The Drilling Disaster Is Worse Than We Thought

By John Ballard

When I read anderson's post yesterday my first reaction was to blow it off as an exercise in frustration. This morning a tweet by Donna Brazile points to a letter dated yesterday from a couple of House Committee members (Waxman and Stupak) to Tony Hayward, CEO of BP pointing to an ominous scenario. This first comment at TPM was my inspiration to pay closer attention to anderson's post. .

The full letter (14 pages pdf) is worth a read as it is an excellent guide to the tech junkies that want to know exactly what happened on the Deepwater Horizon.

In the harsh spotlight of this letter anderson's post and link to Washington's Blog fairly sparkle with information and insight. 

I notice a Memeorandum link today -- I admit it: I was wrong to have supported Barack Obama, a headline making further commentary redundant, except to explain that the speaker was not someone entitled to cast a vote in a US election but a Conservative British MP. I see he resents the use of the term British in Barack Obama's mouth along with a string of other not-so-subtle diplomatic snubs.

His fondness for the EU is matched by his disdain for the United Kingdom. It�s not the diplomatic snubs that bother me: the dissing of Gordon Brown, the insulting gifts, the sending back of Winston Churchill�s bust. It�s not even the faux-anger towards the company he insists on calling �British� Petroleum. (No such firm has existed since the merger of BP and Amoco nine years ago. Thirty-nine per cent of BP shares are American-owned, and 40 per cent British-owned. The stricken rig in the Gulf is owned by Transocean, and the drilling was carried out by Halliburton, yet Obama isn�t demanding compensation from either of these American corporations.)

All these things are minor irritants compared to the way the Obama administration is backing Peronist Argentina�s claim to the Falkland Islands � or, as Obama�s people call them, �the Malvinas�. British troops were the only sizeable contingent to support the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have fought alongside America in most of the conflicts of the past hundred years. Yet, when the chips are down, Obama lines up with Hugo Ch�z and Daniel Ortega against us.

Et cetera, et cetera... I appreciate his bristling but it is becoming clear as the drama unfolds that the White House was aware from the start that (a) the magnitude of this catastrophe is much bigger than anyone imagined and (b) nothing is to be gained politically by grandstanding, knowing that a moment will arrive when much of the swelling public anger will be redirected at the mother country.

There was an old saying that The Sun never sets on the British Empire. Historically, Empire USA is a modern extension of the British Empire and we may be living the time when the sun finally begins to set on our part of the Dominion. This view of America as a crumbling empire is consistent with the message Ron has been sending for some time.

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The letter from Waxman and Stupak may be for "tech junkies" but I find it fairly easy reading.

The Committee's investigation is raising serious questions about the decisions made by
BP in the days and hours before the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon. On April 15, five days
before the explosion, BP's drilling engineer called Macondo a "nightmare well." In spite of the
well's difficulties, BP appears to have made multiple decisions for economic reasons that
increased the danger of a catastrophic well failure. In several instances, these decisions appear to
violate industry guidelines and were made despite warnings from BP's own personnel and its
contractors. In effect, it appears that BP repeatedly chose risky procedures in order to reduce
costs and save time and made minimal efforts to contain the added risk.

At the time of the blowout, the Macondo well was significantly behind schedule. This
appears to have created pressure to take shortcuts to speed finishing the well. In particular, the
Committee is focusing on five crucial decisions made by BP:

1. the decision to use a well
   design with few barriers to gas flow;


2. the failure to use a sufficient number of "centralizers" to
   prevent channeling during the cement process;


3. the failure to run a cement bond log to
   evaluate the effectiveness of the cement job;


4. the failure to circulate potentially gas-bearing drilling muds out of the well; and


5. the failure to secure the wellhead with a lockdown sleeve
   before allowing pressure on the seal from below. The common feature of these five decisions is
   that they posed a trade-off between cost and well safety.
   

�

Deepwater wells are drilled in sections. The basic process involves drilling through rock,
installing and cementing casing to secure the well bore, and then drilling deeper and repeating the
process. On April 9, 2010, BP finished drilling the last section of the well. The final section of
the well bore extended to a depth of 18,360 feet below sea level, which was 1,192 feet below the
casing that had previously been inserted into the well.

