Boomeroomers! I'm going to use a little different format for explaining Static Kill than I did in explaining Top Kill... not that Static Kill is any different. Not that Static Kill is going to, like, work. It's not. What I'm going to to do is give you a Kossack's translation of yesterday's BP briefing. These briefings are basically conference calls. The various organizations in the News Media each assign the reporter they hate the most to call in to these and try to ask questions. There's one question per-reporter, per-call. So obviously no follow-up questions are allowed. If you were BP, you'd do it that way too!
If they allowed follow-up questions, they could get something like this:
REPORTER: "Last night, it was reported that there are oil and gas leaks in the newly-installed Capping Stack. Can you comment on that?"
KENT WELLS: "Those connections have been tested to very high pressures in the case of the capping stack we actually tested it to 15,000 PSI with water and with no leaks"
REPORTER: "You tested it at 40 degrees Fahrenheit?"
KENT WELLS: "No"
REPORTER: "That makes you look pretty fucking stupid, doesn't it?"
Now... Kent Wells is the fellow with BP who gives these briefings. My buddy Bob Cavnar calls them "McBriefings". Bob has a book about the BP Gulf Disaster coming out in October (Disaster on the Horizon - The Deepwater Well Blowout: What Happened and Why). If you want to know the whole truth, buy that book. I'm going to. Bob has explained intricate technical details in 30-second answers on Countdown, and explained them fully. Imagine what he can do with a whole book!
So let's get to my translation of yesterday's McBriefing. I'm taking my direct Kent Wells quotes from the Transcript -- PDF but if you want an accurate rundown on these briefings, you don't need the transcripts. Just go to the Daily Kos BP Catastrophe Liveblogs and look for BP Technical Briefing notes by a Kossack named Tomtech. What strikes me when I read Tom's notes, is that he is a natural-born journalist. He's a fine reporter. And while you're in the liveblogs, PLEASE REC THE MOTHERSHIP !!!!
Oh yeah... translations. Here we go:
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But as I said at the beginning, the well integrity tests, we've now had the well shut in for 12 days with no anomalies, and – and we just continue to gain more and more confidence as – as that goes on.
LOOSE TRANSLATION: Note we don't call the leaks on the two BOPs anomalies whereas everyone in the industry calls things like that pretty fucking signifigant anomalies. We're gradually spending less and less time broadcasting the leaks on the HC Connector, because they're obviously getting worse and I don't want any questions in these briefings about those leaks because it would be difficult to describe them as "inconsequential" like I used to. We've actually got Thad Allen believing those leaks are a good thing! I forget what we told him to get him to think that. Some horseshit. Thad's amazing. As are you people, you reporters, your having completely forgotten we have fucking leaks on our wellhead. Leaks on the wellhead! You let us call that "integrity". God bless you people. I love you.
We're going to – we're going to monitor pressures. We're going to monitor volumes that we've pumped. And looking at those in tandem versus what we would expect under different conditions, whether it's only going down the casing, going down only the annulus, or both, it'll give us some good insight.
LOOSE TRANSLATION: Here, there are two possibilities most likely as to where the flow is coming from, looking at it from the surface. At the base of the BOP, the flow is either coming from the space between two casings or the plug at the very bottom of the hole has given out and the gas is coming up the center-most casing... or the drillpipe... or there are five other liner hangers that could have gone to shit and the flow could be coming up the center-most casing... wait. I said there were two possibilities. That's like nine or something. Doesn't matter, because believe me here, there's NO WAY for us to tell where the mud is going once it enters the well during Static Kill because all we have to look at is pump rates, total volume and pressures. If you'd read Fishgrease's Booming The Top Kill back on May 21st, over two months ago, you'd have a pretty good idea as to what we're looking at because nothing downhole has changed unless we've actually made things fucking worse with this "integrity test". We can't tell a fucking thing. We're not flowing now, so the pump volume number is more accurate than with Top Kill, but that's not going to help us because we really really don't know what's below the BOP and can't figure it out by pumping into it. Well... we're not flowing now... much, I mean. If those leaks on the HC Connector open up worse while we're pumping mud then that would be fucked up. Or even more fucked up. However you want to describe it. We do have a pretty good idea where the flow is coming from because we completely left out the last liner hanger at the bottom of the hole. I don't mean we left it out of this conversation. I mean we left it out as in, we didn't fucking install it. So probably, that's where the flow is coming from. I mean.... DOH! If that's the case (it is), there's no way in fuck we can kill this well with Static Kill. That won't mean Static Kill wasn't a success. You'll note, earier in my briefing, I basically said we've put containment work on the back burner. You didn't react to that at all! It was like, containment? Measurement? What the fuck is that? So that's Static Kill, basically. It kills the media's interest in containment and total measurement. Sweet. Well, that, and we just had to squeeze in one final failure here.
END TRANSLATIONS
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Y'all Boomers be good. Be careful, too. I work in Oil & Gas, around wellheads and vessels with thousands and thousands of psi on them. But the most dangerous part of my job is when I have to drive on public roads and highways. Drive defensively. Lot of drunk Republicans out there.
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MAJOR UPDATE!!!! Check out Bob Cavnar's latest post on The Daily Hurricane!
100 Days of The Well from Hell
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