There have been several suggestions of possible causes of the...

There have been several suggestions of possible causes of the recent 'blow-out'. None of course confirmed in any way as yet.

If it is some ingress of water from an area surrounding the well getting boiled up and reaching the surface then that may be the best scenario but still a bloody nuisance.

I have had a melt down in my pc and been off line while that has had major surgery so I haven'f read every word here.

It has made me wonder though about the problems that could be associated with heat, expansion, contraction and associated stresses imposed on the well.
(Someome posted on this sort of thing and related it to the on/off running of the well with the prep's and running of the closed loop test etc.but I don't think there has been any follow up on that?)

I don't recall ever seeing what measures are incorporated in the well design to absorb the expansion/contraction forces involved.
In any steam distribution system,say in a brewery, where the pipework conveys steam from the boiler about the plant, expansion joints are employed.
You have probably seen these in pictures without thinking what they are or why they are there.
One of the oldest, siplest and most obvious are to build large 'loops' into the pipeline every so often, like 50 or 80 metres. In a 150mm pipe these are pretty big. Maybe 3m dia. and easy to see.
More modern and compact in-line telescopic devices have been used for many years now and aren't so obvious but they are still there. These expasion/ contraction forces are too great too ignore and could push walls over or shove plant off their mountings and of course reault in pipe bursts and all manner of havoc.

All this with a couple of hundred meters of pipe say.

So, imagine the amount of expansion that will occur
in 5km's of bore casing operating at 270 deg's C.

rbohlsen. I feel you for one here, may have the expansion tables at hand to calculate a figure. Maybe even the thrust generated if there was nowhere for the metal to readily move,though move it will, somewhere I fear. These forces could easily pull a joint undone at some point or points and be a possible cause of our current dilemma.

At just a guess, a very wild one, I would think a 5km long pipe heated to 270C could grow easily a metre, possibly much more so some provision must surely be made but I can't recall any mention.

Maybe some of our resident subscribers with well drilling and construction knowledge can throw some light on this aspect for our interest as we once again find ourselves patiently waiting for further company news.

cheers and peace be with you fellow followers,

geojac