Jon Excell

Editor
The Engineer

Deepwater disaster demands slick thinking

12 May 2010 | By Jon Excell

The catastrophic fallout from the Deepwater Horizon disaster is a stark reminder that the offshore oil and gas industry operates at the very limits of technology and safety.

Almost three weeks after the BP-leased rig sank following an explosion that killed 11 workers, around a million barrels of oil a day continue to gush into the Gulf of Mexico.

So far, efforts to plug the leak and clean up the ocean have met with limited success. Ships equipped with skimming equipment have removed around 100,000 barrels of oily water, but efforts to place a giant containment dome over the leak failed earlier this week. BP - which accepts responsibility for the clean-up - is now considering installing a smaller device that would funnel oil to the surface.

Initial efforts to stop the leak with a large containment dome failed

The company has even suggested that it might attempt a rather desperate sounding measure known as a “junk-shot”, in which a bizarre mixture containing shredded tires, golf balls and human hair is pumped into the well in an effort to plug the leak.

Worryingly, there are also emerging environmental concerns that the dispersant used to break up the oil slicks may be more environmentally damaging than the oil itself. Some critics have claimed that these chemicals - which are being both dumped from the air and pumped beneath the sea to the source of the leak, could have a catastrophic effect on sea-life and also lead to far wider spread of oil.

Frustrated by the lack of progress, the US government has threatened to lift the cap on compensation that the party deemed responsible for the leak would have to pay. Not surprisingly, the companies under the spotlight are all pointing the finger at each other. BP blames Transocean, which owns the rig, for the failure of a critical blowout valve, while Transocean says as the operator BP is responsible. Meanwhile Halliburton, which cemented the well, has also come under fire.

Given the huge profits made by the offshore oil and gas industry, and the sector’s proud record of rapidly developing engineering solutions that work in the most unforgiving environments it seems astonishing that engineers are still struggling to contain the leak, and that the technology required to address this kind of problem had not been thought through before.

The problem it seems, is that this eventuality was simply not planned for. Indeed it’s emerged this week that US oil industry regulator the Minerals Management Service had failed to require the installation of a backup shutdown system. Even more surprising is the news that shortly after President Obama took office BP received a waiver on the usual requirement to carry out a detailed environmental analysis. A hang-over from the Bush administration’s gung-ho approach to exploration perhaps?

The longer the blame game rumbles on and the longer oil continues to gush into the Gulf of Mexico, the bleaker the future looks for deepwater oil exploration. And with deep areas of the ocean bed thought to harbour some of our planet’s largest remaining reserves of oil, it’s a crisis that could have profound implications for our relationship with fossil fuels.

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Readers' comments (20)

Anonymous | 12 May 2010 2:25 pm
It is very surprising that it is taking so long to plug the oil leak. We have such cutting edge technology for getting to the oil, but it seems there are no back up plans for when this goes wrong.

It is a real worry that the oil slick will affect such a great many marine creatures and birds. This is an environmental catastrophe on an unprecedented scale and can only get worse before it gets better.

The steps of using a dispersant on the oil is also of concern as no one knows or seems to care that this may also have a devestating effect on the wildlife population and if it gets into the human food chain, who knows what the effects could be. The oil company doesn't seem to care about what evasive measures will do to our frail environment, so long as they take care of business.
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Anonymous | 12 May 2010 2:27 pm
Not sure about the article, but the headline is certainly a disaster!
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Anonymous | 12 May 2010 2:31 pm
Why don't they:

A- direct and precipitate the oil spill into a selected and defined sandy location

B- mine the sand using large trucks&bulldozers

C- recover the oil using the same process Canada's oil sand process (steam assisted)

D- truck back the clean sand like for all the artificial beaches that have been built

All the above technically already exist. It they let the spill spread, it's going to be harder.
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Michael Kerton | 12 May 2010 3:03 pm
Risk management is standard procedure. I charge around £600 per day preparing safety systems and disaster planning.

The best in safety engineers in the business would still be cheap compared to the loss of revenue from the oil wasted, the cleanup with unlimited costs and the loss of credibility, which is immesurable.

This is just plain negligence!
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David Robson | 12 May 2010 3:23 pm
In my opinion, if they are 'operating at the very limits of technology and safety', then they should have had an appropriate risk management strategy in place, as opposed to none! They've obviosuly not carried out any 'maximum credible accident analysis' or MCA analysis. It's absolutely disgraceful and someone(s) need a few years behind bars for this!
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jessernew | 12 May 2010 3:33 pm
Why can the well casing not be cut off cleanly below the leak and plugged with a steel plug?
It seems that the robots used to place the funnel over the casing could be used to cut it off cleanly.
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Alan Collison | 12 May 2010 4:04 pm
They should have had an emergency plan for this disaster before it happened, after all it was only a matter of time, they'll be made to pay now, and rightly so.
They need to get someone on board who knows what they are doing, to put it right.
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Anonymous | 12 May 2010 4:25 pm
Yes, they can cut it with a diamond wire cutter if the pipework is not too bent.
At that depth the contained gas will immediately turn into a giant methane hydrate Slush Puppy as it depressurises. It will need a valve clamped or swaged to the pipe then turned off. I presume that there is a problem with this. Probably just coming out with too much force. Otherwise, drilling two relief wells as fast as you can is the only option.

High pressure / temperature / water depth is a new and worthwhile challenge but not being treated with due respect. That is very much down to government HSE and certifying authority attitude. It's no use certifying the same equipment for more and more arduous use. At some point you need to build new fundamentally safer sytems with additional barriers and levels of control. This is only going to happen if the HSE is fully independant from the industry and has teeth. Laissez faire has its limits.
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tony smee | 12 May 2010 4:35 pm
Agree with the two previous writers, I was in oil & gas for 20 years onshore and offshore. It's not that there aren't solutions, at a price, managers in my experience don't listen to inspectors, risk analysis or technical engineers with experience enough to see the risks.

In Saudi Red Adair drilled a new hole and hit the existing well, then they pumped concrete into the blowout well. Not too sure how shredded hair & golf balls would block it, at pressures of 5000 psi. There is a solution where they push a narrow pipe say 3 inch dia. down the well for some distance and drop lead balls into it. A column of oil and lead balls can equal the well pressure and it stops.

The cone or cover that they tried and seemingly failed to fix could have been planned for, already piled to the sea bed around the wellhead. Then a connection in the case of a blowout would have been a bit simpler.

I'm pretty sure that some risk analysis guy had all this in his reports, and any government approval engineers must have expressed some concern about the consequences of a blowout at that depth.

I'm no expert on well technology but I think there's a way to have a second high pressure cut-off further down in the well. It came up in Kuwait after the invasion and all the wells were set on fire by Saddam Hussein.

That's all I know! I've presented solutions for 60 years to managers who couldn't understand, or were under other pressures to meet production targets. Most of the time they get away with it.
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J | 12 May 2010 5:09 pm
I have commented before about the absence of a back up plans for when things go wrong, or rather the equipment TO HAND to back up the plan.

Some good ideas here, esp the last above.

Dispersants have long been known to be themselves contaminants. Essentially detergents, all we have - the least bad in this situation.

See also the testimony before the US Senate Committee On Energy & Natural Resources, 11 May, by Steve Newman, Chief Executive Officer, Transocean Ltd.
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