Experts: “Very high level of concern for the integrity of the well”

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Experts: “Very high level of concern for the integrity of the well”; “That’s all people are talking about”By oilflorida, on June 20th, 2010
Share1714retweetOil spill containment efforts could be putting strain on damaged well, New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 18, 2010:

As BP and the government have plotted ways to shut down the renegade oil well in the Gulf of Mexico or contain its spewing oil over the past two months, their options have been limited by concerns about the potential for blowout in the underground portion of the well.

In a well of questionable design with a questionable cement job that’s gone through a major explosion, too much pressure on the well, could trigger a rupture, sending oil pushing through fissures in the rock of the ocean floor and bubbling up through the seabed, where it can’t be contained.

That’s why BP abruptly stopped the “top kill” efforts to seal the well May 28 after the company previously had said the procedure would continue for a few more days. It’s also why the company is continuing with efforts to contain the oil flowing out of the well rather than seal the well outright by adding another blowout preventer on top of the malfunctioning one. …

U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen acknowledged as much at a briefing Thursday.

“One thing that nobody knows is the condition of the well bore … We don’t know if the well bore has been compromised or not. One of the reasons we did not continue with top kill at higher pressures, there was a concern that if we increased the pressure too hard it might do damage to the casings and the well bore. What we didn’t want was open communication of any oil from the reservoir outside the well bore that might get into the formation and work its way to the sub sea floor and then result in uncontrolled discharge at that point. …

“We don’t know exactly the condition of the well bore …That’s the reason we didn’t go … to excessive pressures on the top kill and decided that we’d deal with containment and then go for the final relief well.” …

The integrity of the well has become a major topic of discussion among engineers and geologists.

“Everybody’s worried about all of this. That’s all people are talking about,” said Don Van Nieuwenhuise, director of geoscience programs at University of Houston. He said the things that BP has being doing to try to stop the oil or gain control of it have been tantamount to repeatedly hitting the well with a hammer and sending shock waves down the pipe. “I don’t think people realize how delicate it is.”

“There is a very high level of concern for the integrity of the well,” said Bob Bea, the University of California Berkeley engineering professor known to New Orleanians for investigating the levee failures after Katrina, who now has organized the Deepwater Horizon Study Group. Bea and other engineers say that BP hasn’t released enough information publicly for people outside the company to evaluate the situation.

Florida Senator Bill Nelson also expressed concern. The Democrat sent BP a letter asking for information and documents relating to any breaks in the well casing beneath the sea floor, any monitoring that BP is doing of the structural integrity of the well, any monitoring of the nearby sea floor for oil leaks, and whether any oil or gas has escaped beyond the boundaries of the casing.

BP spokesman Toby Odone said Friday his company can shed little light on the subject. “We don’t know” anything about the condition of the underground portion of the well, Odone said. “We don’t know whether the casing inside the well is damaged.”

When wells are drilled, engineers send links of telescoping pipe down the hole, and those links are encased in cement. The telescoping pipe, called casing, unfolds like a radio antenna, only upside down, so the width of pipe gets smaller as the well gets deeper.

The cement and layers of casing are normally quite strong, Van Nieuwenhuise said. But with the BP well, there are several weak spots that the highly pressurized oil could exploit. BP ran out of casing sections before it hit the reservoir of oil, so it switched to using something called liner for the remainder of the well, which isn’t as strong. The joints between two sections of liner pipe and the joint where the liner pipe meets the casing could be weak, Van Nieuwenhuise said.

Bill Gale, an engineer specializing in fires and explosions on oil rigs who is part of Bea’s Deepwater Horizon Study Group, said the 16-inch wide casing contains disks that are designed to relieve pressure if necessary. If any of those disks popped, it could create undesirable new avenues for the oil to flow.

Bea said there are also concerns about the casing at the seabed right under the blowout preventer. …

In an answer to a question, Bea said, “Yes,” there is reason to think that hydrocarbons are leaking from places in the well other than the containment cap.

“The likelihood of failure is extremely high,” Bea said. “We could have multiple losses of containment, and that’s going to provide much more difficult time of trying to capture this (oil).” …

Bea said BP isn’t sharing enough information for others to know. If there is oil and gas escaping from the sides of the well, it could erode the sediments around the well and eat away at the support for all the heavy equipment that sits above. Bea said reports that BP is using an inclinometer [to monitor the blowout preventer's tilt] is significant news. “It tells me that they are also concerned,” he said.

http://www.floridaoilspilllaw.com/experts-very-high-level-of-concern-for-the-integrity-of-the-well-thats-all-people-are-talking-about

[Hatha Sunahara]

I have been reading Bob Chapman's latest International Forecaster (6/19/10). He has an interesting perspective on this oil well disaster. Here's an excerpt from his newsletter dealing with the oil spill:



The President's response to the oil spill, and that of BP, have been virtually non-existent, despite many doable fixes, and those doable fixes would include the fixes which could not be implemented due to a total and intentional lack of preparation for just such a disaster, which lack of preparation was of course allowed by the Illuminist marionettes in our environmental regulatory agencies in charge of off-shore drilling who are in bed with big oil. This lack of response should not come as a surprise, as it is obvious that they were told to delay the implementation of any real solutions, and to deceive and obfuscate the truth about the extent of the oil leak and its potential for destruction, as instructed by their handlers in the Shadow Governments of the world, mainly Rockefeller and Kissinger for the Joker, and Rothschild, Zbig and the Black Nobility (especially the British royal family) for the BP executives, all in a coordinated, conspiratorial effort.

