Transocean semi fire in BP's GoM operations

Anyone know how much BP get for each barrel there? I assume it is not the spot price but must be close to it. At least this can offset the vast ammount they are spending. at $60 that is I guess that is nearly $1m in revenue - I'm sure they will want to keep quiet about that though.

A mere drop in the ocean compared with what they are spending I know but it does make you wonder!

Log

In reply to djpreston, post #344

Darron,
Corrections just in from the White House: article should read: "owned by British Diamond Offshore Drilling Inc. (DO)" and "The British owned and British built Ocean Saratoga rig". A spokesman claimed "an old cracked BP coffee mug found onboard proves the link."

Yup, Obama does not like the British. First thing in the skip when he moved into the Whitehouse was a bust of Churchill.
Obama had a pretty awful childhood too. Here's Glenn Beck on Obamas background:

http://www.watchglennbeck.com/video/2010/april/watch-the-glenn-beck-show-april-6-2010/

Obama's fathers apparently bigamous marriage to his mother ended when he was two years old, his 'memories of my father' must be quite dim. An uncle in Kenya was apparently interred by the Brits during the Mau Mau revolt. So possibly a combination of Anglophobia and a dislike of capitalism.

Another reason Obama might not like us is our treatment of his brother, when he dropped into the UK en-route for Obama's inauguration..... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7995544.stm

'According to the News of the World, fingerprint tests linked him to an alleged sex attack on a British girl. ' And we know how accurate TNOTW is. Nonetheless, the Home Office confirmed he was denied entry ...'A Home Office spokesman said Samson Obama was denied a visa after immigration officers noticed one of his documents was false. That led them to further inquiries. '

Personally, if there had been enough evidence to charge Samson then I hope the Government would have had the b-lls to do have done so - but I doubt it.  Special relationship and all that. 

AA 

GOM spill no 2 reported: this could potentially muddy BP's liability for the overall clean-up somewhat...

http://blog.al.com/live/2010/06/another_gulf_oil_spill_well_ne.html

In reply to moniclub, post #350

My first thought when I saw those reports was that the real winners (and only winners) from the whole business will be the lawyers. Everyone else will lose.

My first thought when I saw those reports was that the real winners (and only winners) from the whole business will be the lawyers. Everyone else will lose.

This other rig leaking in the gulf - does that not indicate that there is an issue with the way the Oil service companies have been doing their jobs?

This is interesting :

Oil and gas companies drilling in the Gulf of Mexico’s shallow waters have until June 17 to verify they meet new requirements for blow-out preventers and June 28 to submit safety certifications, U.S. regulators said today.

Companies will have to get an independent third party to verify that devices to stop blowouts are operable and compatible with well locations, the Interior Department said in a statement today.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ammFHAJetw5M&pos=9

Surely the companies responsible for the equipment should be responsible for this, just before drilling commences? Or it should atleast be a joint responsilbility.

And I don't think everyone else will lose. More regulation and stricter safety standards could just mean higher Oil prices as the industry passes on the costs to the consumer.

You don't think companies like Shell who are not involved in the GOM incident but produce huge amounts of Oil won't benefit from higher Oil prices?

Surprise, surprise: these reports of another leaking well turn out just to be media hype/a scare story:

DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

Taylor Energy said it continues work to plug offshore wells in the Gulf of Mexico that began leaking when its production platform was toppled during Hurricane Ivan in 2004.

The company is using the drill rig Diamond Ocean Saratoga, with full approval from Unified Command.

The leaks, originally estimated at nine gallons a day, never made landfall and have been substantially reduced, the company said.

Earlier Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the U.S. secretary of the interior said in an email that less than a third of a barrel of oil was leaking from Taylor-owned wells.

Media reports had surfaced that Diamond Offhore Drilling Inc. (DO) was dealing with a leak at a Taylor-owned oil well in the gulf.

The work had been under way before a government-mandated drilling ban that was instituted as a result of the massive BP PLC (BP, BP.LN) oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

What are peoples' thoughts on Matt Simmons estimation/understanding that the rate of oil leaking into the gulf is more like 100,000 bpd?

http://bit.ly/9rNACG

And that the blowout may have resulted in a loss of structural integrity of the well casing. His suggestion on bloomberg TV was to set off a nuke!

I had a lot of respect for his work on twilight in the desert. So could this be for real, could BP & the US administration be covering up a much more serious problem than is being reported through the media? Or should we discount this as nonsense?

In reply to macroeconomix, post #354

I'm no expert - but I don't believe anything like 100,000 bopd - though I don't rush to completely discount his comments on the well casing.

The media has a big interest in hyping up the story and keeping it running - so I'd frankly take anything published with a large pinch of salt., especially as 99% of it is written by people who have zero understanding of the oil business (ie less than virtually everyone here).

