DKos Boomers! Greetings! This is going to be a long, fairly text-intensive diary. Not a lot of pretty pictures. But then if anyone thinks any pictures from this mess in the last few days are pretty, they're sick.
BP is going to try to END this leak, probably this weekend. They're going to use a procedure called Top Kill. I'm writing this diary to explain that procedure so you know what to watch for in the next few days.
But there's a problem.
I DON'T UNDERSTAND IT!
GAH!
But let's face it. That's not that big of a problem. In terms of whether it will work or not -- whether or not it will stop this horrid leak, Comrade Fishgrease understanding this procedure is of zero consequence. None. It's not going to matter. There is, however, another problem:
NO ONE ELSE UNDERSTANDS IT!!!
INCLUDING BP!!!
BIGGER GAH!
Lets jump the bump and I'll see if I can confuse you even more.
In trying to explain Top Kill, and why no one understands it, I'll need to use some graphical representations -- diagrams. Problem: all of these diagrams are simply confusing vertical lines running down the length of the page. Not kidding. I've viewed a thousand well bore diagrams and completion diagrams and they're all the same. Vertical lines running down the length of the page. They make me want to puke.
Another problem is that the diagrams representing our exact, present Oilpocalypse wellbore setup are unavailable, represent conflicting information, or are provided by The Media, in which case they are what we in the business refer to as,
Fucking Wrong
As we proceed in the next few days (maybe weeks!) and MSNBC, CNN NBC CBS ABC and everyone else flash goofy, hastily assembled graphics on the screen in attemps to illustrate Top Kill, turn off your TV. Scenes from the movie, Napoleon Dynamite would be as illustrative of what is actually happening at the leak site, particularly this one:
Mud and Gas and Oil and Pressure and Holes and shit
I've watched very knowledgable people argue about which pipe or which pipe-within-a-pipe or which pipe-within-a-pipe-within-a-pipe at the BOP is leaking. They argue about it here at Daliy Kos and they argue about it at The Oil Drum and I assure you, DKos Boomers, BP engineers are arguing about it in Houston and in England. I don't know. They're not sure. And it doesn't matter. This is all one pipe. All one hole. There is 100% communication between each chamber in this hole. That means that a molecule of mud or oil or gas anywhere in this hole has an unblocked route to anywhere else in this hole. No one is certain where the openings between the chambers are, because this well is fucked up as a Christmas Turkey on the day after Christmas (FUCT-O-DAC). Some BP engineers may have a better idea of where the openings are than non-BP engineers, but no human being is sure. That makes arguing about this stuff silly. Stop it. Please, Sweet Sexy Jesus, make them stop it.
When drilling a well, heavy mud is circulated down the drill pipe and back up the annulus. The annulus is the area between the inside of the wellbore and the outside of the drill pipe.
Why don't they just fill the hole with mud and let it sit there? Why do they circulate the mud like that? It's because once they're into the producing formation, oil and gas ooze out into the mud, making the total column lighter and unable to contain the tremendous pressures in that producing formation. So they constantly circulate the mud back to the surface, where the oil and gas are separated out of it, it is checked for weight and composition, spiked with corrective additives, and sent back down the drillpipe. This is important! To be able to keep a well dead, YOU HAVE TO BE ABLE TO CIRCULATE THE MUD!
Look at that diagram above again. In performing Top Kill they're going to try to reverse the direction of those arrows (I think). That means we need to start calling it Kop Till or Till Kop or something. Fuck that. I'm kidding. It's still Top Kill. But listen; the BP engineers are getting about 3 hours of sleep a night and they're getting into arguments about terminology, about what to call stuff, and that's slowing things down and making mistakes more likely. Nothing is so complex and fucked up that engineers cannot make it more complicated and fuck it up worse. They don't touch the well itself (with this well, no one does, obviously). They talk about shit and draw shit and run models on computers. Yes. I know what you're thinking, DKos Boomer, and you are correct. We are fucked.
Back to business here. To kill a well and to keep a well dead, YOU HAVE TO BE ABLE TO CIRCULATE THE MUD! But where are they going to circulate it... TO? If they're going down the annulus with the heavy mud, and up through the drill pipe, where is the mud going to go? Where, DKos Boomer? I'm asking you because I don't know! And THEY don't know! Because this well is FUCT-O-DAC! And I can prove that this well is FUCT-O-DAC! This next sentence is important.
If they had a better idea of how Top Kill was going to work, they would have tried it long long LONG before now.
Any knowledgable persons disagreeing with me on this, I have to remind you that there are several cement retainers and plugs strung out down this hole and just because we assume they're leaking in one direction, doesn't mean they'll leak in the other. An analogy to this is that a check valve is always in failure mode unless you need it to fail. Anyone who has ever worked with flow and check valves and plugs and stuff wants to french kiss me right now because that statement is so true it is fucking beautiful.
