean this mess up, the material must be transferred to a US flag ship.

Neocons hate unions and believe that if a foreign government subsidizes its industries to enable them to undercut the prices that American business charges, then so be it. So now they are screaming at Obama to waive the Jones Act so foreign companies can help out. What has been the official White House response? I transcribed it from a video found on the White House blog featuring Carol Browner, Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change.

Question from a FaceBook user:

“And what about offers from foreign governments? Why [hasn’t] the Jones Act been waived to allow foreign offers with technology to help collect oil.”

Browner answers:

“There are a number of foreign offers that we have taken advantage of and the Coast Guard analyzes them and I think we have – help me here – we have taken from Belgium, The Netherlands, Canada there is one other country. If it becomes necessary to waive the Jones act then that will be taken care of but at this point it hasn’t been necessary.”

In other words they have no problem waiving the Jones Act but it’s not necessary right now.

But that’s not what you are going to hear from the Obama haters and the anti-unionists. It’s all about why Obama is against cleaning up BP’s mess.

Because that makes perfect sense.

A Small Spill on a Very Large Table

If I weren’t so angry at what British Petroleum was doing to the Gulf of Mexico this video would be funnier.

BP: Boundless Prescience

I got this over the internet tubes this morning.

Ever say something one day and regret having said it the next?

Thanks Suzy.

$50 Million in BP Cash Goes Toward Sprucing Up Its Image

Have you seen the new BP television ad that is going out – a little belatedly some say – on the airwaves this week? In case you haven’t I cadged the YouTube embed code and have the whole thing below.




That ad, and apparently more to come, is not the brainchild of their regular advertising company but of a pair of political consultants who run DC-based Purple Strategies. A company that is said to be getting at least $50 million from BP to promote their soiled image.

Now admittedly using BP’s CEO, Tony Hayward, as the spokesman is probably the right thing to do – who better to apologize to America than the guy who is ultimately responsible for the murder of 11 oil workers and the destruction of the Gulf ecosystem – but right now this seems to me to be a stupendously bad idea.

BP’s name is drilling mud right now and they should have to weather this storm just like the people whose lives have been temporarily or even permanently altered. No, they don’t get to spend the money we give them by using their products to promote themselves. Not right now.

The analogy to this is a bank robber who kills 11 bank employees in commission of the act and then using the money he stole from the bank to go on TV and apologize for killing them so maybe he can get a sympathetic jury.

Seafloor Gushers: Never Again

A local Houston oil and gas executive had a piece in the Houston Chronicle last week on where to go forward now that we have finally produced an ecological nightmare in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s here. People need to read it.

At the bottom he has a few suggestions that are focused and achievable; things that we must do before re-embarking on deepwater oil and gas exploration, a program that has been completely shut down, even to the extent of shutting down wells that are currently drilling in the deepwater.

Pasted here below are his suggestions:

• Development of a sophisticated, high-volume, subsea oil-collection system that is available 24/7 to the industry for more efficient cleanup of spills in the event they do occur.
• Strict regulation of the types and use of oil dispersants to mitigate damage to the environment and life.
• Complete the split of the Minerals Management Service into the three agencies, making safety and environmental regulation totally separate from the revenue and leasing functions.
• Conform safety, equipment, procedures and inspections for all vessels working in U.S. waters, whether they are foreign or U.S. flagged. Strengthen tax regulation to assure all vessels are on equal footing.
• Establish a subsea technology function within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or the MMS to advance the research, standardization and regulation of all subsea operations in U.S. waters, with the goal of making these functions safer and more reliable.

I have an amendment and another suggestion.

Amendment. I think it’s a great idea that the feds should build a branch within its environmental arm that is a source of expertise in subsea drilling operations. Really, this is the answer to reliance on the expertise and equipment of the self-same oil company whose corner-cutting ways produced this disaster in the first place. But I really think that the taxpayers ought not be saddled with the bill. Years ago, the major oil companies shed themselves of their R&D branches because they were money sinks. I really think that any company that leases offshore acreage from the feds need to contribute to the continuing support of an MMS or NOAA research lab – especially if they benefit from the research.

