BP 'ordered workers to drill quickly'

[maddezmom]

Source: AFP

The massive explosions before the sinking of an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico - leading to a massive slick - came after BP ordered a faster pace of drilling, a rig worker says.

With its complex drilling operations costing BP around $US1 million ($A1.13 million) a day and the extracting of oil behind schedule, Mike Williams, the rig's chief electronics technician, said a BP manager pressured workers to step up their pace.

Williams made the comments in an interview on the CBS TV program 60 Minutes, on Sunday.

"'Hey, let's bump it up. Let's bump it up'," Williams recalled of the BP manager's request. "And what he was talking about there is he's bumping up the rate of penetration. How fast the drill bit is going down."



Read more: http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/bp-ordered-workers-to-drill-quickly-20100517-v8wp.html

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more at the CBS link
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/05/16/60minutes/main6490087.shtml

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. Oh yeah.......haste makes waste.

Holy God.

:wtf:

[Violet_Crumble]

2. Hi, Which mod do I PM to ask why a LBN thread was moved to another forum? n/t

[dipsydoodle]

3. So how does this relate

to the issue of Halliburton and the concrete ? Does it follow that if this was the cause that the concrete infill didn't contribute to the problem ?

[maddezmom]

4. after reading this link

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/05/16/60minutes/main6490197_page6.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody

looks like the decision was made by BP to start removing the mud. However, Transocean knew 4 weeks ahead of time about the failure of the BOP.

[dipsydoodle]

5. Ta for that

:hi:

[protocol rv]

7. Dipsy, a little clarification

Halliburton didn't apply concrete, it applied cement. Concrete is a mixture of cement with sand, that's not used in an oil well. The comment isn't relevant, because the well was already drilled - therefore "drilling it faster" makes no sense.

There are a lot of comments being picked up by the press or in these blogs by reporters in the media who haven't bothered to study in the least how an oil well is drilled. It is a shame, because we see a lot of confusing information, and also a lot which is plain wrong.

[maddezmom]

8. the context of drilling it faster is here

The tension in every drilling operation is between doing things safely and doing them fast; time is money and this job was costing BP a million dollars a day. But Williams says there was trouble from the start - getting to the oil was taking too long.

Williams said they were told it would take 21 days; according to him, it actually took six weeks.

With the schedule slipping, Williams says a BP manager ordered a faster pace.

"And he requested to the driller, 'Hey, let's bump it up. Let's bump it up.' And what he was talking about there is he's bumping up the rate of penetration. How fast the drill bit is going down," Williams said.

Williams says going faster caused the bottom of the well to split open, swallowing tools and that drilling fluid called "mud."

"We actually got stuck. And we got stuck so bad we had to send tools down into the drill pipe and sever the pipe," Williams explained.

That well was abandoned and Deepwater Horizon had to drill a new route to the oil. It cost BP more than two weeks and millions of dollars.

from the link above

[zenprole]

6. Repetitive Stress Injury

Hey, it's a good old-fashioned speed-up, just like the robber barons used to like.