News from the Petroleum Front

There has been a lot of mis-information regarding the Deepwater Horizon disaster. I just ran into a site run by Dave Summers who (in his own words):

I have spent the last four decades teaching and leading research teams at the Rock Mechanics and Explosives Research Center at Missouri University of Science and Technology.

So he knows mining and engineering... Check out Bit Tooth Energy. His posts on the Deepwater disaster can be found here:

The Gulf of Mexico oil rig disaster
I am still travelling in the UK, and thus have not been able to follow, in any detail, the environmental disaster that is unfolding along the Louisiana coast, as the oil from the Transocean Deepwater Horizon fire and sinking spreads across the Gulf of Mexico.

However I thought that it might be useful to explain where part of the problem might lie, and so am going to repost one of the technical posts from the past, where I explain what a blow-out preventer is. Then I will add a couple of comments on why it might be that they did not stop the leak in this case.

The first update here:

Further comments on the Gulf of Mexico oil well disaster
The oil spill in the Gulf is continuing to get worse, and there are some questions that have been raised on what could have gone wrong, and how it can be fixed. I am in the same position as most, in regard to getting information � it comes from news reports, in the main. But there are some points that can be picked out as the focus of those reports switch to the impact that the oil is going to have on the coast and businesses that are going to be severely damaged. But there is enough information now available to draw some conclusions.

And today's post here:

Progress on the Gulf oil leak and comments on cementing pipes
BP held a press conference yesterday in which they reported on progress in trying to stop the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, following the blow-out and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon. The well was in the final stages of being closed down, after having been completed, so that the initial drilling rig could leave the site. This meant that the pipe that would ultimately carry the oil and gas to the surface, the production casing string, had been put into place. To hold that pipe in place, and to make sure that it is sealed so that no fluid can flow into the gaps between this tube and the rock walls left by the initial drilling of the hole, the casing had been cemented in place. I am going to repeat part of the post where I talked about that, to explain what this involves. I begin as the hole is still being drilled.

Dave mainly writes about Oil Shale but he is able to make deepwater drilling operations a lot clearer to me -- a good writer who knows his subject and is well connected enough to get the real data and not the media "talking points"