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Posts Tagged ‘safety’

Macondo End Game Confusion – Part 4

Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on August 19, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Aug. 19, 2010 letter, click to enlarge

With the new BOP in place, and the capability to enter the well from the top, squeeze cement into the annulus, and set and test plugs, the relief well intercept appears to add nothing but risk.  Is the relief well being finished because of the repeated “read my lips” statements about its necessity or is there a valid reason that we are missing?

Also, with the well killed, should the Incident Commander be directing and approving operations that seem to fall under the plugging and abandonment category?  Those operations are under the purview of the Bureau of Offshore Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (BOEMRE) in the Department of the Interior.  (Actually, according to the applicable MOU, (see section 10), BOEMRE should have had the lead on well control and flow abatement since the well blew out on April 20.)

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Croc Picks Gillard Win in Australia! Why the Montara Report is Important

Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on August 19, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Like all swinging voters, Dirty Harry – a saltwater crocodile admired for his prediction prowess – took his time sniffing out the candidates in his enclosure at Crocosaurus Cove in Darwin today. Refusing to make a snap decision, Harry – reluctantly it seemed – chose the chicken carcass that was attached to a caricature of Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

Link

Should the croc be correct, BOE friend Martin Ferguson will presumably retain his cabinet position and release the Montara report as promised.  Why is the release of this report so important?

  1. While the transcripts of the Inquiry hearings do a pretty good job of identifying the well planning, cementing, barrier, and management issues that were contributing factors, the Commission’s confirmation of the specific root causes of the blowout is essential.
  2. Only a few BOE geeks and a handful of others have actually read all of the testimony and submissions.  The Macondo planners and Deepwater Horizon crew either were totally unaware of what happened at Montara or ignored what they had learned.  I suspect that the former was the case.
  3. Important emergency response issues, which received minimal attention during the Montara hearings, will likely be discussed in the report.  Montara demonstrated that capping and containment operations can be more difficult for a surface well than they are for a subsurface well.   For safety reasons, a surface capping operation was prohibited at Montara.  Even if the operation was allowed, it probably wouldn’t have been successful because of the way the well was suspended.  Should well suspension practices take into account the possibility of a surface capping operation?
  4. The decision to move a rig from Singapore to drill the Montara relief well, rather than use rigs that were operating off Australia, has broad industry and regulatory implications.  Will this decision be assessed in the report?
  5. Finally, the Montara Commission makes recommendations for Australia’s offshore regulatory regime. These recommendations will be of great importance to the US and other nations that are reorganizing or initiating their regulatory programs.  We expect the Commission to recommend that a single agency regulate operational safety offshore Australia.  This is consistent with the recommendation in my testimony before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and the approach taken by Norway and other leading offshore regulators.  A regulatory regime that includes multiple agencies with overlapping or segmented jurisdiction guarantees conflict, confusion, gaps, and inefficiency.  Wells, platforms, and pipelines are integrated drilling and production systems, and must be regulated as such. Similarly, permitting, auditing, and inspection are integrated regulatory functions that cannot be effectively divided among multiple agencies.  One regulator must be responsible and accountable.

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Macondo End Game Confusion – Part 3

Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on August 17, 2010| Leave a Comment »

We are currently working with BP engineers and our science team to look at test results and do investigations to lead us to the best way to mitigate any risk of intercepting the annulus and increasing the pressure in the annulus. Admiral Allen

This insistence on drilling into a “killed well” reminds me of the Unified Command’s plan to end to end the “well integrity test” and vent the well after it had been successfully capped on July 15.  Fortunately, the Command showed good judgement and reversed that decision. Perhaps they should do the same with the relief well intercept, which no longer appears to be necessary and may be hazardous.

The obvious next step is to re-enter the well from the top, perforate the production casing and squeeze cement into the annulus, and proceed with the plugging and abandonment operation.  If the Command has reasons why this would not be the best approach, we’d like to hear what they are.

