I would like to present some factual information concerning the Deepwater Horizon rig and the MMS procedures involved in oil and gas operations, in this case offshore in the Gulf of Mexico (prompted by a prior diary by 'vets74', and prodded by reader 'Timaeus'). I hope to make the overall process a little clearer for y'all.
The Deepwater Horizon Disaster
I'd like to present some factual information concerning the Deepwater Horizon rig and the Mineral Management Service U.S. Dept. of the Interior procedures involved in oil and gas operations on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), in this case offshore in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM).
I hope to make the overall process a little clearer for y'all, hopefully adding to what many others have done so well.
There seems to be a lot of confusion over these subjects, although we, along with the rest of the universe, are slowly presenting an expanding body of public factual information about this incident. I have been researching MMS issues for around the last four years, ever since the "drill, baby, drill" types became vocal, doing their masters' bidding, with an eye to the manipulation of the MMS bid process. IE: the attempted stampeding of the bid process in order to lower/limit bid prices.
The issuance of the 'pending' and 'final' incident reports, here, and here by the MMS and US Coast Guard will of course finally clear things up eventually.
A good background read is an investigation (small 110kb .pdf) of a riser disconnect and blowout on a well not far from the Deepwater Horizon incident in the same MC area in 2000 (Mississippi Canyon block MC 538). In this man-made incident the BOP Blowout preventer (BOP) stack mostly worked, and the well flow was apparently very weak in comparison to Deepwater Horizon (only a few hundred barrels were released).
A great deal of data is fortunately publicly available from the MMS. But rather hard to interpret, since it is contained in various almost inscrutable database files (often ASCII), often without formatting information (EG: column, row, line placement and descriptions, context). These databases are of course designed to be viewed with appropriate software applications to present them easily, programs undoubtedly possessed by the MMS and oil industry players.
Rooting useful information out of the raw data is a PITA, researching the MMS data is rather difficult (to me anyway).
There will be no pictures here as this is my first diary and the whole pic uploading process is alien to me (in todays context, though I have been in what is now called 'high tech' and 'IT' since the mid '60's, was sending 'email' before most of y'all were born, heh).
If hotlinks were allowed no problem, but I don't have any of those 'photobucket' type things, and it would be rather time intensive since the only internet here is an ancient dialup (aarrrggghhhh). Research has been tough enough, since downloading MMS files (or anything else) is pure torture, especially after having experienced high-speedland elsewhere.
The specs, photos, and much info about the incident rig (and many others owned by Transocean) are on this Fleet Specifications Transocean Deepwater Horizon link, and here on Macondo Prospect, Gulf of Mexico, USA.
This is useful information about the sunken rig (vessel) owned by Transocean. contracted to British Petroleum for the initial exploration and well setting purposes (not at this time for completion and production purposes).
It was operated by Transocean and various sub-contractors, the 'hardware' as it were, for the purpose of drilling and temporarily abandoning two wells, pending well completion and production operations by others. The wells (A and B, of five ultimately permitted on this block) are on a GOM block acquired by British Petroleum at auction.
Another rig/vessel named "Marianas", not the "Deepwater Horizon", was scheduled to do the initial well drilling and abandoning (temporarily plugging, to await completion and production operations by other rigs at a later date), but scheduling demands slotted the Deepwater Horizon into the ill-fated assignment.
This well site was one of many MMS OCS bids won by BP in a scheduled lease auction (#206 on 19 Mar 2008), many other companies won other block bids in this same auction. These OCS auctions are planned in 5-Year OCS Leasing Program which governs the entire process of exploiting subsurface minerals and gas.
The well being drilled by the Deepwater Horizon particulars are as follows:
The assigned MMS OCS contract number is G32306. This contracted well site is located at GOM Central Planning Area, Mississippi Canyon Area, Lease Block MC 252. This block, MC 252, is 5760 acres in size (the most common block size in the GOM) at depths around 4900-5100 feet, there are many wells much deeper.
BP paid $34,003,428.00, a cost per acre of $5903.37, for this one block (among many others) in order to be allowed to exploit this block. Nine other companies bid on this block but lost out.
BP will also pay royalties and percentages to the MMS (U.S. government, we taxpayers) when production begins (well, maybe not in this case, it will be years before this one goes back online).
Winning auction bids (from qualified bidders only) for various OCS blocks offered by the MMS range from a few pennies per acre, to $53,313.06 per acre (like somebody paid more than $133 million for 2508.86 acres of block MC 20 in 1984, just think of the inflation adjusted price!) for the time limited right to exploit underwater real estate.
These auction bid amounts are of course based on the "willing buyer's" opinion of how much oil and gas a given block may hold, versus the anticipated costs to exploit it.
MC 252 had previously been under contract G18207 MC 252 to the Dominion Exploration & Processing Co. from July 2003 to June 2007, this lease was never worked, and expired in 2007.
