What is the Oil spill really costing us ?

[Cohort]

Myself being in the oil industry  ,i cant help but wonder about the real cost involved in this disaster.,
One thing we need to look at is at the depth of this well ,in the gulf of Mexico. This is some very old and very fine oil to be letting it go to waist like this. Obama in denying the Dutch to skim this oil ,and others to collect it is about the most stupid thing i have ever seen.
Fellow members here ,this is like letting gold dust blow to the wind , the refineing of this oil would more than pay for the damage and the clean up with plenty to spare .
Also ,this may be a cutting edge technology well ,but America is no stranger at drilling for oil i assure you of that.
There is a devise called a plug jet ,it is a very heavy and long needle like devise that will sink into the wells rat hole caseing  ,even with a flow chart like this.
Upon setting it off ,it would plug this well off like the wallet of a crooked preacher.  No mention of this devise ,or any help from companys like Boots and Coots has even been asked for ,or allowed.
Someone doesn't want this to stop is the only conclution i can see coming out of this for sure. The well manifold is in tact ,and that is what controls the flow . The BOP is only a safety devise and it may be gone ,but the manifold is what will turn the flow in on itself and allow you to change out a BOP if need be .
This entire thing smells like a rotten fish ,or politician to me ,and any other oil field worker watching this joke unfold.
Kudos to the Cajuns down there ,they have taken their fishing boats and made crude skimmers out of them ,and they are rakeing it in now.
You know what they say ? You just cant keep a good Cajun down !
So Mr. Obama,  i hoist my flag in honor of everything you say.

[Cohort]

Companys that could stop this within 24 hours if they are allowed to .

Boots and Coots
Cudd Services
Brown and Root
BJ Services

To name a few ,and NO ONE puts a BOP on upside down ,it is a worm proof installation. Unless you can mate up a 12in.  flange with a 22 in.  flange ,its just is next to impossible without you tampering with the flanges in the first place.
NOTICE ,no mention to the lyman what a well manifold is !

Well choke manifolds folks ! As in choke off the flow ! And the photos show the valves in tact and servo operated ,as well as the manual over rides.

http://www.glossary.oilfield.slb.com/Display.cfm?Term=manifold

http://www.nov.com/Drilling/Drilling_Pressure_Control/Manifolds_and_Flowheads.aspx

http://oilgasglossary.com/choke-manifold.html


Duuuh !  if they were able to even try and pump cement into this well ,they had to close it off first or the cement would have come out with the pressure of the flow and all that oil with it.
CHOKE is the key word here ,as in chokeing off the flow ,the cement would  over ride the well pressure and flowed downward instead of out .
Remember ,they did try and cement this well ,and they had to stop the flow to do that first.
Common sense folks , unless they didn't care about all that cement and golf balls flowing right out of the well with the rest of that trash .
Its called capping a well ,and its been done for over 80 years now with wells a lot worse than this one .

[Empty Quiver]

Right up front I'm gonna say I don't know crap about the oil industry. I wondered all along how they were gonna pour anything into a flowing pipe. Your description makes sense with what I see on camera.

I have replaced valves on FULL anhydrous ammonia tanks, and on a 28000 gal fertilizer tank that the valve was torn off of. There was no way in hell those were going to be capped off by pouring something in it, the stuff would wash out as fast as you put it there. I screwed open valves into place then shut the valve. The flow wasn't a factor as long as the valve is open.

I can envision your putting a thin probe right down the casing, who cares if it is 700' long then swell that thing up and ruin the flow that way. Like a giant pipe plug you would use to stop a sewer pipe with.  I cant believe that in the last month someone can't build a valve that can be attached over and around that flange. Cinch it down tight and close the valve.

I'm willing to bet that there are two farmers in every county in the U.S. who could get this thing plugged by now. Given the cash already wasted and the future profits, as motivation, it would be over. I cannot believe there is not a single oilfield worker with ACTUAL experience plugging something like this.

Yeah its deep, probably a real pain to work using robotic controls. But I'll bet that killing the drilling industry will sure boost profits throughout the industry,. BP will end up being bought and sold until the original investors are lost in the shuffle and are once again in charge. Worst case scenario they build solar collectors to fill a government contract for even bigger money. 

