Talk:Blowout (well drilling)

2006
Er, hey, hate to ask, but.... did anybody survive the pictured blowout? (WOW.) Petwil 05:23, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I wanna see :( what happened to the pictures?


 * I significantly rewrote this article to add more details into the causes of a blowout and removed a couple of paragraphs which had an accusatory tone towards responsibility of rig personnel in order to establish a neutral point of view. There's a lot of room for improvement on my revision and more details are needed about the well control process, though. --Altailji 23:04, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

July 2009
I also rewrote the article to add some of these details, while keeping with the "flow" of the original one (which probably has been created by a "committee" over the years). Among other things, I edited it to cater to the the reality that not all kicks are gas (salt water ones usually are a bit easier to control) and not all incidences (indeed,few of them) of simple lost circulation lead to a kick. Irv (talk) 23:35, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Add Gusher?
I would leave it as an article of its own, simply because the very word "gusher" is so familiar in oil field lore and in the public's common vernacular. Perhaps a reference to Blowout (well drilling) should appear closer to the top of the page. And the second section (The Cause of gushers -- starting with plankton on the ocean floor!) could be eliminated entirely but if the basic info not already there it should be incorporated in the main Blowout article. Irv (talk) 18:07, 25 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Replied over at Talk:Oil gusher.--Father Goose (talk) 21:11, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Agree that the pages should probably be kept seperate for the moment. Maybe the gusher page should be limited to a time period before modern well control systems were used, and the Blowout page used for newer well incidents and the contemporary understanding of well blowout. andyminicooper (talk) 21:26, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Formation Fluid
I removed this from the article because I could not find anywhere in wikipedia where it is defined to the interested layman. Or at all for that matter. I certainly was not defined in the Petroleum geology article which the wikilink I removed pointed to.

Nick Beeson (talk) 12:11, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

About that jargon
No kidding there's excessive jargon. I've got a doctorate in engineering (but not petroleum engineering) and there are definitely uncommon terms here. Just a few of the terms pivotal to the explanation, but undefined and uncommon:

Mud pit

Annulus (I know the term in geometry, but not what part of a drilling operation it constitutes)

Drill pipe (seems to refer to a specific part of the drilling, but function unknown) Pressure control systems

formation fluid

formation pore pressure (the link for this goes to an article that doesn't mention this term)

thief zone

improper mud density control

Surely a description in common language is possible?

CambridgeOrbital (talk) 23:30, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I wanted to propose the merge of oil gusher into blowout (well drilling). The previous discussion is about a year old, and the main reason not to was the amount of rewrite required. Also, apparently Gusher did not have a cause of gushers section before, which it has now, creating a great deal of overlap. I have already done a great deal of the rewrite at User:Aalox/Blowout (well drilling)/merge example, but it is far from done, and you are all welcome to edit that page to help in the merger. I welcome all of your opinions. -  Aalox (Say Hello • My Work) 00:48, 17 May 2010 (UTC)


 * That looks pretty good so far. My fear was that a merger of the two articles would cause the accessible description of the phenomenon at oil gusher to be buried under the hypertechnical language in the blowout article.  But you seem to be preserving the best qualities of each article, so so far, I approve.--Father Goose (talk) 02:31, 17 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Thank you, I was a bit worried about what you might think. I've completed the vast majority of the merge and consider my part done. I bet there is still a bit of refinement left, but I leave that for the people that know more then me. -  Aalox  (Say Hello • My Work) 03:28, 17 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Frankly I don't see any compelling reason to merge them, inasmuch as "Gushers" are associated in the public's mind with oil blowing over the top of a cable-tool rig's derrick in the old days whereas "Blowouts" are a modern term for rotary drilling with mud and BOP's when something goes wrong. However, at first read-through Aalox's merge example looks just fine to me and covers both topics clearly while maintaining the flavor of each current separate article.  So I say go for it, and assume Gushers now will redirect to the new page. Casey (talk) 04:07, 17 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Good job Aalox. I was quite happy that the gusher and blowout pages resided seperately, but your example page is a much improved on the two, and allows us to build on the combined information. I have been picking away at the blowout page as it has not been an easy read to date. Given the problems in the GoM, I am sure that this is a topic page that is becoming more popular to visit. I don't know how, but can we see how many visits there have been to each page ? So overall I support going ahead with the merger. I will look a bit more at your merge page to se if I can help at all. (andyminicooper (talk) 21:06, 17 May 2010 (UTC))


 * Sweet, I did not expect to get all three of ya to agree to let me do this. Thanks. I went ahead and went public with the merge.  Still a some minor ajustments to do, but with it public people will be able to see it and fix it. -  Aalox  (Say Hello • My Work) 12:36, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Oil formation
Below is copied from User:Aalox/Blowout (well drilling)/merge example. -  Aalox (Say Hello • My Work) 12:39, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

