Offshore Outlook
Where’s the oil?
Jerry Greenberg
July 26, 2010
National Incident Commander Adm. Thad Allen said that BP is having trouble finding oil to skim.
“We’re starting to have trouble finding oil,” he said at his July 21 daily press briefing. “We’ve had skimmers out there on the wellhead site for a number of days now, as many as 50 a day out there. And what we’re finding is that we’re really having to search for the oil in some cases.”
They’re having so much trouble finding oil that BP reduced the number of oil skimming boats skimming by 600. In a July 21 Associated Press report, Matt Kissinger, BP’s branch director of the Vessels of Opportunity Program, said about 1,600 boats are operating daily off Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, 600 fewer than the previous week. Kissinger said that less oil has been spotted in recent days, so fewer boats are needed to skim for the time being.
Is the lack of oil the result of the containment cap installed on the well a couple of weeks ago, or could it be that most of the remaining oil is suspended below the surface?
Turning to the containment cap that was installed a week or so ago, it appeared to surprise many people and spill observers when BP wanted to close the cap and begin well integrity tests. I thought the containment cap’s original purpose was to provide two additional flowlines to the surface so as many as four vessels could capture the oil and flare off the gas. The next thing you know, BP wants to use the device to cap the well and halt the oil flow.
Allen explained its original purpose during a July 15 press briefing: “The capping stack that’s on right now is actually part of the containment plan that we ordered BP to provide. While we have the opportunity potentially to shut in the well, if the readings are correct, what this really does for us is give us four different outlets to go to four different production platforms, increase the redundancy of the machinery and the capacity that will allow us to recover 60,000 to 80,000 barrels a day, which is above the maximum floor rate that we estimate right now.”
It’s nice to watch the video of the well on the seafloor and not see oil spewing into the Gulf, but what’s the real deal? Several spill observers speculate that the reason BP wanted to contain the well rather than produce it to surface vessels is that the U.S. government still has no reliable information regarding exactly how much oil has flowed from the well. This information is needed in order to determine BP’s fine under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, which is $4,300 per barrel of oil spilled.
However, Allen addressed the flow rate data question during his July 23 press briefing: “There’s a lot of sources of data out there that we have already, including the pressure readings that have been taken as we transition from the former top hat to the current capping stack. We believe there is adequate data out there to establish a flow rate. To remove that capping stack just for the purpose of measuring a flow rate may or may not be the right thing to do. But we use all available means, data sources we have right now, to get our best empirical-based measurement of that flow rate and we’ll continue to do that.”
Many things continue to bother me about this catastrophe. One of the big ones is BP’s poor explanations — or should I say dearth of information — regarding what is being done during its various operations. Most of what the public sees is silent video from an ROV. Most people have little idea what is happening, and it becomes more confusing when a TV reporter or news anchor tries to explain it, which usually results in extremely dumbed down explanations or props. One Houston television reporter thought it was a good idea to put slits in a perfectly good garden hose to explain how the casing in the Macondo well could leak during the well cap integrity tests. Now that's just brilliant.
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