The BP Doomsday Scenario

I am tormented about writing this post because of it’s terrifying nature, but I have decided to proceed anyway. I hope every last word of it turns out false.

The reserve that BP drilled into with the Deep Water Horizon project taps a HUGE, HUGE, amount of oil. Current estimates are running about 15 billion barrels of oil and TRILLIONS of cubic feet of methane.

In this reserve, the pressure is running at around 120,000 PSI. That’s right, the pressure down 2.4 miles below the ocean floor, inside that reserve, is 120 thousand pounds of force every square inch.

What was keeping all that pressure bottled up was 2.4 miles of rock and earth. Mother Nature had everything at a nice stable balanced point.

When BP drilled down to this reservoir with a 21″ bore pipe, releasing this pressure to the ocean floor surface at the wellhead, they were maintaining a pressure of around 12,000 PSI at the wellhead until it exploded. The explosion severely compromised the integrity of the wellhead and destroyed the feed from the wellhead to the oceans surface, causing several leaks in the feed line.

Later, to try to contain the leak, they attempted the procedure known as Top-kill, where they inject drilling mud into the well head side ports and down into the borehole.

Some experts are speculating now, based on the short amount of time that was spent with the Top-kill procedure, that pressures involved along with the mud injection actually caused damage to the wellbore casings. This is the liner of the borehole that is going to the oil reservoir.

If the casing is damaged, then it is a problem of hellish proportions. It far exceeds the problems of the leak that is happening now.

To explain the problem, think of those pressures. At the surface you have the 12,000 PSI and in the reservoir, it is the staggering 120,000 PSI. That is an enormous pressure differential looking to finding a way to equal out.

The bore pipe casing is what keeps the integrity of the bore path by withstanding that enormous pressure. If that is gone, the pressure at the reservoir is going to start forcing its way up, flaring out the bore diameter as it climbs.

As it flares out the borehole diameter, the pressure at the top of the flare increases exponentially, eating away at the borehole faster and faster. By the time the relief well reaches the intersection point at 1 and 3/4 miles down, the diameter at that point of the borehole may be huge, tens of feet in a flared shape. This means the relief wells will not be able to stop it.

What is worse is that the pressure will keep on climbing up the bore hole until all that pressure will burst out at the ocean floor. Trillions of cubic feet of methane would vent at sea level at that point, expanding 30 times its original frozen state. This would most likely ignite.

In addition, 15 BILLION barrels of oil would be released in one instant, along with all that methane. It is not even conceivable in the mind what that would do to the planet.

Another scenario is that borehole would naturally cave in on itself at some point, causing the slower release of oil over a long period of time. Estimates are running as long as 30 years. This would be a unstoppable leak, because it would be coming up through the thousands of fissures, driven by all that pressure.

Thousands of leaks spread out over a wide acreage of ocean floor spread out over 30 years or instant Armageddon. End results will be the same.

During a interview with a veteran engineer who writes for a prestigious UK oil trade journal…

The real doomsday scenario here… is if that casing gives up, and it does come through the other strings of pipe. Remember, it is concentric pipe that holds this well together. If it comes into the formation, basically, you‘ve got uncontrolled [oil] flow to the sea floor. And that is the doomsday scenario.

Terrifying!!