If you go on the Halliburton site, you can see that they dope the mud and concrete with all kinds of different stuff. From beads to lighten it, to chemicals and other stuff to make it heavier. Voodoo!!!
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Density engineering of materials is pretty interesting. Apply the thought to structural concretes, and we could print floating islands from lighter-than-water concretes.
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My understanding was that it was (maybe) a Halliburton cement job that failed, and a Cameron BOP that hadnât been tested in forever, which did not operate when they hit the big red button. And apparently they had Homer Simpson as the Safety Whatchamadiddly. In the underwater footage after the disaster, you could see the BOP still standing on the seafloor, with a length of crumpled pipe sticking out of the top of it. Workers later removed the crumpled part, and left a short âchimneyâ of pipe with oil/gas still roaring out like an underwater volcano.
Oil Drummers said that the operator should have noticed the kick (and should have been extra-alert, because they were pumping the mud out getting ready to move the drilling rig off and swap in a production rig) and delivered a âkill pillâ, consisting of extra-heavy drilling mud, and obviously stop the pumping of mud out of the well. Then call in the engineers to read out those fancy sensors and figure out what had failed.
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So this is a âstorage wellâ and not an actual âmethane as it occurs naturally underground wellâ, which explains why the gas is already odorized with methyl mercaptan (much like my own methane emissions).
This just kind of baffles me. They can drill 8500 into the ground (in a very earthquake prone area), and inject metric buttloads of methane which they then extract later to cope with seasonal demands. I guess that makes sense â under the ground is where we got the methane from in the first place.
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Sounds too complicated. How and where to inject the LN2? And how to hold the quicksilver in place while doing it? (not that the industry has ever worried much about toxicity, etcâŚ)
Thatâs probably the answer. Itâs whatever makes the mix heaviest, without interacting too much, chemically, with the other components of the mud. I donât think they worry about corrosion, their stuff is all made to operate in brine already. Just so it doesnât react rapidly.
They used to use a Barium Sulfate emulsion, but the problem there is that the stuff never dissolves, and tends to settle out in clumps. Also, under the severe conditions of deep drilling, it can go into solution just a tiny bit, and then choke the mud return plumbing up with difficult-to-remove deposits.
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The nuke gets my vote. Itâs not that I want LA to fall in the ocean, just that it should 
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Drilling-related disasters.
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My cousin specifically mentioned this guy, but I forgot his name. When the rig âblew upâ, he was walking out a door and the door blew off its hinges at his back, threw him down a hallway some 20 or 30 feet and broke many bones in his body. He was evaced to a ship and lay on the deck for about 5 hours in excruciating pain waiting to be evaced to land.
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The rig also suffered quite bad power surges, enough to blow the lightbulbs, when the diesel engines of the generators started sucking in methane from the air and revved up out of control.
Diesels do that in flammable atmospheres. Interesting phenomenon.
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Thatâs exactly what I was thinking about, the CO2 vs CH4 greenhouse potential is the reason that we see those nice flares on offshore gas platforms, is there a good reason why they wouldnât flare this leak? I canât think of any advantage to not since theyâve given up on trying to plug the well, would the flare really impede the drilling of the relief well?
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Yeah, that was the story told by a lot of the survivors. They were awakened by the generator revving up, and all their lights got bright and burned out at the same time. Then they jumped in the water.
Apparently the emergency shutdown had been hit, but had no effect on the diesels.
⌠they need an emergency mechanism that opens all the exhaust valves â no compression, no engine.
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Logical. That happens when the engine sucks in fuel together with air.
Diesel engines revving up uncontrolled are a frequent sight near hydrocarbon leaks. Common with refinery/pipeline accidents with idling cars nearby.
Or maybe close the air intake. No air/fuel, no energy, no run.
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Been done, sort ofâŚ
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During my brief exposure to maintenance training (with the army) we were admonished to always have a clipboard to hand when running an engine (sized to move an APC) on the stand in the shop.
The clipboard was to clap over the air intake should the engine have a run away. In a pinch, one of the thick maintenance manuals that were ubiquitous in the shop could also be used.
However, while the manual would stop the engine, it might well do so by being digested by and clogging the turbo-chargerâŚ
The clipboard was therefore preferable 
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