And finally, in looking at the list of suggestions you come away with the impression that another spill like this is inevitable. That you, as the masthead of this blog suggests, must plan for the worst.

I don’t think we have that option in this case.

This “spill” is going to be bad for a long, long time. We can’t afford any more. I vote that we go “Socialist Canadian” on offshore oil exploration.

The Canadians have been looking at what is the worst case scenario for a blowout in the Beaufort Sea. In the worst case a well blows out and cannot be killed from above (like the one in the Gulf). But the Beaufort Sea is ice-free only 2 to 3 months out of the year so if there is an unstoppable blowout there is not enough time to drill a relief well to kill it from below. So if a company wants to drill a well in the Beaufort Sea, Canada makes them drill the relief well at the same time.

Sort of gives new meaning to the phrase “Drill, baby, drill.”

Ironically, BP was just up there pleading before their environmental oversight board to relax that bothersome little requirement because it was just too darned expensive.

No, if there is even the slightest chance of having another one of these environmental calamities it is time for the feds to require, in the deepwater, the drilling of a relief well simultaneous to the drilling of the exploration well. It is by everyone’s admission, the only sure way to kill a well.

Question: What Drilling Fluid is BP Using?

Ever since BP initiated its “top kill” procedure, everyone now knows that oil wells are drilled using drilling fluid, or as reported in the media: “drilling mud.” And now, rather than seeing crude oil gushing out from that broken BOP a mile down, drilling fluid, or as they say on TV, drilling mud, is now gushing out into the water column

It’s not mud though, far from it.

As a former professional geologist I remember that any discharge of drilling fluid to the ocean had to be reported, because depending on the nature of the fluid, it can be toxic.

It kills things just as certainly as crude oil does.

And now instead of millions of gallons of crude oil being spewed into the Gulf, God knows how much drilling mud is gushing out of that BOP.

As I said, it is far from being "mud" although that’s exactly what it looks like. The only components that can be found in nature are the clay base, usually a clay called bentonite which is so harmless that they use it as a filler in candy bars.

Three Musketeers, for instance.

The other ingredient is water, sometimes even salt water. That is, if a water-based mud is used. Oil-based mud, or OBM contains what you might imagine is a little more toxic than water. A new mud being used is called SBM or synthetic-based mud is considered less toxic but retains some of the advantages of OBM.

So you see, there is a range of possibilities here. You don’t buy drilling fluid, you mix it up onsite with all the ingredients right there.

Trouble is, I don’t know what kind of drilling fluid BP is using in this top kill procedure and I think it might be important to know that.

All we know is that the fluid is “heavy.” It has to be. Not only do they pump it down under high pressure, it has to be heavy enough to hold the oil and gas in the formation.

And what is used in order to make the mud heavy? None other than heavy metals.

It’s a virtual Who’s Who of the Periodic Table. Here is a short list from this site:

1. Antimony
2. Nickel
3. Cobalt
4. Fluoride
5. Arsenic
6. Lead
7. Mercury
8. Cadmium
9. Barite
10. Vanadium
11. Copper
12. Aluminum
13. Chromium
14. Zinc

Barite is the only one on the list that is not an element. Barite is a chemical compound called barium sulfate.

The only good thing about that one is that barium sulfate is virtually insoluble in water. It still rates a 1 on an MSDS in the Health category, however.

So for now, all I am asking is this: what kind of drilling mud is BP using to kill this well? And for now, that is all I can ask.

But soon enough, I will want to know whether BP chose this mud because it was the least toxic to the environment, or chose this mud for the same rationale that was used that initiated this disaster: they are going the cheapest way out.

The Truth Will Out

When you want to know what twisted off to begin a multi-billion dollar disaster like the BP oil gusher spewing millions of gallons of crude into the Gulf, what you don’t do is listen to the CEOs. First, they don’t have a clue. Second, they are protecting the company and the stockholders. Third, they might just be liable for prosecution.

