A Bad Day on the Rig

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

A very odd drilling disaster in Louisiana in 1980. An entire lake is sucked down a well. An interesting documentary for oilfield hands an those not in the game.

https://biggeekdad.com/2014/03/bad-day-oil-rig/

[Old-Ruffneck + 1,239]

41 minutes ago, Douglas Buckland said:

A very odd drilling disaster in Louisiana in 1980. An entire lake is sucked down a well. An interesting documentary for oilfield hands an those not in the game.

https://biggeekdad.com/2014/03/bad-day-oil-rig/

Yup, that would truly suck for the rig operator. WOW!!

[El Nikko + 2,145]

Engineer's error 😂

Pretty crazy they had both operations running at the same time though. I had a year studying mining in Cornwall UK and there are thousands of shafts and stopes many of which were unknown and more than a hundred years old until a program of surveying was done much later. Some times they would drill into voids from old mines and get flooded killing the guys working down there. It's a miracle people weren't killed in this instance.

Edited April 19, 2020 by El Nikko

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

2 hours ago, Douglas Buckland said:

A very odd drilling disaster in Louisiana in 1980. An entire lake is sucked down a well. An interesting documentary for oilfield hands an those not in the game.

https://biggeekdad.com/2014/03/bad-day-oil-rig/

Nice video. Obviously the fault of Texaco, but interesting how the end of the video says no definitive evidence. I'm thinking Texaco must have hired some very good lawyers. 

Now realize except for the disaster, this is how the SPR basically works except oil in instead of a lake, then the part that throws me is water pumped in to float the oil out (but the water clearly ruins the salt domes). 

Funny thing, salt used to be more valuable than silver, at times more than gold. Roman legions were paid in salt. The Latin word for salt is salarium and that's where we get the term salary. That's also why you might still hear the saying, "He ain't worth his salt". 

Salt was very rare in Europe, but one city in Austria had a major supply, a city that at one time was the wealthiest in Europe and named after its prize: Salzburg (Salt City).

Edited April 19, 2020 by Ward Smith

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

1 hour ago, El Nikko said:

Engineer's error 😂

Pretty crazy they had both operations running at the same time though. I had a year studying mining in Cornwall UK and there are thousands of shafts and stopes many of which were unknown and more than a hundred years old until a program of surveying was done much later. Some times they would drill into voids from old mines and get flooded killing the guys working down there. It's a miracle people weren't killed in this instance.

Can you imagine being one of the guys in the mine when the bit broke through!

I know a bunch of mining engineers, and in 1980 they would have had a good survey of that mine. The problem was that one of the triangulation points used to position the rig....surveyor’s error!😂

Even offshore, using UTM coordinates, I have seen this happen once before, but we caught the error before we spudded the well!

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

6 minutes ago, Ward Smith said:

Nice video. Obviously the fault of Texaco, but interesting how the end of the video says no definitive evidence. I'm thinking Texaco must have hired some very good lawyers. 

Now realize except for the disaster, this is how the SPR basically works except oil in instead of a lake, then the part that throws me is water pumped in to float the oil out (but the water clearly ruins the salt domes. 

Funny thing, salt used to be more valuable than silver, at times more than gold. Roman legions were paid in salt. The Latin word for salt is salarium and that's where we get the term salary. That's also why you might still hear the saying, "He ain't worth his salt". 

Salt was very rare in Europe, but one city in Austria had a major supply, a city that at one time was the wealthiest in Europe and named after its prize: Salzburg (Salt City).

I would assume that they actually displace the oil out with a highly concentrated brine, not water.

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

4 minutes ago, Douglas Buckland said:

I would assume that they actually displace the oil out with a highly concentrated brine, not water.

Nope, Fresh water

[El Nikko + 2,145]

4 minutes ago, Douglas Buckland said:

Can you imagine being one of the guys in the mine when the bit broke through!

I know a bunch of mining engineers, and in 1980 they would have had a good survey of that mine. The problem was that one of the triangulation points used to position the rig....surveyor’s error!😂

Even offshore, using UTM coordinates, I have seen this happen once before, but we caught the error before we spudded the well!

Yeh it must have been terrifying, the Cornwall accident was probably almost instant though and I imagine they were all dead very quickly.

My Masters degree is mining geology but we also had a mining engineering deptartment (we never spoke to each other). Once they made us survey a site outside a mine and when we got back to our original starting point the lecturer was horrified to find that out resulting coordinates and elevations were all totally wrong, some by quite a lot 😂

I quite liked being underground and have been down a couple of cool mines in Australia. I think the best fun we had though was blasting an underground rock face, we drilled our own holes and made animals out of the plastic explosive which really pi*sed our lecturer off. Worrying I wouldn't hear the blast I removed one of my ear defenders and ended up deaf in one ear for a couple of days. What fun 😂

 

[James Regan + 1,776]

WOW- This was unbelievable, can you imagine the scale when you have reversed the flow of the GOM and it taking two days to equalise thats some serious volume. I would assume these caverns are similar to what is the SPR facilities?

Some great footage of the boys working and impressive footage of the carnage that ensued.

