Posted in accidents, Offshore Wind, tagged BSEE, investigation, shutdown, Vineyard Wind on July 17, 2024| 1 Comment »
Appropriate response by BSEE.
Late Tuesday afternoon, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said all operations are shut down until further notice.
“A team of BSEE experts is onsite to work closely with Vineyard Wind on an analysis of the cause of the incident and next steps,” the agency said in a statement.
Posted in accidents, Offshore Energy - General, Offshore Wind, tagged BSEE, Capt. Carl Bois, Coast Guard, GE, Nantucket, turbine blade failure, Vineyard Wind on July 17, 2024| 2 Comments »
On Sunday (7/14), Capt. Carl Bois, of the fishing charter Topspin out of Nantucket, told the Current he noticed a significant amount of debris in the Vineyard Wind lease area.
“There was so much debris at the wind farm,” Bois said. “We covered many miles and only saw the debris at the wind farm site: big sheets of fiberglass with foam core and lots of loose foam.”
On Saturday night (7/13) the Coast Guard warned Mariners as follows: “Coast Guard received a report of 03 floating debris 10 meters by 2 meters in the vicinity of approximately 26 NM SE of Marthas Vineyard and 22 NM SW of Nantucket in position 40 59.559N 070 25.404W. All marines are requested to use extreme caution while transiting the area.“
On Monday (7/15), Vineyard Wind confirmed that a turbine blade incident occurred on 7/13: “On Saturday evening, Vineyard Wind experienced blade damage on a wind turbine in its offshore development area. No personnel or third parties were in the vicinity of the turbine at the time, and all employees of Vineyard Wind and its contractors are safe and secure.”
On 7/16, Vineyard Wind issued another statement advising that they were deploying teams to Nantucket to clean up debris from the incident.
Comments:
Vineyard Wind is a joint venture between Avangrid, a Spanish company, and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. They were
Posted in accidents, drilling, Offshore Energy - General, Uncategorized, tagged BSEE, drilling blowouts, high consequence events, OCS incident data, performance measures, Secret Service on July 16, 2024| Leave a Comment »
As is the case with many Federal and corporate entities, the Secret Service website is long on promotion and short on substantive details and performance data. The limited “Measurable Impact” statistics on their webpage advise that the Secret Service protected 6623 foreign and domestic visits “without incident” in Fiscal Year 2022, which ended 22 months ago.
Their 2024 budget request overview includes a bit more information (pasted below). The Secret Service gives themselves a perfect score if protectees arrive and depart safely. When your scores are always 100%, your performance measures are clearly inadequate.
Like drilling blowouts, assassinations are low frequency, high consequence events. Prevention requires gathering data on lesser events, identifying leading indicators, and tracking high-potential precursors. You don’t prevent high consequence events by only tracking high consequence events.
Inspections are also critical. Does the Secret Service inspect events to assess protective measures such as verifying that the surrounding areas are cleared and being observed? If so, what do those numbers look like.
BSEE, the OCS safety regulator, does a good job of collecting data, but fails to compile and post updates in a timely manner. Their latest incident tables are for 2022, and even those data are incomplete. Panel investigations, which are conducted for the more serious incidents, now take 2.5 years to complete. This is unacceptable for an organization with BSEE’s talent, resources, and safety mandate.
Posted in accidents, Uncategorized, well control incidents, tagged common error, Elon Musk, engineers, Gaza pier, macondo, Montara, Santa Barbara blowout on July 15, 2024| Leave a Comment »
This is very true, but engineers may not have a choice when directed to optimize a flawed decision.
For example, the installation of the Gaza pier was a political decision imposed on military engineers without assessing the operational risks. The $230 million pier was in operation for only 20 days, long enough for several serious injuries to result from the reckless decision.
Some of the worst offshore drilling incidents were largely the result of culture or management driven attempts to save time and money. Modest cost savings were prioritized over verifying well integrity during both the Montara and Macondo well suspensions. The Santa Barbara blowout was the result of eliminating a casing string during development drilling, which virtually assured an uncontrolled flow in the event of a well kick.
