WTF? Two Drill Pipes in BP’s BOP, Nobody Admitting It

(9AM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)

For weeks now, I’ve seen the same discussion over and over again at the Oil Drum.  Somebody looks at the picture of the sawed off riser pipe with what looks to be 2 drill pipes stuck inside of it, when they were trimming the bent over riser off the Blow Out Preventer, before they put the LMRP Oil Sucking Cap on it,  and they ask,

“what is that second pipe inside the riser ?”

And the answer is, “oh, that can’t be a second drill pipe, it must have been crushed when they cut the riser off with the pipe shear.  It’s a figure eight, it’s not two pipes, it’s one pipe, crushed.”

“But it looks like 2 pipes. the diameter looks too big for one pipe. ”

“yes, but it’s one. it’s crimped. ”

Guess what.

http://www.latimes.com/news/na…

The gushing BP oil well is a mystery still unfolding, and late last month, a team of scientists from the Energy Department discovered a new twist: Their sophisticated imaging equipment detected not one but two drill pipes, side by side, inside the wreckage of the well’s blowout preventer on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

BP officials said it was impossible. The Deepwater Horizon rig, which drilled the well, used a single pipe, connected in segments, to bore 13,000 feet below the ocean floor. But when workers cut into the wreckage to install a containment cap this month, sure enough, they found two pipes.

Fancy that !  Bp Tony Deepwotter Spinmeister Hayward never mentioned this before, did he ?

“We still don’t really know what’s in” the well wreckage, said Energy Secretary Steven Chu, whose team discovered the second pipe using gamma-ray imaging. He added: “If there were two drill pipes down there when the shear rams closed, or two drill pipes below, is it possible that in the initial accident …. there was an explosive release of force?…. Did it buckle and snap?…The more we know about this, the better we can know what to do next.”

It only took them a MONTH to admit that some people staring at their screen shots were not hallucinating.  Wonder how many emails it took to whomever in Congress, to get the government to admit to this.

Crap in the BOP, again.

Energy Secretary Chu is speculating that if there are two pieces of pipes stuck in the BOP, instead of one,  that could have been why the shear rams did not close all the way in the BOP.

In other words, the BOP may not have failed because of the reasons/excuses that they have given so far.  The inside of the wellbore casing around that pipe,  might have torn apart with such extraordinary force from an explosion that it separated drill pipe joints, and that the rush of hot oil and methane might have puked up entire sections of pipe from who knows where all the way up into the BOP.

For this to have happened, IMO humble opinion,  it is likely that the failure came at a section where the pipe was changing size from one diameter to another.   The pipe string has been described as a series of concentric jointed sections that looks like an upside down car antenna suspended from above, cascading into the well bore and surrounded by cement when finished.   For a SECOND pipe to able to shoot up, it would have to be a smaller diameter pipe than that which is above.   So, therefore, using logic, and remembering what the discussions were at the Oil Drum, this second pipe is likely from far below the surface of the well, closer to the bottom where they are trying to put in the relief well hole. That is where the smaller diameter, skinnier pipe is.

They’ve got a big hole down there.   To do the mud pack, and kill the well,  they need to find an area of intact pipe and casing.

Holy effing ****.

This would explain why they are drilling down and around and going by the well bore with the relief well’s drill bore on this first round.  They are doing a lot of magnetic imaging trying to figure out how and where, if it is possible to intersect this thing, where the pipe still exists,  and not just pump mud into the oil deposit formation.

I think that the Federal Government has so far been holding this information back, other than the fortuitous slip by Rear Admiral Landry during a press conference. when she said the well “could fail at any time.”  While Adm. Landry probably regrets saying that, I am glad that she did, because I knew then that it showed that there was much more going on than the government was admitting to.

“The well could fail at any time.” –  More pipe could dislodge, and come hurtling up and we can’t stop it.  

So somebody tomorrow should ask Adm. Thad Allen or the President or whomever,  what would be their response to a catastrophic well failure.

You know me, I’m the one person here who has so far been trying to stay calm based on what I know.  I’ve even said that the BOP and riser leaning over a few degrees doesn’t scare me.

This worries me.

This isn’t a question of “If” we need more strict drilling oversight.  To not do so is criminal.  

This would also explain why there is talk of putting in a permanent pipeline under the ocean to pipe this oil to another platform for processing.   Talk of this is preliminary.   If this well bore is truly this damaged, and the relief well mud kill won’t work, the Federal Government needs to stop screwing around and make defined contingency plans now to do this  so if the relief wells cannot succeed they can go to Plan C without another delay.

I thought former President Clinton was being sort of whacky, with his statement that the Navy could just “go in there and blow this thing up.”  I thought, oh, Cricket on the Cracker, not this again.  But he added a disclaimer, he didn’t mean nukes.  Now I think there’s been some Doomsday scenario discussions that are going on, amongst the DC beltway crowd,  and that was his way of pushing it out into the open.

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Thanks again to Linda Leavitt (WhoDat35 http://twitter.com/WhoDat35  )  who has consistently been a clearing house of information,  and had this story link from http://twitter.com/jimtankersl…

I always check the government and BP sources several times a day, and ….. nothing.

The cat is out of this bag.  The well bore is “officially,” badly damaged now.