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Deepwater Well Construction 201

For your Saturday morning viewing pleasure...

By: Steve Maley (Diary)  |  July 24th, 2010 at 09:52 AM  | 

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In Deepwater Well Construction 101, we covered some of the basics of drilling oil wells in 5,000 feet of water. Now, you have a chance to hear from someone who actually knows what they’re talking about.

Shell drilling engineer Joe Leimkuhler recently presented “How We Drill for Oil and Gas” at the Aspen Ideas Festival of the Aspen Institute. It’s 50 minutes long, but packed with information and good graphics (the poor video resolution doesn’t keep the point from getting across).

My takeaway is that there is a right way and a wrong way to design a deepwater well. There is a right way and a wrong way to manage the activity. While Leimkuhler judiciously avoids jumping to conclusions about the root cause of the disaster before all the facts are in, it’s clear that Shell would like the public to draw a clear distinction between Shell and BP’s deepwater operations.

Well, since the embed didn’t work, try this link.

Or this one.

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COMMENTS

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  • Common_Cents

    I saw some brief testimony from a rig worker saying alarms were bypassed.

    • http://vladenblog.tumblr.com Vladimir

      The Shell guy’s discussion of the “safety case” is quite instructive. Everyone involved in one of these operations needs to fell like they’re on a Saturn V that could explode at any time that the key safety measures are breached.

      BP didn’t seem to “get it”. Procedures & responsibilities for responding to well emergencies seem not to have been clear.

      Significantly, six executives, including a VP who has now been named a “person of interest” in the investigation, were on board the Deepwater Horizon at the time of the explosion. They were there to celebrate the rig’s impressive safety record.

      Unfortunately, managers measure the easily measurable. Safety process evaluation becomes a numbers game & focuses on paperwork & lost time accident statistics. Government intervention only makes this pattern worse.

      Measuring safe well design and operating practices is much more difficult, and 1000x more important. Shell seems to have a leg up on BP in that regard. I doubt you’ll find bypassed safety controls on a Shell rig.

  • throwback59

    very funny parody on YouTube:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0SDQVOSmH4

    if it doesn’t link, type in: talking feds same as it ever was

  • nessa

    …just like how to run a government.

  • http://www.jacksonjambalaya.com kingfish

    add to the code. they forgot to include it. Already tried it and tested it on my blog. works fine.

    • http://vladenblog.tumblr.com Vladimir

      Something about the wordpress editor seems to truncate it.

  • http://www.jacksonjambalaya.com kingfish

    ommitted for some reason.

    Include at the end of the code a /embed surrounded by those symbols above the comma and period on the keyboard.

  • dennism

    I don’t have a clear picture in my mind of what the “barrier” is – what the device looks like – that creates the barrier where, say, a 36″ casing stops and the 28″ casing starts.

    • http://vladenblog.tumblr.com Vladimir


      Shell color-coded “barriers” in pink.

      #1, Shell’s point (and the drilling experts I respect agree) that in a well with high bottomhole pressure such as this one, you run a drilling liner instead of a full string, all at once. A short section of 7″ pipe would be run to bottom, cemented, and sealed off at its top against the next bigger size pipe, which is probably 9-5/8″. Later, that assembly is tied back to the top of the well, and that in turn is cemented in place, with cement left inside the pipe to be drilled out in the future, upon completion. I circled all that in red.

      #2. BP failed to get a good seal at the top of the well on the annulus between the long string and the 16″. The engineer in charge of this process seemed very inexperienced during the investigative questioning.

      Shell alludes to another potential problem: the large cross sectional area between the long string and the 16″ at the top creates a large area for the piston force of well pressure to act against if gas were to leak up the “backside”. It could be a large enough force to pull the long string in two.

      • http://vladenblog.tumblr.com Vladimir

        That Shell’s design eliminates much of that force because their full string of casing is 13″, not 16″, eliminating a great deal of cross-sectional are for the pressure to act upon.

      • http://vladenblog.tumblr.com Vladimir

        You can see a better diagram of the BP design at the first link, to my “101″ post of 5/22.

  • http://conservativemountaineer.blogspot.com/ conservativemountaineer

    for sharing this information with us. I watched the entire presentation and, imho, it appeared to be straight-forward and non-biased. I only wish the presentation slides could be viewed in a clearer format, especially, the slide you show in this comment section.

    Again, thanks. A whole bunch.