Sure fits the MO doesn’t it?

Trouble is, people along the coasts don’t care whose fault it is that the well blew out. What they want is action on containment and cleanup. Obama and company seem clueless about how their lack of leadership on that issue is going to hurt them.

There’s a fleck on the speck on the tail
On the frog on the bump on the branch
On the log in the hole in the bottom of the sea,
There’s a fleck on the speck on the tail
On the frog on the bump On the branch
On the log in the hole in the bottom of the sea,
There’s a fleck, there’s a fleck,
There’s a fleck on the speck on the tail
On the frog on the bump on the branch
On the log in the hole in the bottom of the sea.

🙂

Interesting stuff, indeed. As somebody who is not so familiar with the drilling procedures, I didn’t spot that Halliburton’s testimony alluded to such an error on the part of the well construction plan. I am surprised nobody else has picked this up, because this is as close as we’ve got to a root cause. I am guessing there are people who know but are either keeping their mouths shut (it not being their place to speak up), or they are waiting for the right time and place before committing themselves. Still, I’m surprised the industry journals and web forums aren’t all over this.

Why I haven’t been paying much attention to the MSM during this incident is because they seem to leap to conclusions.

Given how the MSM operates overall, I would tend to agree with you. However, the WSJ is more reliable than most.

the WSJ article has assumed not setting the final cement plug was a major error

That is a misreading of the article. A major error appears to be replacing the dense drilling mud with seawater , which was approximately half the density of the drilling mud, BEFORE the final cement plug was set. Once the kick and then blowout occurred, it was impossible to set the final cement plug.

See my previous statements.

I’m trying to go off the industry sources rather than journalists.

The WSJ May 11 uses industry sources. Here are a petroleum engineering professor and a rig hand, who from different vantage points, reach the same conclusions.

The plug is normally put in before the mud is removed, but according to the account of Halliburton, Transocean and the two workers, in this case, that wasn’t done–drilling mud was removed before a final cement plug was placed in the well.
“We understand that the drilling contractor then proceeded to displace the riser with seawater prior to the planned placement of the final cement plug…,” Mr. Probert [Halliburton] says in the prepared testimony, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The “riser” is part of the pipe running from the sea floor up to the drilling rig at the surface.
Lloyd Heinze, chairman of the petroleum engineering department at Texas Tech University, agrees that this is an unusual approach. “Normally, you would not evacuate the riser until you were done with the last plug at the sea floor,” he said in an interview.
A worker who was on the drilling rig said in an interview that Halliburton was getting ready to set a final cement plug at 8,000 feet below the rig when workers received other instructions. “Usually we set the cement plug at that point and let it set for six hours, then displace the well,” said the worker, meaning take out the mud.

Here are two industry sources who agree that displacing the dense drilling mud with seawater before setting the bottom plug was not standard operating procedure.

Regarding why they did it this way, and specifically who made the decision, is yet to be determined.

Halliburton is simply covering itself, to point out that it did what BP told it to do, so it was a dutiful contractor.

Halliburton mentioned not setting the final cement plug in their testimony:

We understand that the drilling contractor then proceeded to displace the riser with seawater prior to the planned placement of the final cement plug, which would have been installed inside the production string
and enabled the planned temporary abandonment of the well. Prior to the point in the well construction
plan that the Halliburton personnel would have set the final cement plug, the catastrophic incident
occurred. As a result, the final cement plug was never set.

Halliburton is confident that the cementing work on the Mississippi Canyon 252 well was completed in
accordance with the requirements of the well owner’s well construction plan.

This would suggest that BP’s well construction plan was being followed. So was the plan wrong? I am hopelessly out of my depth when it comes to the technicalities of drilling and if you have some experience in this area I’ll defer to you without question. But personally, I doubt it the plan was so fundamentally wrong. I’ve seen people deviate from procedures countless times, it is much rarer that I’ve seen an established procedure be wrong in such a manner. Perhaps the plan itself deviated from standard drilling practices, but again, I think it unlikely given how many wells would have been drilled under the same sort of plan. Certainly, Halliburton never mentioned in their testimony that what they were instructed to do was fundamentally wrong, but perhaps that was not the time and place to do so.

Why I haven’t been paying much attention to the MSM during this incident is because they seem to leap to conclusions: the WSJ article has assumed not setting the final cement plug was a major error, whereas Halliburton has not stated this in their testimony (for whatever reason). I’m trying to go off the industry sources rather than journalists.

Any allusion to “slouches towards Bethlehem?”

Where’s that same “roll-up-the-sleeves-can-do spirit?

I’d love to see Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman or Jan Brewer question him on that. I have a hunch his oh-so-thin skin would be even thinner given it was “girls” putting him on the fly.

Sooner or later, something is going to drop. You don’t put that many irons up in the air and juggle them forever. Will it be BP? Blago? Iran? Something old or something new?