I think the section on plankton and how oil is formed is not suitable for this page. This should be provided in a linked page - petroleum engineering ? (andyminicooper (talk) 21:21, 17 May 2010 (UTC))
 * I agree it's starting back too far in time (just like the first chapter of some Mitchner novels seems to start at "The beginning of time"), and gives more background than somebody searching either for blowouts or gushers would need. Rather than Petroleum Engineering for a link, take a look at Petroleum. It's fine to leave in the stuff about traps and pressures in various zones, and now that the combined pages are public, you'll get lots of editing! Casey (talk) 16:57, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I've removed some of the detail. It's possible it could be shortened further.--Father Goose (talk) 17:36, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

I am going to do some drastic cutting back in this section and try to maintain a decent set of links to the petroleum and geology specialist articles. Take a look at this and see if this is going to far. (andyminicooper (talk) 21:59, 21 May 2010 (UTC))


 * What little cited material was in the section is now completely gone. One step forward, two steps back, IMO.--Father Goose (talk) 05:07, 25 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Although I just realized that almost all of the citations had become dead links. Hmm. :-/ --Father Goose (talk) 05:14, 25 May 2010 (UTC)


 * The citation websites seem of low quality, so might be best to try and link back into the petroleum and geology articles which are well supported. I think we are getting towards a more readable article with less jargon. I am still planning on doing more work on the subsurface blowout section and adding some more statistics and mishaps. (andyminicooper (talk) 20:02, 25 May 2010 (UTC))

Oil well fires
I found this page Oil well fires which overlaps quite a bit with this blowout article. Take a look and see if there is possible merit in a further merger. (andyminicooper (talk) 20:13, 25 May 2010 (UTC))

No mention of capping
Where is the information on historical capping of gushers? --69.152.35.82 (talk) 18:27, 11 June 2010 (UTC)

And where is the mention of ways of capping wells? LOL. this article is TERRIBLE.

http://www.jwco.com/technical-litterature/p10.htm  --Ericg33 (talk) 08:49, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Soviet Nuke Claim
The "Methods of Quenching Blowouts" section needs to be revised as it falsely claims that the Soviets capped wells using a nuclear bomb as an established fact, while not providing any date and using a dead youtube link as a reference.

Similar to "Operation Plowshare" in the US the Soviets did a number of tests to see if nukes could be used for civil engineering. According to the newspaper, Komsomoloskaya Pravda, it was reported that authorities used a 30-kiloton atomic explosion triggered at an underground depth of six kilometers on Sept. 30, 1966, to extinguish burning gas wells [not oil] in Urt-Bulak, an area about 80 kilometers from Bukhara, Uzbekistan. Not each use of nuclear energy did the trick. A 4 kiloton charge set off in Russia's Kharkov region failed to stop a gas blowout. "The explosion was mysteriously left on the surface, forming a mushroom cloud," the paper reported.

The charge had to be placed within 82 to 164 feet (25 to 50 meters) and quite deep. The drilling required is about as much as needed for a relief well which can seal a blowout without using a nuclear explosion.

September 26, 1969, they set off a 10 kiloton nuke in the Stavropol region for “oil recovery intensification.”

In 1970, there was another blast in the Orenburg region for creating “reservoirs” for storage of natural gas. As nuclear historian Robert S. Norris notes in the Times, all these Soviet nuclear blasts were on land and did not involve oil.

With the nuclear approach you could be left with a radioative oil blowout instead. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.162.172.66 (talk) 21:49, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

I did not understand "hydrostatic head at depth" (where it occurs). 80.219.49.82 (talk) 21:04, 10 August 2010 (UTC) (Peter)

Formation kick
Posted in Soviet Nuke Claim: ''I did not understand "hydrostatic head at depth" (where it occurs). 80.219.49.82 (talk) 21:04, 10 August 2010 (UTC) (Peter)''
 * I rewrote last paragraph of Formation Kick in attempt to clarify the role of hydrostatic head. Casey (talk) 00:38, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Add locations?
The table at the end gives some famous blowouts, but it should have much more information. At a minimum, include the location (oilfield and country, at least) and the oil company. For example, the last one occurred at a well being drilled for BP, in the Macondo field, about 130 miles southeast of New Orleans. That information is just as important as the name of the drilling rig and its owner.Marzolian (talk) 02:06, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

Tenzig shaped charge
The reference for the Tenzig blowout does not say that shaped charges were used to cap it. This is what it actually says: "Because of the poisonous nature of the hydrogen sulfide, Soviet fire fighters could not simply extinguish the fire with an explosion. 'The gas would kill every living thing within hundres of kilometers,' Izvestia newspaper reported at the time. The well burned for more than a year and was eventually capped." That could even mean that explosives were not used at all. SpinningSpark 14:16, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

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```` Where is the Taylor Spill ongoing for fifteen years? What has been its total barrel release? What is the total barrel release yearly from all blowouts at sea? ```` — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:601:E04:AE0:E9F3:5E65:ECEC:63F2 (talk) 00:32, 11 December 2019 (UTC)