Editor
The Engineer
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.
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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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.
Not sure about the article, but the headline is certainly a disaster!
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.
Standard proceedure is this risk management stuff. 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!
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!
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.
They should have had an emergency plan for this disaster before it happened, afterall 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.
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 puppie 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 2 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. its 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. Lassiez fair has its limits.
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.
I have commented before about the absence of a back up plans for when things goes 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.
In my opinion behind such disasters is a complacency factor. What has been working well gets delegated to lower levels with time. Ultimately there are compromises due to lack of experience and vision. Overlooking important safety aspects is a management’s commitment to itself and its staff. No outside force can implement safety aspect if internal commitment is lacking or missing. I am sure there will be perfect paperwork in every such disaster but life needs to be protected beyond contractual needs. Surely imagination is missing when same equipment is used on sea as it was used on land. Here itself the deep thought is missing. A rig platform is no replacement to ground. Life below the sea is far more sensitive than life below ground. Hope heads are put together and systems deviced for sea work. Till then some suspension needs to be practiced and realities checked everywhere. Ultimately Government is responsible and hope the buck travels to Government level fast so that future is secured and lessons learnt fast. Mistakes do teach but sometimes lessons are costly.
BP is concerned about cost – let the US Navy and others have this problem. They have the equipment and personnel to handle it. THIS IS AN INTERNATIONAL DISASTER!
The most notable fact seems to me that no real activity had been taking place for 3 weeks prior to the explosion, except for the cementing by Halliburton. There is also the news that I read somewhere that there had been a slight leak for some time and that problem was not taken seriously, to the extent of ignoring it. One wonders who knew about that !
It is quite apparent from some of the simplistic comments that few understand the complexities and challenges of deepwater drilling. It is also easy to sit and take cheap shots about something where the causes are not fully understood and the fact is that such events are rather rare given the huge number of wells that are drilled. Count the number of wells in the GOM alone? Anyone who has drilling experience will know about the planning and contingency processes, risk assessments, safety cases and so on that take place in deepwater drilling and enforced by oil companies, drilling companies and I might add the US regulatory authorities. It isnt an ad hoc process and to suggest otherwise is plain ignorance. Every incident is different and it is impossible to have the right equipment standing by as suggested as there is no solution fits all to these things, every incident is entirely different. Blowouts at these depths has long been discussed and isnt something we in the industry are actually “surprised” by. Drilling at 5000 feet is not nearly at the edges of technology and safety, drilling at 10,000 or greater is approaching the envelope. Time for everyone to take a pill, step back and stop the emotive outbursts. There was a shallow depth blow out and fire that destroyed a rig last year of Northern Australia and that took months to drill and kill. Quick fixes at this depth are even harder. We all hope they bring it under control, but like most drilling people I am saddened by the 11 lost lives, but few ever mention that. get a grip everyone!
You could say this is an example of the sheer desperation that now characterises the search for fossil fuels. Another example is the large-scale devastation caused by mining the Athabasca Tar Sands in Alberta. We can look forward to more such scenarios until resources on a suitable scale are put into large-scale solar power ($338 billion so far raised for the Desertec system).
Solution place a collar with an iris valve fitted to the top of the collar, lower into place with the valve in the open position, the collar will have a number of pipeline outlets distributed around the collar piped to the surface. Gradually close off the iris valve, therefore reducing pressure slowly.
Thanks J for the compliment, engineers can see what others cannot, but for some reason we are never heard. Try to have this discussion in the national press, I send articles & comment at about 5/week, even discussed with editors. Last one at the Telegraph admitted that they reprint press releases and have no idea what it’s all about.
Just been the post office where the lady advised me on parcel dimensions, informing me that 353 mm was 61 cms!
This is an interesting case, and one with many facets which need addressing from what is learned from this specific issue. There is always complacency from managers with regard to health and safety issues, this happens in all industries and is an issue which needs addressing. Secondly we have another engineering challenge to develop newer and safer systems and operating practices to allow wells to be closed in such events to minimise and spillages.
Unfortunately, costs and production deadlines will always take precedence and those who make these production figures with minimal costs will be employed. This raises another question! why? consumerism is the answer, how many would pay an extra 1p per litre for fuel to fund this additional safety.
The solution is easy. Reduce the pressure upstream by spiral penetration on several locations prior to the leak, creating a release diameter larger than the existing pipe leak, and tapping this oil to the surface to logistically located tankers. Once the upstream release decreases the leak pressure then you can repair the pipe. One needs to ensure that the release pipes hve triple cut off valves and easy detachments for release once the leak is repaired.
This well is in 1500m water depth, and in any language this makes any recovery solution incredibly hard to engineer – no less difficult than the process required to drill in the first place.
Drilling equipment follows stringent quality standards for design and manufacture, and addresses the unique requirements for such a water depth. But no system can be 100% safe.
Risk analysis is simply a means of asssigning a probability to an event; the only way to prevent a disaster such as this is simply not to drill – if you want to ride bicycles to work and use candles to light your homes… in fact go back to the stone age, since all our agriculture and manufacturing is utterly dependent on oil.
The issue I have is with the American attitude – the number one country on earth utterly dependent and addicted to carbon-based energy. It is THEIR coastline that is threatened by the thousands of wells drilled in the Gulf of Mexico and it looks like they have as much contingency planning for this (almost inevitable occurance) as they did for hurricane Katrina. Shame on the American government for wanting their (cheap) cake and eating it too.
And they have the arrogance to demand that the ‘responsible’ company picks up the bill – including any consequential losses. This seems to me to be a political issue caused by the state of the US economy – The government doensn’t want to put it’s hand in its pocket to protect its own people (again).
If it weren’t for the ingenuity and courage of the engineers developing these drilling solutions, there would be no oil.
I just hope that the UK government DOES have some contingency plan for such an event in the North Sea, which is no less likely. Or perhaps our own leaders treat this threat in the same way as they consider flooding of our homes due to 100-year storms. (i.e. ignoring them and letting the insurance companies clear the mess up afterwards).