May 31, 2010 by Allen
We were shocked to read a blog over the weekend that suggested two events in the ongoing effort for BP to cap the Macando well that has been spewing oil for 41 days since the Deepwater Horizon rig blowout. The first idea was that the Obama administration will soon be taking over control of the spill capping and oil spill cleanup effort from BP. The move will come in response to the public outcry about the lack of involvement of the administration and the continuing string of failed attempts to cap the well.
Supposedly the military will be assigned the responsibility of controlling the spill activities, but they will need to retain the existing engineering and oilfield support workers to accomplish whatever efforts the government deems should be undertaken. The question is whether giving the responsibility to the military will have any impact on the steps that will be taken or potentially just increase the public relations exposure? We question whether the administration will really want to assume greater responsibility for an oil spill that looks like it may last for another 90 days.
The more outrageous suggestion by the blog was taken from an early May article on the Russian news web site,Komsomoloskaya Pravda that reported on the use of nuclear explosions to shut-in runaway wells in Russia. According to the article, there have been five times between 1966 and 1979 in which nuclear weapons were used to shut in wells. Only one attempt in 1972 on a gas well in the Kharkiv region failed. The issue in that case is whether the bomb was properly positioned as it seems to have been placed on the surface near the well based on the mushroom cloud observed. The bomb was a 4-kilton weapon.
The first nuclear well capping attempt involved a runaway natural gas well in Urt-Bulak (80 kilometers from Bukhara) and involved burying a 30-kiloton bomb six kilometers (nearly 20,000 feet) under the earth. The bomb compared to the 20-kiloton weapon dropped at Hiroshima and exploded at a 600-meter (1,969-foot) elevation. The idea of using a nuclear weapon is that the explosion will push the rock and press it and squeeze the wellbore closed.
While the article suggested that there was only a 20% chance of the bomb effort failing, it is hard to imagine the government attempting to use this technique. The KP article pointed out that the risk of space exploration is greater than the risk of the nuclear weapon effort failing. If the attempt to drill relief wells do not prove successful in their initial attempts, will a more radical approach be more easily embraced? One only has to look at the gas well blowout off the Australia coast that took four attempts before being successful to understand the risk of failure with this effort.
It appears clear that the domestic petroleum industry, especially the offshore segment, has reached a tipping point at which public attitudes and government regulation will demand changes in operating procedures. Those changes will be funded by higher costs and taxes on the petroleum industry. Will the changes be draconian enough to drive more of the domestic petroleum industry abroad at a cost to American jobs?
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