The Oil Drum: Capping the Riser, Tech Details of Last Few Hours, Old Mistakes and Seeps

[profgoose]

BP's Deepwater Oil Spill - Capping the Riser - Part 1 (Cap on, but leaks) - and Open Thread

This post describes what leads up to Heading Out's statement at 10:06 PM that they have the cap on but it has not gone down far enough to generate the seal, and so there is a lot of oil still coming out from under the cap. Many technical details and photos.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6558

Lessons Left Unlearnt From 2003 Gulf of Mexico Near-Spill

In May 2003, the Transocean drillship Discoverer Enterprise, under contract from BP, was getting ready to pull out of a nearly-completed development well for the Thunderhorse project in the Gulf of Mexico, about 40 miles south of the current (2010) spill at the Macondo prospect. For some reason, the ship was dragged off its position such that the riser reaching down 6000 feet to the well at the seafloor was snapped off in two places. In this case, a blind-shear ram blow out preventer (BOP) did its job, sealing off the well below and preventing what could have been the largest U.S. oil spill. As it was, the only thing spilled was the drilling mud remaining in the various riser pieces dangling from the ship, buried in mud, or stuck vertically into the seafloor. After rehabilitating the well and then taking stock of the fact that the unthinkable could have happened, BP and Transocean apparently decided not to think about it too much more.
But after reading through some MMS reports, it seems that near-misses happen a lot. Oops.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6543

Natural Oil Seeps and the Deepwater Horizon Disaster: A Comparison of Magnitudes

Some reports in the media attempt to downplay the significance of the release of oil from the Deepwater Horizon accident by arguing that natural oil seeps release large volumes of oil to the ocean, so why worry? Lets look at the numbers.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6552