The taxpayer will foot every last bit of the bill plus interest and graft. Count on it.

[Cohort]

Ill admit i know nothing about farming ,but as you pointed out the principal is the same being mother nature's kitchen. And at last count i haven't received a memo from her saying anything has changed there at all.
I wrote this on the Fox forum only to be attacked by trolls from every corner of the globe who knew nothing about oil production ,only that i was making Obama look bad .  I knew that in this place the members here have a high degree of intelligence ,and would understand what it is i am saying. And that you would appreciate the links to what a well choke manifold is ,rather than have CNN tell you whats going on here .
Its simple little kid  ,water hose in an old pipe full of mud engineering at its best .
And we have plugged wells down as far as 3900 feet in the Bering Straights ,in rough seas with a plug jet. I myself have set the charges that expand the plugs.

This thing expands 10x the size of the casing ,and if needed it can perforate that casing driving anchors into the rock formations around it .
Yes it ruins your well ,but with directional drilling you can go around the jet and continue with your hole and production .
If any of you are old enough ,do you remember the old super balls ? When you bounced them on asphalt the rubber would come apart because it was expanding outward from being highly compressed.
Do this on a scale 100x that effect and guess what you see ?
40 feet of this happening in a 22in. casing ? What happens then ? That well has a very bad case of constipation .                                                  

The trouble i see here is ,once more this President is not giving the great American Industrial Might and know how the respect it deserves.
America is light years ahead of any other Country in many areas  ,includeing oil exploration and well control.
Baker Hughes was doing this as far back as the 1960s , and all a robot has to do is guide the jet into the hole.
The manifold alone would stop this well from being a free flow  , and they had to use it to pump in that cement ,so they have tattled on themselves in the hopes we in the industry will shut up and go away.
But i see Americans loosing their jobs  ,and an entire way of life dieing along that coast ,and we do not do business like that and never would.
You know ,we live there also ,and we eat the food from those waters right along with the rest of you .
For the media to think ,or say any differently  ,is like saying the pilot of an airplane thats going down nose first is some how going to escape the crash .

That pilot is the first one to be involved in that crash  ,so he is going to do what ever he can to save himself and that airplane .
Its the same thing with the American Oil Industry i assure you .

[hillbill]

cohort said"this whole thing smells like a rotten fish"? umm id have to agree.is it possible the present administration is doing everything they can to to keep this crisis goin to further their adgenda?anyone that wants to help or try to help or has  any kind of solution is dismissed.i see them useing this to stop all deep or shallow water drilling period.anybody else get that feeling?

[mechanic]

cohort said"this whole thing smells like a rotten fish"? umm id have to agree.is it possible the present administration is doing everything they can to to keep this crisis goin to further their adgenda?anyone that wants to help or try to help or has  any kind of solution is dismissed.i see them useing this to stop all deep or shallow water drilling period.anybody else get that feeling?

+1

[Cohort]

Well ,there are five closure ,or routing gates on any modern manifold for this size well. One of them is at sub surface manifold level.
Meaning one is down in the casing itself ,and would 99.9% of the time be the functional gate for closure.
A BOP is only a quick response ,automatic choke safety devise ,that allows you to close in a well after a blow out has occured.
Being set above the manifold ,that tells you the manifold is the real duck here ,and the BOP is being over rated in order to drag this thing on without the people being educated ,as to the real use of a BOP.
If an over load ,or an event like this occurs .The BOP is the shear off devise leaving the manifold in tact .
Then guys like John Wayne in the movie Hell Fighters ,come in and shut in the well head.

