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Posts Tagged ‘well control’

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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Colin Leach Reports From Gulf Shores, AL

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on August 11, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Weather: Hot and Sunny

Food: Wonderful

Water: Clear and Warm – Have disturbed fish and crabs!

Beach: White Sand – Clean

Folks need to come down, see and enjoy!

Colin notes that the resort is not nearly as busy as usual.  We all know why. The beach contamination scare spread much farther than the oil.  The Evening News in Norfolk warned viewers that Macondo oil was headed for Virginia Beach!  Should these fear-mongers contribute to BP’s compensation fund?

With regard to Macondo, Colin astutely offers the following:

the story is now quite complex with the flow on the inside, but the potential outside flow the heavy influence on the way forward…….I think that for future incidents we have to have a full and open set of information….suspect that this would have resulted in an easier, faster solution

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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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Tiger Mike Talk Continued

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on August 9, 2010| Leave a Comment »

My former colleague Clarence Kershaw, a retired USGS/MMS inspector and a very knowledgeable offshore oil and gas guy, has run into some Tiger Mikes in his career. Clarence has shared some thoughts on the subject:

I liked your comments on “More Mike Talk”.  I personally think organizations (Military, Government and civilian) are too obsessed with superior/ underling relationships.  It is acceptable for “Mike” types in a superior/owner position to issue instructions-orders-regulations to lower echelon personnel, but is is not always accepted (or sometimes allowed) for lower echelon personnel to “correct” or point out even possible errors made by superiors.

There are a lot of lower echelon personnel who have made an attempt to correct a mistake by a superior and then been rebuffed.  After that they tend to accept errors and say “It’s not my job, man.”  I’ve seen engineers get indignant when something they approved in error was pointed out by an inspector or secretary.  I knew one District Supervisor who did not like to have his writing corrected by an excellent secretary.  She would end up bringing it to me to point out to him, because he would not accept it from her.  He didn’t always accept it from me either.

My point is if you had a “Tiger Mike”  type running the rig just prior to the blowout, it wouldn’t make any difference to him how unstable the well was if he had already made up his mind to continue operations.

No, I don’t know the answer.  One person has to be in charge, but each individual must have over-riding “stop work” authority to assure safety!!!  The problem is magnified if a disagreement occurs and management consistently backs up the one in charge.

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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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Just ‘Roo It!

Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged , , , , , , on August 6, 2010| Leave a Comment »

G’Day Australia.  There are now only 2 weeks until the Federal election. Ironically, the election, which may have delayed the release of the Montara Inquiry report, will be held on the first anniversary of that blowout.

This report will play an important role in keeping our workers safe, protecting our environment and safeguarding our energy security. Minister Martin Ferguson

BOE fully agrees with Minister Ferguson’s statement about the importance of the Montara Inquiry report and hopes that he or his successor promptly releases the report after the election.  The lessons learned at Montara will not only prevent accidents in Australia, but elsewhere in the world. In light of the disturbing similarities between the two blowouts, it is possible that closer international attention to Montara might even have prevented the Macondo blowout.

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Two requests for the Unified Command

Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on August 6, 2010| Leave a Comment »

  1. Now that the Unified Command has had a couple of days to review the static kill data (which were certainly considered in planning the cementing operation that was concluded yesterday), please provide an update on the latest thinking with regard to the well’s flow path.
  2. Please post a cross section schematic (best estimate) of the well after the completion of yesterday’s cementing operation.

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Was Macondo flow inside the production casing?

Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on August 5, 2010| 2 Comments »

Kent Well’s response to a reporter’s question and Colin Leach’s comment on BOE seem to give credence to our suspicion that the flow path for the Macondo well was inside the production casing!  If true, this is enormously significant for the following reasons:

  1. The root cause of Macondo is eerily similar to that at Montara in that oil and gas entered the well via compromised cement in the casing shoe and a failed float.  Did the BP engineers and TO crew even know about Montara?  This shows why accident information must be promptly circulated and brought to the attention of key personnel everywhere in the world. It also demonstrates why the Montara report needs to be released without further delay.
  2. Presumed contributing factors that would be irrelevant or less significant: the long string vs. liner/tieback decision, and the failure to run a Cement Bond Log, additional centralizers, or a lockdown sleeve on the casing seal.
  3. Contributing factors that would have even greater importance: selection of the casing point (integrity at the base of the well), waiting on cement time, timing of the positive and negative pressure tests (this is a topic that warrants much more scrutiny and discussion), and failure to set a cement plug before displacing the mud with sea water.

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What happened to the oil?

Posted in accidents, well control incidents, tagged , , , , , , , , , 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.

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