Confirmed – BP Gulf Oil Spill BOP is Leaning! (Update 3)
Posted by Alexander Higgins - June 11, 2010 at 12:16 am - Permalink - Source via Alexander Higgins Blog
There has been speculation about the Blow Out Preventer leaning, which is why BP robots have been driving around with “inclometers”.
Today that is confirmed as I have recorded video footage of BP taking “bullseye” readings.
From http://www.leveldevelopments.com/subsea-bullseye-slope-indicator.htm
Subsea Bullseye Level and Slope Indicator
These subsea bullseye level and slope indicators are used to level or measure the angle of subsea structures and equipment. They are designed to be easily readable by ROV’s and subsea cameras, and have been used successfully on subsea projects down to 6000m (20,000ft). Our experience in designing and building circular bullseye type levels and inclinometers has resulted in a range of products whose performance and price cannot be matched. To place an order or for more information, please contact us with your requirements.
Subsea Bullseye Level and Slope Indicator PDF
This manufacturer has models that can measure tilts from 3 degrees to 15 degrees.
BOTTOM BOP Bullseye indicates the BOP is leaning – 06/10/2010 about 11:30 PM EST
Middle Bullseye indicates BOP is leaning – 06/10/2010 about 11:30 PM Est
Videos of BP taking the bullseye readings at 11:30 PM on 06/10/2010 EST.
Video of Middle Bullseye Reading.
Video of Bottom Bullseye Reading.
ROV image of the BOP indicates a tilt of 11 degrees (if sea floor is level)
It is possible that the BOP MRP Pipe was bent during the rig collpase.
However, BP is constantly monitoring the tilt using an inclinometer to measure how much it is leaning.
The fact the BP used the ROV’s and cleaned off these bullseyes shows that BP is concerned with the lean for one reason or another.
The Bullseyes can measure a tilt from 3 to 15% based off of similar models found online.
That fact that the ball on bottom bullseye is all the way to edge also raises some alarm.
Saturday, June 13th 2:34 AM I think I have found the manufacturer. It appears to be an I-Tech Bullseye. More information can be found here http://www.i-slope.com/subsea-bullseye-range.html. I will try to figure out what bullseye is being used here.
Wednesday, June 16th 10:40PM
I have received a response from the manufacturer about the measurements. It appears the original bullseye measurements indicate a lean of a little under 3%
Hi Alexander,
I can confirm that the parts in question look like ours and would be manufactured at our plant here in Scotland. The top picture is of a 0-2 degree slope indicator with 0.5 degree increments and the bottom one is a 0-5 degree with 1 degree increments. Going by the picture I would say the overall diameter of the slope indicator would be 350mm diameter.
Please let me know if you require any further help.
Best regards,
Mark
The bad news is there is a rumor that some people over at the oil drum are saying it now looks like the lean has increased up to about 15% and it is getting worse by the day.
Here’s some new screen shots of the leaning BOP (h/t to the BSC over at LATOC) .
Friday, June 18, 2010, 7:57 PM NOLA.com reports BP now confirms the BOP is leaning.
Oil Spill containment efforts could be putting strain on damaged well
Meanwhile, observers monitoring the video feeds from the robotic vehicles working on the sea floor have noticed BP measuring a tilt in the 40-ton blowout preventer stack with a level and a device called an inclinometer.
Odone, the BP spokesman, confirmed that his company has been monitoring the lean of the blowout preventer, which BP believes began tilting when the Deepwater Horizon rig sank and the riser pipe got bent. “That is tilting and has been tilting since the rig went down,” Odone said. “We believe that it was caused by the collapse of the riser.”
June 28th, 11:57 PM EST
New Bullseye Reading Indicates Lean Has Increased By Up to 1.5 Degrees Between June 10th and June 28th
This appears to confirm that the BOP is indeed falling over.
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What I want to know is why is the BOP leaning. What is changing in the topology of the sea floor where the well head is and how quickly is it happening?
Your earlier links showing dangling bits blowing in the oil column make me think that all sorts is not making it out into the light of day.
Thank you for posting this.
I would love to know that as well. There is all kinds of speculation going on but we can't know for sure. After I run some of my thoughts by the guys who know what they are talking about I will post a little more speculation.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by izabels, Alexander Higgins. Alexander Higgins said: Confirmed – Gulf Oil Spill BOP is Leaning! http://bit.ly/akaD8p [...]