[saddlebum]

Cohort;
I agree with you all the way. I roughnecked for 10yrs in Wyoming and Montana and the way they have handled this blowout sure seems like amateur hour to me. Those ridiculous attempts with the domes just made me shake my head in disgust. You don't have to have an engineering degree to know that was a waste of time. Especially when the riser pipe is less than half the size of the casing. If they don't have any drill stem to deal with then they could run a plug in the hole a short ways and stop the flow. Like you said they would have to do that anyway to cement it. Just like abandoning a non-producing zone. Set a plug above and below the perforations in the casing and pump cement.
I have wondered why the BOP and manifold didn't work and thought maybe they were damaged when the casing from BOP to surface went down with the rig when it sank. I'm still not clear on whether there is drill pipe in the hole.
When I heard a roughneck claim that BP ordered the Horizon crew to use sea water instead of drilling mud for circulation, I really blew my top over that. Thats just insane to me.
One things for sure, Obama will milk this for as much political capitol as he can get for his nation killing energy bill. Proof of that in his oval office speech. He and Soros and the rest of the progressives see this as an answer to prayer,(if they prayed), to help them burn down America. I have heard people talk of conspiracy and the way this whole thing has been played out from before the blowout till now, it sure makes a fella wonder. Are they all that stupid or is it something else??  Really good timing too for the progressives.     

[Mikey]

Guys:  don't you realize the sole reason the d-rats haven't let the private market control the flow and recapture oil is so that it will worsen and consequently cost more and more to clean-up and repair and they can go for individual $20 billion dollar shots at a time to help with this or that; and have us pay for it.  They don't want it fixed by the industry - they want to control the 'fixing' process themselves and continue to dig into our pockets for $ whenever they want.  He has already sent 17,000 federal personnel down there - what the hell for, to bring in gov't money or to secretly stage military forces to quell the immigration 'problems' a bit further west...... 

Also, obama is surrounded by chigago idiots - the worst oil problem they have ever had is salad oil on a white shirt.  There is simply no way these liberal idiots are either capable of thinking the problem out to allow private industry to fix the problem or are going to recommend someone good enough to do it.

And Fienstein, the guy who is going to pay out the $20 Billion said that the reason the gov't is doing it is because "although BP has put in a superb effort to control the spill and has begun to reimburse people and municipalities for their losses, the gov't needs to get in there and make sure these people get the $ they need in a hurry" - which means the gov't is going to give it away faster than you can imgaine....... And he was sent there by the prez of the us to get this job done and that is his authority and yada yada yada and how much $ do you want (to vote for us).........

[Ron 1]

  what is the spill costing us???
 
fish/turtles/shrimp/birds/ducks/dolphins  i could go on and on  oh and the beaches we used to swim there is just a start. how many miles of shore line?  better qeustion ? what isnt it costing us!
          rw

[Cohort]

Saddlebum ,you set forth a very good argument on this . You see now the oil industry is finally speaking out ,and we are not going to let this Kenyan make us out to be as incompetent as he is.
SB ,it would seem to me that no drill stem ,or collar is in the rat hole ,or the drill stem casing or they could not have been able to close off and pump cement !
Varco is saying they had just finished tripping when the explosion occured here ,evidence from their Totco log shows they had reached the formation and had cleared the well head of any drill stem ,and the rock bit was out of the hole by then.
Heavy mud was being pumped in to control the flow ,and the BOP was set and active.  All the oil and pressure was being routed to the tankers thru the manifolds ,and it was all so text book it couldn't have gone wrong at that point.

You bring up a damn good point here ,if they were able to Perforate , they would have been able to control the flow its that simple.
If you drilled in Wyoming ,are those not some very deep wells ? im thinking they are at least 12,000 ft wells . It would take a Diesel Electric Rig to even touch that oil up there.
8,000 feet is very high pressure on even a shallow well . And folks ,if your flowing oil ,you have reached your objective period.
And as SB has pointed out there is no reason that this rig could not have simply closed off the well head and have been done with this nightmare.
SB ,must have been a Driller ,or a Tool Pusher , I am a Company Man . SB knows what that means here ,and he is very qualified to comment on this disaster .
In fact ,i bet he could have this thing shut in and producing before i even got out of my dog house if he were on this site.
In the normal chain of command, SB would tell me what he needed to produce MY companys well . I in turn would do what ever he told me to get for him ,or what he needed.
SB is like a Master Sargent or a Gunny in the Military . I may be an Officer ,but his word is gospel ,and until he hands me the keys its his well.
And a major company like BP ,does not allow a joke to be in his position AT ALL.
SB ,i smell a rat and i always will here , and you know what your crew would be doing with a rat out there on that platform.
I hope a rat can swim is all i have to say.

