AP Photo/Patrick Semansky
Boat Strikes Well in Louisiana Inland Waterway.
Does the well have a subsurface safety valve?
In the Gulf of Mexico, deepwater drilling is more risky because that is where the high-rate wells are, not because the water is deep.
- Water depth had little to do with the well integrity problems at Macondo. Similar errors in planning and execution would have yielded similar results in any water depth or on land. Has Montara already been forgotten?
- Subsea BOP stacks have a much better performance record than the surface stacks used in shallow water drilling (more on this later in the week).
- Historical data indicate that blowouts occur less frequently in deep water, not more frequently (more to follow).
- Obviously, blowouts involving high-rate wells are likely to do more damage. This applies regardless of the water depth. You can reduce the spill risk by prohibiting drilling in the areas with the highest production potential, but that wouldn’t be very sound energy policy and you won’t find many buyers for the leases.
- It is safer to conduct intervention and capping operations on subsea wells. Regulators would not even allow surface capping to be considered at Montara because of the high risk to workers. The subsurface ROV work is perhaps the biggest Macondo success story.
- If the Macondo well was in shallow water (with the wellhead above the water surface), and well integrity concerns precluded a risky surface capping operation, how would the flow have been contained and collected?
- Other things being equal, the environmental risk is less at deepwater locations which tend to be farther from shore.
Water depth is just one well planning consideration. Abnormal pressures and temperatures, shallow gas, hydrogen sulfide, ice, permafrost, storms, currents, extended reach targets, and horizontal completions are some of the others. To prevent another Macondo, in the US or anywhere else in the world, we need to focus our attention on the 3 categories of issues listed below. These issues are important in all water depths and in all environments.
- Well integrity including design, construction, barriers, verification, and monitoring.
- BOPE performance and reliability under all conditions.
- Capping, containing, and collecting oil in the event of a blowout.
Posted in accidents, well control incidents | Tagged accidents, Australia, blowouts, BOE, Deepwater Horizon, drilling, Gulf of Mexico, macondo, Montara, offshore oil, oil spill, relief well, safety, well control, well integrity test | 1 Comment »
Energy Training and Resources Macondo Well Diagram
A former colleague sent me a link to this comprehensive ETR report on Macondo. The report provides a good primer on drilling and the issues associated with the blowout. Nicely done!
Posted in accidents, well control incidents | Tagged accidents, blowouts, Deepwater Horizon, drilling, ETR, Gulf of Mexico, macondo, safety, well control, well diagram | Leave a Comment »
Click on photo to enlarge. MWCC information sheet.
Posted in accidents, well control incidents | Tagged accidents, blowouts, Deepwater Horizon, Gulf of Mexico, macondo, Marine Well Containment Company, offshore oil, safety, well control | 2 Comments »
Exxon, Shell, Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhilips will each give $250 million to establish a non-profit organization, the Marine Well Containment Co., to produce and manage the equipment. The system will be designed and built over the next 12 to 18 months to handle spills of 100,000 barrels a day in waters as deep as 10,000 feet (3,048 meters), the companies said in a statement yesterday.
Comments:
- Excellent and necessary initiative.
- Will other GoM operators participate? Unless they can provide a similar capability, they will probably have no choice.
- It may be difficult to manage a capability that will probably (hopefully) never be used? Realistic simulations and drills will be critical.
- Could major components of this capability be used for other purposes? Colin Leach has suggested that an FPSO (Cascade-Chinook?) might provide the necessary collection and processing capability. Such an FPSO could be promptly relocated to the site of a blowout.
- More on this later, but there are advantages to a seafloor blowout (as opposed to a blowout from a surface wellhead), particularly from a safety standpoint. Also, seafloor BOPE has a better historicial performance record than surface BOPE. This new capability will address the major subsea well deficiencies – intervention, containment, and collection.
- I don’t think surface wellheads should be left out of the picture. A surface capping operation on a platform or jack-up rig is far from a slam dunk, and is more hazardous than a subsurface capping operation.
