BP getting lash every which way till Sunday!

[Chimera]

Someone will have to start buying up BP stock soon to stop the slide in share price.

[Sully]

I don't think that anyone wants to buy into that liability.

[CARVtech]

the safety and preventative measures associated with deep water drilling are the same for shallow water driller more or less cause the legislation has not been reviewed in decades, because big companies like BP have control over these boards and comities that run the safety etc..

to put into perspective Stephon. if this happened near trinidad, you'll not be eating fish for prob a few years, and you wouldn't be swimming in at any beaches for months if not years, our natural ocean wild life would perish, the delicate reefs in tobago would DIE and along with the fish, turtles and most sea birds. TObago would not have blue water for years.. this would devastate our tourism and more importantly our beautiful invaluable natural environment. and thats just TnT, it would affect the entire Caribbean..

Your first paragraph:
ABSOLUTE BS...............

1- Fundamental differences in Deep and Shallow Water drilling when it comes to mitigation on risk. Risk specific to well control procedures. True the major secondary well control components are almost the same, but the operating practices, basis of design and control systems are worlds apart.
2- The GoM and MMS do not recognise the International Well Control Forum certifications that the rest of the world follow. The MMS requires a certification that is not nearly as intensive as the IWCF and it is a FACT that most Americans fail IWCF Certification. It is called IACD Well Cap.
3- The MMS, IADC, US Government Scientists, ISO, DNV and all of the other international and local legislative boards have little practical ability to keep abrest of Deep Water Drilling Technology. To say that BP or any other Major "have control" is pretty naieve and pretty stupid. The Majors are the ones developing the technologies, quantifying risks, designing 1st principle mitigations and publishing their research and derived methods. All these boards do, all they can do, is mandate or reccomend best practices one step behind the present technologies.

Your second paragraph:
ABSOLUTE BS......again.........

Trinidad is the site of two MAJOR, MAJOR incidents in the past 40 years.
One of the largest Oil Spills in then history took place off the East Coast during AMOCO's days. If you are old enough to have swam in the Manzanilla River as a child in the 70's it was standard practice to walk with pitchoil to clean off oil from the sand. Almost all of the Nariva Swamp was "killed" with oil, almost all of the brackish water breeding grounds for all the Fish was killed, the mangroves were devastated.
When T&T Government borrowed money from the Japanese in the late 80's to develop the Trintomar Pelican Field and kick off the Trinidad Natural Gas industry they made one of the most rediculous and fundamental errors in shallow water development drilling and took a kick which lead to a massive underground blow out that destroyed the field and the reservoir. The decidions that lead to the final error were systematic, well discussed, and in final conclusion WRONG! What happened there had the potential to kill everyone that was on board...................and the rig had absolutely no control of the situation after they closed the Diverter.

You and 1/2 the people openly discussing the DWH incident and the present spill in the GoM are just as clueless as all the bleeding hearts in the States that only want to get money out of misfortune.

The facts are pretty simple and fundamental:

If you drill the deepest, highest pressured wells in deeper and deeper water, you will eventually make the BIGGEST mistakes.
When you make those mistakes you will learn WHY, HOW, WHAT TO MITIGATE AGAINST, AND HOW TO MITIGATE.
To sit behind your computer and think that drilling a hole in the ground to 18,000ft while floating 5,000ft above the sea floor is any easy task you are about as DUMB as all the people that thought sitting on the Space Shuttle to ride a fuel cell into space was safe!

Lastly, all the talk about BP skimping on safety......................
The entire Drilling Industry survives on an ever increasing level of engineering and COST that the newer generations think they are capable of managing. They spend days, weeks, months and years in some instances risk planning and developing ideas that are sound but are economical. Hard lessons learned, like this one, puts them all back onto the drawing board and lets them know in a heart beat that doing it right can only be done by doing it right and doing it the first time. There can be no compromise. Again going back to the Space Shuttle, they flew well beyind the statistical prediction of a catastrophic booster rocket failure.............when it did happen though they learned pretty damned fast that the root casue was fundamental flawed engineering.

