[ROCKMAN]

With the movie opening soon I figure better to recycle this thread then start a new one to discuss it. I'll see it ASAP and report back. But did some search and found this initial report:

From: http://theogm.com/2016/04/08/deepwater- ... ming-soon/

Y'all can skip this one IMHO...reads like it was written by the BP PR department. So much BS but here's one of the bigger LIES:

''Here’s how it happened. The BOP (Blow Out Preventer) failed to work. Mud gushed out of the well and onto the drilling floor."

The BOP eventually failed. But the BOP isn't designed to stop a wild flow up the well unless someone activates it. The BOP failed to activate after the explosion on the drill floor. And it wasn't activated because no one knew the well was taking a "kick"...that's when oil or NG is flowing up the well bore when it shouldn't be. They only realized it too late when the mud/oil/NG started blowing onto the drill floor. Once a kick is detected there are procedures to "kill the well" (stop the upward flow) without activating the BOP. As everyone in the oil patch knows: the BOP isn't the "last line of defense" but the worst line of defense.

I'll keep looking for more reviews but if this report is truly indicative of the movie it sounds like a white wash attempt you don't want to waste your money on.

[ROCKMAN]

From:

http://www.technologytell.com/entertain ... oil-spill/

"Wahlberg will star as the No. 2 manager on the doomed oil rig in the story about what happened behind-the-scenes in the 48 hours leading up to and the day of the disaster."

And "leading up to" part should be the real heart of the movie. The post blow out events will just be the special effected show.

[ROCKMAN]

"The film is based on an article by David Barstow, David Rohde, and Stephanie Saul published in The New York Times and was adapted by Matthew Michael Carnahan and Matthew Sand."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/us/26 ... d=all&_r=0

"But drilling quickly adds risk. For all of the Horizon’s engineering wizardry, it was tangling with powerful and unpredictable geological foírces. And pushing rapidly into a highly pressurized, three-mile-deep reservoir of oil and gas can be particularly problematic in the Gulf of Mexico’s unstable and porous formations." Way over hyping the drilling risks. Thousands of wells have been safely drilled into reservoirs containg much higher pressures. More on that after seeing the movie

"By 8 p.m., after redoing the test, they all agreed that the Macondo was stable." No, "they all" didn't as was brought out in testimonies.

"They also believe that monitors should have allowed Mr. Revette’s team to spot the signs of leaking within the first 20 minutes. But Mr. Holloway detected no concern in the drill shack. Whether the team was distracted by other tasks or rushing to get done or simply complacent may never be known." . No...it is known. Again details after the movie.

"But once the oil and gas got past the blowout preventer, there was nothing to stop them from racing up the Horizon’s riser pipe, the 5,000-foot umbilical cord to the rig." A complete LIE and every hand that has ever worked on a drill rig knows it. As mentioned before that "oil and gas" passing through the BOP is called "taking a kick" and the Rockman has seen a countless wells take a kick that was controlled ('killed the well") without activating the BOP. Perhaps our resident tool pusher will chime in after he sees the movie...if he can stomach it. LOL.

That's enough...not going to waste time reading the rest.

[Tanada]

From:

http://www.technologytell.com/entertain ... oil-spill/

"Wahlberg will star as the No. 2 manager on the doomed oil rig in the story about what happened behind-the-scenes in the 48 hours leading up to and the day of the disaster."

And "leading up to" part should be the real heart of the movie. The post blow out events will just be the special effected show.

Went to see Sully and the trailer of this movie was included in the list. I was not impressed, looked like a combo of heart string tugging family stuff combined with lots of over used special effects. I do not plan on seeing it myself, but if that is your cup 'o crude go forth and enjoy it.

[ROCKMAN]

T - Thanks. If I read some more reviews (especially by oil patch hands) that confirm my suspicions I'll also probably pass. And since the above poists contain more then I planned before seeing the movie I might as well finish.

Let's cover the finger point at Halliburtin's failed cement. When casing is run it is pumped down the drill pipe to the bottom of the casing. There it flows back up the area between the drilled rock and the casing. That is called the annulus. Cement is NOT pumped into the annulus to keep the casing in place...it ain't going anywhere. It's done to isolate the "pore pressure" in the porous rock from the pressure exerted by the weight of the mud column. Done to prevent two potential problem. The principal one being when mud weight has to be increased for drilling ahead after the casing is set. Done at different times when drilling mud weight has to be increased to compensate for higher pore pressures in the deeper rocks. If the mud weight gets too high the drill mud will get pumped into the shallower rocks with lower pore pressures. This is called LC... "lost circulation". A potentially dangerous situation since LC is often a cause of a well taking a kick or even blowing out.