So the person or persons you want to be listening to is the guy who stood outside the door when the decisions went down. Not the guys in the room doing the arguing, they all have motives.

You want to listen to the fly on the wall.

That’s my experience, in dealing with oil and gas exploration companies. I have some personal experience in this, you see.

So I think the fly on the wall has started to speak, and I am all ears.

From AP via The Houston Chronicle:

“In a handwritten statement to the Coast Guard obtained by the AP, Transocean rig worker Truitt Crawford said: ‘I overheard upper management talking saying that BP was taking shortcuts by displacing the well with saltwater instead of mud without sealing the well with cement plugs, this is why it blew out.’”

“At a Coast Guard hearing in New Orleans, Doug Brown, chief rig mechanic aboard the platform, testified that the trouble began at a meeting hours before the blowout, with a ‘skirmish’ between a BP official and rig workers who did not want to replace heavy drilling fluid in the well with saltwater.”

“The switch presumably would have allowed the company to remove the fluid and use it for another project, but the seawater would have provided less weight to counteract the surging pressure from the ocean depths.”

“Brown said the BP official, whom he identified only as the ‘company man,’ overruled the drillers, declaring, ‘This is how it's going to be.’ Brown said the top Transocean official on the rig grumbled, ‘Well, I guess that's what we have those pinchers for,’ which he took to be a reference to devices on the blowout preventer, the five-story piece of equipment that can slam a well shut in an emergency.”

I knew it.

A top-down management decision to overrule the experienced drillers in an effort to save a buck, to move the mud to another location where it was needed, prematurely took the “lid” out of the drill string that was holding back overpressured crude oil and the well kicked, then blew out.

Somebody needs to start looking around for this “company man” now, and anyone who leaned on him from above causing him to issue these orders, including anyone who incentivized these guys to make these poor decisions.

Eleven lives were ended as a result of these deciders. Thousands stand to lose their livelihoods. The marshlands are being sterilized as I type this.

The truth will out, and there will be justice.

NASA to the Rescue

Answering the hue and cry that the federal government needs to do something to stop the flow of gushing oil into the dark deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, we now have what has been labeled an “All Star Team” of scientists presently meeting right here at the BP America headquarters in Houston.

From where does this “All Star Team” come? Where does the federal government go in this dire emergency in order to recruit a team with the expertise to kill a well that has gushed unknown millions of gallons of crude oil into the Gulf? A well that is a mile beneath the waves?

Why, NASA of course.

And the Sandia National Laboratories..

And The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

And Los Alamos.

And, oh yes, The United States Geological Survey.

No, really.

NASA, after all, has expertise in getting work done in remote locations under hazardous conditions. No, really. They actually said that on television. Sandia Labs typically works in what they call “breakthrough technology.” Lawrence Livermore? They work in environmental extreme conditions as well. What can be more environmentally extreme than the interior of a sun? Los Alamos? They are known to have created small-scale suns.

And the USGS? Well the USGS does dapple a little in oil and gas exploration. They estimate how much of the stuff we have from time to time.

And which one of these organizations has an offshore oil rig or a deepwater submersible and the technology and expertise to use against this looming ecological disaster?

None of them.

But despite all that they lack, this team of experts is meeting right now to “solve the problem” because “failure is not an option” in this “successful failure.” That’s right, the term “Apollo 13” comes to mind, but not because I thought it up . . . they did.

The feds.

The feds are now saying that if BP can’t or won’t solve this problem then they will have to stand aside or get out of the way so the feds and their team of experts can get to work.

No, I am serious. They actually said that, too.

Look, I am not ridiculing this idea because these people are all a bunch of idiots, that is patently absurd. These people are leaders in their field.

THEIR field.