Despite the repeated “my way is the relief well” pronouncements, I trust that the Command will choose the option that accomplishes the objectives with the fewest risks to safety and the environment.

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Macondo End Game Confusion – Part 2

Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged , , , , , , , , , on August 14, 2010| 1 Comment »

Letter from Admiral Allen to BP:

… in response to BP’s request to consider foregoing the relief well, the government scientific technical team has determined that the benefits of the bottom kill procedure outweighs the risks.

  1. Did BP really ask to forgo the relief well or was this just a point of discussion?  If so, it would be nice to hear BP’s side of this.
  2. Is BP confident the annulus is plugged?  If so, what is the basis for their confidence?
  3. If the annulus is plugged, what is the objective for the relief well?  To confirm that cement is in place?  Inject additional cement? Is there sufficient information to properly assess the risks associated with such an injection procedure?
  4. If not unprecedented, it is certainly unusual to drill a relief well into a well that has been killed.  Could measures taken during the abandonment operation (e.g. cut the production casing and set a plug over the production casing  stub) assure the Unified Command that the annulus is sealed?

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Macondo End Game Confusion

Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged , , , , , , , , on August 14, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Yesterday we were watching the evening news and the reporter raised concerns about a rise in well pressure.  I hadn’t heard anything about that, so I checked the transcript from Admiral Allen’s briefing, and he said no such thing.  Here is a direct quote from the transcript:

Finally, we have finished approximately 24 hour period of doing an ambient pressure test on the well head.  The pressure has not changed depreciably (must mean appreciably) over that time period.  So the one thing we can rule out right now that it has direct communication with the reservoir.  Had the pressure risen, we would have known that there were hydrocarbons being forced up from the reservoir.  So we know there’s some kind of a – something that is between the annulus and the reservoir that is not allowing the flow of hydrocarbons forward.

Given the absence of technical details and people to explain them (an ongoing issue), one can understand the reporter’s confusion.  Attempting to read between the lines, I would assume they conducted a negative pressure test (reduced pressure at the wellhead to ambient or that of a column of sea water), and that pressure readings remained constant for the duration of the test.  This would imply that there was no influx of oil and gas up the annulus.  Perhaps the annulus was sealed during the recent cementing operation or flow up the annulus is otherwise blocked.

Of course, we are still waiting for the Unified Command to comment on the well’s flow path.  While this information is fundamental to the root cause analysis of the blowout, there is no apparent political pressure (unlike with flow rates) to inform the public about the latest thinking in that regard.  This is interesting because some of the prescriptive responses to Macondo that are already in progress may be based on erroneous information about the cause of the blowout.

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Aban Pearl and Other Pending Investigations

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on August 13, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Aban Pearl

According to our 15 May post,  Venezuela established a special commission to investigate the sinking of the Aban Pearl, a semi-submersible rig that sank on 13 May 2010.  In the subsequent 3 months, we have not seen any updates on that commission or the status of the investigation.

BOE will also be tracking any reports on the recent crane failure and apparent fatality on the Jack Ryan, and the Bayou St. Denis blowout.  Let us know if there are other major offshore accidents that we should be tracking. With regard to the Jack Ryan, a description of the tragic crane accident is posted in a thread on the Oil Rig Photos site (see the 3 August post).

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Interesting News From Australia

Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged , , , , , , , , on August 11, 2010| Leave a Comment »

It may be winter in Australia, but the offshore debate is heating up.  I awoke to a stream of emails from Odd Finnestad who follows the Australian news very closely.  Odd noted that the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (APPEA) Safety Conference opened with a presentation on the industry response to Montara.  Further from Odd:

Then, Martin Ferguson, who was apparently also present, gave an address. Quotes of his speech appear in numerous articles, and the cat is now out of the bag: The Montara report will NOT be released before the election! And, should the Gillard Labour Party win the battle, Martin says there will be a shift to a national regulator in Australia from January 1, 2012.

See this article for a good summary of Minister Ferguson’s remarks.

