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Posts Tagged ‘Coast Guard’

BOE Update: News and Views

Posted in accidents, cuba, drilling, Florida, Offshore Energy - General, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on May 31, 2011| 1 Comment »

News: BOEMRE releases report on the September 2010 Mariner Fire in the Gulf of Mexico.
BOE Comments:

  • Good report and relatively timely. Nice job by the team.
  • Good discussion of the heater-treater and production safety issues.
  • This was a very serious incident and lives were jeopardized. Sadly, no oil spill means no public attention.
  • Why didn’t the Coast Guard participate in the investigation? Will they be reporting on the haphazard evacuation?
  • Age old question: Is the rather extensive discussion of violations appropriate for an accident report? Should violations and enforcement actions be managed independently from accident investigations?
BOE: Floating liquefaction facilities open interesting possibilities for producing natural gas in remote offshore locations, possibly including the arctic.  The first FLNG facility will be 488 m from bow to stern! Offshore to the future!
BOE: Lots of posturing and not much in the way of meaningful proposals from either party. Unlike Australia, the US has not responded to its blowout with necessary legislative action, most notably the establishment of a single offshore safety and pollution prevention regulator.
BOE: Engineers solve problems when given the opportunity and encouragement. JL Daeschler is busy at the drawing board!
News: Greenland rolls on. despite Greenpeace protests. Cairn Energy has begun a second summer of drilling.
Views: Last summer’s results must have been sufficiently encouraging to justify further exploration. 
News: Hurricane season officially begins tomorrow.
BOE: There has been surprisingly little public discussion about the offshore industry’s preparations. Hopefully, everyone is ready.
BOE: Where is the worldwide commitment from industry and government? This problem can and must be fixed!

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Coast Guard Incident Specific Preparedness Review (Macondo)

Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged , , , , , , , , on April 10, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Good report; worth reading.  Some of the positive points are unlikely to get much attention, so we’ll mention them here:

  1. The National Incident Management System/Incident Command System worked as intended
  2. Personnel provided by the Responsible Party (RP) and Coast Guard personnel worked effectively together, and there was “unity of effort” throughout the response organization.
  3. The team found no evidence of collusion between the Coast Guard and RP.
  4. The response generally benefited from the ability of the Government and the private sector to rapidly assess and adapt to new or unusual contingencies and develop innovative solutions for problems not previously experienced.
  5. The knowledge acquired and capabilities learned from this experience are unprecedented, and should become a basis for significant improvements in planning, preparedness, and response for industry, Government, and the response community.

The “Political Demands” section beginning on page 75 includes relatively candid observations on the challenges associated with the management of such a high profile response.

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April BOP Hearings Should be Streamed Live

Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 24, 2011| Leave a Comment »

While C-SPAN has broadcast some of the proceedings, the Deepwater Horizon Joint Investigation hearings have inexplicably not been streamed live by the Coast Guard (USCG) and Department of the Interior (DOI).  The National Commission and Chemical Safety Board streamed their hearings live, but the USCG and DOI have not done so.  Why? This is perhaps the most significant accident in the history of the US offshore oil and gas program, and the most notable worldwide offshore disaster since Piper Alpha in 1988. Eleven men died on the Deepwater Horizon.  Economic costs will total in the tens of $billions. Major regulatory changes, some of which don’t appear to address identified risks, are being imposed.

The upcoming hearings are particularly important because the BOP issues that will be discussed have enormous international significance. In this era, the world shouldn’t have to travel to New Orleans to observe the hearings, rely on sketchy press reports, or wait months for transcripts to be released. (And how is it that the Montara Inquiry Commission in Australia was able to post transcripts within hours after the conclusion of each day’s hearing?)

Accident prevention is dependent on complete and timely information.  Had more people paid attention to Montara, Macondo may have been prevented. The upcoming Deepwater Horizon BOP hearings are of critical importance, and should be streamed so that all interested parties can follow the proceedings.