But none of them know the oil drilling business. And really, even oil drillers are a little behind the curve here because deepwater drilling is brand new. Yes, the technology is based on techniques developed in drilling on the continental shelf, which is decades old, but there has been a lot of innovation recently. Oil drillers are still on a learning curve when it comes to deepwater drilling. That has become painfully obvious.

But the sobering fact is that despite all of this, the only people and the only organization that has the expertise and equipment to take care of this problem are the major oil companies and the service companies that they hire.

That is, the very people, the very companies that caused the problem in the first place.

No, British Petroleum and Halliburton and Transocean are the ones who can fix the problem that they caused, and by all rights ought to be the ones to fix the problem that they caused. They are on the hook and shouldn’t be let off despite the deeply troubling cries from the right that say that the feds aren’t doing enough in this.

Because if making political hay, calling this “Obama’s Katrina” and at the same time causing the feds to take their eye off the ball by recruiting this “team of experts” instead of holding these companies’ feet to the fire is all that this hue and cry is about, the right will have more to answer for than two wars and a financial meltdown.

Much more.

Cleaning Up the “Ol Spell”: Yahoos and Hay

A friend alerted me to a video that is spreading over the internet like, well, like the oil currently spreading far and wide in the Gulf of Mexico right now.

I am amazed, literally amazed at the ignorance that people have about all things petroleum.

Watch the video. You will see two guys with very heavy Texas accents demonstrate how they pick up used motor oil that has been poured into basins of water by spreading hay over the spill, and then stirring (they say the wind does this).

Here it is from YouTube but you can find it everywhere right now.



Amazing, huh?

Now there are several things that I find just absolutely hilarious about this video. One is that these guys think they have come up with an unique idea. Using hay to pick up an oil spill.

Honestly.

Another belly laugh can be gotten when you listen to them figure out how to dispose of the mountains and mountains of hay that they will have once the millions of gallons of oil are picked up: Burn it.

If you want an opinion of how bad it is when you burn crude oil, ask any odd Kuwaiti whose air quality was degraded when their oil wells were set afire by retreating Iraqis. It’s toxic.

Ohm you say, we would use scrubbers to clean the emissions. But I would guess that not a single scrubber in existence would survive that job.

Then there’s the problem of all the oil that doesn’t come to the surface. Yes, not all oil comes to the surface. Ocean water is stratified and there are density boundaries. Oil that rises to a density boundary takes its time crossing it. How do we get the hay down to those lakes of oil below the surface, one of which is estimated to be 10 miles long, 3 miles wide, and 300 feet thick.

And finally I have to ask which 5 states do we have to mow from border to border in order to come up with enough hay to broadcast over this spill.

And that’s just the video. If you read the comments that accompany the YouTube posting, or any of them anywhere else on the internet, you get another taste of the ignorance that is practically epidemic among the right wing.

People think that Obama won’t do it because he’s too stupid. People think that the government won’t do it because it is such a good idea and so very cheap.

People who still think that it is the role of government to clean up a problem that was created by private industry. To which I have to say this: why is government automatically responsible for a mistake made by private industry? All we have heard in the past year are the squeals and squawks of the right wing over government bailouts of banks and the auto industry. Big government, now, needs to bail out BP and Halliburton? Is that it?

(shaking head in wonderment).

Polls: It’s Still Drill Baby, Drill

Apparently a looming ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is not enough to change the minds of the “Drill Baby, Drill” shouters of two years ago. According to an AP-GfK poll conducted last week, a full 50% of Americans still want offshore drilling to continue unabated.

Remember this?



But oddly enough, while these people still love offshore oil drilling, they are not so sure about British Petroleum. 32% of respondents approved of BP’s handling of the situation and 49% disapproved.

So maybe they think it’s OK for Mother Exxon to drill for oil in the offshore, but not BP.

In their Pew Research Center asked a question that I consider significant asking people to rank the “oil leak” in the Gulf, and 92% of respondents considered the seafloor oil gusher to be either a major disaster of a serious problem. But again, significantly, a CBS News poll found that 51% of respondents rated this as an “isolated incident” as opposed to a “broader problem.”

