Friday, April 27, 2012
Monday, April 23, 2012
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Friday, April 13, 2012
Jamu: Will Indonesia's Herbal Healing Find Popularity in West? - TIME
Jamu: Will Indonesia's Herbal Healing Find Popularity in West? - TIME: Jamu: The Ancient Art of Herbal Healing
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Monday, April 09, 2012
Deuteronomy 32:35 It is mine to avenge; I will repay. In due time their foot will slip; their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them."
Deuteronomy 32:35 It is mine to avenge; I will repay. In due time their foot will slip; their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them.": King James Bible (Cambridge Ed.)
To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.
To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.
Tuesday, April 03, 2012
The Oil Drum | From SEMP to SEMS: Industry’s Response to the Deepwater Horizon / Macondo disaster
The Oil Drum | From SEMP to SEMS: Industry’s Response to the Deepwater Horizon / Macondo disaster
There are TODsters who know about the mechanical side of ops, such as BOP design, then I’ll ever know. Ditto for cement specs and their testing procedures. But I do understand the basic method for preventing a well from blowing out. This may sound stupidly simple to many and they may think I’m leaving something out. I’m not.
Reservoirs, regardless of where they are and at what depth, exist at a certain pressure. The column of fluid in the well bore, whether cased or open hole, has to exert a pressure greater than the reservoir pressure. Basic and undeniable physics: fluid will flow from high pressure to low pressure. It didn’t matter if Halliburton had pumped the best/worst cement on the planet. It didn’t matter if BP had the best/worst cmt testing procedures in the industry. It wouldn’t even matter if BP had pumped no cmt at all. It would not have mattered if BP had the best designed BOP one can imagine or none at all. If BP had left a mud column in the well of sufficient weight to prevent the reservoir from flowing the blowout would not have happened.
Last week I began completing a well I drilled and cased a month ago. Cement was pumped and the drilling rig moved off. I didn’t run a cmt bond log or test neither the cement nor any of the potential annular failures before doing so. There was no need to: I left the mud in the casing that I drilled the reservoir with…the mud weight that prevented the reservoir from blowing out in the first place. I could have left the well with no casing, no cement, no BOP, etc. etc, etc for a 100 years and it would not have blown out.
With the more expensive drilling rig gone I move in a small completion rig. The cement has now had weeks to cure unlike the mere hours the Macondo cmt had. Not only do I run a cmt bond log I test all the cement (in the annulus as well as the bottom cmt plug) to a level exceeding the reservoir pressure. I install a BOP that exceeds the reservoir pressure and actually pressure up on it to make sure it holds that pressure. Then, and only then, do I displace the heavier drilling mud with a lighter weight completion fluid. Then I shoot holes in the casing through the reservoir and since its pressure is now greater than the back pressure exerted by the completion fluid the well begins to flow.
That, boys and girls, is how I’ve completed every well in the last 36 years. Not once have I ever seen an operator temporarily abandon a well without leaving a sufficient mud weight in the hole to prevent a blow out. And that includes offshore wells. I haven’t focused on the offshore for a while, especially Deep Water. I was shocked to discover that the feds allowed this procedure on the Macondo well. I can understand why BP did it. There are no cheap DW completion rigs: they use the same very expensive rig used to drill the well. BP wanted to leave the Macondo well ready to perforate and flow before they moved the rig off location. And that’s exactly what happened…the well flowed. Just a little sooner than they had planned.
Folks can discuss all the things that went wrong in the process: bad cmt, bad testing procedures, management pressure, malfunctioning BOP, drilling hands not monitoring the well properly, etc. But it doesn’t change the fact that had BP left the heavier mud in the hole or had placed packers in the hole isolating the reservoir from the surface before displacing with a lighter fluid the well would not have blown out. Never.
So how do you prevent another Macondo well from blowing out? Just as the doctor said when you told him it hurts when you do this: “Don’t do that”. LOL. There could be a blow out develop during the original drilling phase. That’s a different scenario we can discuss later. But a Macondo type failure need never happen again: just take 15 minutes to rewrite the regs regarding how a well is left temporarily abandoned.
It really is that stupidly simple
There are TODsters who know about the mechanical side of ops, such as BOP design, then I’ll ever know. Ditto for cement specs and their testing procedures. But I do understand the basic method for preventing a well from blowing out. This may sound stupidly simple to many and they may think I’m leaving something out. I’m not.