And if they CAN circulate, and all the oil and gas-puffed mud goes out onto the sea floor, it might just open this leak up worse than it is now, ON IT'S WAY THERE! Meaning, if Top Kill doesn't work, it can make things much much worse. And they know it, too. I promise you DKos Boomers, they know Top Kill could make this leak worse and that it would leak in that worse fashion until the kill bores are completed and that could be a long time and they know that too.
I read on The Oil Drum, that BP engineers decided to try Top Kill because they found a way to read the acutal pressure on the wellbore upstream of any restrictions and found that pressure much lower than they had anticipated. Now, these are drillers. These are drillers telling us how to fix a problem that drillers swore up and down could never happen. A leaking well is not a drilling problem. They're not drilling right now. They're producing. As a production guy, I can tell you that this is a magnificent well. This is what we call a Barn Burner. I've estimated this well is leaking 16,000 BOPD. No one knows, but lets just say it's leaking A Lot. They're looking at Flowing Pressure. On a magnificent well like this, as soon as you shut it in (or stop its flow with mud -- same thing) it takes about a minute for the well to build up to stable Shut In Pressure, which can be much much more than its pressure while flowing. On a magnificent well like this, as soon as they start restricting flow, they'll immediately be looking at a Shut In Pressure very close to what it was when this well was brand spanking new. So flowing pressure is fully irrelevant and I think they know that and I think their being able to read that pressure was not chief amongst their reasons for deciding to try Top Kill. They're trying Top Kill because, like us, they want this nightmare to end and they're willing to roll the fucking dice here. That's. A. Fact.
While Top Kill is proceeding, dear DKos Boomer, over the next few days or even weeks, I want to caution you regarding a few things.
- Seeing an increase in the leak doesn't mean Top Kill has failed.
- Seeing the leak get smaller or even stop doesn't mean Top Kill has succeeded.
- Both could easily mean the opposite.
- Because this well is FUCT-O-DAC.
Okay.
Fucking Kevin Costner
If you love Kevin Costner and think he's trying to save The Gulf of Mexico because he's similar to Jesus Christ, you're going to hate my guts. I'm okay with that. Hate. Away.
Kevin's little infomercial for his device that he staged for BP, The Government, and Concerned Citizens and The Media down next to the Gulf this week is not the first time I've seen that device. It's not the first time BP or The Government have seen that device. It's just the first time The Media has seen that device. Kevin has been peddling that overpriced separator to Oil Companies and the Corps of Engineers and The Coast Guard for a few years now. They've told him they are not interested, for reasons too numerous to list here (suffice to say it is not a new idea). But now that there is a real disaster where he can peddle it in front of The Media and his adoring fans, he thinks he can force Oil Companies and the Corps of Engineers and The Coast Guard to buy it. Oil Companies and the Corps of Engineers and The Coast Guard have even released statements saying they're looking at it. Evaluating it. They're not. They're saying they are because they don't have time right now to deal with a bunch of rabid fucking Kevin Costner fans complaining they're not being fair to poor Kevin Costner, who is only trying to help. Kevin, fuck you. If Sean Penn were not down in Haiti holed up in a self-financed village of relief shacks, doing actual relief work and SHUNNING The Media, he would be down on the Gulf in a little row boat with a couple of lengths of absorb-a-boom, wringing a little oil at a time into a bucket. And he would be gathering more oil than you ever will, Kevin.
Prove me wrong, Kevin. Rent a boat and some skimming boom and hire some out-of-work fishermen and get your sick, opportunist ass out in the Gulf and start using your device to pick up oil... ON YOUR DIME. You do that and I'll eat my words. Until you do that, fuck off, go home and STFU.
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IMPORTANT!: slinkerwink has devastating diary up about lab work and how they're letting the fox guard the henhouse!
Why I Don't Give A D*mn About Rand Paul!
Not sure we can exempt labs that do work for BP and other big oil companies, but we can sure LET THEM KNOW WE'RE WATCHING!!! AND WE'RE NOT GOING TO LET THEM GET AWAY WITH ANYTHING!!!
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ANOTHER IMPORTANT UPDATE: Rei, who has become a good friend of mine here on Daily Kos over the past few weeks, has a beautiful diary up right now. Please visit it. I count on Rei for balance and I seek his reasonable opinions on everything I write about. Rei grew up in the Energy Business and he knows what I know: there are GOOD people in the Oil Business. We need them. They did not cause this disaster and most of them are as pissed off as we are. That includes a large number of BP employees.
The Spill, the Flares, the Oil CEO, and Me
