Category: oil and gas

I love you, Rachel Maddow. But I need to take exception to a thing you said, as much as it pains me.

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It’s a long clip, and the point in question is sort of interspersed through it. Basically Rachel says that the earthquakes in Ohio were caused by fracking. And that this is somehow a surprise.

Now, this may be a nitpicky complaint, but I’m a nerd and it’s my purview to get nitpicky about things.

The earthquakes in Ohio were not directly caused by fracking. they were caused by waste water injection. While Rachel does say this at one point in the clip, for the most part this gets shortened down to the earthquakes being caused by fracking.

In this case, the best you could come up with is an indirect cause, since without the hydraulic fracturing, there wouldn’t be a lot of fluid that needed to be put down the disposal well. But frankly, if you want to be accurate, you have to say that the earthquakes were caused by improper waste water disposal.

And you know what? This is not a new thing. Deep waste water disposal wells in Colorado in the late 60s and early 70s caused earthquakes as well. If there are faults in the area, waste water can get in to them and lubricate them. Or if the well is over pressured, that can change the local stress field and get things to shift around.

As I said, I know that this may seem like hair splitting, but it bugs me to no end to hear the waste water disposal issue being conflated with the actual process of hydraulic fracturing. It’s sloppy. If nothing else, waste water disposal wells are not a new concept, and even without hydraulic fracturing they still get drilled and used because normal oil production often entails a large water cut (ancient salt water coming out with the oil) and that water gets re-injected in disposal wells.

It’s another question to ask if hydraulic fracturing itself causes earthquakes. Likely yes in summary, and here’s a nice recent example from Oklahoma. Though the point in both of these places is really that any induced seismicity is less than a magnitude of 3.0, too small for us to actually feel.

Whether or not this is cause for worry is a whole issue on itself. We can also cause seismic activity by pulling a lot of water out of aquifers and thus cause compaction issues. (Or pulling a lot of oil out of reservoirs and causing compaction there.) While the effect is the same (man-made earthquakes), the causes deserve to be addressed with accuracy.

I am getting increasingly worried about the Macondo well’s continuing shut-in state, not to mention the way BP and Admiral Allen seem to be bickering about it. I guess the good news is that the pressure has built to a reasonable level and has pretty much parked there. That’s certainly better than the alternative¹. And to a certain extent, I can understand why what was supposed to be a pressure test has been extended for days to keeping the well shut in. Because it is preferable to allowing the well to continue to flow into the Gulf.

However.

BP’s making noise about wanting to try another surface kill. I suppose because the last one went so well. Now, one point in favor of this is that they’ve got the well actually shut in, so there’s at least some integrity to the well cap now. But I’m with Bob Cavnar; I’m worried about the continuing integrity of of the casing and the flex joint², and I’m also worried about the integrity of the formations. There have been concerns since the beginning about casing damage that could allow oil/drilling fluid into the surrounding formations, which could lead to failure, fracturing, and give the oil a new pathway into the open water. This hasn’t happened yet, but it very well could, and with no warning. And, now that the relief well is getting close enough to completion to give us a little hope, that kind of failure could needlessly complicate those efforts as well.

If you’ve ever watched the movie True Lies, think about the scene where the terrorists are driving along the highway across the Florida keys, and the bridge basically gets blown up around them. One of the trucks ends up teetering between staying on the road and falling off into the ocean. The terrorists try to creep toward the back of the truck, hoping to get it to sway back onto the highway. Then a bird (a pelican, I think) lands on the hood and they all go tumbling into the drink.

That sort of farcical balance, teetering between safety and disaster, is what this is making me think of, and BP’s inexplicable maneuvering is the pelican in this equation.

With the new cap on the well, they’ve got four good fittings they could hook in to for the purposes of pumping oil. One excuse for not having done that yet is that one of the risers still needs to be completed, and I believe that one or two of the vessels they would be using aren’t there yet. (And of course, constant weather worries.) But what about the vessels and risers already on site? As far as I know (again, geologist, not engineering expert) they ought to be able to just retrieve oil from a couple of the valves and not all of them. They should be able to just take whatever capacity the vessels on site have, which would also keep the well at a lower pressure even if they’re not taking the full flow. Why are the pushing the pressure on the well by keeping it shut in if they’re worried about the flex joint failing? Why are they looking at a plan that might cause catastrophic failure with the relief well so close to completion? And so on. Unfortunately, I’m not in full possession of the facts, and through no fault of my own; there’s a lot of detail that BP is keeping to itself.

