Coming out of the hole you withdraw the drill string stand-by-stand, drill collar and drill-bit. The mud you have been pumping down through the drill string to lubricate the drill bit continues to be pumped down to balance the pressure. By the time there is sufficient mud in the drilled hole cement is pumped down to form the first of three cement plugs. Once the first cement plug has been set mud once again is pumped down to fill a predetermined length of casing. Pressure is kept on this mud for a predetermined time to allow the cement to "go-off" (i.e. set). Once you think it has you then repeat the process to set the second and third cement plugs. Once the third plug has been set you ease off the pressure on the mud pumps and monitor the pressure between the top of the last cement plug and the drill floor. If that pressure falls as you take off the pressure you know that the cement job has been successful and you can recover what drilling mud remains flushing it out with salt water. If on the other hand you ease off on the pressure on the surface but the pressure down the hole does not drop it means that the reservoir pressure is pushing the cement plugs up the casing from down below and that additional plugs will be required.

Now what stage had they reached onboard the Deepwater Horizon when the well kicked? First plug set? Second plug set? Third plug set? Were they in the process of flushing the system through?

Particularly liked this bit, penned no doubt by some enthusiastic reporter at MSNBC, who has sort of half listened to what someone who may or may not have had any real knowledge told him:

Blowout preventers are installed as a routine precaution. They are a bit analagous to a parachute. As long as the airplane is well-maintained and flown with competence, the parachute will not be necessary.

Had the drilling procedure not been interfered with by bean-counters more concerned with cost-cutting than safety, they never would have found out that the BOP was defective.

Well Don I linked you to a site that told you exactly what a BOP Stack does. You obviously did not take the trouble to read it, now why am I not surprised at that?

So a BOP only serves a precautionary purpose does it? You are trying to tell me that it along with the Casing, Guide-Base, Well Conductor and Marine Riser does not form part of the integral closed circuit pressure system that allows drilling to take place? The part of the BOP that is analagous to a parachute are the things called the "Kill Rams" which are a tiny but vital part of the BOP if things go wrong.

The first paragraph of the MSNBC quote is a massive over-simplification that misleads more than it informs.

Move onto the second paragraph. Drilling had been completed days before the 20th April, so what drilling procedure had been interfered with? The "Bean-Counters referred to, where were they? I don't know if you realise this Don but the hole that was drilled still remains perfect to this day, nothing wrong with it, the casing, the guide-base, the well conductor and wait for it the BOP in its normal every day function are all perfectly OK. After all that is what the cap, that has successfully temporarily sealed the leak for the last two weeks, is locked onto.

It was the "Kill Rams" that failed to work on the BOP. They failed to activate, or they failed to shear and seal the well. So much as MSNBC prattles on about drilling procedures and "bean counters" (Oooh don't you just hate those bean counters) to spice up the story. To anyone who has actually set foot on an offshore drilling rig and seen what goes on on a drill floor the guy who wrote that piece is talking out of his arse.

Land drilling and horizontal drilling are BP pioneered proven techniques that have been in use for at least two decades as far as I am aware. What does Don Firth, "Champion of the Earth", aim to achieve in signing up to get "Liberty Island" stopped? Total shut down of Alaskan oil production? I doubt that that would be all that popular, but WTF it won't affect me so fill your boots, 'cos the SUV's are going to have to stay parked and the price of "gas" is going to rocket - And when it does write and thank Don.

Comparative Safety/Performance Ratings:

US Regulatory Authorities:
The Minerals Management Service (renamed on 18 June 2010 to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, or Bureau of Ocean Energy (BOE)) is the regulatory and inspecting body for offshore oil drilling and rigs. According to an Associated Press investigation such examination as was performed was for the most part brief, perfunctory, extremely lax, and with "poor recordkeeping". Crucial safety documentation and emergency procedure information, including documentation for the exact incident that later occurred, was absent. The exact number of required monthly inspections varied over time, with the required monthly inspection for the first 40 months but after that around 25% of inspections were omitted, although the investigation notes this is partly expected, since there are circumstances such as weather and movement which preclude an inspection. Reports of the last three inspections for 2010 were provided under Freedom of Information laws. Each of these inspections had taken two hours or less.

Hey Don that bad they had to change their name mid-disaster.

BP:
Following the incident, BP was criticised in the media as having a flawed culture which did not attend to safety issues as it might, and corporate ratings group RiskMetrics described BP's as having "worse health, environment and safety record than many other major oil companies".

Note: Neither the media OR RiskMetrics who made these judgements have anything to do with the oil industry or any oil industry regulatory body - bare that in mind

BPs recordable injury frequency rate at OSHA was 1.42 injuries for every 200,000 hours in 1999; by 2009 it was 0.34, having declined steadily year-on-year.[Within ten years the Company is four times safer] The total number of reportable incidents per 200,000 hours fell by 10% in both 2006 and 2008, was unchanged in 2007, and fell by 21% in 2009 (the last year for which figures are available). BP chief executive Tony Hayward commented that "You can't change an organisation of 100,000 people overnight, but we have made extraordinary strides in three years." The head of energy research at RiskMetrics agreed that "the company has made improvements during that time". That was big of him

Constant steady improvement, acknowledged by a company that seems to be their greatest detractor (part of Investment Bank J.P.Morgan - no attempt to drive share prices down in order to make a killing later dimension to those comments eh?)

Transocean:
The rig owner, Transocean, also had a "strong overall" safety record with no major incidents for 7 years. However an analysts' review "painted a more equivocal picture" with Transocean rigs being disproportionately responsible for safety related incidents in the Gulf and industry surveys reporting concerns over falling quality and performance. In the 3 years 2005 to 2007 Transocean was the owner of 30% of oilrigs active in the Gulf and 33% of incidents that triggered an MMS investigation were on Transocean rigs, but in the 3 years from 2008 to 15 February 2010 it owned 42% of rigs but was the owner for nearly 3/4 (73%) of incidents. Industry surveys saw this as an effect of its November 2007 merger with rival GlobalSantaFe. Transocean "has had problems" with both cement seals (2005) and blowout preventers (2006), which are the suspected cause of the Deepwater Horizon loss,[47] although Transocean states cementing is a third party task and it has "a strong maintenance program to keep blowout preventers working".

Declining safety record occasioned by a merger with another drilling Company. Hey Don does that sound familiar to you - BP merger with AMOCO??