Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged accidents, blowouts, Deepwater Horizon, drilling, Gulf of Mexico, macondo, offshore oil, oil spill, safety, well control on August 4, 2010| Leave a Comment »
Click to read the full “Oil Budget” report (just released).
The vast majority of the oil from the BP oil spill has either evaporated or been burned, skimmed, recovered from the wellhead or dispersed – much of which is in the process of being degraded.
Posted in accidents, tagged accidents, blowouts, drilling, Gulf of Mexico, macondo, Montara, offshore oil, oil spill, safety, well control on August 4, 2010| 3 Comments »
I awoke to an email message from Odd Finnestad linking the BP announcement. It’s only fitting that Odd delivered the news. He and I have been following Montara and Macondo on a daily basis since August 21, 2009, the day the Montara well blew out in the Timor Sea. A few thoughts:
Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged blowouts, Deepwater Horizon, drilling, Gulf of Mexico, Lousiana, macondo, marshes, offshore oil, oil spill, well control on August 3, 2010| Leave a Comment »
In the less than 3 week period since Macondo was capped, we have transitioned from “doom and gloom” to “all is well.” What next?
Click to read an interesting USA Today article.
“Oil doesn’t really kill marsh plants,” says John Pardue, director of Louisiana State University’s Hazardous Substance Research Center, who has studied the effects of oil on marshes. “You can put several inches of oil on the vegetation surface and you won’t kill the plants.”
Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged blowouts, Deepwater Horizon, drilling, Gulf of Mexico, macondo, safety, well control on July 29, 2010| Leave a Comment »
As promised in “Deepwater is Not the Problem,” comparative performance data for surface and seafloor BOPs follow. Every study and informal review that I have seen has indicated that subsea BOPs are more reliable than surface BOPs. These data are not surprising. Because of the time and cost involved in pulling and repairing subsea stacks, preventive maintenance programs tend to be more comprehensive.
The studies cited below were completed 10+ years ago, but to the best of my knowledge the conclusions are still valid. If there are any more recent studies, BOE would like to hear about them.
Recent data indicate surface BOP reliability is only one-tenth that of subsea BOP equipment.
Subsea BOPs have smaller failure rate than surface BOPs.
SINTEF study: This study is limited to seafloor stacks, and shows there is no difference between failure rates for deepwater and ultra-deepwater wells.
(For wells in >400 m WD) It seems that there is no correlation at all between the failure rate and the downtime related to the water depth.
Sintef Subsea BOP Reliability Study (click to enlarge)
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 on July 27, 2010| 1 Comment »
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.
Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged accidents, blowouts, Deepwater Horizon, drilling, ETR, Gulf of Mexico, macondo, safety, well control, well diagram on July 24, 2010| Leave a Comment »
Energy Training and Resources Macondo Well Diagram
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 on July 23, 2010| Leave a Comment »
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:
Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged accidents, blowouts, Deepwater Horizon, drilling, Gulf of Mexico, Jason Mathews, macondo, offshore oil, safety, well control on July 23, 2010| 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, Australia, blowouts, Coast Guard, Deepwater Horizon, drilling, Gulf of Mexico, macondo, Montara, offshore oil, safety, safety leadership training, well control on July 22, 2010| 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, blowouts, Deepwater Horizon, drilling, Gulf of Mexico, macondo, offshore oil, oil spill, relief well, safety, well control on July 21, 2010| 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?
Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE) 