Troubling testimony from BP engineer warrants Justice Department's attention

[G_j]

http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/06/troubling_testimony_from_bp_en.html

Troubling testimony from BP engineer warrants Justice Department's attention: An editorial

A key question in the investigation of the Deepwater Horizon's blowout is whether BP cut corners to save money in drilling the well at the expense of safety.


<snip>

In an e-mail to Mr. Hafle and other BP engineers, Haliburton representative Jesse Gagliano argued the well needed more components to keep the tubes properly centered in the drilled hole -- a crucial factor in achieving a strong cement job. Mr. Gagliano ran a computer model April 15, five days before the well blowout, showing BP's plan would cause problems while Haliburton's proposal would reduce the risk of gas escaping.

BP's response denying Haliburton's suggestion came from Brian Morel, the junior drilling engineer working with Mr. Hafle. "It's a vertical hole, so hopefully the pipe stays centralized due to gravity," Mr. Morel wrote.


<snip>

What emerges from the e-mail is the image of a company hellbent on avoiding any additional costs in the face of a nightmarish well, ignoring numerous warnings of trouble ahead. Even an internal BP document, uncovered by congressional investigators, warned that BP's final design could allow gas to travel up all the way to the seafloor.

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[90-percent]

1. Suggestion

Send them the tape of the guy on the rig that was on 60 Minutes a few weeks ago. Makes it a complete no-brainer that middle management types were cutting corners all over the place to earn their on time bonuses.

-90% Jimmy

[hedgehog]

2. ""It's a vertical hole, so hopefully the pipe stays centralized due to gravity,"

Blessed Isaac Newton, save us all!

One of the first problems I had for homework in Mechanics concerned determining the stability of long, thin columns. If you don't have time to take a BS in Engineering, try this experiment at home:

Take a straw and set it on end on a table. Watch how long gravity holds the straw upright. You say there are no breezes in the well to knock the pipe over? Fine. Get the tube from inside a roll of paper towels and hold it upright. Set you straw in that and try again.

[Kalun D]

3. Size relationships

A better comparison of height to diameter relationship might be to try and stand a piece of uncooked spaghetti on it's end.

[hedgehog]

4. Or maybe tie a washer to a piece of string and then try to

drop it through a tube without touching the sides. I'm told that in theory the pipe was in tension. That's fine, but tension won't help the pipe resist lateral forces.


This reminds me of the manager who wanted to leave our closed loop cooling towers running in winter when the plant was down (i.e. no heat added to the water). He insisted that running water never freezes. I attempted to instruct him in some basic heat transfer theory, but even the words cooling tower weren't enough to tip him off!

[The Magistrate]

12. Hope, Ma'am, is Not Supposed To Be In An Engineer's Vocabularly....

Unless he can specify just how many pounds of load that hope can be relied on to bear....

[Jamastiene]

14. Hope was in mine when we had to take the networking classes.

I had no problem with the math classes or the engineering classes. When they required that we take the computer networking classes, in addition to our engineering related classes, all of us in the engineering curriculum were steadily "hoping" we'd pass.

Just a funny anecdote. I'm not disagreeing with you. :P

[hootinholler]

15. Well put, Sir! n/t

[Fumesucker]

5. About time for Mr Gagliano to be indicted I think..

Isn't that what the government normally does with whistleblowers? :shrug:

[hedgehog]

6. I think he does have the slight advantage of bing called as

a witness as opposed to volunteering information. Let's just hope the investigators ask the right questions.

[Fumesucker]

7. A mere technicality..

As our esteemed jurist Scalia has said, mere factual innocence is no reason to cancel an execution properly arrived at (or something like that).

[glitch]

8. Satan's asshole aka Scalia did say that, didn't he? nt

[G_j]

9. I forgot, what is his job again?

:sarcasm:

Never fails that some of the worst people rise to the top.

[Poboy]

10. kr

[Lagomorph]

11. I read some internet news sites that claim...

Something about BP informing the government (MMS) they were having problems with cracking in the well in February. Bloomberg, if I remember correctly.

I tried to find some good factual information, but all I got was right-wing, anti-Obama hit pieces referring to information that was coming from UC Berkeley Engineering, no actual sources or information.

[PJPhreak]

13. The reason they use "Centralizers" in a wellbore is that...

It is NOT Straight!!

If you take a long pipe (Drillstring) and start drilling very deep holes the Drillstring is gonna "Wobble" around a bit,Long peices of Pipe become flexable...No deep well is perfectly straight,they tend to "Corkscrew" anywhere frome a few inches to upwards of ten feet offcenter.

BP used only 6 Centralizers on the last Casing string...Halliburton recommended a min.of 21.

The Oil Drum is really good about explaining these "Minute' details...To put it bluntly,

To save Money and Time BP used only the bare Minimum number of these Centralizers...

TOTAL "SAVE TIME AND CASH" FUCKED UP JUDGEMENT CALL ON BP'S PART!!

[hedgehog]

16. Thanks for the clarification - it makes the theory of gravity centering the pipe in the

well even more absurd!