OMG! They drilled into the Tiber oil field - estimated to hold 4- 6 billion barrels of oil

[Are_grits_groceries]

<snip>
BP declined to estimate the size of the new reserve, but a company executive said that it could be bigger than the three billion barrels of oil equivalent, combining oil and gas stocks, thought to be in the recently discovered Kaskida field nearby. As the largest oil and gas producer in the gulf, BP produces 400,000 barrels a day. It has reserves of 18 billion barrels of oil equivalent in reserves globally.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/03/business/global/03oil.html
<snip>


2009: Deepwater drills the deepest well in history at another Gulf oil field
April 20, 2010: During the final stage of a drilling a well -- BEFORE ANY OIL WAS PRODUCED -- a pressure build up caused an explosion


Worst case scenario: oil could enter the gulf stream and spread up the east coast... and around the world
http://www.businessinsider.com/deepwater-horizon-oil-spill-2010-5#2009-deepwater-drills-the-deepest-well-in-history-at-another-gulf-oil-field-2

I hadn't looked this up because I didn't think I wanted to know. (I didn't) If they are right and the pressure is sufficient to keep it flowing and they can't cap it or divert it with another drilling rig.............

[Joanne98]

1. OMFG

[Newest Reality]

2. What is sad is that, if that estimate is correct and there

is, say, 6 billion barrels of oil there, it is actually insignificant on its own.

That entire field would then only be roughly 75 days, or less than three months worth of world supply and that's calculating it low at 80 million barrels per day.

[Are_grits_groceries]

5. So True! nt

[Statistical]

8. Well insignificant is all relevent.

$80 per barrel * 6 billion = half trillion in oil. $$$ it is ALWAYS about the $$$.

[thereismore]

3. The fuckers had to dril the biggest reservoir. Lowest-hanging fruit, I guess. nt

[Are_grits_groceries]

4. I don't think they were sure.

Unless finding fields has gotten a lot easier, then it wasn't planned. They got lucky and we got unlucky. Somebody else may know more about it. However, they can miss with a lot of wells.

[Uncle Joe]

6. That's going to do a lot of damage.

Thanks for the thread, grits.

[amborin]

7. K&R

[Are_grits_groceries]

9. I still cannot process this.

I don't know what they can do. They are going to have to do something because this much oil or even a portion of it isn't just going to damage the Gulf.

BP can't hide this. It will be the biggest story in a lot of places if the worst case happens. We are heading that way so far.

[northernlights]

10. are you ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN this is the Tiber field?

The NYT article says they expected it to take 3 years to develop Tiber. Also that it is 35,000 feet deep -- the Deepwater Horizon well is 25,000 feet, not 35,0000.

Also, a BP official had said off the record/anonymously last week that this was sitting on tens of millions of barrels, not even hundreds of millions let alone a few billion.

Because it sounds like if it is...it's game over. :(

[Are_grits_groceries]

11. This is from Truthout:

Pandora's Oil Well

Technical jargon conceals by confusion. The immense scale of the problem surrounding the sinking of the Transocean drilling rig, Deepwater Horizon, requires that the public stay alert when confronted with slick lingo. So, I'd like to help readers understand from a geologist's viewpoint the sad absurdity of the Gulf of Mexico situation - one that is much more than yet another "oil spill."

In September 2009, British Petroleum (BP) announced their discovery of the giant Tiber oilfield and crowed that drilling a 35,055 foot deep well into the earth's crust under 4,132 feet of water made it one of the deepest wells ever achieved by their industry. Less than one year later, BP had to alert the public to an explosion and fire onboard the semisubmersible drilling rig - a unit floating above the seafloor that when flooded causes the contraption to submerge to a desired depth and produce relative stability while drilling for oil and gas in rough waters. The rig was mining oil from the Mississippi Canyon 252 well that BP owns. And on Earth Day 2010, we learned that BP had "activated an extensive oil spill response" and was working with Transocean using remotely-operated vehicles to assess the condition of the Tiber well and the "subsea blowout preventer."

A critical distinction here is between an oil spill and a blowout. I tried to look up the definition of "oil spill" in OilGasGlossary.com and found the following: "Sorry, but we can't found (sic) the definition of Oil Spill in our Oil Gas Glossary." I don't mean to be disingenuous. I really just wanted to have confirmed my instinct that the vernacular meaning of spill, to flow from a confined space, implies a finite amount of oil. In contrast, the glossary told me that a blowout is an uncontrolled flow of oil, water, or gas from a well bored into the earth. It suggests to me a comparatively unlimited quantity of the black gold. When BP announced their discovery and termed it "giant," they meant to convey that the Tiber oilfield contained somewhere between four billion and six billion barrels of oil; this contrasts with a "huge" oilfield usually considered to contain 250 million barrels of the stuff. Regardless of whether it's giant or huge, this Gulf of Mexico event is more than a spill.

What we have beneath the Gulf of Mexico is a gusher, folks. Only, unlike 1859, when drillers greeted gushers with celebratory hoots, in 2010, BP confronts the Mississippi Canyon blowout with a relief well - that's another well drilled near and into the well that is out of control. BP doesn't use the phrase, but drillers call the continuously spewing wells "wild wells." Forgive me, but it's hard to feel reassured by the company's assertion that they've begun to remedy the subsurface problem - oil escaping with great force from inside the earth to the planet's watery surface - in this manner.

I'm reminded of the Centralia, Pennsylvania, underground coal seam fire that has been burning since 1962. Like other coal seam fires, it may continue to burn underground for decades or even centuries until the fuel source is exhausted. So, too, the polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), banned by Congress in 1979, yet still leaking into the Hudson River three decades later from fractures in rock beneath the General Electric facilities at Hudson Falls and Fort Edward, New York, where the company utilized PCBs in the manufacture of capacitors.
http://www.truthout.org/pandoras-well59394

Google Tiber oil field or Deep Water Horizon well. There are a lot of articles. I don't believe a word BP says or anybody else. I don't think they know.

As far as I can tell from any articles, they are in that field. How much oil escapes depends on the pressure and how much is trapped in impermeable rock. Whatever it is, it's too damn much.

Another good article here:
BP Finds 'Giant' Oil Source Deep Under Gulf of Mexico

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/02/AR2009090203560.html

It's the Deep Water Horizon rig on the Tiber well into the Tiber oil field. They apparently went below allowable levels.

[northernlights]

12. no doubt it's too damn much, and I don't believe anything they say either

but the NYT article also said the Deepwater Horizon would be shared between Tiber and another nearby field that they have (Kadiska?).

I'm just hoping beyond hope, I suppose. Because it seems to be that if something spews 4-6 billion barrels of oil into the ocean, it's goodbye ocean. Not just Gulf...Atlantic and maybe beyond. Who the eff knows.

But killing the ocean means goodbye to life. End game. But I'm not a scientist and I haven't done the math. Ok, I tried, but I forget how to do conversions when going between cubic meters, liters and gallons and am (not) studying right now for my clinical chemistry final tomorrow, so don't have time to sit down and really work it out. My crude attempt the other day brought me to some trillion gallons of water in the ocean...that's versus say 250 or so billion gallons of oil (6b barrels). I forget also how many gallons of water a single quart of oil renders toxic.

Maybe I'll have a go at it this weekend. It may help me put my day-to-day life into perspective. Because if it's game over, then what the eff am I running around like a fool and worrying about borrowing more money for school. May as well borrow to the max, quit the shit job working for a bunch of banksters...and enjoy school and the last of my life again. :(

[Are_grits_groceries]

14. They are 2 different fields.

BP finds oil in second Kaskida well
UK oil and gas giant BP has confirmed the presence of oil in an appraisal well on the Kaskida oil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico, increasing confidence in the company's resource estimate.

BP previously estimated that Kaskida contains 3 billion barrels of oil in place.

A company spokesman said the latest well gives BP new information on the nature of the reservoir, but declined to comment on how much of the oil BP believes is recoverable, Dow Jones reported.

The company plans further seismic surveys of the reservoir in the coming year and another test well in 2011.

BP made a similar sized oil discovery in the Tiber field in the Gulf of Mexico in September.

Both fields are in deep-water, away from existing oil infrastructure and have very deep boreholes, all of which will raise the cost of development.

"We need a large resource to justify the expense of new infrastructure," said the BP spokesman.

http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/article199184.ece

Everything is so confusing anyway. I think they are using doubletalk and jargon to cover up what is really going on.

[northernlights]

13. craps. Kaskida has 4-6B barrels

according to that article.

[csziggy]

15. Tiber looks to be a long way to the southwest of Deepwell

By the way, here is one of the best maps showing the movement of the surface oil:
http://oilspill.fsu.edu/model_output/hycom_gfs.html

[Are_grits_groceries]

16. I don't think so.

At least according to the articles, Deep Water was the one that hit that field and they crowed about it. I hope I'm wrong.

[Are_grits_groceries]

17. here's another article:

Deepwater Horizon costs $365 million dollars to build. The rig had 130 crew members, and covered the size of two football fields. Its owners, Transocean, rented the rig to BP at a cost of more than $500,000 a day. Last September, it drilled six miles down to an field that contained 3 billion barrels of oil. Today it lies sunk in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Wall Street Journal has posted an interactive timeline of events in the Deepwater Horizon Rig Disaster.

http://www.vizworld.com/2010/05/deepwater-horizon-interactive-timeline-wsj/

[csziggy]

18. Tiber is not the same as Deepwater - BP calls the leaking well Macondo

Deepwater was the drill rig vessel that sank. Part of the confusion is that Deepwater Horizon drilled the first well into Tiber.

Partner says Tiber appraisal delayed

ConocoPhillips said appraisal of BP’s Tiber oil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico will be delayed by last month’s rig explosion at another BP prospect in the region.

News wires 12 May 2010 21:52 GMT

ConocoPhillips, which commented on possible effects of the spill today in a presentation at its annual shareholders’ meeting, did not say how long appraisal work at Tiber may be delayed. BP announced the “giant” Tiber oil discovery last year, saying it may hold more than 3 billion barrels of oil. BP is operator of Tiber. At the time the discovery was announced, the company said Houston-based ConocoPhillips held an 18% stake.

Robert Wine, a spokesman for London-based BP, told Bloomberg he was not able to comment on the schedule for appraising the discovery. BP is battling to stop leaks from its Macondo well that began after an April 20 explosion and fire aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. The blast killed 11 workers. Deepwater Horizon was the rig that drilled the Tiber discovery well, which rig owner Transocean claimed was the deepest well ever drilled.

Macondo is leaking an estimated 5000 barrels of oil per day into the Gulf of Mexico. At least two drilling rigs that could have been used for Tiber will be tied up drilling relief wells to stanch the flow of crude at Macondo, said Brian Uhlmer, an analyst at Pritchard Capital in Houston. The Deepwater Horizon sank on 22 April. The Tiber exploration well was the deepest on record. BP, which owns a 62% stake in the prospect, said in September that it planned more wells to assess the reservoir. The company planned to finish a second well there by 27 August, according to an exploration plan filed with the US Minerals Management Service.

Published: 12 May 2010 21:52 GMT | Last updated: 12 May 2010 21:52 GMT

http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/article214783.ece

[northernlights]

19. ok. according to linked, we're talking about 44million barrels of oil

also possibly 770,000 gallons of diesel fuel from the rig itself.

"There are an estimated 44 million barrels of oil reserve in the Macondo oil field-- about 1.8 billion gallons."

http://www.opednews.com/articles/BP-Insider-Massive-Dead-Z-by-Rob-Kall-100508-893.html

[csziggy]

20. Yeah - it is not like this is a big improvement over Tiber

Just a different field.

I can't imagine what it would be like if they cannot cut off this flow and the thing keeps gushing. Even if only a percentage of the oil comes out, that will still be far larger than any other oil release.

Generally, oil companies can only get a percentage of the oil out of a deposit:

Kern River Oil Field was discovered in 1899, and initially it was thought that only 10 percent of its heavy, viscous crude could be recovered. In 1942, after more than four decades of modest production, the field was estimated to still hold 54 million barrels of recoverable oil. As pointed out in 1995 by Morris Adelman, professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of the few remaining energy gurus, “in the next forty-four years, it produced not 54 million barrels but 736 million barrels, and it had another 970 million barrels remaining.” But even this estimate was wrong. In November 2007 U.S. oil giant Chevron announced that cumulative production had reached two billion barrels. Today, Kern River still puts out more than 80,000 barrels per day, and Chevron reckons that the remaining reserves are about 480 million barrels.

Chevron began to achieve its miracle in the 1960s by injecting steam into the ground, a novel technology at the time. Later, a new breed of exploration and drilling tools—along with steady steam injection—turned the field into a sort of oil cornucopia. Yet, Kern River is not an isolated case. Most of the world’s oilfields have revived over time. New exploration methods have revealed more of the Earth’s secrets. And leaps in extraction technology have led to tapping oil in once-inaccessible areas and in places where drilling was once uneconomic. In a way, technology is the real cornucopia.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=squeezing-more-oil-edit-this

So if 10% comes out without special treatment, that would be about 4.4 barrels or 180,000 gallons. But that sounds like less than the estimates I have heard for what is already out into the Gulf. Of course, BP and the news have been switching around how much is coming out and changing the measurements from gallons to barrels and back, so it is hard to keep track.

And the oil field that humans have dealt with in the past are not under such tremendous pressure as this one, so estimates based on past experience could be wildly off.

In other words, we have no way to know how much has come out and how much more could come out.