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.
Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE) 