By David Goldman, CNN
(CNN) — The clock is ticking for President Donald Trump to get a deal done with Iran.
Or maybe it’s the other way around: Iran could be dealing with a ticking time bomb – in its own oil wells! With just days to go before they’re destroyed.
That’s according to Trump, who can’t seem to stop talking about exploding oil.
April 23, Oval Office: “If they don’t get their oil moving, their whole oil infrastructure is going to explode. You know what that means? Because they have no place to store it and because they have no place to store it, if they have to stop it … something happens underground that essentially renders it in very poor shape and you never recover fully.” April 26, Fox News: “When you have, you know, lines of vast amounts of oil pouring through your system, if for any reason that line is closed because you can’t continue to put it into containers or ships, which has happened to them (they have no ships because of the blockade), what happens is that line explodes from within, both mechanically and in the earth.” May 4, Hugh Hewitt Show: “You know, their oil, when you turn off the oil, underground, and the mechanical too, but underground has a tendency in like almost 100% of the cases, to literally explode and just destroy everything around it. And you can never get that oil again.”What in the world is he talking about?
There’s a kernel of truth in what Trump is saying, although it wouldn’t happen the way he’s describing it – and certainly not in the short timeframe he laid out.
Iran’s oil isn’t about to go boom (on its own, anyway). But the war has created a challenging physics problem for the entire Middle Eastern oil industry.
Well, well, well
Shortly after Iran effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz to foreign tankers, local energy producers ran out of places to store the oil and gas that was piling up. Many neighboring Middle Eastern wells had to be shut off (the industry actually uses the term: “shut in”).
Iran had to shut in its own wells this month after the United States started blockading the strait.
Shut-ins are not like flipping off a light switch. They represent a complex engineering challenge that involves serious physics and meticulous planning over the course of days or even weeks.
When oil wells are shut in, the pressure underground can become imbalanced, deforming the underlying structure. Those changes can damage reservoirs, which can create similar problems for nearby wells, too. Water can seep in, reducing the well’s potential output.
Equipment can be damaged under extended downtime, too. Pumps and lift systems can easily become corroded. Sand and debris can settle into equipment. Concrete casing and tubing – used to seal and extract oil – can lose integrity, causing leaks and potential hazardous gas releases.
And, yes, in rare cases, explosions.
But serious damage – let alone an explosion – isn’t likely, oil industry analysts agree. Wells have been shut in for extended periods before, including in Iran.
During the early days of the pandemic, when basically no one was traveling anywhere, the world ran out of room to store fuel that no one wanted, and oil was literally selling for negative dollars. Producers, including Iran, shut in their wells without any significant or lasting damage.
Some Middle Eastern suppliers have also temporarily shut in their wells when OPEC production caps kicked in.
The oil industry, even in a country as economically battered as Iran, is well equipped to handle it.
“The US blockade of Iran’s oil exports will not cause catastrophic, or even very serious, damage to its upstream oil industry,” said Robin Mills, non-resident fellow at Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy. “If and when the blockade is relaxed, Iran will probably be able to resume production promptly.”
Flipping the switch back on
Restarting production at the end of the war isn’t like flipping a switch, either. The problem just works in reverse.
Production will need to be restarted – slowly, over several weeks – to ensure reservoirs of crude don’t collapse, requiring re-drilling and substantial repairs. Producers will have to balance underground pressure as they inject water and gas into wells to extract the oil.
Because wells in the region are large and close to one another, restarting production will require significant coordination across companies and countries to ensure consistent pressure across multiple wells. Otherwise, cave-ins, leaks and catastrophic damage to wells can occur.
Any time a well is shut in, a producer runs the risk of reduced oil flow when it’s restarted. To prevent that, some operators maintain low oil flow rates, akin to dripping a faucet in freezing cold weather to avoid frozen pipes.
But the industry knows all this. Iran has plenty of experience dealing with shut-ins and restarts.
Don’t expect an explosive end to this particular story.
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