MONDAY, JUNE 28, 2010
KLMNO THE ENVIRONMENT Relief in the gulf?
BP is drilling two relief wells (the second is a backup) near the well that is spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico, hoping to stop the flow and seal it off.
How the wells are progressing Well 1
How a relief well works Drill ship Well 2 1 Oil spill
May 2 Drilling began 5,000 feet
Well head
May 16 Drilling began 5,000 feet
A shaft is drilled parallel to the
uncontrolled well and turns in to intercept it. Sensors dropped down the new hole help determine the trajectory needed to hit the target shaft.
2 May 24
Approached 10,000 feet
Saturday Almost 11,800 feet
June 19 Passed 15,000 feet
LISA BERNHEIM/HOUMA COURIER Aworker walks on the Development Driller II, one of two rigs drilling relief wells at the site of the oil spill.
Floating city tries to stem oil spill in gulf The oil spill: The latest developments
oil from A1
ride out a major storm. The En- terprise will need up to five days of warning before gale-force winds arrive to decouple from the well that BP named Macondo, af- ter the fictional city in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” Ships and rigs will sail away, leaving the well to gush freely until they re- turn.
Among the vessels that would
have to leave are the two enor- mous rigs that are drilling relief wells, which are critical to killing the Macondo well. Development Driller III was the first to begin operations, and it has burrowed more than 11,000 feet below the sea floor, homing in on the blown-out well. It can already pick up magnetic signals from Macondo’s steel casing. The second, Transocean’s De- velopment Driller II, started later and isn’t as deep yet. It is 324 feet by 258 feet, dominated by a 228- foot derrick. It is here that a handful of journalists dropped in this weekend for a tour of dis- aster-response life. “We want to get this thing done so bad — it hurts. But you can only do it at a certain pace,” said Mitchell Bullock, 61, the BP well- site leader, a job that more tradi- tionally is known as “the com- pany man.” As with the Deep- water Horizon, this rig is leased by BP but is largely staffed by Transocean employees. Even though this is an emer-
gency operation, performed un- der the heat lamp of global media attention, it is also business as usual. There is no sense of crisis. The people on the rig are doing what they do best: drilling a well. They’re making a hole in the bot- tom of the sea. Jeremy Marts, 31, is a driller,
operating out of the auxiliary drill shack. It’s air-conditioned, with a glass top, protected by steel grating, that offers a view of 149 sections of drill pipe racked to the rafters, each pipe 122 feet long, at 34 pounds per foot: heavy-duty stuff that’s ready to be linked together for the miles-long drilling operation. “It’s just a process that takes time,” Marts said. “It doesn’t hap-
Oil was spotted in new areas on the Mississippi coast, which had mostly been spared damage from the Gulf of Mexico spill. Donald Langham, Jackson County’s emergency management director, said tar balls and a patch of oil were spotted at the St. Andrews beach and at the Lake Mars pier in Gulf Park Estates. Langham said cleanup teams are on the scene and two skimming vessels are working. In recent days, more oil has been seen in Mississippi’s waters and along barrier islands. Oil has also washed up in Louisiana, Alabama and Florida. --- Associated Press
pen overnight. We’re out here, drilling a well. That’s our focus. I wake up in the morning, my fo- cus is to keep all these guys safe for the 12 hours I’m working.” Twelve hours on, twelve hours
off — that’s the schedule. There’s foosball in the rec room. There’s a Wii. There’s TV and Internet. Two workout rooms, one for cardio, one with weights. Steak nights are Saturday and Tuesday; Friday is seafood and Sunday is fried chicken. This is an entirely planned en- vironment. No drinking, no drugs, smoking only in designat- ed areas. Clothes must be clean in the accommodations areas. No oily coveralls in the mess hall. No loud noises near the sleeping compartments. A training video declares that “horseplay” is abso- lutely prohibited. “You spend half your life out here. Your co-workers become like family,” said Tommy Lenoir, 46, a BP health and safety repre-
Tuesday in the Health and Science section: How do oil companies rank in environmental impact? The Green Lantern column scanned the last three years of annual sustainability reports, put out voluntarily by the six major oil companies and by smaller refiners, and focused on two metrics: the amount of oil spilled by each company and the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per barrel of production.