Hind Sight is 20/20 and BP are taking the wrap for an entire industry that places risk mitigation on equal footing as cost. Not by intent, but by the fact that whatever they do, has to be economical.

I am not saying that they are not at fault, they are. However I can tell you as an experienced professional that does exactly what they were doing, on a daily basis, they were not being blindly stupid and that they did not relax their safety standards. They made decisions based on real time information, relative to an agreed job plan, and they failed to identify the root casue of the problem they were having until it was too late.
I have worked for BP internationally for a number of years on more than one of their higher profile wells and I can tell you that BP is not a negligent gorup that uses financial power to break rules.

All these Americans blaming this one, blaming that one, blaming Obamo, the MMS, Transocean, BP................it is a sad situation, but it is laughable
All they want is to hold someone accountable, get paid off, obviously get the coastal waters cleaned and then get back to business as usual.
I gurantee you if this happened in the North Sea, Iraq, Iran, Mediteranian, South China Sea, Australia..............the average American would not give a flying F***.

[Damien]

Good read

[Rainman]

you know what surprises me?
the people who have the most opinions and theories are people who have never been on a rig or offshore platform and have absolutely no experience in the business. Just a bunch of bandwagonists armed with articles from the internet. If they are so concerned about the environment why aren't they saying "oh my, the poor dolphins" instead of "die bp, die" which, in my opinion is the real disaster here, the environment. Priority should be placed on clean up and spill containment, not placing blame! After the cleanup, investigations will be held, the root cause of the accident will be determined and the persons responsible will be held accountable. Before you all go shouting "f@ck bp" think about how much revenue the country will lose if bp closes down.

Your point is taken but ..... seeing that you have worked on rigs you are fully aware that they do cut corners. You say the income will be cut.... and that's with all disasters, but think about the persons who now have no fishing when fishing is all they know. That is one of the biggest seafood supply areas in America. The Barrier reef is dead dead dead.... the reality is if all industries closed and you had to live natural again we would suffer cause CARELESSNESS like this.

Obviously reading is not your strong point, nay, comprehension. As you would have read in my previous post; my concern is primarily about the environment. Yes corners are cut to make drilling targets, but that is irrelevant now and demonizing the same company charged with the cleanup effort is destructive and counter productive. The main focus IS and will continue to be the environment. The fishermen are impacted but this is the hand that we have been dealt at this time and as such must be controlled in order to return to a state of normalcy. ALL resources will go into the cleanup for NOW, investigations and the subsequent prosecutions will be handled after. What i meant by income will be lost is more of a locale issue, if bp is forced to cease operation in Trinidad (unlikely, but a possibility nonetheless) take the following numbers into account, bpTT processes approx 62% of the natural gas production of T&T, which is approx 26% of the Government's revenue, and contributes 14% to the TnT GDP. It also employs close to 600 local employees, both in-house and contractors.

[CARVtech]

fixed by your friendly mod

[Greypatch]

BP

Being Purchased

[snowman]

you know what surprises me?
the people who have the most opinions and theories are people who have never been on a rig or offshore platform and have absolutely no experience in the business. Just a bunch of bandwagonists armed with articles from the internet. If they are so concerned about the environment why aren't they saying "oh my, the poor dolphins" instead of "die bp, die" which, in my opinion is the real disaster here, the environment. Priority should be placed on clean up and spill containment, not placing blame! After the cleanup, investigations will be held, the root cause of the accident will be determined and the persons responsible will be held accountable. Before you all go shouting "f@ck bp" think about how much revenue the country will lose if bp closes down.

X2

[Alpha_2nr]

you know what surprises me?
the people who have the most opinions and theories are people who have never been on a rig or offshore platform and have absolutely no experience in the business. Just a bunch of bandwagonists armed with articles from the internet. If they are so concerned about the environment why aren't they saying "oh my, the poor dolphins" instead of "die bp, die" which, in my opinion is the real disaster here, the environment. Priority should be placed on clean up and spill containment, not placing blame! After the cleanup, investigations will be held, the root cause of the accident will be determined and the persons responsible will be held accountable. Before you all go shouting "f@ck bp" think about how much revenue the country will lose if bp closes down.

