An oil-drilling procedure called cementing is coming under scrutiny as a possible cause of the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico that has led to one of the biggest oil spills in U.S. history…
The process is supposed to prevent oil and natural gas from escaping by filling gaps between the outside of the well pipe and the inside of the hole bored into the ocean floor. Cement, pumped down the well from the drilling rig, is also used to plug wells after they have been abandoned or when drilling has finished but production hasn’t begun.
In the case of the Deepwater Horizon, workers had finished pumping cement to fill the space between the pipe and the sides of the hole and had begun temporarily plugging the well with cement; it isn’t known whether they had completed the plugging process before the blast.
Regulators have previously identified problems in the cementing process as a leading cause of well blowouts, in which oil and natural gas surge out of a well with explosive force…
The scrutiny on cementing will focus attention on Halliburton Co., the oilfield-services firm that was handling the cementing process on the rig, which burned and sank last week…
Halliburton also was the cementer on a well that suffered a big blowout last August in the Timor Sea, off Australia. The rig there caught fire and a well leaked tens of thousands of barrels of oil over 10 weeks before it was shut down. The investigation is continuing…
Federal officials declined to comment on their investigation, and Halliburton didn’t respond to questions from The Wall Street Journal.
Golly gee, that’s a surprise.
Could this have been a terrorist attack? Isn’t there a 2nd well burning?
Smartalix, I agree with you, but the insidiousness runs much deeper. Ordinary Americans demand to be free of Arab oil and support the elected officials. The way to stay in power is to kiss the ass of the electorate. That 500,000 valve would have saved the day… or not. The initial explosion was caused by a poor cement job…. which happens so frequently that would say the process is inadequate, but there’s no alternative… so everyone involved just takes the risk and crosses their fingers.
The well should NEVER have been allowed in such deep water and so close to shore, in the first place… valve or no valve!
Everyone is to blame.
Why didn’t people make such a big deal when a coal mine blew up? Do seals count more than workers in West Virginia?
What I find frustrating is that there are no products on the shelf which Halliburton markets directly to the American people. Everything they do *facilitates* the creation of things we need – gasoline, continued war in Iraq, etc. – and so they’re a hard target to use our wallets against. Even Enron made something people needed (though it’s pretty hard to not use electricity, unless you bought [gulp] BP Solar-brand photovoltaic cells).
With cronies of the former #2 in tight control of the company and the regulators, it seems impossible to think that there’s going to be any real accountability for this. At least JPMorganChase got some public embarrassment in NYC when people dropped paper sacks of WV dirt in their lobbies. It didn’t bring people back from the dead, yet it was an achievable gesture.
HEY
# 23 boolez said,
WOULD YOU HIRE HALLIBURTON TO RAPE YOUR SISTER?
From the All You Have To Do Is department:
Float a platform in a mile deep area.
Snake a line down to the ocean bottom.
Drill two miles past that.
Wait for something to go wrong.
What could it possibly BE?
43,
There has been a lot of accusation about bad GOP senators and lax regulation due to their actions as a casue of the mining disaster. AND the finanical disaster. AND the medical reform issue, AND…
The right seems to only have the aganda of “f*ck you buddy, I got mine”.
So, for an extra $500,000 they could have reduced the chance of this happening with a remote valve control. But some corporate executive got to pocket part of the “savings” he created by vetoing the extra cost of the better safety equipment. Reduce costs => get big bonus. As long as corporations can buy congressmen for less than the cost of the safety equipment, they will.