BP Gulf Oil Spill Well Integrity Test Failing, 24 Hours Into Test Pressure Remains At 6,700 PSI

  Posted by - July 16, 2010 at 10:00 am - Permalink - Source via Alexander Higgins Blog
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As I reported yesterday an insider in the BP control room leaked to the Washington Post that the pressure inside BP’s blowout preventer had only risen to about 6700 psi.

He said that indicated that the well casing could be blown down hole although yesterday he cautioned that we needed to wait for about 24 hours to make that determination.

Fast forward to now and we are almost 24 hours into the test.

Apparently Kent Wells from BP isn’t aware that the pressure reading was leaked to the Washington Post yesterday because he just tweeted that the pressure inside the well is around 6,700 and still rising.

Tweeted at 8:36 EST on July 16th during the BP technical briefing.
BP Gulf Oil Spill Well Pressure Remains Around 6,700 PSI

So no Kent the pressure is not still rising.

The pressure is the same as it was yesterday when the well was first closed.

As Washington’s Blog points out at close 24 hours into this operation the pressure should have rose to between 8,000 and 9,000 psi if there where no leaks in the wellbore down hole.

As Coast Guard admiral Thad Allen has explained, sustained pressure readings above 8,000 pounds per square inch (psi) would show that the wellbore is more or less intact, while pressures of 6,000 psi or less would mean there could be major problems:

We are looking for somewhere between 8,000 and 9,000 PSI inside the capping stack, which would indicate to us that the hydrocarbons are being forced up and the wellbores are being able to withstand that pressure. And that is good news.

If we are down around in the 4,000 to 5,000, 6,000 range that could potentially tell us that the hydrocarbons are being diverted someplace else, and we would have to try and assess the implications of that. And as you might imagine, there are gradations as you go up from 4,000 or 5,000 PSI up to 8,000 or 9,000. …

We will at some point try to get to 8,000 or 9,000 and sustain that for some period of time, and these will be done basically, as I said — if we have a very low pressure reading, we will try and need (ph) at least six hours of those readings to try to ensure that that is the reading. If it’s a little higher, we want to go for 24 hours. And if it’s up at 8,000 or 9,000, we would like to go 48 hours just to make sure it can sustain those pressures for that amount of time.


The former director of Sandia National Laboratories says the pressure readings so far have been ambiguous.

…

Hunter, who witnessed the test from BP’s war room in Houston, told The Washington Post that the pressure rose to about 6,700 psi and appeared likely to level out “closer to 7,000.” He said one possibility is that the reservoir has lost pressure as it has depleted itself the past three months.

“It’s just premature to tell. We just don’t know whether something is leaking or not,” Hunter said.

We will need to wait another 24 hours or so – and engineers will have to continue monitoring sonar and visual images (both help determine if any oil is leaking from the seafloor), and seismic data (to determine if there are any new leaks below the seafloor) – before engineers can determine how stable the well is.

Well here we are and almost 24 hours has elapsed and things just aren’t looking good.

The pressure has still failed to rise to the 8,000 psi that engineers were hoping for and while BP is assuring us the pressure is still rising that doesn’t appear to be the case.

Overnight things weren’t exactly quiet either.

ROV’s spent the night scanning the seafloor for leaks and the just may have found some on both the seafloor and from BP’s equipment.

Update: July 16th 3:43 PM

The first oil industry expert, to my knowledge, has stepped forward to confirm my analysis.

Bob Cavnar has posted the following update saying the failure for the pressure to increase indicates a leak in the well bore on the Daily Hurricane.

Kent Wells just completed his morning McBriefing, lasting a whopping 8 minutes, including questions (limit one per customer, follow ups not allowed, no coupons accepted). He said that the test is continuing, and that pressure continues to build, currently at 6,700 psi. Even though Wells said that pressure is continuing to rise, the 6,700 happens to be the same pressure reported by the Washington Post last night, a few hours after the well was shut in. Tom Hunter, a retired Sandia Laboratories director and member of the government scientific team, said the pressure rose to 6,700, and appeared likely to level out “closer to 7,000.” Since the pressure is still at 6,700 psi, it looks like it’s been level for about 12 hours. In my experience, it would be unusual with a well of this pressure and permeability to rise much more after that number of hours. We could more tell if BP would disclose the actual feed rather than one data point that is completely uninformative.

The reported pressure is at the lower end of the ambiguity range that Adm Allen talked about a couple of days ago. Recall that he said that 8,000 to 9,000 would show strong integrity, 6,000 to 8,000 would be ambiguous, and below 6,000 would indicate a leak. With the pressure now virtually level at 6,700, it’s at the lower end of the ambiguity range, so it seems there is a good chance there is leak-off. That makes a lot of sense to me since there is 1,200 feet of open hole from the bottom of the 9 /7/8″ liner to TD at about 18,300 feet. That’s not to mention possible casing damage up hole.

Cavnar went on to explain that BP will be going on to rerun the siesmic survey and compare it to the original survey performed before the well as capped.

But Cavnar warns that the survey isn’t as sure of a thing as BP and the Government has made it sound to be and his analogy seems to indicate that the survey is highly likely not to pick up any leaks down hole.

Wells did say they were going to run seismic again to see if they can see fluid movement below the surface.

…

They ran a baseline survey a couple of days ago, and will compare that data to the data that they’ll get today to see if anything has changed around the well to indicate fluid movement. But, as one of my geologist friends of mine likes to say, reading seismic for precise conclusions is often like trying to observe airplanes flying overhead while lying on the bottom of a swimming pool. It’s difficult to draw definite conclusions, even using high frequency seismic, but it will be another data point.

July 16th 2010
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer has reported that Thad Allen stated the pressure in the well is still at 6700 PSI which could indicate a leak in the well down hole.

BP will continue the integrity test for the next 6 hour and is bringing additional equipment such as more sonar to inspect the sea floor and search for petroleum leaks on the sea floor and down the well bore.

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