Oil Flow Rate: BP's Biggest Lie

Less than two years ago, BP was boasting to the oil industry, in its own publication, that it had developed the technology to accurately measure flow rates of hydrocarbons mixed with “troublesome percentages of liquids or gas.” Now suddenly they don’t have a clue.

Their own video clearly shows oil flowing at considerably more than one pipe diameter per second. Ambient pressure a mile down is around 2,000 psi. BP says the pressure inside the pipe is 16,000 psi. Gas volumes are compressed under pressure. Liquid volumes are not. The relative volume of gas inside the well is insignificant to the volume of oil, but methane is also toxic.

Tenth grade math will tell you that a 21.5-inch diameter pipe, flowing at 22.5-inches per second, is 70,000 barrels per day, no matter what the fluid is. That is not an opinion you should need an expert to confirm. It is very basic math, dust off your pocket calculator. Apparenty no one in the media can do tenth grade math. This is an even bigger story about the failure of education.

Now BP is admitting that the maximum flow possible is 160,000 barrels per day. How much more of a smoking gun do you need?

excerpt from p. 5 of BP’s own Frontiers publication, August, 2008:

“… BP has identified that by combining sonar flow measurement with additional measured parameters, such as pressure drop in a flow line, both the liquid rate and the gas rate on a wet gas flow line can be determined. BP has proven this additional breakthrough in practice and expects to deploy the technique in the field by the end of this year.

It appears that measuring hydrocarbon flows which contain small but troublesome percentages of liquids or gas may be less problematic in the future thanks to BP’s creative vision for sonar flow measurement.”

www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/reports_and_publications/frontiers/STAGING/local_assets/pdf/bpf22_34-38_sonarflow.pdf

Woods Hole has a submersible with this technology, but was denied access to the site by BP.