And how do we determine when the mud weight needs to be increased so much that casing has to be run to prevent LC? That call falls to the well site PPA..."pore pressure analyst". PPA's are some of the smartest hands in the oil patch; they analize data while drilling to find those depths when casing needs to be run. Usually a 2 man crew since the job runs 24/7. Unlike drill crews the PPA doesn't rotate out every week or two: the analysis is as much art as science and demands continuity so the PPA stays on the rig for the entire well. Prior to his current gig the Rockman was a PPA working on Deep Water wells in the GOM. IOW I know what the f*ck I'm taking about. LOL.

As mentioned earlier cement failure (not isolating the annulus from the deeper hole to be drilled) is so common we almost expect it. Which is why testing the CS (casing seat...the annulus at the bottom of the casing) is critically important. How important? Some years ago the Rockman worked on a rig where the same CS repeated failed. Each time more cement was squeezed into the annulus...and thus we call this equipment the "squeeze tool". The Rockman has never seen the same CS fail so many times and needed to be squeezed: 24 times over a 6 week period. And this was in a "normal pressured" interval...IOW not high pore pressure. Because the operator could never get a good CS test the well was plugged and abandoned. This well had cost $48 MILLION at that point. IOW getting a good CS test is so vital the operator took a $48 million loss instead of taking the risk to drill ahead.

OK...the end of this installment...time for breakfast.

[ROCKMAN]

Doc - "...issues regarding why it happened are something else and I believe largely due to bad rig management." Yes: rig management was obviously at fault. But you and I have probably been in the same position more the once: go with the companies expectations...or just go. Fortunately I've never been desperate enough for a paycheck that required me to risks hands or the environment. But we've both seen it happen with others.

I think I mentioned once about an offshore gig I was on. Going in hole the drill pipe slammed into something so hard when it got the BOP on the sea floor it shock the rig enough to wake everyone up. Obviously they should have shut down and pulled the BOP up and checked it. Would have cost a few $million in rig time. Not only was that not done there was no mention of it on the morning report. Of course just being a consultant I had no stroke to interject myself into the matter. But everyone on the rig knew what happened and it was their decision to come back or not after days off. Everyone did...including me. The good news was that with the drill crew knowing there was a question of the BOP working they were all the more careful while drilling.

Are you going to see the movie? I might not. The little I've read indicates they aren't going to point fingers at the derelict ones who caused the accident. Even if I didn't know the uncle of one of the dead hands I don't think I could handle the guilty getting anything close to a pass.

[ROCKMAN]

Thanks TB. But I don't really need readers. I get on hard on just seeing my words on the net. LOL.

I actually don't read much either way in the level of responses. It mighht be more interesting to see what feeds back after the movie opens. I still haven't decided if I'll watch it. I gave up going to memorials and funerals a long time ago...even for close friends. By that point it's too late to say what should have already been said. The movie might play like a crappy memorial or a great one. Either way not interested. Been there...done that. Too many f*cking times. LOL.

[ROCKMAN]

Movie review from an oil patch hand:

The tears streaming down my cheeks do not do justice to the raw emotion I'm experiencing as I silently leave the theater. I'm not alone. Heads are bowed, eyes are red and the mood is very somber.

I'm in Houston, Texas, for the public premiere of Deepwater Horizon, the Hollywood dramatization of the tragic events that occured in the Gulf of Mexico six years ago. The theater is packed and the mood is light. I myself am wondering what kind of "creative license" Hollywood is going to apply to this story. What ridiculous plot lines are they going to present the audience with in order to appeal to a main stream audience? My skepticism grows through the opening scenes of the movie, as the newly introduced characters have a perfectly coherent conversation in the helicopter en route to the rig, without the aid of headphones. Anyone who has flown out to an offshore installation knows that choppers are loud and conversation is stinted at best. I was keeping a list of the bad analogies and incorrect assertions. Oil coming from dinosaurs and a dinosaur tooth found in the cuttings to name just a few. Then the film sucked me in.

It dawned on me that the little inaccuracies are insignificant. The real story was that the culture and behaviors depicted in the film can lead to unimaginable pain and suffering. I don't want to debate whether the film is an accurate depiction of what actually happened. I wasn't there, it's not for me to say. But I've been in the industry long enough to know that when corners are cut to save costs and safety is ignored, bad things happen. If you are not familiar with the industry's worst disaster, Piper Alpha, you should be. 167 people died that day in 1988 and while there were many causes, culture was number one. History repeated itself 22 years later and it will again unless we all internalize this message. Unless we all feel how real the implications of our behaviors and decisions are.