[...] [...]
I was a rigger for 10 or so yrs.What were) they thinking of when (BP) pump out the drilling mud from the long string.And the BOPS were NFG. BP Should not be allowed to drill anymore wells period…
What is this crap of using a nuclear bomb to seal the well !! They allready open a can of worms that they can not control, and they want to create a hugh tital wave that will wash more of BPS mess ashore and now the bops are leaning,NO MORE DRILLING IN WATER DEEPER THAN 1000ft
Chris -They have drilled above a FAULT LINE,and now the oil is washing away the sea floor
Hey dud,the well head is sitting above a fault line and the end of of the bit is in the formation
[...] [...]
[...] BOP è come la torre di pisa (solo più basso, sporco e non artistico)http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2010/06/11/confirmed-gulf-oil-spill-bop-leaning/ cosa ne dite? 64. Artigiano (tubista evoluto), Venerdì 11 Giugno 2010 ore 19:19 @Darkman:se [...]
BP ELECTRONICS TECHNICIAN : “ WE GOT THE DRILL STUCK .”
June 11/2010-12;45 AM EST.
Mike Williams, the chief electronics technician on the Deepwater Horizon, and one of the last workers to leave the doomed rig] said they were told it would take 21 days; according to him, it actually took six weeks.
With the schedule slipping, Williams says a BP manager ordered a faster pace. “And he requested to the driller, ‘Hey, let’s bump it up. Let’s bump it up.’ And what he was talking about there is he’s bumping up the rate of penetration. How fast the drill bit is going down. ” Williams says going faster caused the bottom of the well to split open, swallowing tools and that drilling fluid called “mud.” “We actually got stuck. And we got stuck so bad we had to send tools down into the drill pipe and sever the pipe,” Williams explained.
Read the rest at : http://www.prisonplanet.com
Is there still drill pipe down hole and the bit,they did a chemical cut correct.
Hang on, Isaac. You give a tease here to read the rest but take us to a home page at Prison Planet where we must search for “the rest.” You don’t explain that after Mike discussed the push to go faster, CBS’s 60 Minutes explained that the cracked well had to be abandoned after tools were sent down into the drill pipe to sever the pipe. So this cracked well is not the same well that is spewing now. What I’d like to know is: How far away from this well is the cracked well?
HOW DRILLING AND TECTONIC MOVEMENTS ARE INTERDEPENDENT.
June 11/2010-2:29 PM EST.
By: Isaac N.
How you ask ? By what’s know as Enhanced Oil recovery.
Enhanced oil recovery is also called improved oil recovery or tertiary recovery (as opposed to primary and secondary recovery). Sometimes the term quaternary recovery is used to refer to more advanced, speculative, EOR techniques.
E.O.R. techniques are:
Gas re-injection is presently the most-commonly used approach to enhanced recovery. In addition to the beneficial effect of the pressure, this method sometimes aids recovery by reducing the viscosity of the crude oil as the gas mixes with it.
Chemical injection, the injection of various chemicals, usually as dilute solutions, have been used to improve oil recovery
Polymer-enhanced recovery, using sub-micron expanding polymers, which are injected into faultline/fissure areas in the well-field, where they expand slowly over 6-9 month’s time to force oil out of porous rock.
Microbial injection is part of microbial enhanced oil recovery and is presently rarely used, both because of its higher cost and because the developments in this field are more recent than other techniques
Thermal methods. In this approach, various methods are used to heat the crude oil in the formation to reduce its viscosity and/or vaporize part of the oil. Methods include cyclic steam injection, steam drive and in-situ combustion. These methods improve the sweep efficiency and the displacement efficiency. Steam injection has been used commercially since the 1960s in California fields
How do E.O.R. techniques influence geostatic pressures ?
Geostatic pressures are determined by the weight of a column of beds. At a given depth, the geostatic stress or geostatic pressure (g) is given by a biaxial ellipsoid, with: vertical = v =d. g .h (d=density of sediment, g=gravitation, h=height of sediments)horizontal =h = confining pressure of g. The geostatic stress ellipsoid varies with depth. The state of stress tends to become hydrostatic at great depth. Stress that is uniform in all directions, as beneath a homogeneous fluid, causes dilation rather than distortion in isotropic materials.( A medium whose properties are the same in all directions.) Pore pressures of the interstitial fluids ( oil + water ). In geology, the fluids are generally water, saturating the open pore spaces of a rock column have the same effect as immersing a rock in a water column. The pore pressure (p) is given by: (p) = d’ . g . h
A significant increasing in pore pressure, which acts in opposite sense of the geostatic pressure, creates conditions to cause gravity deformations. Gravity deformations cause plate movements . Plate movements raise well-field pressures , as evident in records of the 2006 5.9 underwater quake in the Gulf of Mexico.