Well said sir.

[TriniVdub]

you know what surprises me?
the people who have the most opinions and theories are people who have never been on a rig or offshore platform and have absolutely no experience in the business. Just a bunch of bandwagonists armed with articles from the internet. If they are so concerned about the environment why aren't they saying "oh my, the poor dolphins" instead of "die bp, die" which, in my opinion is the real disaster here, the environment. Priority should be placed on clean up and spill containment, not placing blame! After the cleanup, investigations will be held, the root cause of the accident will be determined and the persons responsible will be held accountable. Before you all go shouting "f@ck bp" think about how much revenue the country will lose if bp closes down.

Your point is taken but ..... seeing that you have worked on rigs you are fully aware that they do cut corners. You say the income will be cut.... and that's with all disasters, but think about the persons who now have no fishing when fishing is all they know. That is one of the biggest seafood supply areas in America. The Barrier reef is dead dead dead.... the reality is if all industries closed and you had to live natural again we would suffer cause CARELESSNESS like this.

Obviously reading is not your strong point, nay, comprehension. As you would have read in my previous post; my concern is primarily about the environment. Yes corners are cut to make drilling targets, but that is irrelevant now and demonizing the same company charged with the cleanup effort is destructive and counter productive. The main focus IS and will continue to be the environment. The fishermen are impacted but this is the hand that we have been dealt at this time and as such must be controlled in order to return to a state of normalcy. ALL resources will go into the cleanup for NOW, investigations and the subsequent prosecutions will be handled after. What i meant by income will be lost is more of a locale issue, if bp is forced to cease operation in Trinidad (unlikely, but a possibility nonetheless) take the following numbers into account, bpTT processes approx 62% of the natural gas production of T&T, which is approx 26% of the Government's revenue, and contributes 14% to the TnT GDP. It also employs close to 600 local employees, both in-house and contractors.

CL financial contributed to a much larger GDP, yet we survived even after their downfall. So if BP were forced to cease operation, yes the country will feel it, but like always we will recover.

[Bezman]

i aint getting into who knows more about what, cause i dont claim to know a whole lot, but AFAIK the oil spill in trinidad was caused by two vessels colliding in a tropical storm off the coast of trinidad, not by BOP failure, so it was a controlled amount of oil that spilled) and the majority of the spill never came ashore, the environmental impact was immensly different, they towed the whip out into the atlantic where it sank...

and I am sure we will all see this go on to be bigger than any spill off trinidad very soon..

secondly as far as safety etc, why is it that BP is trying the same methods to stop a leak that failed decades ago, and why havent the relief and blow out preventative measures been advanced to a level where there are multiple blow out preventative valves and multiple relief wells/valves??

I may not be as knowledgeable as "you" but i do hear the experts speak on the subject on the news and reports and hear some of the same issues i have raised brought up there... I have read through the wikis and watch all the reports i can catch on cnn etc..

The way deep water drilling is done and the preventative safety measures but in place must be looked at. BP is being very guarded about the amount of oil leaking and only last week supplied the media with a high res video of the leak (it has since gotten worse as they cut the pipe to fit a new piece that will help in catching the oil)..

i know for you ppl in the industry this is very touchy as you feel ppl are attacking you (your professionalism) personally (as 7/10 of my friends work in the oil), but i do feel that BP should have had some disaster relief measures in place. Their numbers for worse case scenario of a leak were waaay off and the kind of money and technology being used here, i would think they would have had more than one way to stop it.. thankfully the entire way deep water drilling is done will change from this and we will nto have these kind of environmental disasters happening again.

just my 2c

[bushwakka]

and I am sure we will all see this go on to be bigger than any spill off trinidad very soon..

secondly as far as safety etc, why is it that BP is trying the same methods to stop a leak that failed decades ago, and why havent the relief and blow out preventative measures been advanced to a level where there are multiple blow out preventative valves and multiple relief wells/valves??