This film does exactly that. If you work in the industry, you should watch this movie. If you drive a car, you should watch this movie. If you've benefited at all from the oil and gas industry (that's you, you and yes, you), then you should watch this movie. But most of all, if you have any decision making authority in any industry that puts people in situations that could be harmful, you need to watch this movie. Then you need to ask yourself, what can I do to make sure this never happens again.

My heart goes out to the family and friends of the eleven souls that lost their lives that day. May their memory live on in the safety cultures, systems and processes inspired by their deaths.

[Synapsid]

ROCKMAN,

There have been quite a few comments over at OilPro from various oil-patch professionals who were surprised that they found the film much better than they'd anticipated.

[Revi]

We just saw the film Deepwater Horizon, and it was excellent! Over an hour of action, Lots of info about deepwater drilling. Overall a definite peak oil film. You realize the extent to which we are going to get the oil nowadays.

I recommend it highly! It's out on Dvd now, so you should be able to find it everywhere.

Mark Walberg is a great main character, and Jeff Bridges is great as the old guy who knows what's going on.

Malkovich puts on a great performance as a Cajun representative of BP. He's so good that I didn't recognize him at first.

[Revi]

Thanks! I didn't know that there was a thread already. See this movie. It was a really exciting film about an important subject. It is my kind of movie. I think people will like it, even if they aren't into peak oil.

[ROCKMAN]

Revi - Yes, the general review from the oil patch: much more accurate then anticipated. Not perfect but any more details and the public would have becomes bored/lost.

And no: the Rockman didn't watch the movie.

[Revi]

Great to know that people who are in the business liked it! It is an exciting film. Maybe the end was a little hollywoodized, but it kept you on the edge of your seat for at least an hour and a half.

[Cog]

Haven't seen the film yet but I know what Rockman is talking about with reference to safety in the oil field. Back in 1980 I worked as a mud-logger for an outfit called Exploration Logging. The company serves as a consultant during drilling operations. We catch samples, monitor mud pit volumes, and monitor gas returns in the mud.

I was on a land drilling job in Texas and the bottom depth they were trying to reach was around 23,000 feet. We were down to about 15,000 feet when we started seeing the gas returns in the drilling mud start rising steadily. We brought that to the attention of the mud engineer and driller repeatedly that morning. Wrote it in our log of course the time and who we told. The gas coming back got higher and higher and we told the driller, it was looking dangerous from our point of view. The driller said: "We are making a lot of hole right now and I'm not going to slow things down"

About 15 minutes after that the kick happened. Our gas chromatigraph pegged to the right and gas and oil started shooting out of the well. Everyone ran away from the well. The driller walked back under the rig and shut things down.

The driller could have killed us and his crew because he wanted to make hole as fast as possible by running his mud weight light. Nobody died but they lost about 5000 foot of pipe downhole when the pressure caused the rock to close in around the pipe.

No matter what the job, you can cut corners on safety and best practices and get away with it a lot but eventually it bites you hard.

[rockdoc123]

The driller could have killed us and his crew because he wanted to make hole as fast as possible by running his mud weight light. Nobody died but they lost about 5000 foot of pipe downhole when the pressure caused the rock to close in around the pipe.

No matter what the job, you can cut corners on safety and best practices and get away with it a lot but eventually it bites you hard.

unfortunately there are no clear rules when it comes to drilling, especially when drilling under adverse conditions (eg. high pressure high temperature). Most who have spent decades in the industry have either a direct experience or an anecdoctal one with over pressure, gas kicks and bad stuff happening on the rig site, I have many. That being said the decision to run with higher or lower mud weights isn't always an easy one. There are some serious tradeoffs. I remember a well we were drilling that had a very long high angle slant section prior to intersecting the reservoir. Mud weight was an issue because of an over pressured shale section but that had to be traded off against an issue with higher mud weight not allowing for the rotation speed needed to clean the hole, avoid development of cuttings beds and hence result in a stuck pipe incident. Caught between a rock and a hard place....too low mud weight runs the risk of shales expanding in the high pressure section and causing stuck pipe and too high mud weight would result in cuttings beds and stuck pipe. This is why the drillers job is a tough one and why they hate when they are second guessed by management back in the office (though sometimes that is a good thing). Note that under balanced drilling is one of the advances that has allowed for better completions in tighter reservoirs (it avoids invasion of drilling fluids into the reservoir) and that has been done safely for over a decade now. So it isn't a simple equation.
That being said there are some clear safety rules on the rig that have been in place for a very long time. Those rules are only as good as the people who they apply to. As an example I remember drilling wells in the amazon where the decision was made to go to the more expensive "mechanical push" mechanism rather than risk the rig hands doing something stupid knowing evacuation was not a simple matter.

