The Oil Drum | Tech Talk: Progress on the Gulf oil leak and comments on cementing pipes and well completion

The Oil Drum | Tech Talk: Progress on the Gulf oil leak and comments on cementing pipes and well completion

ROCKMAN on May 3, 2010 - 1:27pm

I DO NOT HAVE CONFIRMATION OF WHAT I’M ABOUT TO SAY!!!!

Did everyone hear that? Maybe true…maybe just BS. But just heard a story re: the displacement of the drilling mud with sea water from the riser. The mud was being pumped into a boat at the rig. Normal procedure. But at one point the boat captain notified the rig his tanks were almost full. But that didn’t match the volume of mud that could have been pumped in the time span.

What this might mean: when you’re drilling and you stop to add a new section of drill pipe you monitor the return mud tank. When you stop your mud pumps, the flow of mud from the well bore should also stop. If it doesn’t then something down hole must be pushing the mud up and out… oil/NG/water or any combination. That’s why you do a “flow check”. To make sure the hole is static. Pure speculation on my part based upon the unconfirmed report of excessive mud pumped to the boat: the well started coming in and no one was monitoring the flow back. There are also electronic monitors to watch for this but they don’t work very well (or at all) during such an offloading op.

But if true this goes a long way toward explaining why the accident happened so fast. As others have mentioned there are procedures to kill a kick or an actual well flow. But those actions are only taken when you know they well is coming at you. As we say in the oil patch: “When you see it coming at you through the kelly (the drill floor) you’re probably already dead.”