- Well integrity is, of course, critical to the success of any well containment operation, and that should be the primary area of consideration for all offshore operators.
Posted in accidents, well control incidents | Tagged blowouts, Deepwater Horizon, drilling, Gulf of Mexico, macondo, Marine Well Containment Company, offshore oil, oil spill, safety, well control | Leave a Comment »
Platts has an interesting report on yesterday’s hearing:
Guide said the decision to use a long string of casing instead of a liner
was made because it provided better long-term well bore integrity, not because a liner would have cost an additional $7 million to $10 million. He said the liner would have added only one additional barrier in the well. John Guide, BP’s Well Team Leader
Comment: One additional barrier is very significant when you only have 2 others and there are issues with the primary barrier (production casing cement).
Jason Mathews, a BOEM panel member, asked Guide if he knew that in the past year, Schlumberger had been brought to rigs 74 times for cement bond logs, and only three times they had been sent away without doing the logs; in two instances BP, sent the crews away.
Comment: Interesting statistic; good research by Jason and the BOEMRE team.
Posted in accidents, well control incidents | Tagged accidents, blowouts, Deepwater Horizon, drilling, Gulf of Mexico, Jason Mathews, macondo, offshore oil, safety, well control | Leave a Comment »
We believe that we should not start the static kill operation until we have installed the last liner run in the bottom of the relief well. Admiral Allen
Comment: This is understandable given the potential for communication between the 2 wells at or near the reservoir level.
– There has been some media talk about allowing the well to flow during a possible hurricane evacuation. I don’t see any direct quotes from Admiral Allen that specifically say that, so I hope these media reports are inaccurate. As indicated in previous posts, this is an unnecessary measure that could be viewed as irresponsible.
-Safety Leadership has been a major emphasis of drilling contractor training programs in recent years. Transocean’s program is summarized here. Safety leaders create an environment in which each employee is comfortable raising any and all concerns without fear of repercussions. Safety leaders are also encouraged to raise safety issues with the companies that contract their rigs. Judging by comments at the BOEMRE-CG Macondo hearings, some DWH employees were not comfortable raising safety concerns to their supervisors or the operator. During the Montara blowout hearings, there was evidence of similar reluctance on the part of contract employees. Drilling and other contractors need to take a close look at their Safety Leadership programs and find out why these entrenched attitudes persist.
Posted in accidents, well control incidents | Tagged accidents, Australia, blowouts, Coast Guard, Deepwater Horizon, drilling, Gulf of Mexico, macondo, Montara, offshore oil, safety, safety leadership training, well control | Leave a Comment »
Most recently, tensions flared as BP made plans to lower its newly designed cap onto the gushing well. Last Thursday, when the cap appeared to stop the oil, all weren’t happy at the Houston crisis center. Instead, a squabble broke out between government scientists and BP engineers.
Which of the official investigations will look at the important interactions among Unified Command participants and the effectiveness of the decisionmaking procedures?
Posted in accidents, well control incidents | Tagged accidents, blowouts, Deepwater Horizon, drilling, Gulf of Mexico, macondo, offshore oil, oil spill, relief well, safety, well control | Leave a Comment »
BOE Senior VP for International Affairs, Odd Finnestad, was the inspiration behind this little ditty. This is what happens to people who read 3,000+ pages of Montara testimony and submissions 🙂
Cap, Baby, Cap!
The Montara blowout has been capped.
The Macondo blowout has been capped (we think).
The Varanus Island report has been capped.
The Montara report has been capped.
The MMS has been capped.
The number of Macondo investigations has been capped (not!).
Deepwater drilling has been capped.
US production will be capped (zapped?).
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged cap baby cap | Leave a Comment »
Shirley Sherrod, a Department of Agriculture employee, was labeled as a racist, thrown under the bus, and fired before the facts were considered. I can’t imagine that happening in Washington <sarcasm intended>.
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