I’m starting to fall into the paranoid camp that thinks BP is fighting to keep the well shut in and even pushing for the inexplicable attempt at a static kill because that will prevent truly accurate measurements of the well flow. Since, after all, knowing how much the well can flow at would give a pretty accurate way to measure just how much oil has gone into the Gulf, which is important since fines are charged per barrel – and fees for removal of oil from the lease are also charged per barrel.

It would also be easier for me to dismiss my growing sense of paranoia as misplaced suspicion if it weren’t for the fact that this company has already shown a blatant disregard for safety in the interest of savings/profit. BP was aware of the leak in the BOP’s control pod for months, and did not see fit to have it fixed. They didn’t bother to run a cement bond log³. They didn’t conduct a circulation test to see if there was gas in the wellbore. And so on, and so on, an infuriating list that just gets longer and longer the more times BP is called to testify.

BP killed eleven people because they thought the savings were worth the risk. Which is an easy enough decision, I suppose, when you’re making it from hundreds of miles away from the drilling rig. BP has put a knife in the heart of the Gulf of Mexico’s ecosystem because they thought the savings were worth the risk. BP destroyed the livelihoods of thousands because they thought the savings were worth the risk. No one set out to kill eleven people or damage an ecosystem or destroy the livelihoods of people; but all of these things add up to show a disregard for risk, where the people making the decision about that risk are not the ones that will bear the brunt of the damage if the odds turn sour.

So how paranoid am I actually being, if I find it a reasonable conclusion that they just might be willing to risk exacerbating this heartbreaking situation because it could get them out of some fines? It might be worth the risk. At this point we’re all just teetering at the edge of disaster and waiting to see where BP lands.

1 – As in, constant low pressure or a sudden drop in pressure, which would basically indicate that the oil’s found a different way to escape the well.

2 – Mr. Cavnar provides a more technical discussion of that issue here. The problem is, none of us armchair quarterbacks knows precisely what fittings/etc are being used, and no one’s bothering to share that information.

3 – This is basically a sonic assessment to see if there’s cement fully surrounding the casing, which lets you know if the cementing worked properly. Logs usually cost by the foot, so running a log through the entire 15,000 foot length of this well would be a costly proposition. In the past, I’ve seen different types of logs (for a cement bond log you really have to run the whole thing) that companies have tried to save on by only running them for sections of the well, a couple hundred feet at a time. As a geologist, I find this practice very annoying.

On Countdown last night, Keith Olberman reported that the relief well is 40 feet away from the well that’s blown out, and it’s expected to take several more weeks to reach it. I thought I’d clarify this, since it may be a little confusing as to why it is going to take several weeks to drill 40 feet.

Per USA Today the relief well is aimed for a point 18,000 feet deep. From the somewhat nonspecific language of the news article, I’m assuming that the 18,000 feet is the subsea¹. This means that the actual drill string for the well will likely be significantly longer than 18,000 feet, since it’s being drilled directionally and is thus not the shortest possible distance from the point they’re aiming for.

My knowledge mostly relates to how wells are drilled on land, but as far as I know, the principle is the same for offshore drilling. Basically, the actually drill bit is at the end of the drill string, which stretches the length from the rig floor to wherever the bit happens to be at the time. The drill string is effectively a long, long pipe through which the bit can be powered and drilling fluid (mud) can be circulated.

Drill string is, as you can imagine, not just one insanely long pipe. It’s made out of joint after joint after joint of pipe. This pipe normally comes in lengths between 30 and 45 feet. So basically, when you’re drilling you start with, say, a 45 foot length of pipe. You drill down 45 feet until that pipe is basically at the floor of the rig, then you add another 45 foot length of pipe, then drill down more. And so on. And so on.

The sectional nature of drill pipe is important in this case because as drill string is pulled from the hole, you also have to break it off a section at a time and stack the pipe on the racks. This process can be done fairly efficiently for what it is, but that doesn’t quite get around the fact that when you have to pull an 18,000+ foot drill string out of a hole 45 (or whatever) feet at a time, it’s not exactly a speedy process.

And that is, in fact, what’s having to be done, at pretty regular intervals. As close as the relief well is, they really don’t want to miss the Macondo’s² pipe, and they’re effectively attempting to locate something a bit smaller than a dinner plate. Directional surveys do have error attached to them, so they don’t have a precise enough location on the well they’re trying to hit to just drill blindly.

So basically what is happening at this point is that the relief well is drilling a little bit (maybe a foot or so, I don’t know for certain) and then they’re pulling up the entire (18,000+ foot) drill string so they can put a magnetic tool down the wellbore to check the location of the Macondo’s pipe. Then they pull up the magnetic tool, put all 18,000+ feet of the drill string back down and drill a little more.

I think “excruciating” is a fair way to describe this process. But with the care that’s taken, there will hopefully be a very good chance of hitting the blown out well on the first try, which is the really important thing. Playing fast and loose is certainly part of what caused this issue; hopefully some care and precision will get the Macondo killed finally.

