Chevron: No relief well needed off Newfoundland

[imurhuckleberry]

Source: Reuters

The company will abide by any regulations prompted by British Petroleum's (BP.L) massive oil spill in the Gulf, but requiring a relief well could actually increase the risk of an accident, said Mark MacLeod, Chevron's Atlantic Manager.

"I will have to say as you're drilling a second well you're exposing people to the risk of drilling each well, so you're effectively doubling the risk," MacLeod said.

Chevron is drilling the Lona 0-55 exploration well in the Orphan Basin, some 430 kilometers (270 miles) northeast of Newfoundland's capital St. John's.

Canadian regulators announced last month that Chevron must take additional safety measures, including new test results on its blowout preventer and undergo more safety inspections of its drillship.

"We believe all wells can be drilled incident free. We believe this well will be drilled incident free and we won't need a relief well," MacLeod said.

Chevron is drilling a well in more than 2,600 meters (8,530 feet) of water off the Canadian coast, making it twice as deep as the BP well that has been fouling the Gulf of Mexico with oil since April

Read more: http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKN1725656420100617?rpc=401&feedType=RSS&feedName=governmentFilingsNews

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. No more oil wells, please.

[Dappleganger]

2. Well if that's the argument they want to use...

"endangering people's lives" then they shouldn't be doing any drilling in the first place!!!

[Lasher]

3. Fuck Chevron.

Even as the Gulf dies, the greedy bastards want to cut corners. What a lameass excuse, the second well exposes people to risk. So does the first one.

30 years of this deregulation insanity, and still a lot of us don't realize that corporations need to be tightly controlled by government.

[imurhuckleberry]

4. It is horrendous that they are having to go to these depths to retrieve

the last deposits. It's insane....CRAZY!

[highplainsdem]

5. And this after they admitted last week that their blowout preventer might fail. Link:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8533565

[caraher]

6. Let me get this straight...

There's basically no risk in drilling a well... but we should be worried that drilling two doubles the risk. The risk that they already told us not to worry about.

OK, let's do the math... Mr. Chevron dude, let's say the odds of anything going wrong with 1 well are 1 in a million. The chance of drilling two and both of them crapping out would therefore be 1 in a trillion. So far so good.

But what the second well means that if one of them goes all BP on use, we're already drilling the relief well - or it's already in place. So if we drill a trillion oil well sites, 1,999,999 of them blow up the way we saw in the Gulf, but it doesn't take 6-12 months to plug the leak. And on that last 1 in a trillion we're just as screwed as we are now.

Whereas if we drill a trillion sites, 1 well per site, we get a million blow ups just like what we have now. To be "ahead" on total spillage merely requires that the head start on relief wells on average saves half the time (or rather, reduces the spill per incident by factor of at least two). That seems like a pretty safe bet to me!

Of course, it *is* an additional expense... but hey, that's your problem, Mr. Oil Company Dude, not mine!

[Trillo]

7. Sometimes I wonder if these corporations have some existing space transportation

to a new planet for their chosen ones. I believe Stephen Hawking was talking of the need to find such a planet back in the late 1990s, for human survival's sake. It came up again in the last few months.

[GreenPartyVoter]

8. It's hard not to think that, the way they plunge headlong into disaster like that.

[Prometheus Bound]

9. "We believe..." "We believe...", he said twice. Hardly confidence inspiring.

This is what it's come to. You got to believe.

[Art_from_Ark]

12. That was the St. Louis Cardinals' slogan back in '74 or '75

"You got to believe."

It still didn't help them get to the playoffs.

[Zorra]

10. It's always safe until it ain't. nt

[Mendocino]

11. "What could possibly go wrong here?

There are those pesky icebergs, like the one that sank the Titanic. However the chances of one hitting a drilling rig, is well.. high. But we count on being lucky. Besides prevailing currents would carry any spillled oil to Europe and we need not worry about that."

Organization Of Fuel Using Countries (OFUC) spokesman-Dewey Kare;)

[pitohui]

13. yeah yeah blah blah blah

yes drilling wells is risky as is building skyscrapers but if there is no one in newfoundland willing to assume those risks i guarantee we've got a lot of ballsy guys in louisiana happy to fly up there and help you guys drill the relief well in question

sheesh

[Javaman]

14. What? Me worry?. nt