E.O.R. techniques are specifically designed to raise pore pressures in the well-fields.
This how tectonic movements and oil drilling are interdependent on each other. These practices require serious reconsideration.
SOURCE: Wikipedia, E.O.R. page
SOURCE: Salt tectonics , biblioteca
SOURCE: NALCO/TIORCO WEBSITE
Maybe you didn’t read the same article I did.Or maybe you didn’t read the whole thing.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/prominent-oil-industry-insider-theres-another-leak-much-bigger-5-to-6-miles-away.html
If you are interested in using a satellite to locate oil leaks than read this M.M.S. paper from 2001 :
Using Satellite Radar Imagery to Detect
Leaking Abandoned Oil Wells on the
U.S. Outer Continental Shelf
http://www.mms.gov/tarprojects/355/355AA.pdf
….Then, go to AVISO , live-access satellite and make a request for a data-set, from any one of the millions of variations available.
http://las.aviso.oceanobs.com/las/servlets/dataset
If you want to see what Earth looks like with out water,check my site. I’ll put up a picture from AVISO on the front page.
http://mentaljudo.blogspot.com/
Thanks for providing the complete link to your article. Still, this statement: It is therefore possible that there has been another ongoing leak which BP has tried to cover up, has not yet been confirmed as far as I can tell.
Read my latest post ” Faultline Cowboys “, and you’ll understand why I am standing by my assumptions.
http://mentaljudo.blogspot.com/2010/06/faultline-cowboys.html
[...] pipe could be leaning as much as 11%/" http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/201…-bp-capping-2/ http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/201…l-bop-leaning/ Due to the cracking in the sea floor, and the leaning BOP, there is a strong chance what's left of [...]
Isaac, I’ve really enjoyed your enlightening comments.
I am hampered by no off-shore experience and not nearly the education and experience that you apparently have.
I do, however, consider my ‘common sense’ pretty good; so I’d like to comment on the poison Corexit BP insisted on using for a dispersant.
I am adamantly against BP, or anyone else using any kind of dispersants. Non-toxic absorbents – they exist- should be used,along with absorbent booms that could be saturated, pulled though wringers mounted on vessels and then returned to the water…And Kevin Costner’s invention should be picking up those huge plums of submerged oil that Corexit submerged (out of sight).
I welcome any criticism from you…or anyone else with ‘common-sense’ etc.
[...] look for is the BOP itself being blown apart or away then its game over evidence here of it leaning http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/201…l-bop-leaning/ does it look like its leaning? Its only a matter of time with these pressures before the entire [...]
[...] leaning: http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/201…l-bop-leaning/ Combined with theoildrum article, that suggests the whole schmeer will break off soon. Whee. [...]
[...] Read more… [...]
[...] Here's a link to at least some initial verification photos. No I don't know if the BOP was leaning from the start though…http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2010/06/11/confirmed-gulf-oil-spill-bop-leaning/ [...]
after all this GREAT info your dark now for 3 days
would love an update brother
My Apologies for the lack of updates. I have been having server issues: high traffic, DNS issues, poor database performance and word press bugs.
I will have few updates today.
This tilting has been corroborated by BP spokesman now
http://www.floridaoilspilllaw.com/times-picayune-bp-confirms-blowout-preventer-is-tilting
[...] reported by Alexander Higgins, confirming BP is using the Subsea Bullseye Level and Slope Indicator to watch for lean and [...]
[...] Otherwise click cancel. You must enter a subject for your comment And from June 11 (4.00 / 2) Confirmed – BP Gulf Oil Spill BOP is Leaning! [...]
[...] what was the original measurements of the lean of the broken wellhead? It was three degrees on June 10th, 2010. Given Admiral Allen's announcement about the riser tilting ten or twelve degrees, this does not [...]
