The last thread was locked and I'm not sure why. If you are going to lock the thread, atleast tell us why. There seems to be a large audience on here that's interested in the situation and I'll gladly continue to funnel information here.
I was forwarded an e-mail today at work that contain a 15 minute audio clip from a radio show. I couldn't get it to load here, but I did find a link to that audio clip HERE. This is an interview with an employee who was working on the Horizon rig at the time of the explosion. From the previous thread, we discussed some "hear-say" scenarios about what actually happend and he confirmed most of what was posted by myself, brantleyjones, and kenny b.
To sum up the clip (it's long, but worth the listen)... they had just run a cement retainer in the hole and performed their twice daily pressure test on the blow-out-preventer (BOP) stack. After the test (he doesn't know if the test was good or not, but assumed so because they continued operations afterwards), the drilling riser (the pipe running from the bottom of the rig to the top of the BOPs at the bottom of the ocean floor) was displaced from drilling mud to sea water. This is a common practice when you're abandoning one wellbore and moving to another (or movig in a different rig to perform the completion). After the sea water was in place, the rig took a "kick". A kick is when the reservoir emits some gas into the wellbore and forces it uphole. Kicks are common on almost all rigs. However, this kick was so powerful that it shot the seawater in the drilling riser to the "crown"of the rig. So basically a 200 foot+ geyser. Now this gas that followed the sea water is just lingering around surface and any type of spark could ingnite it.
For those not familiar with the oil field, here's some notes on drilling mud. The mud is used to counter-balance the pressure of the reservoir. Drilling mud is weighted anywhere from 6 lbs/gallon up to around 20 lbs/gallon (could probably even go higher). The higher the pressure of the reservoir, the higher weighted mud you need to keep the reservoir from "coming in."
Anyways, I hope this brings some more light to the situation. It's a great listen, escpecially if you've had oil field experience and understand the operations offshore.
I was forwarded an e-mail today at work that contain a 15 minute audio clip from a radio show. I couldn't get it to load here, but I did find a link to that audio clip HERE. This is an interview with an employee who was working on the Horizon rig at the time of the explosion. From the previous thread, we discussed some "hear-say" scenarios about what actually happend and he confirmed most of what was posted by myself, brantleyjones, and kenny b.
To sum up the clip (it's long, but worth the listen)... they had just run a cement retainer in the hole and performed their twice daily pressure test on the blow-out-preventer (BOP) stack. After the test (he doesn't know if the test was good or not, but assumed so because they continued operations afterwards), the drilling riser (the pipe running from the bottom of the rig to the top of the BOPs at the bottom of the ocean floor) was displaced from drilling mud to sea water. This is a common practice when you're abandoning one wellbore and moving to another (or movig in a different rig to perform the completion). After the sea water was in place, the rig took a "kick". A kick is when the reservoir emits some gas into the wellbore and forces it uphole. Kicks are common on almost all rigs. However, this kick was so powerful that it shot the seawater in the drilling riser to the "crown"of the rig. So basically a 200 foot+ geyser. Now this gas that followed the sea water is just lingering around surface and any type of spark could ingnite it.
For those not familiar with the oil field, here's some notes on drilling mud. The mud is used to counter-balance the pressure of the reservoir. Drilling mud is weighted anywhere from 6 lbs/gallon up to around 20 lbs/gallon (could probably even go higher). The higher the pressure of the reservoir, the higher weighted mud you need to keep the reservoir from "coming in."
Anyways, I hope this brings some more light to the situation. It's a great listen, escpecially if you've had oil field experience and understand the operations offshore.