BP (and partners) called MC 252 "The Macondo Project", which included other wells in other MC blocks.
This one was 1 of 5 well bores that were to be drilled in block MC 252. An oil company may drill as many wells as they feel necessary in an assigned/won block (subject to certain distance apart restrictions and MMS approval).
Preliminary exploration operations were begun on MC 252 back in the late 1990's. Geological and seismic data was gathered and analyzed by various other companies. This data, I presume, is mostly proprietary and traded for renumeration amongst the players in the 'awl bidness'.
Actual drilling operations on the first well in block MC 252 commenced last fall. Only one accident had been reported on the block (in Nov 2009) prior to this incident. It involved a roustabout falling off of a stack of drill pipe, he was evacuated to hospital.
The amount of oil and gas located below this MC 252 block and available to leak into the GOM is not definitively known; although BP, based on their winning bid amount, probably have a pretty good estimate that it would be productive, derived from the seismic and geologic data..
As an exploratory well, much data would have been logged (well log) as the drilling proceeded down, recording the various formations encountered, productive or not. The log is a detailed record of the geologic strata and conditions encountered in the drilling operations, based on observation and analysis of the drill cuttings as produced, and instrument readings gathered downhole.
Keep in mind that this (formerly hoped for) reservoir is located under almost 1 mile of seawater, 18,000 feet below the ocean floor (about 3 miles). It is below many geologic strata that may contain high pressure gas deposits, let alone the reservoir itself which is obviously under intense pressure.
An analysis of the MC 252 well logs would be quite interesting.
It might uncover evidence of a gas formation that possibly breached the borehole and caused the suspected "kick" that brought explosive gas to the rig drill floor, causing the initial explosion and fueling the blowtorching of the rig for two days until it sank 1500 feet from the wellhead. A "kick" is the unwanted intrusion of very high pressured gas or oil into the any part of the borehole.
If not controlled by the hydrostatic pressure supplied by the counter-weight of the heavy drilling fluids (muds) in the riser, or safety devices (BOP, etc.), the gas will expand and move rapidly to the open surface, then it is sure to ignite (explosions and fires are fairly common per incident reports).
The well itself might be thought of as a set of different diameter straws slipped one into the other (from several feet wide to just inches across), a large diameter at the seafloor, getting smaller as it goes deeper. Comprising the cut/drilled hole, installed casings, drill strings, toolheads, and risers, etc., attached by pipe/tubing to the rig itself, parts of it moved up and down and turned as needed, by the rig equipment-- the derrick/mast above the drill floor.
In the MC 252 reservoir, the total amount of productive formation may run into the hundreds of millions of barrels of oil and many Tcf's (trillion cubic feet) of gas available to leak into the GOM and the atomsphere.
Although the amount uncontrollably leaked will be just potentially a large fraction of that, as an equilibrium pressure will eventually be naturally reached after leaking enough formation fluids from the reservoir, unless the flow is stopped by human intervention. Hence the urgency in the capping/relief operations.
This leaked oil is a three dimensional entity, and the pictures of it on the surface just depict a very small amount of it. Given the many thousands of square miles of ocean now covered by the slick, that sounds strange, but the total cubic volume is distributed throughout the water column and not visible, and therefore an even more serious issue than realized by many.
I have had "my hair on fire" over this since a few days after the Deepwater Horizon sank. I realized, and predicted, that the growing and enormous amount of crude being released would eventually contaminate much of the Gulf of Mexico (and commented here on DK and elsewhere). And due to currents, winds and tides, would likely be picked up in the "Loop Current" and be carried to the "Gulf Stream". Whereupon it would then be transported by the Gulf Stream around the Florida peninsula and begin a journey up the East Coast and possibly as far as Ireland and the UK. Much as the Icelandic volcano ash is transported by the Jetstream over vast areas of the globe.
An allowance must also be made for the effects of the hurricane season which starts soon, let alone the average weather systems that occur in the Gulf mixing it around.
This indeed may be "Oilegeddon", though I fervently hope it can be resolved very soon.
I have spent much of my life on (and in ;] ) the bays and waters of the Gulf of Mexico and seen first hand (still have some Ixtoc tarballs in a jar of seawater from SPI) what such disasters can wreak, like Ixtoc I,
. Ixtoc I was an exploratory oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, about 100 km north west from Ciudad del Carmen in Campeche. On June 3, 1979, the well suffered a blowout and is recognized as the second largest oil spill in history.
.
Which, unfortunately, Deepwater Horizon may surpass in its effects upon many more people, economies, plants and wildlife, both terrestrial and marine.
This diary may be short a few supporting links or other items. If you need them, just ask in a comment, and I will root something out of my many saved data sources and browser tabs/history about these issues. Forget about pictures and video, I could steer you in the general direction of them, but can't efficiently process them from here in rural dialupland (FU Verizon!!).