Reservoirs, regardless of where they are and at what depth, exist at a certain pressure. The column of fluid in the well bore, whether cased or open hole, has to exert a pressure greater than the reservoir pressure. Basic and undeniable physics: fluid will flow from high pressure to low pressure. It didn’t matter if Halliburton had pumped the best/worst cement on the planet. It didn’t matter if BP had the best/worst cmt testing procedures in the industry. It wouldn’t even matter if BP had pumped no cmt at all. It would not have mattered if BP had the best designed BOP one can imagine or none at all. If BP had left a mud column in the well of sufficient weight to prevent the reservoir from flowing the blowout would not have happened.
Last week I began completing a well I drilled and cased a month ago. Cement was pumped and the drilling rig moved off. I didn’t run a cmt bond log or test neither the cement nor any of the potential annular failures before doing so. There was no need to: I left the mud in the casing that I drilled the reservoir with…the mud weight that prevented the reservoir from blowing out in the first place. I could have left the well with no casing, no cement, no BOP, etc. etc, etc for a 100 years and it would not have blown out.
With the more expensive drilling rig gone I move in a small completion rig. The cement has now had weeks to cure unlike the mere hours the Macondo cmt had. Not only do I run a cmt bond log I test all the cement (in the annulus as well as the bottom cmt plug) to a level exceeding the reservoir pressure. I install a BOP that exceeds the reservoir pressure and actually pressure up on it to make sure it holds that pressure. Then, and only then, do I displace the heavier drilling mud with a lighter weight completion fluid. Then I shoot holes in the casing through the reservoir and since its pressure is now greater than the back pressure exerted by the completion fluid the well begins to flow.
That, boys and girls, is how I’ve completed every well in the last 36 years. Not once have I ever seen an operator temporarily abandon a well without leaving a sufficient mud weight in the hole to prevent a blow out. And that includes offshore wells. I haven’t focused on the offshore for a while, especially Deep Water. I was shocked to discover that the feds allowed this procedure on the Macondo well. I can understand why BP did it. There are no cheap DW completion rigs: they use the same very expensive rig used to drill the well. BP wanted to leave the Macondo well ready to perforate and flow before they moved the rig off location. And that’s exactly what happened…the well flowed. Just a little sooner than they had planned.
Folks can discuss all the things that went wrong in the process: bad cmt, bad testing procedures, management pressure, malfunctioning BOP, drilling hands not monitoring the well properly, etc. But it doesn’t change the fact that had BP left the heavier mud in the hole or had placed packers in the hole isolating the reservoir from the surface before displacing with a lighter fluid the well would not have blown out. Never.
So how do you prevent another Macondo well from blowing out? Just as the doctor said when you told him it hurts when you do this: “Don’t do that”. LOL. There could be a blow out develop during the original drilling phase. That’s a different scenario we can discuss later. But a Macondo type failure need never happen again: just take 15 minutes to rewrite the regs regarding how a well is left temporarily abandoned.
It really is that stupidly simple
Monday, April 02, 2012
Darryl E. Owens: Here's why people are so angry over Trayvon Martin's death - Orlando Sentinel
Darryl E. Owens: Here's why people are so angry over Trayvon Martin's death - Orlando Sentinel
Emmett Till was dead. And despite damning evidence, Bryant and Milam were acquitted -- after the all-white jury deliberated a mere 67 minutes. (Later, they'd cash in by selling Look magazine the blow-by-blow of how they lynched Till for allegedly whistling at a white woman).
Nearly 57 years later, and some 800 miles from the delta town where Emmett Till met his doom, another young black kid's death has revived the suspicion that a black life doesn't have all that much value.
Sure, few of the nearly 400 righteously indignant people who flocked Allen Chapel AME Church this week, demanding that police lock up George Zimmerman, probably know the details about Emmett Till's death.
But the black folk among them know all too well the deep, abiding sense that, in a country where segregation, Jim Crow and prejudice have created unequal footing, African-Americans also too often endure separate and but unequal justice.
That's why it's not surprising so many blacks packed in Sanford church in protest. And why blacks in Central Florida (and elsewhere) have reacted so viscerally to the death of Trayvon Martin, 17, who was gunned down last month.