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Update on Gulf Oil Slicks

Posted in accidents, tagged , , , on March 23, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Our oil spill expert, Cheryl Anderson, has been monitoring the Gulf of Mexico slick reports, and has provided the following update:

Excerpt from a NOLA.com article below published 4-5 hours after yesterday’s Coast Guard media briefing regarding the source of the latest slick in Louisiana state waters :

A state official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of a continuing Coast Guard investigation, said the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries traced the emulsified oil on the west side of the river to its apparent source at West Delta Block 117. He said tests by a state-contracted lab confirmed that was the source of the oil.

Wildlife and Fisheries officials found the source of the oil Monday evening and encountered workers in a boat trying to restore a cap on the well using a remotely operated submarine.

There was a USCG Media Briefing at 2 pm local time Monday [4-5 hours before the NOLA.com article was published]. The briefing confirmed that the 100-mile sheen on Saturday was not petroleum, just sediments from water disturbances.

With regard to the most recent slick, the Coast Guard said:

–no source had been identified,

–no active spill incidents had been identified,

–spill had been Federalized,

–testing showed that it was Louisiana crude, and

–LSU was still working on the tests to see if the oil matched the Macondo well or any recorded previous spill incident.

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Kudos to the Coast Guard and responsible journalists

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on March 21, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Kudos to:

  1. The US Coast Guard for promptly analyzing the Gulf of Mexico sheen that was reported over the weekend and determining that it was not associated with offshore oil and gas production.
  2. The many news organizations and journalists who ignored the irresponsible speculation, and waited for the Coast Guard to complete its investigation.

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Coast Guard: Gulf Sheen likely from dredging

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on March 20, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Wall Street Journal:

What was reported as a miles-long oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico is likely a plume of silt emanating from a dredging operation on the Mississippi River, a U.S. Coast Guard spokesman said Sunday.

So much for the hysterical post-Macondo rush to judgement by a few reporters.

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Gulf sheen: new information or irresponsible reporting?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 20, 2011| Leave a Comment »

The Examiner is reporting the following:

The oil sheen is suspected of coming from the Matterhorn field which includes a deepwater drilling rig, Matterhorn Seastar that is owned by W&T Technology.   The oil is suspected from coming from a leak in the well which is a producing well.

Suspected by whom? Does the reporter have legitimate information or is this rank speculation? The Coast Guard is sorting this out, so we should know something soon. A statement from W&T would be helpful.

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Coast Guard investigating reports of large Gulf of Mexico sheen

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on March 20, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Coast Guard news release

The Coast Guard said in a news release that it received a report of a three-mile-long rainbow sheen off the Louisiana coast just before 9:30 a.m. local time on Saturday. Two subsequent sightings were relayed to the Coast Guard, the last of which reported a sheen that extended from about 6 miles south of Grand Isle, La. to 100 miles offshore.

Though the Coast Guard was able to confirm that there is a substance on the water’s surface, it has not yet been able to determine if it is oil. Wall Street Journal

 

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Houston Chronicle on BOP Failure

Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on February 25, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Giant metal shears successfully sliced and closed pipe full of runaway crude in the early moments of last April’s Deepwater Horizon disaster, but the oil blasted through rubber gaskets around the blades and unleashed the nation’s largest spill, according to sources familiar with an ongoing investigation. Houston Chronicle

That would be consistent with the video evidence recorded on the Q4000, but we still need a lot more information about the timing of the shear ram closure, the position of the ram and drill pipe before and after shearing, maintenance, and other important BOP issues.

Kudos to the Chronicle for their ongoing coverage of Macondo issues.

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More from the BOEMRE-CG Macondo Hearings

Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on December 8, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Washington Post report:

Workers on the doomed Gulf of Mexico oil rig were distracted by multiple activities going on simultaneously and didn’t try to shut the well until 49 minutes after potentially explosive gas particles began flowing in, a BP vice president told a federal investigative panel Wednesday.

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