Explosion – Deep Water Horizon Drilling Rig in GOM, USA

[Paul]

Thanks for the "education" Chief. Having worked with MSRC on the west coast I’m familiar with their operations and assets but not the others.

[James McLauchlan]

DeepwaterHorizonJIC — 06 May 2010 — ROV conducts subsea operations – – A remotely operated vehicle uses a saw to cut a ruptured pipe in preparations to stop a leak, May 3, 2010. The ROV was critical in completing the subsea operations and stopping one of the three leaks. Video provided by courtesy of BP.

ROV cutting pipe at Deepwater Horizon (You Tube Video)

[tobs]

Interview of a survivor from the rig:
http://www.marklevinshow.com/Article.asp?id=1790422&spid=32364

[Rons_ROV_Links]

ABC News:

– Deepwater Horizon Survivors: ‘People Were Jumping Off the Side’

– Deepwater Horizon Survivors Tell ABC News No Alarm Sounded Before Blast, Safety Gear Failed

[Rons_ROV_Links]

Upstreamonline.com:

– BP eyes ‘junk shot’ to clog Macondo

– BP rethink as Macondome chokes

RoughneckCity.com has put together a slideshow of images from the Deepwater Horizon disaster. To watch, click here.

[baglimit]

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Emerging-oil-rig-evidence-apf-449679850.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=4&asset=&ccode=

Emerging oil rig evidence shows lack of regulation

Emerging details of oil rig equipment failures reveal troubling lack of regulation

Jeff Donn, H. Josef Hebert and Mitch Weiss, Associated Press Writers, On Thursday May 13, 2010, 6:28 am EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The first firm evidence of what likely caused the disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil blowout — a devastating sequence of equipment failures — drives home a central unsettling point about America’s oil industry: key safety features at tens of thousands of U.S. offshore rigs are barely regulated.

Wednesday’s hearings by congressional and administration panels — in Washington and in Louisiana — laid out a checklist of unseen breakdowns on largely unregulated aspects of well safety that appear to have contributed to the April 20 blowout: a leaky cement job, a loose hydraulic fitting, a dead battery.

The trail of problems highlights the reality that, even as the U.S. does more deepwater offshore drilling in a quest for domestic oil, some key safety components are left almost entirely to the discretion of the companies doing the work.

It remains unclear what, if anything, Congress or the Obama administration may do to address these regulatory deficiencies.

So far, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has proposed splitting his department’s Minerals Management Service in two to make safety enforcement independent of the agency’s other main function — collecting billions in royalties from the drilling industry.

But the events that unfolded in the hours before the blowout on the Deepwater Horizon rig suggest that much more will ultimately need to be done on the regulatory front.

As the day of the catastrophe got under way on the drilling platform 48 miles off Louisiana, workers were stabilizing the mile-deep exploratory well to mothball until production.

Shortly after midnight, nearly 22 hours before the explosion, contractor Halliburton finished pumping cement into the well. Heavy cement is used to fill gaps around the drill piping and block any surge of natural gas or oil.

As part of the planned routine, the workers next capped the drill pipe with the first of multiple cement plugs. The plugs are meant to stop any upsurge of gas or oil inside the piping.

The cement and metal casing along well walls were then checked. Positive pressure tests indicated they were sound.

But there are no federal standards for the makeup of the crucial cement filler, MMS spokesman David Smith confirmed Wednesday. Government and industry have been working to publish new guidelines later this year, but they will be recommendations, not mandates.

Also Wednesday, a group of Louisiana crab fishermen claimed in a lawsuit that Halliburton — with permission of well owner BP PLC and rig owner Transocean — used a new quick-curing cement mix with nitrogen. It supposedly generates more heat than other recipes and could allow dangerous bursts of methane gas to escape up the well.

According to the testimony and other evidence that has emerged this week, the first sign of trouble came shortly before dawn. Workers pumped out heavy drilling fluid for a negative pressure test to make sure underground gas couldn’t seep into the well. That test failed: it meant the well might be leaking. Another test was run. It too failed.

Workers debated what to do next. They eventually decided to resume work.

Further reducing protection from a blowout, heavy drilling fluid was pumped out of a pipe rising to the surface from the wellhead. It was replaced with lighter seawater in preparation for placing the last cement plug.