Also, I’ll add that around the time the relief wells started drilling, we had a company meeting. I didn’t end up attending, but my husband did and reported what had been said. It was mostly one of the VPs passing on information about the disaster. One of the things he said is that THE best directional drilling engineer in the business is at the helm of the relief well. So here’s hoping.

ETA: I found this video released by BP³ explaining (with animations) the drilling process for the relief wells. The narration isn’t exactly scintillating, but I think the animation can really help you visualize the process. I’ll admit, the thing I found most interesting was the enormous range in casing sizes that they’ve had to set. Casing gets set in layers; I’ve never seen this many layers, but then again I’ve never worked on a well at a depth of more than 10,000 feet.

Note: In the video, they refer to “MD.” That stands for “measured depth,” which is the length drilled. Measured Depth is normally not the same as Subsea Depth, since it’s really a measure of wellbore length rather than a quantification of depth below sea level. In this case, they mention a 13,000 foot measured depth, which may seem a little confusing. They’re talking about 13,000 feet drilled and not counting the additional footage that it takes just to get from the drilling platform at the ocean surface to the ocean floor, which is approximately 5,000 feet.

1 – Depth below sea level as measured in a line perpendicular to the surface of the sea.

2 – The proper name of our favorite underwater oil “volcano.”

3 – I consider this video propaganda-free, since it’s a good representation of the drilling process and at no point does the boring narrator compare directional drilling to “a graceful dive into the Earth’s hallowed seas of rock” or some shit like that.

I made it my business to listen to the President’s Oval Office speech from last night. I found it to be an intensely disappointing experience.

From where I stand, he had the opportunity to really strongly push the country in a new direction, particularly in calling for new energy policy. While he did say that new policy was needed – and at least he also gave a shout out to the need for stricter regulation – he didn’t present any kind of specific plan. And honestly I think that’s what we needed. Give us something, Mr. President – you mentioned the plan you came up with for energy independence as a candidate. Even retreading that would have been preferable to the nothing that we’ve got. I’m also mystified that he brought up the House passing the cap and trade legislation and didn’t take the opportunity to put pressure on the Senate for sitting on their hands. (The Senate: where good legislation goes to die.)

Of course, some of the responses to the speech have been pretty ridiculous. Like Sarah Palin telling Bill O’Reilly:

“Otherwise, Bill, we are going to be dropped to our knees and bowing to the Saudis and Venezuela and places like Russia, that will keep producing oil and petroleum products,” she said. Then “we will have to ask them to produce for us because we will still be dependent upon these sources of energy.”

We’re going to have to ask people to produce energy for us anyway; even if we drilled every available reserve tomorrow, the oil wouldn’t last long enough to transfer us over to a new energy economy. I’m extremely tired of the lie that domestic drilling will magically fix our “dependence” on “foreign oil.” Short of the god of your choice floating down to earth on a cloud made of cotton candy and pissing out an endless river of crude oil for us to dip in to, nothing is going to end our oil dependence until we build ourselves in to a society that no longer feels the need to waste it by setting it on fire.

Also, all the people going on about how the number one priority should be plugging the hole? No shit, really? Are we simply allowed to talk about nothing else until it’s plugged? Because standing anxiously around and staring at it, not daring to say another word is not going to make it get capped off any faster. Though I suppose if you’re suckling on the teat of the oil companies, that’s preferable to using that time to discuss alternative fuel sources.

I was even more disappointed that rather than address the specific policy issues and strike while the iron was hot, so to speak, the President devoted the entire end of his speech to praying. Maybe it’s a measure of how helpless he and the people caught directly in the path of this man-made disaster feel, that all they can think of is prayer. But praying isn’t going to come up with concrete policy goals that voters can get behind. Praying isn’t going to clean up the beaches or stop BP’s rather creepy attempts to shut out public observation of the cleanup. God apparently wasn’t with the men who died on the drilling rig.

We did this, and we need to fix it. Period. What Rachel said.

But I do disagree with Rachel about one thing. Last night, she said:

In the current setup we have in this country, the oil industry has everything going in their favor. They get all of the gains, all the profits from their incredibly lucrative industry. And the risk is always ours. It’s our American beaches that get doused in oil, it’s our American marshes that get ruined when something goes wrong, it’s our American industries that get destroyed when places where people make their livelihoods get polluted and made toxic.

It’s not just our beaches and marshes and livelihoods. As long as our demand for oil remains monstrous, as long as we lionize a business culture where the only responsibility that exists is to make money for the shareholders and damn the social consequences, we own a share in all of these disasters.