I may not be as knowledgeable as "you" but i do hear the experts speak on the subject on the news and reports and hear some of the same issues i have raised brought up there... I have read through the wikis and watch all the reports i can catch on cnn etc..

i know for you ppl in the industry this is very touchy as you feel ppl are attacking you (your professionalism) personally (as 7/10 of my friends work in the oil), but i do feel that BP should have had some disaster relief measures in place.

just my 2c

i'm sorry....what disaster relief measures could be in place for an unforeseen blowout? and blowouts are always unforeseen! There is very little knowledge or know-how of how to deal with oil-spills, because it is not profitable to invest in something so majorly that happens once in a blue moon......and the world does run on profit....don't make BP out to be some greedy demon when you yourself live on profit!

if you were at the helm of BP america right now, what would you do? Open up and let all the information spill out right away so that more uneducated people can point fingers and jabber nonsense about things they don't have a clue about?

No-one can say for sure here that any company would handle the situation differently.
Wr.t. to ur argument for redundant BOP's.....the BOP itself is a redundancy with multiple rams, it is not plausible to make redundant hydraulic systems and redundant battery systems and redundant everything....hell, might as well have a redundant rig drilling a redundant well the same time to provide relief in case something like this does happen right?

CL financial contributed to a much larger GDP, yet we survived even after their downfall. So if BP were forced to cease operation, yes the country will feel it, but like always we will recover.

bear in mind, CL was bailed out by the Central Bank...u think we gonna have enough $ in the coffers left for BP?

[Greypatch]

the company has lost over 95B USD since the rig incident

[Chemical]

I say bring in the Canadians ....especially from P/Canada

[Greypatch]

Why is BP important to the UK economy?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/10282777.stm

Its stock market value has fallen from about £125bn to about £70bn, which may make other oil companies think about making a takeover bid, although shareholders would be unlikely to accept an offer at the current levels.

[CARVtech]

i aint getting into who knows more about what, cause i dont claim to know a whole lot, but AFAIK the oil spill in trinidad was caused by two vessels colliding in a tropical storm off the coast of trinidad, not by BOP failure, so it was a controlled amount of oil that spilled) and the majority of the spill never came ashore, the environmental impact was immensly different, they towed the whip out into the atlantic where it sank...

Apparently I was misunderstood there so let me clarify:

I did not imply that BOP failure was root cause. I am simply sating that back then the volume of oil spilled and the documented environmental impact to the Nariva Swamp was highly significant relative to the incidents of the time.

Another misconceived notion stemming from the media is that the BOP failed and this is what caused the spill.
The fact is in deep water the BOPs are on the sea bed, allowing an expanding influx to enter the Riser above the BOP renders the BOP useless. If you look at the early pictures of the fire on the DWH you will see what is called the Diverter Overboard line blowing a flame. You will also see that just above the water line a fire ball around the riser. This is physical evidence of them having closed the Diverter on surface and trying to vent the gas out the side, the Diverter is not designed to handle much pressure (on that rig, with that riser probably 500psi. There is a seal on the Riser that allows the rig to heave, this seal is normally air actuated with 120 to 150 psi. If the internal pressure exceeds the seal activation pressure (remember it is air) the seal pushes back and leaks.................gas and existing flame = fire ball.
After they attempted to shut in at the Diverter the Riser seal failed (called the Telescopic Joint) and the whole closed system from sea bed became compromised.
The ROVs proved that 2 of the BOP Rams at sea bed were apparently closed at some point prior to whomever closed it dieing on the Rig Floor.

Procedure failed and allowed the influx above the BOPs. What is not known for certain is where the influx came from. It is thought that it came from a failed seal assembly just below the BOPs in the Wellhead.
What failed on the BOP is what is called the Dead Man System, which is exactly as it's name implies...................however, catastrophic failure before the BOP has a chance to function does not imply that the BOP is root cause.

secondly as far as safety etc, why is it that BP is trying the same methods to stop a leak that failed decades ago, and why havent the relief and blow out preventative measures been advanced to a level where there are multiple blow out preventative valves and multiple relief wells/valves??

