Seadrill's West Atlas Rig On Fire - Incident Photo of The Week

[admin]

This weeks incident photos are of the fire that wa... Click HERE to read the full blog article.

[scone]

Leaking for 10 weeks before the fire? What is going on out there, it would not be allowed to happen in the North sea.

[cmjeff]

Anyone have an update on what happened? All I got was "a fire broke out when they tried pumping heavy mud into the hole". Something must have gone wrong during a well control operation.

Any details would help!

[NAUTICART]

Anyone have an update on what happened? All I got was "a fire broke out when they tried pumping heavy mud into the hole". Something must have gone wrong during a well control operation.

Any details would help!

source:

PIPELINE MAGAZINE

Published on 08/11/2009

PTTEP Australasia (PTTEP AA), a subsidiary of Thailand’s PTT Exploration and Production Public Company,reported on November 3, 2009 that the fire at the West Atlas rig at Montara wellhead platform has been put out after heavy mud had been successfully injected into the leaking well.
The West Atlas caught fire earlier last week, wherein the leak resulted from a blow-out at a subsea well near Seadrill’s jack-up West Atlas, on 21 August, according to reports.
The company said it is closely monitoring the situation and its experts are ready to assess the damages and to make plans for future work.
The company has insurance coverage of $270 million. It will soon start working to claim the damages which will be booked as income in the next quarter.
Future production plans for this rig will be considered after the experts had assessed the damages.
PTTEP had advised about 400 barrels per day (bpd) of oil were spilled into the Timor Sea, but the Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism released a far higher estimate of 2000 bpd.
The incident has forced PTTEP to postpone the first oil from Montara to the second quarter of next year. Sources said the operator may sustain over $180 million in additional costs on the project.
PTTEP CEO Anon Sirisaengtaksin said that PTTEP AA received good assistance from the Australian Government during the oil leak and the fire at the rig and would like to express his sincere thanks.
PTTEP AA has worked closely with the Australian the Australian Maritime Safety Authority or AMSA and agencies concerned to control the oil slick.
The company also cooperated with Australian environment agencies and experts to monitor the environment in the Timor Sea both in the short team and the long term.

[Steamer]

"Something must have gone wrong during a well control operation."

It doesn't look like there was ever any well control from day one. Call me skeptical but that fire was just too convenient. It did a good job of destroying any evidence of what was going on when they lost control.

This whole affair stinks of fraud and corruption and it doesn't do any good at all for the future of offshore drilling in the U.S. All we can be thankful for is that the Aussie government screwed up so badly they put a very tight lid on the incident from day one. It has been a stealth disaster since it began. But that stealth will come back to haunt us when people see that the government coverup on behalf of the oil company was so successful. They will ask what prevents that from happening off the coast of Florida. Even NPR, which rarely misses an environmental story, did not speak a single word.

I spent a month alongside the fire on the Ixtoc blowout and there was nothing about that event that wasn't reported or observed minute by minute. The secrecy and misinformation surrounding the Atlas mess will harm the industry here and I wish our own oil producers would speak up to condemn what happened and the way the incident was handled.

[captmrb]

http://www.seadrill.com/modules/modu...&mid=27&Sid=71

The above statement from Seadrill back in August indicates that the leak wasn't coming from the well that the West Atlas was working on. Not sure how burning the rig down covers anything up.