Proving to myself, again, the utter ignorance that people have of the oil and gas industry.

Here are the questions I would like to see asked:

If you knew that the oil industry does not have a plan in the event of a subsea blowout in the deepwater, would you want to continue deepwater exploration and development?

If you knew that both BP and Halliburton have both been investigated for unsafe operations, would you want them to drill in the deepwater, especially on the same drill ship?

If you knew that no matter how many offshore oil wells we drill, we will never attain energy independence, would you want to continue drilling for oil in the deepwater?

And finally,

If you knew that neither BP nor Halliburton has any intention of reimbursing people for the livelihoods that they destroyed in the Deepwater Horizon disaster, would you want them to continue drilling for oil in the deepwater?

I wonder what respondents would say to these questions.

Clusterduck

When the CEOs to British Petroleum, Transocean, and Halliburton came to the capitol the other day to offer their opinions on how the BP oil blowout happened, and more importantly, who or what was to blame for the incident, we got a very, very lucid view of how the reparations will be delivered to all of the people whose lives, and livelihood will be affected by the mistake of some miscreant or another.

And how taxpayers will be reimbursed for government services rendered in response to this ecological disaster.

A lucid view because what the CEOs engaged in, as we typically see when more than one party is involved in a disaster such as this, was a circular firing squad.

Quotes from USA Today:

BP:

“Lamar McKay, chairman of energy company BP America, said BP is responsible for cleaning up damages from the leak because it was operating the rig. However, he said the failure of a safety seal was the responsibility of Transocean, the rig's owner.”

Transocean:

“Transocean CEO Steven Newman countered that drilling projects ‘begin and end’ with the operator — BP.”

Halliburton:

“Halliburton executive Tim Probert denied that flaws in his company's cement
contributed to the leak.”

Eliciting this comment from President Obama this afternoon:

“‘I did not appreciate the ridiculous spectacle at congressional hearings,’ Obama said at a Rose Garden news conference, referring to testimony this week from executives of BP, rig owner Transocean and Halliburton, which was doing cement work on the oil pipeline in the hours before the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank last month.”

It speaks volumes. Volumes because according to these oil company execs, that while there is a major ecological disaster occurring in the Gulf of Mexico right now, no one seems to be to blame. Here in the Gulf, an area that has been “drill friendly” since the first offshore rig was installed in the late 1940’s, apparently the disaster was no one’s fault but somebody else’s.

If I don’t miss my guess then, when it comes time for shrimpers to hold out their hand for reparations, when it comes to states holding out their hands for compensation for their beach clean-up efforts that is all but inevitable, they are all going to see these fine fellows jerk their thumbs over their shoulders referring everybody down the line.

CEOs are all ducking their responsibility. It’s a sad tale that is all but too common in this day and age. But this time, they are doing it in synchrony as a single unit.

A clusterduck if you will.

BP’s “Apollo 13”: It Just Gets Worse and Worse

A BP spokesman by the name of Bill Salvin made the unfortunate comparison between his company’s ecologically disastrous blowout and subsequent oil disgorgement into the fisheries of the Gulf of Mexico, and NASA’s “Successful Failure” of 1970, the nearly doomed manned mission to the moon, Apollo 13.

Said Salvin on May 2nd:

“It’s just an amazing effort, truly an Apollo 13 effort 5,000 feet below the surface of the ocean trying to stop this spill.”

Why make that comparison?

NASA is a United States federal government agency working under a federal budget. An agency whose employees, in April 1970, “worked the problem” and got what would otherwise have been a doomed mission to the moon back to Earth with no moon rocks to show for it, but with slightly less than three healthy crew members (Fred Haise came down ill with a urinary tract infection). NASA spared no expense to design, build and execute these moon missions. The reputation of the United States, and the lives of our astronauts were, after all, at stake.