Im and trying to see if this has any similar geology to the Pre-Salt finds in Brasil, is it the same type of Geology ? Rock Sniffers please (El Nikko) 

So good to see no-one was lost also.

Great post Douglas.

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

27 minutes ago, Douglas Buckland said:

I would assume that they actually displace the oil out with a highly concentrated brine, not water.

These aren't the people I worked for decades ago, but are probably related somehow. Given the wild conditions and WTI selling below $20 right now, it might be interesting to Hire these guys to make your own storage. Maybe the business model for the next 2 years is creating storage. Click on the salt caverns link and there's a short video discussing it. 

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

18 minutes ago, El Nikko said:

Yeh it must have been terrifying, the Cornwall accident was probably almost instant though and I imagine they were all dead very quickly.

My Masters degree is mining geology but we also had a mining engineering deptartment (we never spoke to each other). Once they made us survey a site outside a mine and when we got back to our original starting point the lecturer was horrified to find that out resulting coordinates and elevations were all totally wrong, some by quite a lot 😂

I quite liked being underground and have been down a couple of cool mines in Australia. I think the best fun we had though was blasting an underground rock face, we drilled our own holes and made animals out of the plastic explosive which really pi*sed our lecturer off. Worrying I wouldn't hear the blast I removed one of my ear defenders and ended up deaf in one ear for a couple of days. What fun 😂

 

I've worked on drilling rigs that were below ground in mines (drills made by Robbins). Called raise drills, meant to create shafts and ventilation. Been quite a ways underground in fact several miles in hard rock. My biggest fear at the time? That there'd be a nuclear war and of course I'd survive easily that far down. Paid the bills when surface work was hard to come by.  

[James Regan + 1,776]

7 minutes ago, Ward Smith said:

These aren't the people I worked for decades ago, but are probably related somehow. Given the wild conditions and WTI selling below $20 right now, it might be interesting to Hire these guys to make your own storage. Maybe the business model for the next 2 years is creating storage. Click on the salt caverns link and there's a short video discussing it. 

Ward, I was pondering this today. looking at all possibilities, some impossible, my freezing of oil into cubes to be stored in the polar caps, is a non starter as crude doesn't freeze it only increases it viscosity. Huge ballon type devices placed in old quarries etc. I think the only solution is to cut production, weather the storm and work through the glut to the point where crude becomes a viable option to drill and produce. We really need a common market carburretor to regulate this Wango Contango Syndrome, if we don't take away something as the collective we are being foolhardy. Time to swallow our pride and take control, IMO it will never work if we don't enter into a CO-OP agreement. 

If we have not learnt anything after this shitstorm we never will and we will be continuing this cycle of market share wars and hot wars, regulation is required, as crude oil is not going away regardless of what the greenies think.

I would now think that Green people have seen how serious this gets when OIL and its flow gets disrupted, the dumb ones (which is 98.7%) will still believe that this is a great PR campaign for lowering the carbon footprint, but I'm sure a lot have finally seen this game is on and the buy in serious.

Carbon fuels and feedstocks will be the catalyst for the EV revolution, you can't have it both ways, now try explaining that to a tree hugger, I have its like talking to a Wooly Rock.....

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

4 hours ago, Douglas Buckland said:

A very odd drilling disaster in Louisiana in 1980. An entire lake is sucked down a well. An interesting documentary for oilfield hands an those not in the game.

https://biggeekdad.com/2014/03/bad-day-oil-rig/

Fantastic!  Thanks for sharing, Douglas.

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

1 hour ago, Ward Smith said:

Nope, Fresh water

How do you keep from dissolving the cavern walls?

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

1 hour ago, El Nikko said:

Yeh it must have been terrifying, the Cornwall accident was probably almost instant though and I imagine they were all dead very quickly.

My Masters degree is mining geology but we also had a mining engineering deptartment (we never spoke to each other). Once they made us survey a site outside a mine and when we got back to our original starting point the lecturer was horrified to find that out resulting coordinates and elevations were all totally wrong, some by quite a lot 😂

I quite liked being underground and have been down a couple of cool mines in Australia. I think the best fun we had though was blasting an underground rock face, we drilled our own holes and made animals out of the plastic explosive which really pi*sed our lecturer off. Worrying I wouldn't hear the blast I removed one of my ear defenders and ended up deaf in one ear for a couple of days. What fun 😂

 

Plastic explosive or ANFO?

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

54 minutes ago, James Regan said:

WOW- This was unbelievable, can you imagine the scale when you have reversed the flow of the GOM and it taking two days to equalise thats some serious volume. I would assume these caverns are similar to what is the SPR facilities?

Some great footage of the boys working and impressive footage of the carnage that ensued.

Im and trying to see if this has any similar geology to the Pre-Salt finds in Brasil, is it the same type of Geology ? Rock Sniffers please (El Nikko) 

So good to see no-one was lost also.

Great post Douglas.