Creating a new all-powerful national regulator for the offshore oil and gas industry would be a top priority of a re-elected Gillard Labor government, federal resources minister Martin Ferguson said today.

While the other states appear to be on board, the West Australia government is not happy.

The most colorful quote is from APPEA CEO Belinda Robinson:

Knee-jerk reactions such as calls for moratoriums on offshore exploration were not the answer and it was important not to “overdo the self-flagellation”, she said.

BOE comment: We’re not looking for “self-flagellation,” but a little humility would be nice. Ms. Robinson and industry leaders in Australia, the US, and elsewhere need to take a close look at the safety culture of the industry they represent. The reactive studies that are necessary to satisfy government authorities are not enough.   The goal should be participation by all offshore operators in organized programs that assess across-the-board risks and address problem areas before major accidents occur.

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Macondo’s Heroes

Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 10, 2010| 3 Comments »

We have heard plenty about Macondo’s real, imagined, and convenient villains, but very little about the heroes.  Let’s pay tribute to them:

  1. First and foremost the eleven men who lost their lives exploring for energy for our economy and security.  Sadly, were it not for the massive spill, their sacrifice would have received little public attention.
  2. The rescue crews who brought the other 115 workers safely to shore.
  3. The responders who worked under difficult conditions to minimize the environmental effects of the spilled oil.
  4. The relief well crews who demonstrated how complex drilling operations should be conducted.
  5. The ROV and well intervention teams.  The performance of the ROVs and subsea tools is perhaps the biggest Macondo success story.  Their pioneering work will be studied in developing the well intervention, capping, and collection plans that will be a part of future drilling programs.
  6. The people of Louisiana, who despite their personal adversity continue to believe that energy, fishing, and other offshore interests can and must co-exist.
  7. The MMS oil spill research program.  In the lean years following the Valdez oil spill research surge, MMS continued to conduct important burning, dispersant, remote sensing, and mechanical cleanup studies, while upgrading and expanding the use of the nation’s major oil spill response test facility – Ohmsett.
  8. The Unified Command scientists who are providing comprehensive scientific data about the effects of the spill, and refuse to be swayed by sensational media reports.
  9. Oil consuming bacteria!
  10. Others?

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BP audit of DWH leaked

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on August 8, 2010| Leave a Comment »

A newspaper says it has obtained an internal audit conducted by BP PLC on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that details severe safety flaws months before the Gulf of Mexico spill.

link

Comment: Was this a planned leak?  If so, how does this strengthen BP’s legal position?  The DWH had deficiencies (bad for Transoocean), but BP knew about the deficiencies and didn’t ensure that they were corrected (worse for BP?).  As indicated by the poster below (More “Mike Talk”), the poor working relationship between the operator and contractor may have been the real core problem.

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More “Mike Talk”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on August 8, 2010| 1 Comment »

From a poster who has requested anonymity (for background about this topic, see the 2 preceding posts):

There has been a lot of hard work done to update Mike and bring him into the modern world.  I too have had experiences with “Mike” and at a minimum they are distracting and most cases unsafe.  Mike and those like him are bullies, plain and simple.  They may have technical skills, however their people skills are lacking.  Mike doesn’t only work for Operators.  I don’t think there is an appreciation of the complex people relationships that are laid over the technical issues and inevitably there are culture clashes.  It appears that regardless of Transocean and the Deepwater Horizon having worked for BP, the relationships between senior BP and TO personnel was extremely disfunctional.  As someone with multiple decades of experience, I was amazed that what I believed were top flight organizations appear to have not progressed out of the stone age.  I’m not sure what the solution is here.  The competance of all individuals expecially those in senior positions is very important, however the skill set must include more than technical competance alone.  Significant time and money are spent in well control schools, but when the people involved can’t communicate, all such training doesn’t realize much benefit.  It may be trite, but there needs to be a TEAM.  I thought the major players had that concept in their management schemes but the recent history, at least for this incident, does not appear to indicate this.  It appears there is another big task to add to the long list of items needing attention to prevent another such occurance like Macando … and Montara.

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