Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged accidents, blowouts, David Dykes, Deepwater Horizon, drilling, Gulf of Mexico, Hung Nguyen, investigation, Jason Mathews, Kirk Malstom, macondo, offshore oil, safety, Sylvia Murphy, well control on October 2, 2010| Leave a Comment »
Capt. Hung Nguyen, David Dykes, and Jason Mathews question the witness. Sylvia Murphy and Kirk Malstrom monitor attentively from the 2nd row.
I would assume that one of the CSpan stations will be covering the hearings, but their broadcast schedule for next week has not yet been posted.
Posted in accidents, Offshore Energy - General, Regulation, tagged accidents, blowouts, Deepwater Horizon, drilling, macondo, offshore oil, regulations, safety, safety management, SEMS, well control on September 30, 2010| 2 Comments »
Today, BOEM released fact sheets describing the Drilling Safety and Safety and Environmental Management (SEMS) rules. The complete documents will be available for review as soon as they are published in the Federal Register.
Based on the fact sheet, the Drilling Safety Rule does not appear to include any significant surprises. The rule seems to be generally consistent with the recommendations in Secretary Salazar’s 27 May Safety Measures Report to the President (the “30-Day Report”). This is an Interim Final Rule that will be effective upon publication.
According to the fact sheet, the SEMS Rule will incorporate all elements of API RP 75 into BOEM regulations. This is an improvement, in my opinion, from the proposed rule which incorporated only 4 elements of RP 75. The effective date for this rule is not indicated in the fact sheet.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged accidents, Australia, blowouts, Canada, macondo, Newfoundland, NOPSA, offshore oil, safety, safety culture, well control on September 30, 2010| Leave a Comment »
Safety culture is how the organization behaves when no one is watching.
Also, NOPSA’s September Newsletter has some interesting updates including information on the jackup failure offshore China.
And how does a reporter question the humility of engineers? 🙂
Engineers do amazing things, but they aren’t always as smart as they think, nor their systems as robust as they seem on paper.
Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged accidents, Australia, blowouts, BOE, Colin Leach, Deepwater Horizon, macondo, Montara, offshore oil, safety, well control on September 28, 2010| Leave a Comment »
We have commented frequently about the similarities between the Montara and Macondo blowouts, particularly the root cause casing shoe issues. In this post, Colin Leach draws attention to the float shoe and collar issues that permitted oil and gas to enter both wells. Click here to view the full post. The Bly report (page 70) noted some significant “inconsistencies” in the operation of the float shoe/float collar (see full post). This is so similar in nature to the “inconsistencies” in the 9 5/8″ cement job on the Montara well to be scary. The bottom line is that both disasters could have been prevented if these “inconsistencies” had been recognized and additional barriers placed above the float collar. In fact even if there are no “inconsistencies”, the placing of an additional barrier or so seems like an exceptionally prudent step, which would not take that much time or effort.
Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged accidents, blowouts, bly, BOE, bp, Deepwater, Deepwater Horizon, drilling, Gulf of Mexico, macondo, Montara, offshore oil, safety, well control on September 28, 2010| 1 Comment »
As previously posted (July 27, 2010), deep water had little to do with the well integrity problems and other contributing factors leading to the Macondo blowout. The Bly (BP) report further confirms this position.
Of the eight key findings in the Bly report (listed below), only number 4 could be considered to be more of a deepwater issue. The BOP failures may also have been influenced by deepwater factors. However, as previously noted, surface BOPs have a much higher failure rate than subsea stacks.
While the Montara blowout was in relatively shallow water, slight variations of findings 1 through 4 were the primary causes of that accident.
BP findings:
Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged accidents, blowouts, Deepwater Horizon, drilling, Gulf of Mexico, macondo, National Commission, offshore oil, oil spill, safety, well control on September 26, 2010| Leave a Comment »
Monday’s hearings will be broadcast on CSpan 2 beginning at 0900 ET. Admiral Allen will be the first witness and will address decision-making within the Unified Command. Given the number of high profile witnesses and the limited time allotted to each witness, in-depth questioning would seem to be unlikely. Will this be a day of short speeches?
Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged accidents, Australia, blowouts, Deepwater Horizon, Gulf of Mexico, macondo, Martin Ferguson, Montara, NOPSA, oil spill, safety, well control on September 23, 2010| Leave a Comment »
Montara Blowout, Timor Sea
I awoke to two very important developments from Australia as reported by Anthea Pitt with Upstream:
By expanding Nopsa’s role, one central agency will look out for the safety of our offshore workers and the environment from exploration to decommissioning. That means it will be responsible for approvals and regulation of safety and environment, as well as integrity of facilities and day-to-day operations.
Bravo to Australia and Minister Ferguson! As I indicated in a submission to the Montara Commission and testimony before the US Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, a single agency must be responsible and accountable for the regulation of offshore oil and gas operations if safety and pollution prevention objectives are to be achieved.
Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged accidents, blowouts, Deepwater Horizon, Gulf of Mexico, macondo, offshore oil, oil spill, relief well, safety, well control on September 19, 2010| 1 Comment »
Now that Admrial Allen has officially confirmed that the dead Macondo well is in fact dead, what is the legacy of the relief well?
Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged accidents, blowouts, Deepwater Horizon, drilling, Gulf of Mexico, macondo, offshore oil, relief well, safety, well control on September 17, 2010| Leave a Comment »
Admiral Allen’s statement:
I have received extensive briefings over the last 24 hours regarding the final effort to intercept the Macondo well. Through a combination of sensors embedded in the drilling equipment and sophisticated instrumentation that is capable of sensing distance to the well casing, BP engineers and the federal science team have concluded that the Development Driller III relief well has intersected the Macondo well. This determination was made based on a loss of drilling fluids that indicated communication had been established beyond the relief well, the pressure exerted against the drill bit as it came in contact with the well casing and, finally, an increase in pressure in the choke line of the Macondo well blow out preventer. While each of these indicators taken separately would not necessarily be conclusive, the aggregate data available supports the conclusion that the two wells are joined. It is also important to note that none of the measurements supported a scenario where the annulus of the well is in communication with the reservoir. Accordingly, we intend to proceed with preparation to cement the annulus and complete the bottom kill of the well. Further information will be provided as cementing procedures are completed.
Observations:
Posted in accidents, tagged accidents, bly, bp, Commons, Gulf of Mexico, Jack Ryan, macondo, offshore oil, oil spill, safety, Tony Hayward, UK, well control on September 16, 2010| Leave a Comment »
If you haven’t heard BP executives answer the same questions (long string, centralizers, cement bond log, BOP failure, etc, etc) often enough during appearances before Congress, you can watch a UK House of Commons committee ask them to Tony Hayward and Mark Bly on cspan’s recording of yesterday’s hearing. This excellent legislative teamwork is further evidence of that special relationship between the US and UK.
I do wish that both government’s would show more interest in some of the lower profile incidents that also have major international significance. Perhaps they can coax Venezuela to release information about the Aban Pearl sinking. Even though I follow Hugo Chavez’s tweets :), I’ve learned nothing of significance about that accident.
In light of yesterday’s post about negative pressure testing, I was interested in this comment by Tony Hayward at the Common’s hearing:
We clearly have taken a lot of action to clarify and provided much greater rigor around the assessment of the negative pressure test.
Can BP tell us more?
Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE) 