I am not aware that they are using methods of the past that have failed. I can tell you that NO ONE has ever attempted to stop flow in 5000ft of sea water. Their method is technically sound. The problem they had with the failed methods so far are from what is called hydrate formation at those depths and pressures and temperatures.
The Blow Out Preventer comprises 5 Rams and 2 Annulars and an absolute minimum of 10 valves between them. Each has it's function and each function will have it's unique scenario.
A relief well is a well drilled that intersects the problem well bore at close to total depth. A relief well has to be drilled after the incident takes place. They are presently drilling two of them.................This is the best attempt at a permanent fix and even these fail..........hence they are drilling two of them.

The way deep water drilling is done and the preventative safety measures but in place must be looked at. BP is being very guarded about the amount of oil leaking and only last week supplied the media with a high res video of the leak (it has since gotten worse as they cut the pipe to fit a new piece that will help in catching the oil)..

i know for you ppl in the industry this is very touchy as you feel ppl are attacking you (your professionalism) personally (as 7/10 of my friends work in the oil), but i do feel that BP should have had some disaster relief measures in place. Their numbers for worse case scenario of a leak were waaay off and the kind of money and technology being used here, i would think they would have had more than one way to stop it.. thankfully the entire way deep water drilling is done will change from this and we will nto have these kind of environmental disasters happening again

BP has been streaming ROV Real Time footage from 12 ROVs in the water under the insistence of the President and his administration. This has been going on for weeks now.
The head of the MMS and the USCG along with BP and the US Government's team of independent scientists all knew that cutting off the riser would potentially reduce the pressure loss in the damaged area and increase the spill rate. It is why they waited and attempted other options before. There is a dedicated group trying to quantify the spill rate as there is absolutely no way for BP to know it and to be guarded about it. This team is using various models to try to simulate and predict a flow rate margin. There is no method to try to measure it.
The new piece is working, but they had problems cutting the riser and the seal in the new piece is not 100%. Some oil is being brought to surface, some is leaking still.

I am not touchy, nor do I think people are attacking. What is just plain irritating is listening to and reading when people make drastic comments, compile silly claims and propose that better can be done, or not enough being done..................simply from listening to the media and reading what someone else has to say.

How can you spend over 1 billion dollars, mobilize 4 drilling rigs (likely costing more than 1.75 million per day) and over 20,000 people in less than 4 weeks and note be prepared for a disaster? They are doing everything that can be done and they are being managed by the USCG directly, each step of the way needing to get approval.
How do you quantify what level of disaster you need to be prepared for?

Lastly, I guarantee you, HOW Deep Water Drilling is conducted will NOT change as there is little wrong with it. Each day we push the limit and each day we learn, it is one of those industries that never sleeps and never relaxes at the present limit............if it did we would all be riding bicycles.
What will change in the GoM is legislation and some requirements for hardware and their operating standards. IF this takes off to other places in the world is left to be seen.
It has already been pointed out to the US Government that the GoM Legislation and the regulatory operating standards are dictated to no obvious benefit. The method of control is archaic and places like the North Sea sectors of the UK and Norwegian oil fields are far more advanced in their design, execute, regulate, learn cycles.
The GoM is one of the last places in the world where the Operator does not have a dynamic opportunity to re-establish and elevate the standard. He is handed the rules and he has to conform....................their rules are not good enough as everyone is coming to find out.

[CARVtech]

Step aside from the DWH incident and the ongoing spill for a minute.

Ask yourself this question?

How come BP America is having so many problems in the United States, oil leaks in Alaska, exploding gas lines and deaths in Alaska, exploding refineries in Texas, blow out in the GoM and a massive ongoing oil spill?

They do not seem to be having problems operating in other parts of the world.

Hell let's assume they are a bunch of safety compromising penny pinchers, that their standard has to be dictated to them or else they are a liability................what does that say about the standards imposed elsewhere................they are not having problems elsewhere are they?