[Cog]

When the mud engineer saw a steady increase in gas returns, over time, would it have prudent for him to start slowly increase his mud weight in tenth of a pound increments until it steadied out? I'll defer to your knowledge on this since I don't have a clue if that is the right way to go about this. Ultimately the mud engineer and driller were kicked off the job as soon as the company men from Texaco arrived.

[rockdoc123]

Ultimately the mud engineer and driller were kicked off the job as soon as the company men from Texaco arrived.

Every drilling situation is different so pretty hard to remote second guess. Obviously if the driller got run down the road he was doing something that he was instructed not to or perhaps it was MAC (management ass covering). Drillers do screw up. Usually it is when the driller is rewarded for making hole on a time schedule rather than completing a hole without problems.
Drilling purposely underbalanced is much different than ploughing ahead in what is supposed to be a balanced system not paying attention to kicks.

My guess is the situation you were in (based on the description) was solved by simply increasing the mud weight? Note that as gas pores into mud it lightens it and you can end up in a runaway system pretty quickly if you don't try to plug off the offending zone by sending down some loss containment material. Your mud engineer should have noted that the mud ppg was dropping and would have had to compensate. If your mud weight is already high the problem becomes more serious as their is a limit to how high you can take the mud weight (been there, got the post card a few times).

[ROCKMAN]

Doc - I'm sure you got it wrong. Clearly it was the fault of the mudlogger. As it's usually discovered in every well postmortem meeting. You know, those meetings where mud loggers are never invited.

Right, Cog?

[Cog]

Funny you mention that Rockman. When the company man from Texaco got there, after talking to the driller and mud engineer, he came over to our trailer. We showed him the hourly logs where we had warned both the driller and mud engineer. We had already faxed them to our office. Always keep good written records. It will save your ass. Post-disaster people's memories get real funny when it comes time to blame someone. We didn't get a pat on the back from him, but we didn't get run off the job either which our company considered a win.

We got to sit on the job for the next three days watching various companies(Drexler or Dressler something) try their luck on getting the pipe unstuck. The rig was a happening place. Helicopters, guys in suits, a real dog and pony show. Finally when Texaco realized the pipe wasn't getting unstuck, they released our company and it was off to another rig. From my understanding they left that 5000 foot of pipe in the hole and drilled a slant around it.

[ROCKMAN]

Cog - Good for your company. What you may not realize I've seen mudloggers blamed by managers who knew it was the company man, mud man or driller who f*cked up. But because that manager selected those other companies (companies that might have some spare tickets to the Super Bowl) and doesn't want to take the heat for choosing them for the job might stick it to the easily replacable mudlogging company. Seen it done more then once.

And no, beyond lunch, the Rockman doesn't take bribe. That way if a contractor carelessly screws up I have leverage to "negotiate" a reduction of the invoice. Long ago I once ran with the top salesman of a mud logging company notorious for bribes. One night while out drinking he asked if I was ever going to give him a job. I told him no. Even though he would give a couple of his loggers who were worth a sh*t and wouldn't have to bribe me everyone would assume he had. After that night I became one of his favorite drinking buddies.

Now true story about the same mudlogging company. They were on a well drilling by the operator that bought the project from my friend, Mike. Mike knew they would be cutting the target about 2 am and went to the rig to see if his override would be worth anything

Got there and mud was actually b!owing over the derrick top...elbow and assholes running every direction. Mike ran to the mud logger's trailer and found him passed out with a needle still in his arm. So nothing for Mike to do but sit in his car off location an see if it blew up...which it didn't. Just lost the hole.

And yes, same mud logging company got the job for the redrill. Probably cost them a Super Bowl ticket and a hooker or two. And yes: they did have a few hookers essentially on refrainer. One of their annual perks for clients was a deep sea fishing trip in the GOM. You know what they say: what happens in the GOM stays in the GOM. LOL.

Unless someone takes pictures, of course. Another true story: two young engineers (one my frtied) stop by the mud company's apartment for drinks. And surprise...a couple of hookers serving the drinks. My frtiend was tempted but married decided to pass. The other married stayed. A week later that engineed told my friend he was switching mud companies on the next well to the one with that apartment: they mailed him photos of him screwing that hooker. My friend was never agai tempted.