BP is a multinational oil giant with billions upon billions of dollars at its disposal. BP and its drilling contractor, Transocean, along with dozens of consultants, consulting companies, the US Coast Guard, and Jesus knows who else are all set to “work the problem.” A problem caused by their own failure to use the safest, most reliable blowout preventer equipment with a remote control cutoff switch because it was too expensive. Half a million dollars, after all, is just too much money to spend in order to assure failsafe drilling in an environment unreachable by man.

But I suppose what Salvin is referring to is the fact that the problems they are encountering are ones that they did not anticipate, and ones that have to be solved on the fly.

But drilling engineers do not rocket scientists make.

Witness “the dome.” On its face, putting a dome over the seafloor oil gusher and using it to collect the oil and gas gushing out into the lower bathyal waters of the Gulf of Mexico seemed like a good idea, although BP engineers cautioned that it had not ever been done in water this deep.

So imagine their surprise when gas (methane, etc) hit the cold water of the lower bathyal Gulf of Mexico and froze into a slush called a gas hydrate. Gas hydrates are the most abundant form of hydrocarbon on the planet, after all. It exists abundantly in marine sediments below 300 meters (1000 feet) in water depth. The USGS estimates that gas hydrates comprise twice the total carbon to be found in fossil fuels on Earth.

The gas hydrate slush clogged the top of the dome out through which the oil was to be extracted and siphoned up to processing ships on the sea surface.

Gee, they never thought that would happen.

Their proposed solution? Pump warm water down to the dome to melt the gas hydrate.

Is that even possible? Pumping warm water through a mile long hose that extends down through frigid water (just above freezing at that water depth) to counteract an ocean’s worth of cold water? Has anyone ever even modeled that before?

No, where the NASA near-disaster and the BP impending disaster differ is that while some things were not anticipated by engineers in either project, NASA had the tools and the instrumentation at both ends of the disaster to “work the problem.”

BP is flying blind without a compass (not that a working compass would do them any good). My impression is that BP engineers are doing what they do best: looking around for a bigger hammer.

Governator Shuts Down Drilling In State Waters

Now take California. Please.

No, just kidding. California, the state of my origin has just done the right thing, again, through its Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Schwarzenegger took one look at the looming ecological disaster that BP and its henchmen have inflicted on the Gulf Coast, an area that has been generally benign toward offshore oil development, and passed on a 2008 agreement to develop oil deposits that occur in state waters by drilling horizontal wells from existing rigs that are currently sitting in federal waters.

Proposed by a Texas oil consortium that calls itself Plains Exploration and Production Co., or PXP, the project would have brought much-needed oil revenue to California, to the tune of $100 million per year.

A nice chunk of change for a state which is reeling under an $18 billion budget deficit.

But the governator is opting out and is closing exploration and development drilling in California state waters (which extend from the beach to 3 miles offshore) “for the foreseeable future.”

From AP through the Houston Chronicle:

“You turn on the television and see this enormous disaster, you say to yourself, 'Why would we want to take on that kind of risk?' Schwarzenegger said.”

Indeed.

Back in 1969 California experienced the first significant offshore oil disaster in the now historic Santa Barbara Channel blowout. The blowout polluted the beaches of some very high priced real estate and brought on a federal moratorium on offshore oil drilling that lasted for some years.

Tony Strrickland, a GOP California state senator and PXP-supporter complains that the present disaster in the Gulf in no way, shape or form resembles the Santa Barbara oil spill.

“‘They are two completely different types of drilling. In the Gulf they had to use floating platforms because of deep waters. T-ridge is only 1,000 feet deep and the platforms would be fixed,’ Strickland said. ‘If we don't drill oil here, then we have to import it from overseas, which also has a big risk of oil spills’”

I love that last argument. If we don’t drill for it we’ll have to tanker it in.

This is a nice argument that might even make some sense, except that our unquenchable thirst for crude oil, our vast demand for the stuff, requires that we import oil from the Middle East whether we drill for it here or not.

But the reality is this: the present BP disaster resembles what happened 41 years ago in Santa Barbara more than anyone is willing to admit.