By the numbers 815 visibly oiled birds collected alive 1128 Oil reservoir Why a ‘bottom kill’ works better than a ‘top kill’
Mud shot into the bottom of a well shaft — rather than through the top, as with the failed “top kill” on June 3 — can overwhelm the flow before the oil and gas have a chance to expand and gain momentum.
SOURCES: BP; Alfred Eustes, professor of petroleum engineering, Colorado School of Mines
birds collected dead (309 visibly oiled) From Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, reported to the Unified Area Command. Final
determination of injury or death has not been made.
sentative on the rig. Robert Robinson, a rig safety
training coordinator, calls Rich- mond home. His 5-year-old son, Mason, doesn’t grasp what’s go- ing on, but his 10-year-old, Ty, knows that “Daddy’s rig is trying to stop the leak,” Robinson said. “He thinks it’s pretty cool.” Matt Michalski, the rig’s mas-
ter, is 32 and has the easygoing nature of a surfer dude. No acci- dent, that: When he choppers back to terra firma, he beelines for the New Orleans airport and, after changing planes in Hous- ton, is in San Diego and then is riding the Pacific waves — all in the same day. What do fellow surfers think of
what he’s doing? “Some people are curious,” he said. “Some people have different opinions about offshore drilling than I.” The relief wells are all-impor- tant for ending the gushing-gey- ser phase of the crisis. The idea is to send mud, then cement, to the root of the well, clogging the hole at the base before the rising hy- drocarbons gain momentum. At the well’s bottom, the oil and gas are moving like a train easing out of the station; by the time they reach the lower pressures at the top of the well, they’re barreling along the tracks at top speed. The endgame is tricky. No one knows the condition of the well bore deep below the gulf. It’s con- ceivable that the bottom of the well has eroded around the steel casing, said Charles West, a geo- physicist who has consulted for
the petroleum industry and worked on relief wells. If that’s the situation, he said, drilling into the casing would be “like try- ing to chase a strand of spaghetti around with a spoon.” That would force the drillers to back up and aim a bit higher on the well. Finding the target is critical. The drill bit can’t turn on a dime; if it misses, it will have to be backed up for another ap- proach. “They got to get it right,” said
Chris Wokowsky, 49, the offshore installation manager and Transocean’s top guy on the rig. He looks relaxed, confident.
This is a steady operation, literal- ly so: You can’t even tell, moment to moment, that the rig is float- ing. Peer over a handrail and you
BONNIE BERKOWITZ AND ALBERTO CUADRA /THE WASHINGTON POST
can see, below the water, the white outline of giant pontoons that keep the rig afloat. Eight thrusters on the four corners con- tinuously adjust to wind and wave to keep the rig positioned within a foot of where it is sup- posed to be. A digital display on the bridge shows the distances to all the oth- er vessels. The Enterprise is 0.45 miles away; the Q4000 is 0.63 miles; the DD3 is 0.47 miles. There are 64 ships within five miles.
Plus two robotic submarines nearly a mile below. Dean Miller is the submersible operator. “We regularly see deep-sea rays, squid, octopus,” said Miller, 33 and British. At a reporter’s re- quest, he joysticks a sub to take a
broad view of the blowout pre- venter on top of the well. It’s a huge structure. Intact. The riser emerges from the top. This is what these things are supposed to look like. The tour over, the visitors re- turn to the helipad. The chopper rises and makes a half-circle around the city on the water, the roar of the flares drowned out by the thumping of the rotors. The flight crosses the vast oil slick, which is capricious, sometimes forming vast swaths of silver-gray sheen, other times streaking the surface with red-orange tendrils. The oil is invisible from some an- gles; from others it goes on and on into the distance, no end in sight.
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100’s of WINES and SPIRITS ON SALE ForStore Hours&Locations Please Visitourwebsiteat:
LISA BERNHEIM/HOUMA COURIER Workers aboard the Development Driller II typically work 12-hour shifts, then are off for 12 hours. SeeStoresfor AdditionalWeeklySales
www.montgomerycountymd.gov/dlc
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Sale starts
Saturday Reached 16,400 feet
Drillers hope to intercept the well at 18,000 feet.
Mud Oil
Drillers puncture the wall and the
casing pipe inside. 3
Heavy chemical mud is pumped
down through the new shaft. Downward pressure from the mud overwhelms the rising oil and gas, slowing and eventually stopping the flow.
Cement
4 Cement is pumped down
after the mud, sealing the old well permanently.
S
A9
18,000 ft 5,000 ft
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