Federal rules say an operator must hold newly cemented well-wall casing under pressure for up to 12 hours before resuming drilling. Other than that, there are few rules about how long to let cement set.

Whatever the main cause — cement or something else — the last plug was still missing just before 10 p.m. on the 20th, when drilling fluid pushed by underground gas started kicking up uncontrollably through the well.

Desperate rig workers tried to activate a set of hydraulic cutoff valves known as a blowout preventer to squeeze off the surge. However, hydraulic fluid was leaking from a loose fitting in the preventer’s emergency system, making it harder to activate powerful shear rams to cut the piping and cap the blowout. Also, a battery had gone dead in at least one of two control pods meant to automatically switch on the preventer in an emergency.

The preventer "was to be the fail-safe in case of an accident," Lamar McKay, the president of BP America, said at the House hearing.

Yet industry officials acknowledged a fistful of regulatory and operational gaps: There is no government standard for design or installation of blowout preventers. The federal government doesn’t routinely inspect them before they are installed. Their emergency systems usually go untested once they are set on the seafloor at the mouth of the well. The federal government doesn’t require a backup.

In one telling exchange Wednesday at a hearing of the Coast Guard and MMS in Kenner, La., Coast Guard Capt. Hung Nguyen asked a regional supervisor of the federal regulatory agency a question about blowout preventers: "It’s my understanding that it’s designed to industry standard and it’s manufactured by the industry, installed by the industry, with no government witnessing or oversight of the construction or installation. Is that correct?"

"That is correct," replied Michael Saucier, the MMS field supervisor for the Gulf.

As gas pushed upward on the Deepwater Horizon, it suddenly ignited from an unknown source and turned the platform into an enormous fireball. Eleven people were killed.

In the following days, workers kept trying to force the blowout preventer to close — without success.

Maddeningly, they lost a day trying to close a ram without realizing it had been replaced by a useless test part.

The unrelenting gusher of oil is now threatening wetlands, wildlife, the fishing industry and tourism.

Sometimes finger pointing at each other, officials from several of the companies involved said at Wednesday’s hearings that it’s not yet clear what precisely triggered the accident.

On Wednesday, BP was left still considering two ways to stem the stubborn blowout that has spewed more than 4 million gallons of oil into the Gulf. One was a pipe linked to the end of the gushing tubing. The other was a box to cover the leak and siphon the oil to a ship. As a backstop, a relief well is being drilled, but its completion is months away.

Adding urgency, thick, glossy tar balls turned up farther west and east than before: on a barrier island southwest of New Orleans and on an Alabama beach near Florida.

Associated Press writers Michael Kunzelman in Kenner, La., Curt Anderson in Miami and Jeffrey Collins in Robert, La., contributed to this story. Donn reported from Boston; Weiss from Greenville, S.C.

[rovnumpty]

To add another point for debate.

I was on a sister vessel (built around the same time, for R&B)of the Horizon back in 2001 and we had some issues with the BOP then.

During testing, they tried to close the Super shear rams on the BOP, with no effect. They then tasked the ROV to hotstab it and pump them closed.

No problem, until we were told that we needed 200 litres at 6000 psi. Nae danger of that with a magnum and a standard drill support package.

They then decided to run without them, and ‘only’ use 41/2" drill string.

Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but if the same thing had hapened on that well as happened on Horizon’s well, wouldn’t we have been in the same boat?

Mind you, this did happen in Nigeria, so who cares?

[Rons_ROV_Links]

PHOTO RELEASE: Remotely-operated vehicles piloted from the motor vessel Viking Poseidon

[Rons_ROV_Links]

Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer ‘faulty’ – Congress

The device meant to stop oil leaking from a Gulf of Mexico well after last month’s rig explosion was faulty, US Congressional investigators have said.

The blowout preventer (BOP), a set of huge valves, had a hydraulic leak and a failed battery, they said after studying documents from BP and others.

Oil industry chiefs say it is too early to conclude what caused the disaster.

A climate change bill just submitted to the Senate could allow states to veto some offshore drilling plans.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama has also proposed new legislation which foresees $188m (£127m) in emergency funding to cope with the fallout from the oil spill.

His administration intends to recover most of the money from BP.