He was shot to death while visiting his family at a gated neighborhood in Sanford. Neighborhood Watch volunteer George Zimmerman, who isn't black, admits pulling the trigger. Self-defense, he says. And he walked out the Sanford Police headquarters, with police saying there wasn't enough evidence for an arrest.
The state attorney's office now wrestles with whether to file charges.
"We come together today in the name of justice," Allen Chapel pastor Valerie Henry told justice-seekers this week. "We stand as [Trayvon's] voice."
A ritual that's sadly become reflex.
More than a century ago, W.E.B. Dubois observed: "Daily the Negro is coming more and more to look upon law and justice, not as protecting safeguards, but as sources of humiliation and oppression. The laws are made by men who have little interest in him; they are executed by men who have absolutely no motive for treating the black people with courtesy or consideration; and, finally, the accused law-breaker is tried, not by his peers, but too often by men who would rather punish ten innocent Negroes than let one guilty one escape."
An observation borne out by lynch mobs that killed with impunity and mass tragedies such as a 1920 riot in Ocoee and the 1923 burning by a white mob of Rosewood, an all-black Levy County town, for which no arrests were made. And more recently, with the notorious 1992 acquittal by an all-white jury of four white Los Angeles cops involved in the brutal beating of Rodney King.
The message: black lives have little worth.
It's why so many blacks cynically cheered the O.J. Simpson murder verdict -- even though the Juice was guilty as sin.
Emmett Till was dead. And despite damning evidence, Bryant and Milam were acquitted -- after the all-white jury deliberated a mere 67 minutes. (Later, they'd cash in by selling Look magazine the blow-by-blow of how they lynched Till for allegedly whistling at a white woman).
Nearly 57 years later, and some 800 miles from the delta town where Emmett Till met his doom, another young black kid's death has revived the suspicion that a black life doesn't have all that much value.
Sure, few of the nearly 400 righteously indignant people who flocked Allen Chapel AME Church this week, demanding that police lock up George Zimmerman, probably know the details about Emmett Till's death.
But the black folk among them know all too well the deep, abiding sense that, in a country where segregation, Jim Crow and prejudice have created unequal footing, African-Americans also too often endure separate and but unequal justice.
That's why it's not surprising so many blacks packed in Sanford church in protest. And why blacks in Central Florida (and elsewhere) have reacted so viscerally to the death of Trayvon Martin, 17, who was gunned down last month.
He was shot to death while visiting his family at a gated neighborhood in Sanford. Neighborhood Watch volunteer George Zimmerman, who isn't black, admits pulling the trigger. Self-defense, he says. And he walked out the Sanford Police headquarters, with police saying there wasn't enough evidence for an arrest.
The state attorney's office now wrestles with whether to file charges.
"We come together today in the name of justice," Allen Chapel pastor Valerie Henry told justice-seekers this week. "We stand as [Trayvon's] voice."
A ritual that's sadly become reflex.
More than a century ago, W.E.B. Dubois observed: "Daily the Negro is coming more and more to look upon law and justice, not as protecting safeguards, but as sources of humiliation and oppression. The laws are made by men who have little interest in him; they are executed by men who have absolutely no motive for treating the black people with courtesy or consideration; and, finally, the accused law-breaker is tried, not by his peers, but too often by men who would rather punish ten innocent Negroes than let one guilty one escape."
An observation borne out by lynch mobs that killed with impunity and mass tragedies such as a 1920 riot in Ocoee and the 1923 burning by a white mob of Rosewood, an all-black Levy County town, for which no arrests were made. And more recently, with the notorious 1992 acquittal by an all-white jury of four white Los Angeles cops involved in the brutal beating of Rodney King.
The message: black lives have little worth.
It's why so many blacks cynically cheered the O.J. Simpson murder verdict -- even though the Juice was guilty as sin.
Saturday, March 31, 2012
This Video Will Shock South African people... wmv - YouTube
This Video Will Shock South African people... wmv - YouTube
Rev Manning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=17m8OnHC7dQ#!
Rev Manning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=17m8OnHC7dQ#!
It's all about race now - HUMAN EVENTS
It's all about race now - HUMAN EVENTS: There are two Black Americas in this country. One is comprised of hard working, decent, hospitable, laid back, wonderful people of faith and the other is the product of broken homes and single parent families, entitled, secular, a feral pack. Obviously we need to encourage one over the other but welfare state liberalism and the culture, which is controlled by the left, feed and encourage the dysfunctional one.
