Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged Deepwater Horizon, drilling, macondo, offshore drilling, offshore oil, oil spill, safety, well control on May 7, 2011| Leave a Comment »
“Is there likely to be litigation over new drilling permits? You bet there is,” said David Petit, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
“We’ll definitely litigate it,” Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, said of the federal approval of Shell’s plan. “It’s patently illegal.”
Environmental Suits Threaten Gulf Drilling- Wall Street Journal
Posted in drilling, well control incidents, tagged BOP, design, JL Daeschler on May 2, 2011| Leave a Comment »
JL Daeschler, subsea engineer and inventor, sent me some preliminary drawings for a new BOP concept.
Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged accidents, blowouts, Deepwater Horizon, drilling, Gulf of Mexico, offshore oil, oil spill, weathering, well control on May 1, 2011| Leave a Comment »
oil-eating bacteria
…scientists led by Terry Hazen, a microbiologist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, discovered that cold-loving microbes were making quick work of the oil (Greenwire, Aug. 24, 2010). These bugs were, in effect, oil-seeking missiles. They were highly mobile, armed with swimming flagella and protein sensors that could guide them to their oily prey, according to additional work so far unpublished by Hazen’s group. New York Times
Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged blowouts, Helix, MWCC, offshore oil, oil spill, well control on April 21, 2011| 2 Comments »
“One of the goals potentially of the MWCC group is to see how we can work together with the Helix group to try to accommodate solutions for all of the Gulf of Mexico,” Dupree (BP) said.
Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged accidents, blowouts, BOP, Deepwater Horizon, drilling, Gulf of Mexico, macondo, offshore oil, oil spill, safety, well control on April 20, 2011| 6 Comments »
“The Deepwater Horizon BOP was unreasonably dangerous, and has caused and continues to cause harm, loss, injuries, and damages to BP (and others) stemming from the blowout of Macondo well, the resulting explosion and fire onboard the Deepwater Horizon, the efforts to regain control of the Macondo well, and the oil spill that ensued before control of the Macondo well could be regained,” BP said in the suit.
Posted in accidents, natural gas, well control incidents, tagged accidents, blowout, Marcellus Shale, Pennsylvania, shale gas on April 20, 2011| Leave a Comment »
Per the Citizens Voice, no injuries were reported
The Atgas 2H well operated by Chesapeake Energy in Leroy Township blew out at around 2 a.m., according to Bradford County Emergency Management Agency Deputy Director Skip Roupp.
The well was in the process of being hydraulically fractured and Roupp characterized the spilled fluid as “mostly water … with some contaminants” but he did not know the exact composition of the fluid.
“Evidently the crack is in the top part of the well below the blowout preventer,” he said, referring to a device used in emergency situations to choke off flow from a well. “They don’t really know what happened yet because they don’t have it controlled yet.”
Posted in accidents, tagged accidents, Alliance, fall, fatality, Gulf of Mexico, Hilcorp Energy on April 19, 2011| Leave a Comment »
An employee on a non-producing offshore natural gas platform died after falling through a deck opening on Monday, the U.S. offshore drilling regulator said.
The employee of Alliance Oilfield Services was working on a Hilcorp Energy platform in 375 feet of water about 129 miles off the Louisiana coast in the Gulf of Mexico, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement said in a statement. Hilcorp and Alliance are both privately-held companies. Reuters
Posted in accidents, tagged Flotel, Jupiter, macondo, offshore oil, oil spill, Pemex, safety, sinking on April 19, 2011| 2 Comments »
Jupiter Flotel
….interest in offshore accidents quickly diminishes. The Pemex Jupiter semisubmersible quarters facility sank last week with 713 workers aboard (fortunately all were safely evacuated). This stunning near-disaster received minimal coverage. Follow-up reports are non-existent. As our friend JL Daeschler asked, how does a flotel capsize in calm conditions and shallow water? What went wrong and why? Let’s hope that a comprehensive investigation is conducted and that the findings are shared worldwide (unlike Venezuela’s handling of the Aban Pearl sinking).
As we have noted before, Macondo would have disappeared from the news within a week if the deadly fire and explosion had not been followed by a sustained oil spill. The only investigation would have been by Coast Guard and the Minerals Management Service (which would likely still exist). There would have been no National Commission, National Academy, Chemical Safety Board, or congressional investigations, and prosecution by the Justice Department would have been unlikely.
In the US, offshore spills are media events; other accidents are not. How much attention did the horrific fire and explosion that killed seven workers on the South Pass 60 B Platform receive in 1989? Virtually none. How about the lives lost in helicopter crashes? While the crash that killed 17 off Newfoundland in 2009 has been well studied and reported, offshore helicopter crashes in the US receive almost no attention. Ditto for crane accidents. If we want to build a proper safety culture, we need to pay as much attention to the low-profile accidents as we do the pollution spectaculars, and everyone needs to participate.
Posted in accidents, UK, tagged diving, fatality, North Sea, offshore oil and gas, UK on April 15, 2011| Leave a Comment »
Per the Evening Express in Aberdeen:
A DIVER working for an oil company has died at sea.
The 49-year-old oil worker took ill while diving with the Acergy Osprey, operated by Subsea7 which is based in Westhill.
No other information is available at this time.
Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE) 