OntheWilderSide

President Obama and B.P. SHOW US THE MUDLOGS!
By  Chris Landau, geologist

What are you hiding? Why are you hiding them?

2 (two) new directional wells being drilled into this well, theoretically to be completed by August 2010, will not work to solve this Transocean-Halliburton-BP blowout well and will create a larger uncontrolled blowout disaster.

Reasons for the mudlogs

1)    A mudlog is a schematic cross sectional drawing of the lithology (rock type) of the well that has been bored. Without looking at the mudlogs and e-logs, we are all navigating blind. They are the forensic tool that you use to discover what happened. The mudlog is your map and your compass and your guiding star.

2)    How many oil and gas horizons were there in this well? There was certainly more than one. The mudlog will list the gas and oil horizons. Were there 10, 30 or 50? Which of these many horizons are we trying to seal? Are the proposed directional wells above some oil and gas horizons and below others? Why is this choice being made? Regardless, the directional wells that are being drilled, can not seal an open well or blown out well or blown out formation. Back pressure is required for drilling mud to stay in the well to keep the oil out to allow the cement to set. We need a quiet zone for the cement to set, not a “roaring river” of oil and gas. Whether you inject that cement from the top of the well or the bottom of the well, you have not changed a thing. The pressure in the well is the same everywhere. Directional wells will not work. You only create more holes with less back pressure to keep out the oil and gas. The drilling mud escapes. The cement escapes. Only new wells that do not intersect this blowout well will help drain the gas and oil pressure from this region. When this happens you can plug this well.

3)    It is a dangerous game drilling into high pressure oil and gas zones because you risk having a blowout if your mud weight is not heavy enough. If you weight up your mud with barium sulfate to a very high level, you risk BLOWING OUT THE FORMATION. What does that mean? It means you crack the rock deep underground and as the mudweight is now denser than the rock it escapes into the rock in the pore spaces and the fractures. The well empties of mud. If you have not hit high pressure oil or gas at this stage, you are lucky. If you have, the oil and gas comes flying up the well and you have a blowout, because you have no mud in the well to suppress the oil and gas. You shut down the well with the blowout preventer. If you do not have a blowout preventer, you are in trouble as we have all seen and you can only hope that the oil and gas pressure will naturally fall off with time, otherwise you have to try and put a new blowout preventer in place with oil and gas coming out as you work.

4)    More directional wells into the blowout well will create more holes in the casing and production pipe for the oil and gas to leak out of, by drilling more rough boreholes into this well. More cement and mud from more points is not going to help. You are just creating more holes and you will not be able to see whether your seal is working at three miles down inside the rock at these juncture points.

BP, publish the mudlogs and e-logs so that we can study the forensic evidence.
You need to drill 4 new wells 1000 to 1500 feet away from this existing
well to relieve the oil and gas pressure out of this zone.
BP, you are wasting time with a directional well solution for August 2010
that can not work. It is designed for failure.

5)    The drilling cap and pipes that are now collecting 15000 barrels of oil a day could be blown off if you push more drilling mud into this well when the directional wells intersect in August 2010.

6)    You will have to weight up the mud significantly and you risk either, blowing off the cap or blowing out the formation.

7)    As I have already stated directional wells will not work if you have leaks though the cap at the top or leaks through the formation at the bottom of the well. So, close the cap, then test the formation to see if it is stable. If it is, you do not need the directional wells. If it is not, the directional wells will not help.

8)    If you suspect or know the rock formation is blown out, we all know you will never seal this well. Even if you cap it, the oil is going to come though the sea floor next to the casing and the Blow out Preventer well. It will come up forever.

9)    Then drill the 4 to 6 vertical relief wells that do not intersect with this blown out well to relieve the oil and gas pressure.

10) B.P. we are not mushrooms, to be kept in the dark and fed on B.S.

11) One last small point. Is this oil, old oil or new oil? Is it being renewed today? Have you dated the oil? Not the formation. Have you dated the oil? How quickly is it being regenerated? If it is being regenerated quickly and you can not seal it, the Gulf of Mexico has an oily problem forever. What will you do? What will you say? What are you going to tell us?

12) Publish the mudlogs. They are vital and are our maps to finding the solutions.

Chris Landau (geologist)

chrislandau at yahoo dot com

June 9, 2010

Filed under: Ecology, energy, Environment, green, nature, News, politics, progressive politics, public health Tagged: | BP, Freedom of Information, Gulf oil blowout, Gulf Oil Spill, mudlogs, off-shore drilling, oil disaster, oil drilling