And no wonder. About 30% of our domestic oil production comes from the Gulf of Mexico. In addition, you might note that we have a multi-billion barrel, mega-oil field off the coast of Gull Island, Alaska, where an immense underwater oil field, far larger than any of the oil fields in Saudi Arabia, will now lay dormant for the foreseeable future. This BP disaster is really just another evil, twisted and deceitful Illuminist machination intended to, among other things, control our supply of domestic oil, without which our already floundering economy cannot function. This is how they intend to take us into a so-called "peak oil" situation, forcing oil prices to skyrocket so that people will give up the freedom of their cars for public transportation, and to reverse the population flow by forcing people out of suburbia into urban centers where they can be more easily controlled. This is a longer term purpose of the Illuminati, which they will implement after they have impoverished the world with their upcoming economic takedown-catastrophe to establish their one-world fascist state. They will use so-called "peak oil," and what we could term "peak food," as their final blow to bring you to your knees so you will beg for their one-world police state, or so they think.

The concept of "peak oil" as the outgrowth of oil becoming more difficult and expensive to extract is a total fraud. There are tens of billions of barrels of cost-effective oil awaiting extraction around the globe, much of it within the US (i.e. Gull Island in Alaska and the Baaken in North Dakota and Montana to name but a few), but none of these huge oil reserves are being exploited sufficiently if at all, with the idea being to create the appearance that we have entered into a "peak oil" situation. The difficulty and expense of extraction is a deceitful excuse being given to cover up what is really happening to cause so-called oil "shortages."

The real cause of these "shortages" is the ongoing suppression of oil extraction from many known mega-sources of cost-effective foreign and domestic oil by withholding investment into exploiting these mega-fields and by creating environmental disasters to steer the people away from either promoting the exploitation of these mega-fields (i.e. the BP disaster), or by steering them away from promoting cleaner and more cost-effective sources of energy (i.e. the Three Mile Island Disaster, yet another Illuminist sabotage special). You might note that the Three Mile Island disaster was said to be caused by a design flaw. Yet this project had twin-reactors with identical designs, and the remaining reactor has operated flawlessly for over 30 years. We also have to wonder if Chernobyl was not a refilled Illuminist prescription for suppression of nuclear power. You might also note that France operates almost exclusively on nuclear power. And they know what to do with their waste. It is called "reprocessing" of nuclear fuel. So the next time you hear one of your Congress Critters wailing and complaining about the economic and environmental cost of creating some nonsensical nuclear waste storage facility in a mountain somewhere, you should laugh in his/her face. We also note that all the environmental Nazis are funded by big oil and the Illuminist tax-exempt foundations.

They protest whatever they are told to protest by the Illuminati, such as nuclear power, or off-shore drilling, or exploitation of natural resources no matter how reasonable the terms. Anything to control the supply of resources with the ultimate objective being to enslave the public to Illuminist interests.


From my own experience I am inclined to see this oil spill the same way Chapman sees it. People who are deemed to be 'experts' are selected for public exposure in the media for their obeisance to authority and support of their bosses agenda. There is always diversity of opinion among experts, but the media only covers those experts who are friendly to the agenda of the controlling power.

In my business career, I've sat in meetings looking at the 'experts' present, and it became obvious after just a few observations that the agenda they were supporting was the one that everyone had to adopt--that was the decree of the controllers. Those who attended the meetings were of two varieties. The ones who went along uncritically because they knew it was good for their careers, and those who were skeptical who learned to contain their skepticism because they knew it was bad for their paychecks. The repeated message (and training) was--you go along to get along, and if you disagree shut up.

I think the scare tactics--creating the imagery that the earth will crack open and release a sea of toxic oil and gas comes through loud and clear here. We are supposed to be scared. We are being primed to pay more for oil, and to not object to carbon taxes, and whatever else is in the agenda. It may very well be that BP is allowing the uncontrolled flow to continue (with support from the experts) because this is good for their long term profit agenda.

Hatha

[Libertytree]

Hatha, It's not that I really disagree with anything particular, as the modus operandi for the PTB is surely complex and serves many of their objectives simultaneously. Though, what I don't see echoed in the MSM is any type of fear whatsoever, the general population is very much complacent and positive about the oil spill.

The only place I see any fear promoted is the very small % of us that key in on such events via the net. I use the term "fear" begrudgingly, as sometimes the "truth" is exactly the thing to fear. What I haven't seen is the net news being parroted in the MSM.