At this point, BP had to make an important well design decision: how to secure the final
1,192 feet of the well. On June 3, Halliburton's Vice President of Cementing, Tommy Roth,
briefed Committee staff about the two primary options available to BP. One option involved
hanging a steel tube called a " liner" from a liner hanger on the bottom of the casing already in
the well and then inserting another steel liner tube called a "tieback" on top of the liner hanger.
The other option involved running a single string of steel casing from the seafloor all the way to
the bottom of the well. Mr. Roth informed the Committee that "Liner/Tieback Casing provides
advantage over full string casing with redundant barriers to annular flow. In the case of a
single string of casing, there are just two barriers to the flow of gas up the annular space that
surrounds the casing: the cement at the bottom of the well and the seal at the wellhead. Mr.
Roth told the Committee that in contrast, "Liner/Tieback provides four barri ers to annular
flow. They are

1. the cement at the bottom of the well,


2.  the hanger seal that attaches the
   liner to the existing casing in the well,


3.  the cement that secures the tieback on top of the liner,
   and


4. the seal at the wellhead. The liner-tieback option also takes more time to install,
   requiring several additional days to complete.

Internal BP documents indicate that BP was aware of the risks of the single casing
approach. An undated "Forward Plan Review" that appears to be from mid-April recommended
against the single string of casing because of the risks. According to this document, "Long string
of casing ... was the primary option" but a "Liner ... is now the recommended option.")

The document gave four reasons against using a single string of casing, They were:

• "Cement simulations indicate it is unlikely to be a successful cement job due to formation
  breakdown,"


• "Unable to fulfill MMS regulations of 500' of cement above top HC zone,"


• "Open annulus to the wellhead, with "seal assembly as only barrier."


• "Potential need to verify with bond log, and perform remedial cement job(s)."

In contrast, according to the document, there were four advantages to the liner option:

• "Less issue with landing it shallow (we can also ream it down),"


• "Liner hanger acts as second barrier for HC in annulus,"


• "Primary cement job has slightly higher chance for successful cement lift,"


• "Remedial cement job, if required, easier to justify to be left for later."

Communications between employees of BP confirm they were evaluating these
approaches, On April 14, Brian Morel, a BP Drilling Engineer, e-mailed a colleague, Richard
Miller, about the options, His e-mail notes: "this has been [a] nightmare well which has
everyone all over the place."

Despite the risks, BP chose to install the single string of casing instead of a liner and
tieback, applying for an amended permit on April 15. The company's application stated that
the full casing string would start at 9 7/8 inches diameter at the top of the well and narrow to 7
inches diameter at the bottom. This application was approved on the same day.

The decision to run a single string of casing appears to have been made to save time and
reduce costs. On March 25 , Mr. Morel e-mailed Allison Crane, the Materials Management
Coordinator for BP's Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Exploration Unit, that the long casing string
"saves a lot of time ... at least 3 days. On March 30, he e-mailed Sarah Dobbs, the BP
Completions Engineer, and Mark Hafle, another BP Drilling Engineer, that "[n]ot running the
tieback ... saves a good deal of time/money. On April 15, BP estimated that using a liner
instead of the single string of casing "will add an additional $7 - $10 MM to the completion
cost. The same document calls the single string of casing the "[b]est economic case and well
integrity case for future completion operations."

Around this time, BP prepared another undated version of its "Forward Plan Review."
Notably, this version of the document reaches a different conclusion than the other version,
calling the long string of casing "the primary option" and the liner "the contingency option."
Like the other version of the plan review, this version acknowledges the risks of a single string of
casing, but it now describes the option as the "Best economic case and well integrity case for
future completion operations."

That description of shortcomings relating to "Well Design" is followed by similarly incriminating narratives regarding Centralizers, Cement Bond Log, Mud Circulation and Lockdown Sleeve.The letter ends with this open-ended and damning conclusion.

The Conm1ittee's investigation into the causes of the blowout and explosion on the
Deepwater Horizon rig is continuing. As our investigation proceeds, our understanding of what
happened and the mistakes that were made will undoubtedly evolve and change. At this point in
the investigation, however, the evidence before the Committee calls into question multiple
decisions made by BP. Time after time, it appears that BP made decisions that increased the risk
of a blowout to save the company time or expense. If this is what happened, BP's carelessness
and complacency have inflicted a heavy toll on the Gulf, its inhabitants, and the workers on the rig.