Kent Wells Technical Briefing, 7:30AM CDT, 2010/07/17 Saturday

Transcribed by Steve Friedl [SJFriedl]	- steve@unixwiz.net

Note: These are on-the-fly paraphrases, not direct quotes!

Darren Bodo in BP press office
only briefing today - no PM briefing
tomorrow at 7:30AM CDT
Kent "Good morning: let me start first with relief well: RW1 by DD3, completed open hole ranging run yesterday
 (precision part of the hole). Now 4.8' from macondo well, angle of 1.9 degrees"
"Now gonna drill 24' to the casing. Feeling very good at this point how the well is lining up"
"Drill that, do another ranging run, set casing, looking for intersection at end of July"
"Well integrity test continues. Pressure 6745"
"Building 2psi/hr"
"Buildup is slowing down"
"Question yesterday about reservoir pressure would be, I think about 6800 psi +/- 50"
"Continuing w/ monitoring, temperature, ROVs, sonar scans, seismics"
"Doing 2 seismic runs today - an overabundance of caution"
"Taking every possible precaution. I mentioned yesterday: NOAA vessel doing surveys to see if there could be breaches other places"
"You'll see bubbles on the 36" casing"
"This is quite normal. First piece of pipe put in down to 500'. Build well on top of that"
"There are 6 or 8 valves around this piece of pipe, it's quite common. But we'll go take a sample and make sure it's not gas from deeper down in the riser"
"Could be nitrogen or biodegrading methane"
"As the well cools down, that's probably what caused those bubbles"
"With the well shut in, there's no containment data to share with you"
Now open for Q
Q from Upstream: "Could you use this cap to choke the well back to what the current collection can take?"
"We'll be progressing every 6 hours as unified comand analyzes the data. Clearly if all the data says we have integrity in the well, and we wanted to contain -vs- shut in, we would have that option"
"But no decisions have been made"
Q from CNN: "Could there be some sort of debris or blockage that's contributing to the low pressure?"
"I don't think so: in a no-flow situation, anything that would act as a choke wouldn't act as a factor"
[tone of voice is that this was a surprise question]
"Technique we're using is a Horner plot. I don't think there's anything in the way of the pressure"
Q Reuters: "Is the test going to end after 48 hours?"
Kent: "I'm not going to jump ahead of the process. Adm Allen is the decision-maker, those decisions will be made as we collect data"
Q NBC News: "This test is going to continue all day until tomorrow morning? Does this mean you're going to keep the well shut-in past mid-day today? How would you assess info you've gotten so far?"
[ugh, same question]
"Conditions have always been to allow extension of the test if there is no risk, more to learn, no reason to make a decision right now"
"So far, everythign we've seen indicates that no evidence that we don't have integrity. Pressure building as one would expect."
[he worded it carefully, "no evidence of no integrity"]
Q from Bloomberg: "Since our tech briefing, did you find additional evidence against leaks? Beyond 48 hours will you do more tests that you haven't done so far, diff kinds of tests?"
"No evidence of lack of integrity, we'll just keep monitoring as we go forward" blah blah blah
Q from NYT: "Update on timetable for getting 3rd & 4th containment system?"
A "Over next coupla weeks, addl containment will come in - taking slight pause w/ all additional monitoring"
"First is Q4000 & Helix, then we have the ability to bring in the Enterprise w/ LMRP cappy, that may collect all flow at that point"
"Second freestanding riser is just about built and in place, need to do connections, toisis pisces[sp?] in the field in a coupla days, then some days to connect all up"
"Only thing to get in the way is weather. Over next coupla weeks we have options to bring up significantly more capabilities"
Q from BBC News "How did you arrive at that 7500psi pressure number to look for? Could 6700psi be result of depletion?"
A "We've put together numerous models of what would cause this with having integrity, having some, having no integrity, lots of monitoring"
[more of the same]
"We're feeling more comfortable that we have integrity, but test is not over, not reaching conclusions. No evidence that we don't have integrity, and that pressure rises gives us confidence"
Q from AP: "When you say you're feeling more comfortable that you have integrity, does that mean you have more confidence that there won't be more oil let into the environment? Still chance of oil back into water?"
"If we do decide at any point, during or after test, that we wanna open the well back up, we will flow into the gulf for a time to bring pressure down so we can go into collection systems [q4000 & helix] and we will work at that point to bring vessels up to max collection capacity. Will move to collect all the oil"
"Could be a period of flow into the gulf"
Last Q
Q from ABC News: "Assuming pressure readings are accurages, assuming depletion, was the flow rate prior to capping lower than you thought?"
"Clarifying: we didn't predict 7500, we set a range, right now 6756 headed to 6800 +/- 50psi, very much in the range"
"Our whole focus is on running the test perfectly, monitoring everything, running 2 seismic lines 2x/day, almost continuous seismic ops. Really focused on that, but clearly math says that lower reservoir pressure means lower flow rate, but we're not focused on that"
-end-