It's all about race now - HUMAN EVENTS
It's all about race now - HUMAN EVENTS
If it had been a white teenager who was shot, and a 28-year-old black guy who shot him, the black guy would have been arrested.
So assert those demanding the arrest of George Zimmerman, who shot and killed Trayvon Martin.
And they may be right.
Yet if Trayvon had been shot dead by a black neighborhood watch volunteer, Jesse Jackson would not have been in a pulpit in Sanford, Fla., howling that he had been "murdered and martyred."
Maxine Waters would not be screaming "hate crime."
Rep. Hank Johnson would not be raging that Trayvon had been "executed." And ex-Black Panther Bobby Rush would not have been wearing a hoodie in the well of the House.
Which tells you what this whipped-up hysteria is all about.
It is not about finding the truth about what happened that night in Sanford when Zimmerman followed Trayvon in his SUV, and the two wound up in a fight, with Trayvon dead.
It is about the exacerbation of and the exploitation of racial conflict.
And it is about an irreconcilable conflict of visions about what the real America is in the year 2012.
Zimmerman "profiled" Trayvon, we are told. And perhaps he did.
But why? What did George Zimmerman, self-styled protector of his gated community, see that night from the wheel of his SUV?
He saw a male. And males are 90 percent of prison inmates. He saw a stranger over 6 feet tall. And he saw a black man or youth with a hood over his head.
Why would this raise Zimmerman's antennae?
Perhaps because black males between 16 and 36, though only 2 to 3 percent of the population, are responsible for a third of all our crimes.
In some cities, 40 percent of all black males are in jail or prison, on probation or parole, or have criminal records. This is not a product of white racism but of prosecutions and convictions of criminal acts.
Had Zimmerman seen a black woman or older man in his neighborhood, he likely would never have tensed up or called in.
For all the abuse he has received, Geraldo Rivera had a point.
Whenever cable TV runs hidden-camera footage of a liquor or convenience store being held up and someone behind the counter being shot, the perp is often a black male wearing a hoodie.
So assert those demanding the arrest of George Zimmerman, who shot and killed Trayvon Martin.
And they may be right.
Yet if Trayvon had been shot dead by a black neighborhood watch volunteer, Jesse Jackson would not have been in a pulpit in Sanford, Fla., howling that he had been "murdered and martyred."
Maxine Waters would not be screaming "hate crime."
Rep. Hank Johnson would not be raging that Trayvon had been "executed." And ex-Black Panther Bobby Rush would not have been wearing a hoodie in the well of the House.
Which tells you what this whipped-up hysteria is all about.
It is not about finding the truth about what happened that night in Sanford when Zimmerman followed Trayvon in his SUV, and the two wound up in a fight, with Trayvon dead.
It is about the exacerbation of and the exploitation of racial conflict.
And it is about an irreconcilable conflict of visions about what the real America is in the year 2012.
Zimmerman "profiled" Trayvon, we are told. And perhaps he did.
But why? What did George Zimmerman, self-styled protector of his gated community, see that night from the wheel of his SUV?
He saw a male. And males are 90 percent of prison inmates. He saw a stranger over 6 feet tall. And he saw a black man or youth with a hood over his head.
Why would this raise Zimmerman's antennae?
Perhaps because black males between 16 and 36, though only 2 to 3 percent of the population, are responsible for a third of all our crimes.
In some cities, 40 percent of all black males are in jail or prison, on probation or parole, or have criminal records. This is not a product of white racism but of prosecutions and convictions of criminal acts.
Had Zimmerman seen a black woman or older man in his neighborhood, he likely would never have tensed up or called in.
For all the abuse he has received, Geraldo Rivera had a point.
Whenever cable TV runs hidden-camera footage of a liquor or convenience store being held up and someone behind the counter being shot, the perp is often a black male wearing a hoodie.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
An Unfortunate T-Shirt Hits Florida Streets In Wake Of Trayvon Martin Killing | The Smoking Gun
An Unfortunate T-Shirt Hits Florida Streets In Wake Of Trayvon Martin Killing | The Smoking Gun
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
-M K Gandhi
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
-M K Gandhi
Monday, March 26, 2012
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