Posted in accidents, Offshore Energy - General, tagged Bell 212, Georges Bank drilling, Georges Bank Monitor, helicopter crash, Iran on May 21, 2024| Leave a Comment »
A Bell 212 helicopter is in the news following the crash that killed Iran’s President and Foreign Minister. Given the difficult weather conditions and mountainous terrain, the crash was most likely an accident.
As noted in this vintage newsletter (p. 8), we flew to Georges Bank drilling rigs in the early 1980’s in a Bell 212 contract helicopter, owned and operated by Petroleum Helicopters Inc (PHI).
The Bell 212 was chosen by the USGS aviation expert because of its range, reliability, and IFR capabilities that enabled flying in limited visibility. Because of difficult fog conditions on Georges Bank, drilling rigs were sometimes not visible until we were descending to land.
For the most part, the offshore industry has replaced Bell 212 helicopters with newer models, but the 212 was in use for many years and had an excellent performance record.
Posted in accidents, pipelines, tagged Erik Andersson, insurance litigation, investigation, Lloyds, Nord Stream, responsible parties on May 15, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Nord Stream AG has responded to their insurers’ “a goverment did it, so we don’t have to pay” defense. Nord Stream’s full response, courtesy of Swedish engineer Erik Andersson, a leader in seeking the truth about the the pipeline sabotage, is linked.
Key excerpts from the Nord Stream AG filing (p.5):
(a) On their proper construction, in the context of Exclusion 2.i as a whole, the words “destruction of or damage to property by or under the order of any government or public or local authority” relate only to destruction or damage that arises out of or is related to the confiscation, nationalisation or requisition of therelevant property (and/or attempts thereat). In the premises, those words do not apply to the Damage.
(b) Alternatively, in the event that the Defendants establish that the Damage does constitute destruction of or damage to property by or under the order of any government, then it is therefore covered by the Deliberate Damage clause because it would have been “loss, damage, liability, cost or expense caused or inflicted by order of any governmental or regulatory body or agency” and Exclusion 2(i) to Section I does not apply: paragraphs 8 and 9.2 above are repeated.
If the insurers contend that one or more governments were responsible, shouldn’t they have to identify the government(s)? That would be nice. However, Erik doesn’t think the Nord Stream AG response puts the insurers in that politically difficult position. I agree. This case is about getting the insurers to pay for the damages, not identifying the responsible parties, something that the Swedes, Danes, and Germans have shied away from.
Posted in accidents, Offshore Energy - General, UK, well control incidents, tagged API standards, BOPE, continuous improvement, JL Daeschler, North Sea, Richard Krahl, well control, workover on May 9, 2024| Leave a Comment »
JL Daeschler, pioneering subsea engineer and BOE contributor, recounted a frightening incident in 1976, a year after UK North Sea production began:
We found ourselves in a drastic situation. While working on a subsea well, the wireline retrievable tubing safety valve got tangled up in the tree area. We had an open well situation and couldn’t cut the wire in the subsea tree. Further, the weather was bad, and keeping on location was difficult. The riser hydraulic release was faulty, so there was an imminent high risk of a “jammed ” subsea tree, bent/damaged riser, and uncontrollable well flow.
We got through this, but recognized that improved well control capabilities were needed during workover operations. Management decided that any future workover operations on a subsea tree/well would require a small diameter workover BOP with shearing capability immediately above the Xmas tree. A year later, we had the hybrid kit pictured below (with JL). Note that the guide funnels are slim to run on guide lines and not overshoot the guide base posts.
JL’s story reminds us once again that safety achievement is dependent on continuous improvement driven by experience, research, and technological advances.
