Idea to close the BP well: 'Plugging it with a string of cement-filled casing pipes'

[seafan]

This actually sounds like a viable method to close in this well.



I came across this idea to close the BP well, offered by a reader today in the Pensacola News-Journal, in the comments section of the article Oil spill: BP fires 92 cleanup workers:


June 13, 2010

hodiebkhalifa said:

"As an expert in oil fields in the Middle East, I've already offered BP the following simple technique that can instantly plug the well. Though BP admitted it can work, it wouldn't implement it because it will kill the Well.


PLUGGING BP WELL BY A STRING OF CEMENT-FILLED CASING PIPES:

{BP has to lower down the wellbore through the Riser Pipe Stub and the Blowout Preventer a string of 16"- 18" Casing Pipes connected together 500-1000 ft long after being filled with cement. BP Well will instantly be plugged and there will be no need for the Relief Wells. The annular space between the Casing Pipe String and the well walls can be filled by pumping cement. The whole operation will take few hours}

Another reader WillowDawn responds:

June 13, 2010

hodiebkhalifa, I forwarded your message to Governor Crist, and also to the Santa Rosa County Authorities including a contact I have in office of Mayor Thompson of Milton.
.....

If this is ultimately attempted, BP's operations must first be placed in receivership, and control of its operations taken over by the US Government/US Military.


I would not put it past BP to intentionally attempt sabotage of this maneuver if left in charge of this operation, as shutting down this well is not in BP's playbook.

On further thought, perhaps that was BP's intent with "the junk shot", to damage the inside of the well casing, so that it would crack and leak around it, into the seabed, precluding shutting down the well. That way, BP continues to drill relief wells for 3 more months, while this gusher belches, unabated.



Bottom line is, BP must be removed from control of operations.



Obama truly is in a dance with the devil.

[Ian David]

1. OMFG! That's very close to what I suggested on their website!

Except instead of casement pipes, I suggested a "Concrete Sausage" of flexible material like PVC.

[Statistical]

2. Relief wells kill the well.

It is illogical that BP won't use this technique over relief well because it will "kill the well".

Relief well intersects main well about 20,000 - 30,000 ft down. Mud will be forced into main well until flow stops.

Then concrete will be injected and then more mud.

Essentially making a mud-conrete-mud sandwhich that will seal the main well (and relief well) below the intersection point.

[NYC_SKP]

3. This proposal makes sense to me. A tapered solid insert, a cork, but much longer.

hodiebkhalifa, I forwarded your message to Governor Crist, and also to the Santa Rosa County
Authorities including a contact I have in office of Mayor Thompson of Milton.

I don't know where your comment violated terms of service, but I suspect that BP had it removed.

hodiebkhalifa said:
"As an expert in oil fields in the Middle East, I've already offered BP the following simple technique that can instantly plug the well. Though BP admitted it can work, it wouldn't implement it because it will kill the Well.

PLUGGING BP WELL BY A STRING OF CEMENT-FILLED CASING PIPES:
{BP has to lower down the wellbore through the Riser Pipe Stub and the Blowout Preventer a string of 16"- 18" Casing Pipes connected together 500-1000 ft long after being filled with cement. BP Well will instantly be plugged and there will be no need for the Relief Wells. The annular space between the Casing Pipe String and the well walls can be filled by pumping cement. The whole operation will take few hours}

http://www.pnj.com/comments/article/20100613/NEWS01/6130321/Oil-spill-BP-fires-92-cleanup-workers

You know, this seems really doable with the riser out of the way.

I'd recommend a very long tapered plug, increasingly larger diameters from the bottom tip up, to the point that the largest diameter nearly seals the 20"diameter opening.

The taper would ensure a gradual change in fluid dynamics and pressure.

Why wouldn't this work?

[Schema Thing]

4. yes, because having this gush unabated

for three more months is so clearly in BP's interest.

[seafan]

5. BP's interests are to keep drilling. *Needing relief wells drilled* is the upshot of a rogue well.

So we will end up with two wells instead of one. (If this even succeeds at shutting down the broken well is simply immaterial to BP.) Nice, how that works out for BP, huh?


Drilling is in BP's interests. They could not care less how long this blowout gushes.


For them, it's cheaper to pay fines and damages than it is to stop drilling.

What goes around comes around. One of the greatest bailouts in history came in 1953, when the Eisenhower administration authorized a CIA-backed coup in Iran. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, owned by the British government, had been expropriated and nationalized in 1951 by unanimous vote of Iran’s parliament. The ’53 coup evicted prime minister Mohammed Mossadeq and installed Shah Reza Pahlevi, the creature of the West’s oil companies , with full tyrannical powers. The AIOC got back 40 per cent of its old concession and became an internationally owned consortium, renamed… British Petroleum.

There are plenty of American ingredients in the company, with such BP acquisitions and mergers down the years as Standard Oil of Ohio, Amoco and Arco,. No matter, it’s “British Petroleum” now in the minds of Americans and the company is the designated fall guy – a role it richly deserves since, as Jeanne Pascal, a former lawyer for the US Environmental Protection Agency, recently put it, “They are a recurring environmental criminal and they do not follow US health, safety and environmental policy.”

No mercy.

----Alexander Cockburn

BP's whole operation is analogous to aggressive cancer.

[Statistical]

6. You do understand relief well is not an independent shaft.

So when relief well seals the main well it will be BELOW the intersection and thus the relief well and main well are both shutoff.

Relief well is being used because it is proven method that works.

Why did the Mexicains, the Australians, the Iranians all use relief wells? Because it works.

[backscatter712]

7. The well's too badly damaged to save.

There's damage to the BOP, damage to the well casing under the sea floor, bad cement, etc. etc. etc.

It's cheaper for BP to permanently kill this well and drill a new well right next to it.

And realistically, the only known-working way to kill the gusher is with the relief well.

[Strelnikov_]

8. Would not work, for multiple reasons

A) Oil would leak from around the annular area between the casing and the plug, not that one could even get it into the hole because

B) The drill pipe (and production casing) are still in the hole, preventing any such insertion, not that it would work anyway because

C) The static pressure at the wellhead has been reported as 8,000 psig to 13,000 psig. I have seen reports that the casing at mudline (seafloor) is 36" dia. At 10,000 psig (assuming a gas cap) the plug will therefore have a force acting on it of 10,179 k . . that's 10+ million pounds, which could be resisted by a 36" dia. plug, filled with concrete, 16,439' long at placement (assuming submerged weight of concrete, of course). However, this is not really practical since sea level is only 5,000 ft. above mud line.