The Santa Barbara blowout occurred on a platform set in 188 feet of water, set into the seabed. That makes it dissimilar because the Deepwater Horizon was a floater. However, that is where the dissimilarity ends. In 1969 they were drilling well A-21 off Platform A in the Dos Cuadras Field, operated by Union Oil Company. For reasons that became apparent later, surface casing was set too shallow. When the drillers were pulling the drill string out of the hole the well was “swabbed” – sort of what you do with a plumber’s friend in your kitchen sink, but in the opposite direction.

Oil came up to the drill floor and the BOP was immediately closed. Oil stopped flowing. But what happened next, because the surface casing was set to shallow, the high pressure oil fractured the surrounding shallow sediments, and oil flowed up these fractures to the sea floor.

Just about exactly what is happening in the BP well, from the reports I hear. Oil is not just flowing through the BOP which never closed off completely, but also from the seabed.

To this day tentlike structures on the seafloor around Platform A collect the slowly seeping petroleum from these seeps – much like the dome that BP is proposing to build and deploy.

So, beg to differ, this thing in the Gulf looks a lot like the blowout event in the Santa Barbara Channel.

But the whole irony of the article we read in the Houston Chronicle is from contributions from the local commenters. The gist of their argument is that if California won’t drill for oil in their state offshore acreage, they should not get a drop of oil from Texas – or Louisiana.

Sometimes I have to shake my head in disbelief at the incredible ignorance of my fellow Texans on the right.

California imports no oil from the Gulf Coast.

As a matter of fact, and I remember this well, the irony of it that is, in 1986 the Pacific Texas Pipeline Company laid a thousand mile-long oil pipeline from California to Texas. Not to get oil to California from Texas, but the other way around. To send oil produced from California and Alaska oil fields to Texas refineries.

On Using a Faulty Blowout Preventer in Overpressure

It wasn’t long ago that when an offshore oil rig reached overpressured sediments, that was the end of drilling. Pack it up.

Overpressure is produced when the rate of sedimentation is so great that fluids literally have no time to escape upward as overburden accumulates. Something that is quite common in the deepwater of the Gulf of Mexico. Especially at the mouth of the Mississippi River, which has been pouring sediments into the Gulf for millions of years.

But as time went on, we got the knack of drilling in overpressure. But you had to be careful, and you had to watch the well all the time, making sure your mud system balanced the fluid pressure at depth. If the mud is too heavy it goes into the formation and induces fracture. The formation “breaks down.” Too light and the pressure pushes the mud column up the well.

So a subsea blowout preventer is essential. One with lots of backup including some “blind rams” that can cut right through pipe if a blowout is imminent. That’s a system of last resort because you definitely lose the well if you cut the pipe at the BOP.

But as it turns out, as reported in the London Times, BP has known that this particular type of BOP has had some defects.

Knew about it 10 years ago.

From the Times Online:

“In June 2000, the oil giant issued a "notice of default" to Transocean, the operator of the rig that blew up last month. The dispute was over problems with a blowout preventer, a set of iron slabs that should close out-of-control wells. It failed on the Gulf of Mexico rig, triggering the explosion and oil spill.”

“Transocean acknowledged at the time that the preventer did "not work exactly right". The rig in question, the Discover Enterprise, was unable to operate for extended periods while the problem was fixed.“

“The preventer was made by Hydril, now owned by GE's oil and gas arm, and Cameron International, a Houston company. Cameron also made the preventer on the Deepwater Horizon, the rig that exploded. Its preventer was fitted at about the same time BP was complaining of problems with its sister vessel.”

Whether that had any bearing on the cause to the most recent blowout and looming ecological disaster, one can only speculate. I hope it is not the case that the BOP was substandard. I hope it is not the case that BP and Transocean were cutting costs. Cutting costs in light of $2.60 per gallon gasoline and $84 per barrel crude. Cutting costs during times of record profits in the petroleum industry.

I hope this is not the case, but like my masthead announces, I am not optimistic.