In a letter to House speaker Nancy Pelosi, Mr Obama requested $100m in immediate funding for the Coast Guard and $29m for the Secretary of the Interior for additional inspections, enforcement and studies, saying he would "spare no effort to clean up whatever damage has been caused".

Eleven people died when an explosion – thought to have occurred after a surge of methane gas from deep within the well – destroyed the Deepwater Horizon rig on 20 April.

At least 4m gallons (15m litres) of oil have leaked into the Gulf from the damaged well to date, the Associated Press news agency reports, and desperate efforts are being made to protect the Gulf coast’s ecosystem from the slick.

Attempts to stop the leak have so far failed but engineers hope at least to begin reducing it later this week with a steel dome – dubbed the "top hat" – which has been lowered on to the seabed.

‘Apparently defective’

Representative Bart Stupak, head of the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, said its investigators had uncovered significant problems with the BOP, which was meant to stop sudden, dangerous rushes of volatile oil and gas.

He said a 2001 report by Transocean, which operated the drilling rig on behalf of BP, indicated there could be as many as 260 failure possibilities in the equipment.

"How can a device that has 260 failure modes be considered fail-safe?" Mr Stupak asked.

The hearing was also told that the BOP had been modified, which made it difficult to operate after the accident.

A senior BP executive, Lamar McKay, told the House: "It’s inappropriate to draw any conclusions before all the facts are known."

Jack Moore, president of Cameron International Corp, which built the BOP, also told the hearing it was "far too early" to draw conclusions, adding that the company had not been able to the examine the BOP.

Climate bill

Introducing the new climate change bill, Senator John Kerry described it as "a bill to hold polluters accountable" after the "devastating" oil spill.

The main aim of the American Power Act is to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 17% within a decade and by 80% by 2050, which is ambitious by any standards, the BBC’s Madeleine Morris reports from Washington.

To try to achieve this, the bill pushes nuclear power and clean coal technology by giving financial incentives.

It imposes a strict carbon-trading market as well as mandatory cuts on emissions by certain manufacturers and power companies.

Because of the Gulf of Mexico spill, a provision was added at the last minute, allowing states to veto drilling less than 75 miles (120km) off their own coastlines.

But that may not placate several Democratic senators, who are already uncomfortable with offshore drilling and, because of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, are now even more so, our correspondent says.

Republican support for the act is by no means guaranteed at the moment, she adds.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8679090.stm

[Scott Beveridge]

Folks,

Is this just another jaw-jacking example (albeit a very tragic one for the workers who lost their lives – RIP) of massive companies turning the other way when corners need cutting????? 👿 👿 👿 Someone UP TOP needs their backside reamed! Think about it….. it could’ve been any one of us offshore trash…..

[Mark DuPriest]

I would like to know why they are not attemping to use the Smart Flange.
http://www.oceaneering.com/subsea-products/pipeline-repair-systems/smart-flange-plus-connector/

[Craig Thorngren]

I would like to know why they are not attemping to use the Smart Flange.
http://www.oceaneering.com/subsea-products/pipeline-repair-systems/smart-flange-plus-connector/

Lucas,

If someone has an idea, or new technology, they can contact the comand center at the below number. I pulled this off of the website that had the pictures of the ROV control room.

Submit alternative response technology, services or products: (281) 366-5511

Chief

[Mark DuPriest]

Yes, Chief I have that number, thanks anyway.
However, in this day and age to post only a ph. # and not web access indicates to me the typical handling of this situation.
BP, Anadarko, and Mitsui being allowed to award Transocean the right to drill without a credible Emerg. Spill Response Plan which would include the equipment built, tested, MMS cert. and stored ready-to-go in strategic locations is a scandal.
I don’t blame them, they are simply acting like most lezzez faire capitalists.
I do blame 100% the MMS of the US Interior Dept.

I am not on the continent and am not going to incur the charge to be put on hold for 45 minutes to suggest something so obvious. OI is on the job, I am sure they have suggested it.
I would be interested in knowing why it has been discounted.

[Craig Thorngren]

The only thing that come’s to mind is the the size of the pipe. The Smart Flange looks like it has a maximum of 24" diameter. The only thing I can think of is the pipe is bigger than the flange. Maybe they can make one bigger, who knows…

Chief

[Mark DuPriest]

The riser I believe is 21"", I will check.
OI claims they have a mdl good too 24".

[Author]

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