The fact is that because companies like BP, Exxon Mobil, Shell etc etc push the limit everyday they are in reality the ones who create the standards. These companies do not exist in isolation and neither are they now, they are all sitting together trying to help BP...............the best minds in the business are on the issue............the magnitude of the failure to date are not a reflection of the effort and competence, it is a reflection of the magnitude of the challenge at hand.

[AbstractPoetic]

Looks like actor Kevin Costner may come in to save the day. It's ridiculous how BP nor the government haven't a clue how to mitigate the oil spill.

Wednesday, Kevin Costner presented his oil spill solution to Congress and demonstrated his machine that separates oil from water with a 99.9% success rate. Actor, Kevin Costner said that he was inspired by the Exxon-Valdez oil spill in 1989 to come up with an idea that would safely separate oil from water, and over the years he has spent $20 million on the machine and the patent for it.

In May, BP asked for 6 of Costner’s machines to be flown to the Gulf to be tested. And now BP has ordered 32 more of the machines because they have an almost 100% success rate in separating oil from ocean water. The machines, marketed by Ocean Therapy Solutions suck up the oily water and recycle the water. 32 machines will process about 6 million gallons of water each day

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/deepwaterhorizon/7045250.html

[Bezman]

[Damien]

good video, thats where bp gonna get licks

[bushwakka]

well said CARVtech....i'd work with you anyday

Bezman, does ur vid say anything abt actually stopping the well? or does it just talk about efforts to mitigate the spill on surface?

If ixtoc is so parallel to the current disaster....whose fault is it really? the oil companies' or the US gov't?

once u stop to pick up a stranger begging for a ride in de night and he almost kill u....would u do it again? isn't the lack of oversight a major contributing factor as well?

the way i see it, more oversight would have at least preventing the use of a 'faulty' BOP...the surge would have still happened, but it would have been contained

[Bezman]

bushwaka its not my video horse

[Deepthoughts]

Wow scrolled through this thing to the end. The hardest thing is to give up economic security for environmental concerns. Its the same with the smelters in a way. We MAY need the increased industrialization, BUT will it be good for the country?

On another note it has taken them over 20 years but they FINALLY charged the people in the Bhopal, Indian chemical factory accident. YET the international company that OWNED the plant simply SOLD it to a local company right AFTER the incident. They effectively washed their hands of it and walked away, unpunished. This can happen ANYWHERE big multinationals live and work in Third World Countries.

DEFINITELY something to think about.

BTW oil spills HAVE happened here in T&T, its just not that "big a deal" made out by our media and our government: I remember in the 80's there was a well head explosion and acres of farmlands were blanketed by a thin coat of oil from the blowout. We always forget our history, small OR large.

[teems1]

http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com ... ankruptcy/

[kurpal_v2]

I thinks its discovery that has a special on the disaster right now(36 iirc on flow)

[crazybalhead]

I say bring in the Canadians ....especially from P/Canada

No thanks.

And BP pays my bills yes...I hope for one that they survive this period. What I hope is learnt is that our talented and experienced people stop this "we have to do what the GOM is doing" mentality.

[cornfused]

I thinks its discovery that has a special on the disaster right now(36 iirc on flow)

YES and with with 0 oil rig hours and 1 month oil experience , it is clear to me that there are very few who understand the magnitude of the disaster . Yes there was a BOP that had at least 6 valves designed to curb and stop the flow and threat of a Blow out and designed to work at about twice the depth of this blow out , but the electrical lines and hydraulic where cut at the sea floor before the operator on deck could activate them , 5000 ft below might as well be some where on mars , dark , pressure ice formations etc etc.

There tried a 4 story 280,000 lb containment dome that floated with the gas and hydrate crystals blocked the holes that would be use the "pipe off" the oil and gas , this also caused the dome to float off the sea floor.

After viewing that documentary I am sure that the best and brightest in terms of oil and deep sea services and oil pipe recovery are working around the clock on this disaster

[zcarz]

[Rallyfignis]

interested to see Costner's machine in action