For novice Rick’s Blog readers, Buzz items are rumors and other unverified bits of information that come to me. More often than not they turn out to be true, but I post them for discussion purposes with the hope someone might go on record and fill in the blanks surrounding the item. This blog has been around for five years – I realize it’s quirky and has a set of rules only I understand, hence it bears my name.
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This is information is from someone inside the oil industry who had a son on the Deepwater Horizon rig. Much of this matches the other news reports on the April 20 explosion:
Talked to my son, he is at home now, and in good shape. What I was told about the explosion was they had set a 9-5/8 tapered production liner, did their cement job, had positive tested, and also negative tested.
They were going to set a balanced plug around 3000′ below the well head which would be at about 8000.’ The senior company man wanted to set the balanced plug in mud, but the engineers wanted to displace with water prior to setting balanced plug, so they displaced from 3000′ below mud line, and were getting ready to set plug.
The derrickman called the driller and said he needed help. He had mud going everywhere, and about this time the drill floor disappeared. then there was an explosion, then a second explosion.
The flames were then now going straight up allowing evacuation of men, then you know the rest.
The hands that are missing are the ones that were on the drill floor and pump room. You know the results of that. This all took place in less than a minute.
Rig was evacuated in about 25 minutes.
It is believed that the seal assembly at the well head gave up. If that is the case and they would have set the balanced plug in mud then displaced the riser, it would only have delayed what happened by a couple of hours.
Gas must have channelled through the cement job and up the back side of the 9-5/8 production casing.