Well on the news BP are reporting to be collecting 20,000 bpd which they reckon to be 60% of the flow. So the numbers are creeping up from the original "5000 bpd". So perhaps the PR has been to downplay the seriousness of this leak!

I do hope that turning the seabed to glass isn't the ultimate answer though.

macroeconomix do you have a reference to this 20,000/60% number?

From BP's own website they are giving 12 hourly capture rates which currently come in at about 15-16K/day. This seems inline with estimates. I've not see any estimate from BP or others about the percentage capture.

ref: http://www.bp.com/extendedsectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=40&contentId=7061813

Log

In reply to macroeconomix, post #356

Prof Iraj Ershaghi, director of petroleum engineering at the University of Southern California has buried this one.

NUCLEAR BLAST
"Drill a hole next to the well. Place a low-yield nuclear warhead and detonate it. "The power will fuse the rock together and the intense pressure from the sea water will keep the rock in place thus sealing the leak." - Michael Murray, Greensboro, North Carolina, US

EXPERT VIEW

Prof Ershaghi says: "A nuclear blast would not fuse the pipe under the cooling effect of water but rather would create a crater and would make it impossible to control the flow."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/us_and_canada/10268979.stm

Yes and the BBC were reporting that the top kill had worked at one point - not sure I trust them much.

I've just bought some more at 386p - done buying now my average is now 482p (bit of a disaster) but should walk away at some point relatively unscathed.

Log

Does anyone know the size of this discovery?
It must be on depletion by now.
If 100,00bbls/day (and this is not reservoir volumes (Formation volume factor), then thats close to 5mmbbls recovered. Depending on recovery factor (say 18%)on solution gas drive then 5mmbbls represents a STOIIP of 28mmbbls.

I would be bery sceptical about 100k/day. Theres casing friction,hydrostatic back pressure, and the back pressure of the novel completion etc. More like the 10-20k range.

FH

In reply to loglorry, post #357

The 60% figure came from sky news FWIW

In reply to macroeconomix, post #354

What are peoples' thoughts on Matt Simmons estimation/understanding that the rate of oil leaking into the gulf is more like 100,000 bpd? http://bit.ly/9rNACG

And that the blowout may have resulted in a loss of structural integrity of the well casing. His suggestion on bloomberg TV was to set off a nuke!

IMV Matt Simmons is showing more and more how little he knows about the pointy-end of the oil industry.

And suggestions of flow-rates such as that even call into question his ability to make valid assumptions when doing his arithmetic. Not good, when you consider how he makes his living and his reputation - you might expect that kind of thing to be part of his core-competence.

I discussed the nuke nonsense here.

SW10

Glenn Beck tries to explain Obama's throat stamping, arse kicking rhetoric, shaking down "the man" on 9th June edition (www.watchglennbeck.com). Tries to explain who Obama is talking to, if not middle America. His core key associates.

Unfortunately the latest news on the wires isn't good (can't yet find it on the web):

Teams of government and university scientists have estimated that a broken BP PLC (BP, BP.LN) oil well in the Gulf of Mexico was likely spewing between 20,000 and 50,000 barrels of oil a day before BP partially contained the flow earlier this month, the director of the U.S. Geological Survey said Thursday.

That estimate is up from a range the government put out May 27 of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day.

Teams of scientists working separately and using different measuring techniques came up with a range of estimates of the rate at which the oil was flowing out of the well before BP sliced a broken pipe connected to the well and placed a containment device over the well June 3, said USGS Director Marcia McNutt.

Some of the flow-rate estimates within the range were based on analyzing high-resolution video of the gushing oil, while other teams used remote sensing technology and satellite imagery to estimate the flow, McNutt said. She added that scientists are still working to determine how much oil has been flowing before the well pipe was cut, and how much oil has been flowing after the pipe was cut and the containment device was placed.

McNutt said the calculations were made assuming that 40% of the material flowing out of the pipe is oil.

The teams include scientists from the Department of Energy, the USGS, the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Georgia and other research institutions, McNutt said.

Earlier Thursday, U.S. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said BP might be increasing its ability to capture crude spewing from the broken Macondo well, but that all the extra crude will be flared off into the atmosphere.

BP has captured 73,000 barrels of oil aboard the vessel Discoverer Enterprise in the last six days, Allen said.

 

Could this well really be flowing more than 25mbopd + substantial gas, despite flowing through a partially closed BOP, that has been further clogged with "junk shot" material? Any thoughts from those with knowledge from "the pointy end" would be very welcome!

Regards,

Mark

In reply to flyinghorse, post #360

Size of the discovery ? - According to the Wiki it was 50m boe .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macondo_Prospect#cite_note-size-2