[...] The “integrity of the well casing is a major concern,” Marvin Odum, president of Shell Oil, told the Houston Chronicle last week. Engineers and geologists fear the stack atop the well could tip over if the well integrity further degrades, leading to the “unlikely, but not implausible” scenario of “oil gushing through the sea floor.” Update On June 10, the stack was only tilting by about two or three degrees. [...]
i have been watching for days now
tonight it looks like the lean is far worse
maybe 30 degrees
anyone have any ideas
[...] is that the BOP tipped over during the initial explosion and sinking of the rig, Alexander Higgings points out that the blowout preventer appears to be tipping over more and more each [...]
[...] an inclinometer is significant news. "It tells me that they are also concerned," he said. Here are videos of BP measuring the tilt of the BOP.While the BOP weighs 40 tons, the riser package as a whole [...]
[...] are videos of BP measuring the tilt of the [...]
[...] [...]
[...] are videos of BP measuring the tilt of the [...]
[...] [...]
[...] http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2010/06/11/confirmed-gulf-oil-spill-bop-leaning/ this has pics and a video Reply [...]
Depending on how much surface casing is left and concrete if there is any left,and how much pressure is down hole,Im goina say the stack could fall over in 5 to 10 days.
[...] the stack is leaning? I covered this in an earlier post and made similar comments. Check this link http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/201…l-bop-leaning/ There are 2x photos taken 10th June. There is also an explanation of those 2x photos quote " [...]
[...] are videos of BP measuring the tilt of the [...]
[...] of oil are leaking into the Gulf per day, confirmation that the wellhead is now tipping as much as 11 degrees, and new video evidence that sea floor has begun cracking under the pressure, I am starting to [...]
[...] I originally wrote that the subsea bullseye measurements taken on June 10th indicated that the BP Gulf Oil Spill BOP was leaning 3 degrees. [...]
[...] has confirmed that the failed blowout preventer (BOP) on its Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico is tilting sidewa… at an acute angle 12 to 15 degrees from perpendicular. Geologists and petroleum engineers are now [...]
[...] 1:07 PMReport Abusive PostPHOTO / VIDEO PROOF: BP Gulf Oil Spill BOP is Leaning!Quote [link to blog.alexanderhiggins.com] ExhaleAeonVoltsUser ID: 810969 United States6/30/2010 1:13 PMReport abusive postRe: PHOTO / [...]
[...] David Phillips | Jun 29, 2010 BP has confirmed that the failed blowout preventer (BOP) on its Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico is tilting sidewa… at an acute angle 12 to 15 degrees from perpendicular. Geologists and petroleum engineers are now [...]
[...] “I originally wrote that the subsea bullseye measurements taken on June 10th indicated that the BP Gulf Oil Spill BOP was leaning 3 degrees. [...]
Mr. Higgins, several of the screengrabs pictured on your blog were created by myself, for the viewers at LATOC. Either give credit to the LATOC community, or remove them.
Credits added.
Thanks for the credit, but the images aren't all mine, but were submitted by several members. I just wanted their hard work to be credited.
The credit to LATOC in general will be fine. Thanks again.
[...] PS: ANWR is a refuge, yes. And in that giant refuge is a SMALL piece that was set aside explicitly for drilling! Do a little research if you don't believe me and try to stay off of liberal sites when you do. when you become familiar with the terrain there then imagine the same failure at ground level that they had a mile deep in the ocean and tell me how long the oil would be spewing and how easy it would be to recover it on frozen tundra versus a mile deep in water… Nothing I'm suggesting here is designed to help a party or BP profits. It is based on common sense and a complete disregard for the political fortunes of ANY party or financial benefit of any company. You should try the same criteria when formulating your ideas. It's now protected, so live with it. Even if drilling was allowed in ANWR, it would only account for around 1.2% of the world's total consumption by 2030, when production would come on line, and it would have very little impact on global prices. Oil is a global commodity, so oil that's pulled out of the ground within our borders just gets put into the world market. We don't get to keep it for ourselves because we found it within our borders. On a separate note, this doesn't look good. The base of the BOP is bent and it's now leaning. http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2010/06/11/confirmed-gulf-oil-spill-bop-leaning/ [...]
[...] has confirmed that the failed blowout preventer (BOP) on its Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico is tilting sidewa… at an acute angle 12 to 15 degrees from perpendicular. Geologists and petroleum engineers are now [...]