When I was a young engineer with the US Geological Survey, the OCS safety regulator at the time, my boss and mentor Richard Krahl (known as “Mr. OCS” for his commitment to offshore safety) slammed😀 a copy of the first edition of API RP 14C (Analysis, Design, Installation, and Testing of Safety Systems for Offshore Production Facilities) on my desk and told me to read it carefully. That pioneering process safety document has grown with the offshore industry and is now in its 8th edition.
Similarly, API RP 2A-WSD (Planning, Designing, and Constructing Fixed Offshore Platforms— Working Stress Design) is now in its 22nd edition and API STD 53 (Well Control Equipment Systems for Drilling Wells) is in its 5th edition. There are countless other examples of the progression in safety equipment and practices.
As individuals, companies, agencies, and collectively as an industry, there can be no standing still. Nothing is routine and the challenges continue to grow: deeper wells, more complex geology, higher temperature and pressure, deeper water, harsher environments, remote locations, new security risks, and more. We get better or we get worse, and the latter is not an option. Onward!
Posted in well control incidents, Offshore Energy - General, Gulf of Mexico, Guyana, oil spill response, tagged macondo, top kill, LSU, blowout, capping stack, Guyana, Mayank Tyagi on May 6, 2024| 1 Comment »
The government’s decision to require that a capping stack be located in Guyana is prudent. Although the need for a capping stack is dependent on multiple barrier failures and is thus extremely low, the environmental and economic consequences of a prolonged well blowout warrant timely access to this tertiary well control option.
A capping stack must be properly maintained and deployable without delay. In that regard, BSEE has a good program for testing Gulf of Mexico capping stack readiness. Capping stack drills are an important post-Macondo addition to the unannounced oil spill response program that dates back to 1981.
The capping stack designed during the Macondo blowout shut-in the well on 15 July 2010. The decision process that allowed the well to remain shut-in was a bit perplexing, and we had a bizarre situation where the Federal Incident Commander threatened to require the resumption of the blowout. The same well integrity concerns had prematurely ended the “top kill” operation on 28 May, allowing the well to flow unnecessarily into the Gulf for an additional 48 days (5/28-7/15). (See this important paper by LSU Petroleum Engineering professor Dr. Mayank Tyagi et al: Analysis of Well Containment and Control Attempts in the Aftermath of the Deepwater Blowout in MC252)
Posted in accidents, Norway, Offshore Energy - General, tagged Havtil, Norway, offshore safety, risk assessment, RNNP, safety culture on May 2, 2024| Leave a Comment »
As promised, the Norwegian petroleum safety regulator (Havtil) has posted their risk trend report (RNNP) for 2023 in English.
Havtil prioritizes risk assessment and publishes their comprehensive annual analysis of safety trends in a timely manner. The 2023 RNNP was posted in Norwegian earlier this year and the summary report is already available in English. RNNP reports are an important safety resource that should be reviewed and discussed wherever oil and gas operations are conducted.
As an example of the breadth of these reviews, the two sets of charts below convey data that are not typically documented by offshore safety regulators. The first set documents near-misses that did not result in injuries, but did expose workers to that risk.
The second set of charts is a summary of worker responses to a survey, a means of assessing the safety culture. The big jump in favorable responses to the HSE questions is encouraging. In particular, the report notes (p. 14) that responses to a question about being pressured not to report incidents has moved in a positive direction in the last two surveys. Hopefully, this is an industry-wide trend.
Posted in accidents, climate, pipelines, tagged Arch Insurance, Erik Andersson, insurance dispute, Lloyds, Nord Stream on April 24, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Our last Nord Stream pipeline post discussed the Nord Stream AG suit to recover damage costs from insurers Lloyd’s and Arch.
In a court document (excerpt below) obtained by Swedish engineer Erik Andersson, Lloyd’s and Arch assert that the damage was inflicted by, or under order of, a government , and therefore the insurers are not liable.
Given that the suspect governments have denied responsibility, shouldn’t the insurers have to prove that a government did it, and identify the government? That is what Nord Stream AG is asserting in their filing (except below).
Long, but interesting video with Erik Andersson:
