BP Gulf Oil Spill Well Integrity Test Failing, 24 Hours Into Test Pressure Remains At 6,700 PSI
Posted by Alexander Higgins - July 16, 2010 at 10:00 am - Permalink - Source via Alexander Higgins Blog
Loading ...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.
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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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Sami Shamieh, Alexander Higgins. Alexander Higgins said: BP Gulf Oil Spill Well Integrity Test Failing, 24 Hours Into Test Pressure Remains At 6,700 PSI http://bit.ly/aqgqTI [...]
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If we go by the estimate of 140 million gallons having been leaked since 4/20/10,we can then calculate that that amount of oil would fill a cube which measures 264 feet per side.
I have seen on several sites that the Macondo resevoire is about the size of Mt. Everest,if that's true,then we can rule out the pressure loss to "well depletion" as Mt. Everst is many cubic miles in volume and a cubic volume of oil 264 feet square would be a mere spoonfull from the swimming pool.
We have a down hole leak taking place.
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[...] BP Gulf Oil Spill Well Integrity Test Failing, 24 Hours Into Test Pressure Remains At 6,700 PSI | Al…. July 16th, 2010 | Category: Uncategorized | Comments are closed | [...]
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You can't really rule anything out. Their are hundreds of thing that can effect the gas pressure in the production zone such as the porosity of the formation or even something being forced into the fracture that is bridging off the gas flow.
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[...] the rest of this great post here Comments (0) Posted in BP News [...]
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[...] the rest of this great post here Comments (0) Posted in Oil Spill [...]
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New Oilgeddon video just released…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwTsIsIkcrs
You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll laugh again, then you’ll die.
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[...] Gulf Oil Spill Well Integrity Test Failing http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/201…ains-6700-psi/ Both Relief Well Blowout Preventers Fail http://www.floridaoilspilllaw.com/bo…sting-problems [...]
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[...] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC6Ea75ixbk (External Embedding Disabled)Here is is. May still be processing.Here is info from the Alexander Higgs blog.http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2010/07/16/bp-gulf-oil-spill-integrity-test-failing-24-hours-test-p... [...]
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It is reported that scientists are being offered $250.00 per hour by BP, if they will simply sign on the dotted line, and keep silent about their work and findings for at least the next three years. Traitor? such a strong word “Judas” …. you choose….
http://just-me-in-t.blogspot.com/2010/07/judas-money-sign-on-dotted-line.html
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The cap is a public stunt, nothing more. If they knew that this would everything that’s needed to stop the oil, they wouldn’t be drilling relieve wells but would have capped the well 70 days earlier while hundreds of million gallons oil were gushed out into the ocean. Are the people really so stupid to believe that it takes 3 months to built a well cap? It’s just a metal barrel and no matter how many fancy gadgets you add to it, it’s still just a metal barrel. A team of the best engineers could design this in 24 h and the best crew could make it in 5 days maximum. There are plans for this kind of accidents and every oil digging company has an emergency well cap plan. Since this problem’s even affecting the gulf stream and expands to Europe I’m slowly starting to regret that this hasn’t gathered more international responses. Obama’s biggest mistake was to let BP in charge of operations and giving them authority of coast guard. They don’t have the right incentives to protect your ocean and your kids.
http://campbellbrown.blogs.cnn.com/2010/05/28/official-bp-rushed-in-cleanup-workers-for-obama-visit/
http://www.examiner.com/x-33986-Political-Spin-Examiner~y2010m7d3-RFK-Jr-BP-has-incentive-to-hide-size-of-Deepwater-Horizon-oil-spill
http://www.gcnlive.com/wp/2010/07/12/former-contractor-bp-not-interested-in-cleaning-up-oil-spill/
The biggest error of BP and EPA is the continued secrecy about raw data, which is absolutely necessary for us to create reliable simulations and technical solutions. A Professor in Vienna Technical University has made a proposition to stop the oil leak, but like us he doesn’t have the necessary access to data to continue research.
http://zukunftwissen.apa.at/cms/zukunft-wissen/fti-und-wissenschaft/zukunft-wissen-topnews.pdf;jsessionid=16F6106F3C5B6DA08510D44B70E441AA.cms1?id=CMS1278943707824
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IF they will not allow photogs and people in to see what is going on then it is not plugged. What they do, not what they say
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I posed the following question to the oil industry folks at the Oil Drum website.
Read replies at link below.
FintanDunne on July 17, 2010 – 5:13pm
“We are encouraged that we have integrity…”
“We find no evidence of lack of integrity…”
- Kent Wells @ 7:30am briefing 7/17/10
I find this conclusion by Kent Wells bizarre. Logic seems to be stood on it’s head here. Are we being spun a flimsy certainty on well integrity?
Rewind back to the Top Kill attempt now shrouded in the mists of memory. Am I correct in saying that the Top Kill was abandoned precisely because the top well pressure was found to be in between 6,000 to 7,000psi? And this development was a sufficiently worrying indication of the likelihood of a down hole breach to cause the abandonment of Top Kill.
Fast forward a couple of months to the last few days. Now with a sealed cap in place the pressure is again found to be in the same range of 6,000 to 7,000psi.
But this time the finding is readily and conveniently dismissed on the basis of well depletion (perhaps due to compartmentalization). Obviously the earlier low pressure could not be dismissed by well depletion.
There seems to be a viable alternative explanation.
There is a breach down hole which is either a crossflow leak or a leak into formation. That leak was there at Top Kill and caused the low pressure reading. That leak still is there and confirms the earlier Top Kill pressure reading. There is a 75 million bbl reservoir with no compartmentalization and there is no significant well depletion.
Instead we have a down hole breach which is in stable equilibrium and feeding steadily (not explosively) into formation. (It could even in theory be feeding natural seepage lines all this time, with the sea floor exit of this seepage many miles away.)
I am reassured by seismic scans (as is BP) that this possible leak is not in the upper reaches of the bore. But there is NO evidence of compartmentalization or well depletion. There is instead an assumption that this depletion explains the low pressure.
Kent Wells is formally correct. There is no evidence of lost well integrity. But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. And there is a viable alternative explanation of the low pressure which is consistent with our earlier Top Kill pressure reading.
Can you help show the error in my logic? Thanks.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6742#comment-679657
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Saboteurs is what they all are. One doesn’t need a degree in anything to realise that by pressure testing an unstable situation the best that can happen is that existing fissures below the sea bed do not widen nor that new ones open up.
But as this is a sabotage manoeuver dressed up as a unique engineering feat one knows intuitively that pressure testing will widen existing fissures and open up new ones and make the situation worse, as intended, and be out of anyone’s control to fix it.
To clarify my point that this is a sabotage manoeuver the objective from the beginning should have been to capture the gushing oil before it got into the sea, as it is, they talk about a pressure of 6,700psi not being the expected 8 or 9,000psi; but what happened to earlier reports of the pressure being b/n 20 and 70,000psi ? Does that mean that the very testing for pressure immediately caused oil to find points of least resistance sub sea ?
Cap and Funnel to Tanker should have been the project’s name, instead they thought only of the dead end idea of Cap and Pressure Test, since what do you do then that you couldn’t do by Cap and Funnel to Tanker ?
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Unconfirmed reports on Press TV News last night that the reason for lack of pressure and why Obama doesn't want to depend on this measure, is that they are worried about leaks below the BOP and further seapeage from the seabead surrounding…
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This is what I saw yesterday or something like it.
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[...] http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2010/07/16/bp-gulf-oil-spill-integrity-test-failing-24-hours-test-p... [...]
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[...] la mission de fermer définitivement le puits avec un couvercle seulement. Les tests de pression et d’intégrité du puits ne sont pas concluants et le drillage des deux puits de secours a été interrompu parce que les [...]
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[...] Allen’s letter also indicates that the lack of well pressure is due to lack of well integrity which dismisses claims by BP that the low well pressure is due to reservoir [...]
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[...] la mission de fermer définitivement le puits avec un couvercle seulement. Les tests de pression et d’intégrité du puits ne sont pas concluants et le drillage des deux puits de secours a été interrompu parce que les [...]
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[...] la mission de fermer définitivement le puits avec un couvercle seulement. Les tests de pression et d’intégrité du puits ne sont pas concluants et le drillage des deux puits de secours a été interrompu parce que les [...]
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[...] Originally, the goals for pressure inside the wellcap was 8000-9000 pounds per square inch and according to BP’s own estimates, this should have occurred within 24 hours of the well being sealed. Anything less than that could indicate the integrity of the well had been compromised and oil, methane and other fun stuff had already started leaching into the surrounding walls. This would potentially create pockets of gas and crude that might rupture. So when the pressure only reached 6700 psi, the excuses started coming: the lowered PSI readings were a result of the volume of oil already released, or hey, the pressure’s still rising, slowly, but it’s rising…but it never did rise to 9000 psi, not even 8000 psi. Today, the pressure still stands at around 7000, well short of original estimates. This is what led to the twenty-four windows the Coast Guard ran for awhile, monitoring the pressure and evaluating the safety of keeping the well sealed, all the way up until Tropical Storm Bonnie…where apparently the concerns about pressure faded as quickly as that storm. [...]
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[...] post was followed up by Questions BP Needs to Answer in which he again alludes to the fact the BP and Government are not being transparent about the the success of the static kill and pointing out once again that oil is still leaking from the well and that there are the huge [...]
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[...] far short of target BP and the Government set for an “intact well” and as time passed the pressure still failed to rise significantly indicating the well integrity test [...]
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[...] BP Gulf Oil Spill Well Integrity Test Failing, 24 Hours Into Test … [...]
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[...] live video feed of one of the BP ROVs. Recorded after the well cap test had begun, a test even the BP experts admit failed to generate the http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/gulfwellstillleak... these videos clearly show what looks like oil seeping up through the ocean floor near the well [...]
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[...] [...]