 | |
I asked some of my friends and family members recently what caused the Deepwater Horizon tragedy. Even though they are all informed, smart people, not many of them knew precisely what happened — even two years later. But the truth is out there, and pretty readily discernible. Unfortunately, the nightly news doesn’t have the time or technical expertise to tell you exactly what happened.
I came across a great, in-depth post over at Energy Bulletin that goes specifically into the known knowns of why the Deepwater Horizon leak, at least, happened, which seems to have cause the massive explosion.
While the thousands of gallons of oil grabbed the headlines, gas is actually what started everything.
Specifically, gas built up very early on in the drilling and oil excavating process, which started way back on April 19. 2010. At that point, not enough cement was used at the point of drilling, some 18,000 feet below sea level. Because of that mistake, the cement seal at the floor of the ocean did not “take”, meaning that gas and mud built up where drilling took place. An increase in the measured amount of gas was charted on April 20, and pressure in the main pipe fluctuated as gas and mud worked their insidious effects at the place the cement seal. Finally, a blowout began when gas pressure overcame the wellhead seals. Gas shot straight out of the water, igniting and exploding.
So in the end, it was not the oil itself that exploded. And in fact, setting the leaking oil on fire was one option during the struggle to get the leak contained — but it was decided against as being too harmful to the local environment.
Simple gas pressure caused a critical breakdown:
The blowout and oil spill on the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico was caused by a flawed well plan that did not include enough cement between the 7-inch production casing and the 9 7/8-inch protection casing.
1 comments:
This is a good argument about one of the disasters happened on industrial power generation.
Post a Comment