Did you happen to notice the spinning chain? To show my age, I have not only used one,  I know the correct way to make the ‘tail’ on one!😂

[James Regan + 1,776]

6 minutes ago, Douglas Buckland said:

Did you happen to notice the spinning chain? To show my age, I have not only used one,  I know the correct way to make the ‘tail’ on one!😂

Gets some rope, I expect to see a nice crown knot, I love splicing rope both hemp and Wire, its a lost art....

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

Just now, James Regan said:

Gets some rope, I expect to see a nice crown knot, I love splicing rope both hemp and Wire, its a lost art....

True...I was okay at short splicing rope, not so good at a long splice. Was absolutely useless splicing wire rope.😂

[Anthony Okrongly + 114]

7 hours ago, Ward Smith said:

Funny thing, salt used to be more valuable than silver, at times more than gold. Roman legions were paid in salt. The Latin word for salt is salarium and that's where we get the term salary. That's also why you might still hear the saying, "He ain't worth his salt". 

Salt was very rare in Europe, but one city in Austria had a major supply, a city that at one time was the wealthiest in Europe and named after its prize: Salzburg (Salt City).

That is very interesting. 

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

8 hours ago, Douglas Buckland said:

How do you keep from dissolving the cavern walls?

Exactly! 

Remember, in a previous SPR discussion I was right with you, thinking this was the dumbest idea in the world, then I looked it up and was gobsmacked. Given that the govt is involved and every decision goes through countless layers of know nothing bunglecrats, it must be pretty robust to have lasted this long, this well. 

Maybe there are a lot more salt caverns than I knew. I still believe Has to be cheaper to store oil in those than any other methods we know. The thing to do now is have the private sector do it. You should be contacting Petronas and offering your services as drilling engineer on going into salt and creating caverns to store oil. Same for @James Regan and @Tom Kirkman. The same money guys who thought it was a good idea to buy Cushing storage and VLCC's at $100k per day might think building independent storage systems and holding for a rainy day, when the world starts clamoring for oil and no one is setup to produce it, is a brilliant investment. They'd be right. 

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

8 hours ago, James Regan said:

Gets some rope, I expect to see a nice crown knot, I love splicing rope both hemp and Wire, its a lost art....

You can make a surprising wage splicing Dyneema or Amsteel synthetic rope. As you said, it's indeed a lost art. Where I live there are 4 different companies selling "wire and rope" but there's one guy, "Mike" who doesn't work for any of them. He's just on call and they deliver to him and pick it up. There might be other people who try, but if you've got a 20k load, "Mike" better be the one who spliced the loop. 

[El Nikko + 2,145]

10 hours ago, Douglas Buckland said:

Plastic explosive or ANFO?

Normally they use ANFO for blasting especially surface blasts at quarries etc, it's a diesel slurry but this stuff was like plasticine or modelling clay, I can't remember what exact type of explosive it was called now clearly not semtex or anything like that.

I wonder if I can find my notes, it would be such a shame to have lost them, I do still have my main disertation which I did in Adelade Australian. The funny thing is I was going to do sedimentology or structural geology to go into the oil industry and was warned off because the oil industry was in a mess back then so switched to hard rock geology and mining and when I graduated gold and metal prices has crashed through the floor and there was no chance of a job...story of my life 😂

[El Nikko + 2,145]

14 hours ago, Douglas Buckland said:

A very odd drilling disaster in Louisiana in 1980. An entire lake is sucked down a well. An interesting documentary for oilfield hands an those not in the game.

https://biggeekdad.com/2014/03/bad-day-oil-rig/

Back to the original story, there's no way this would happen today is there? The idea of drilling near an active mine seems insane to be honest.

I did a course in wellbore collision once which was pretty interesting, even with the modern tools the sphere of uncertainty becomes huge over long distances due to 90ft surveys. I know that's really more relevent to longer reach wells and horizontals but what kind of surveys would they have been using back then? Gyros? I guess if it's fairly shallow it should be quite accurate.

Quite a few of the offset wells we got given for our modelling and correlation purposes (until the recent apocalpyse) came without a survey file and you could tell the ones that were probably quite deviated in the target window because the target formation looked much thicker than it should have done. It makes me wonder if many of them weren't drilled with a survey tool and they just did a gyro at the TD of the vertical well.

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

If they were simply drilling a vertical well, in 1980, they were probably taking Totco surveys (drift only). Directional drilling was in it’s infancy at that time. They would know the inclination at a specific point, but not the direction of the inclination.

Keep in mind that due to the surveying error, they were supposed to be 400 feet further away.

With the present LWD and MWD technology available today, this should not occur. Keep in mind that if you don’t actually know the coordinates where the bit hits the dirt, all your fancy new technology is worthless!😂

[El Nikko + 2,145]

21 minutes ago, Douglas Buckland said:

If they were simply drilling a vertical well, in 1980, they were probably taking Totco surveys (drift only). Directional drilling was in it’s infancy at that time. They would know the inclination at a specific point, but not the direction of the inclination.

Keep in mind that due to the surveying error, they were supposed to be 400 feet further away.

With the present LWD and MWD technology available today, this should not occur. Keep in mind that if you don’t actually know the coordinates where the bit hits the dirt, all your fancy new technology is worthless!😂

Well there is that 😂