possible risks

At the risk of sounding negative and not wanting to put a dampener on GDN progress thus far but I was just reading this article in relation to the recent incident with the BP's off shore oil rig where they were in the process of converting from exploration to production, I realise one is land based and the other is deep sea based and a different set of risks need to be factored but at the end of the day they are both wells, both under immense pressure, both have high levels of gas and both have cement seals and the below incident could easily happen with GDN. read below quote:

"Leaked report explains terrifying chain of events that has rocked the British oil giant. By Philip Sherwell in Louisiana

A deadly bubble of methane that forced its way up from beneath the ocean floor caused last month's oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, according to workers who survived the blast.

The gas shot up the drill column, expanding rapidly as it rose, and burst through a series of seals and barriers before exploding, triggering an even larger blast when the oil that gushed up behind it ignited.

The fullest account so far of events surrounding the blast on April 20 - which killed 11 workers and has led to more than three million gallons of crude oil pouring into the sea - has emerged from an internal investigation into the accident by BP, the oil company that leased and operated the rig.

Workers described the "screaming and hollering" as people ran for their lives to leap off the sides, according to tapes and internal documents whose contents emerged on Saturday. There were claims that the alarm system designed to warn of an imminent explosion failed to sound.

The chain reaction behind what some fear will be the worst oil spill in the industry's history was revealed by Robert Bea, engineering professor an the University of California, Berkeley, who worked for the British oil company as a risk assessment consultant during the 1990s. He was passed documents and a tape from the BP inquiry by others within the industry.

According to the account he has pieced together, a group of BP executives were on board the Deepwater Horizon rig celebrating the project's safety record while, far below, the exploration well was being converted for oil production.

The workers set and then tested a cement seal at the bottom of the well, he believes, but - as they reduced the pressure in the drill column and attempted to set a second seal below the sea floor - a chemical reaction caused by the setting cement created heat.

That heat converted a pocket of methane crystals into a bubble of compressed gas that grew as it rose up the drill column.

Within moments, workers on the surface saw seawater in the drill column rocketing 240 feet into the air, before gas and then oil surfaced. "It was chaos," said one survivor, Dwayne Martinez. "Nothing went as planned, like it was supposed to."

The gas flooded into a room with exposed ignition sources, Prof Bea said, causing the first explosion, and others followed. According to one interview, the gas cloud caused giant engines on the drill floor to run too fast and explode, setting "everything on fire"."


Let us pray that this does not happen in our case. good luck to all holders. next weeks ahead should be interesting indeed.