[saddlebum]

All the wells I worked on were 15 to 25,000ft wells in Wyoming and 8 to 12,000ft in Montana. I didn't get all that far up the ladder in my years in the oil patch, but I know enough to know there is too many things wrong with this mess. I have worked on high pressure natural gas and oil wells. Some with H2s poison gas so bad that we had to call in Cud Pressure Control for total containment and control of the well with gas mask stations everywhere and safety guys waiting off to the side to go in and drag off casualties if necessary. One sniff at ten parts per million and your dead. After a safety assesment by an oil field safety company on one well they figured we could lose three men on that well. Fortunately we beat the odds on that one. I have never been on a well that got completely away from us, but have had some close calls. Some mud and oil baths when it was coming back at us. I'd like to have a dollar for every 100lb sack of bentonite I packed out to the mud tanks to mix a "pill" and pump it down hole when the pressure started coming on hard and fast. I know a little about high pressure wells. I have never worked offshore with a wellhead depth of 5000ft so there are some aspects of this well I'm not familiar with. BUT DANG IT !!  I'm having a hard time finding anything good to say about how this played out. Except in the interview I saw on TV with some rig hands. It sounded like they tried to do the job right but had to do what they were told by BP. The opposite of the way you described the process in your previous post,(the way it's supposed to be). I was mad at the Horizon boys at first until I heard about BP's envolvment and Horizon's judgment being overridden by some office boy from BP. NO OFFENSE !

I have to wonder if we will ever know the whole truth about what happened and why. Or why they are blowing it now on capping and cleanup. This whole thing is either very idiotic or very sinister. Oh hell, it's probably both.

[zacharoo]

I am a cajun and have had cried my eyes out. We are about to loose a way of life that GOD HAS BLESSED US WITH!!!  I am a diaabled ex salt miner who used to look out to Vermillion Bay before going under ground. All my family are hunters and fishermen. My wife's family is from here and are fishermen and off shore oil men. OUR WAY OF LIFE IS LEAVING US!!!! Our FINE PRESIDENT IF THAT IS WHAT HE IS !!!  DOES'T CARE!!! His main contributer for his campain was BP!!! Look it up!!! If we don't get God back in our lives soon we are doomed !!! This is a Cristian Nation with a Moslem at it's head, that makes no sence!! YOU CAN HAVE YOU CHANGE. I AS AN AMERICAN WANT TO SAVE MY LIFE, LOVE ,GUNS AND FREEDOM!!!

Keep your gun and your bible close. The Bible to protect your soul and your gun to protect the ones you love!!  God bless you and your's. Forgive my rambling but I am fed up!!

Zacharoo

[Cohort]

God Bless you Cajun , your inspiration in the face of the worse attack on you in your people's history ,Has NOT gone without notice .
Your Courage is what you have given the rest of us at a time when it looked as if we had none to give.
We know who is responsible for this and why , they have not fooled a single one of us as you can see in this post.
And trust this when i say we also know that it will not be to far off when it is we who are the target as well.
You will get back the wonderful things you shared with the rest of us. A life without your input ,and your great culture isn't a life worth living .
And it sure isn't America ,The land i grew up in even out here in the hard NM Deserts.
It isn't about Capitalism Libtards  ,its about America . Most Americans i know are not the rich ,greedy ,self absorbed  people you think we are .    

Only you would know about those vises ,we prefer to pass on your sins.
We carved this Nation out of the rock it was made of.  And we buried our children along the way ,and we never asked you for a damn thing while doing it for you also.
But we were happy without you ,and your trying to take all we have and more . AND THAT WILL NOT BE TOLERATED I ASSURE YOU.
Cajun they have pushed to far on this one  , and their lies fall on deaf ears now .
Better to die with a sword in my hand  ,than with shackle's around my feet.
Spartacus .

[saddlebum]

If your looking for the oil conspiracy, try this. It was explained better on the Glenn Beck Show but you get the idea. Obama's Big Oil !!

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,595042,00.html?mep

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,594902,00.html

[Cohort]

Just in :

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/06/22/federal-judge-blocks-obamas-offshore-drilling-moratorium-gulf-mexico/

Way to go ,slam down everything this Kenyan does !