Deepwater Horizon - Transocean Oil Rig Fire

[TroubledByThis]

For what it's worth, I've begun looking at this robot show as a distraction, this "well head." I hope I am wrong, since the "well head" is bad enough by itself. For weeks now my attention has drifted into the areas the corp/govt/media/banking powers that be, just don't seem to want us to see. My videos are produced for so-called common people who scan Youtube for alternative views, not 'experts' or whomever is focused upon their own niche of expertise. I have produced a hopfully entertaining video that poses questions never much asked ... paints a frightful picture of Humpty Dumpty. Let me entertain a question with you? Sure it's speculation because the TRUTH IS OUT THERE out of sight, out of mind.

WHERE is the Horizon? HOW did she go down? WHY can we not see her? WHEN did the riser pipe separate from the tower? HOW does methane hydrate comglomerate rock strata, much like permafrost, take to injection from annular ring leaks below surface, possibly combined with vertical injection nearby from a falling 242' tower which possibly separated from the platform? I also question the 'offical story' in my below-video comments. I truly suspect a conspiracy of silence at the highest levels. Disclosure is the best form of subterfuge if it allows one to divert attention. I hope I am a fool and 100% wrong. If I could see the Horizon I could tell what's UP. But sadly none of us seem to ask to see the Horizon. How does one determine location if one cannot see the horizon? Much respects to all here and MUCH respects to the men that went down with Horizon. Feel free to ignore this post and take it with a grain of salt. I chart my own wild course with such a video. If I don't ask for the true story of Horizon's demise, possibly a key missing piece to this dark puzzle, WHO will?

[Corky]

Whatever I post, I post as a guy who works on rigs hands-on, in and around the moonpool more often than not. I'm out there to perform a professional duty to the very best of my ability and (more importantly, to me) to feed my family. I'm not out there to get blown up or burned to death by idiots, regardless of their nationality. Like many of us here, I've worked all over the world. I've worked in the GOM for various US companies. I also had the particular misfortune to work in SE Asia for Unocal, and I can state without hesitation that in my 25+ years of offshore experience, I have never seen such lax and cavalier attitudes towards well safety as I've witnessed from American company men.

perhaps this disaster is an opportunity to take a hard look at the problems within your industry as a whole, and to make the necessary changes to ensure that something like this never happens again.

FraRig, I absolutely agree with you that any old-school land rig mentalities (or old school shallow water/well mentalities for that matter) have no place in the highly technical ultra deepwater operations being planned & carried out in today's D & E environment. As you correctly pointed out, the technology on the cutting edge is rapidly exceeding the training of the folks in the field trying to deal with the challenges which arise. This is why I really do not understand the lack of real engineering personnel on the rigs (North sea included) these days. Remember the early days (think Sedco) when we were all learning about deepwater drilling & the subsea engineers on the rig actually had an engineering degree & helped design & test all the equipment. I am wondering if this catastrophe will bring back those days.

I know we are bitching, complaining & getting distracted by the blame game here & it seems like for the last few days we are all just going back & forth saying "yes it is . . . . . . .no it isn't. . . . . yes it is". I think part of the problem is that we all keep doing the same thing you just did. O & G is O & G, if you work on the rig in a subsea position as you allude, and it effects you personally, as you have also alluded "some ignorant as%hole in a Stetson hard-hat playing the big man and dictating that: This is the way it's gonna happen!" doesn't that make it a problem within OUR industry as a whole? Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to single you out or pick on you because we have all been doing the same thing; just saying maybe we should all quit with the you guys vs. us guys BS and try and figure out how we are going to fix OUR industry on a world-wide scale so we can all continue to feed our families. I know the NORSOK regulations are much stricter in some regards & that things there have vastly improved in that area, but it wasn't painless & it sure wasn't voluntary (think Piper Alpha).

It has become VERY obvious to the whole world that, despite claims by everyone involved, we in the GoM operating theater (remember - one company's accident effects the public's opinion of us all regardless of how different our policies & procedures may be) obviously did not learn as many lessons as we gave lip service to from the Piper Alpha disaster & this seems to be true at all levels (& yes, I know it was a completely different scenario, but it was another incident that shocked the world and placed the public & government's focus firmly on our industry).

I am not trying to throw out a plea of "why can't we all just get along" because most of the folks here are rig & boat trash and as such we like to bitch & pick & cuss & agrue with each other as part of our daily fun, but what I am saynig is I think we need to keep the good, honest disemination of information & facts up so we can all figure out what happened to learn from the mistakes which were made, at whatever level, so this never happens again.

Okay, I'm done ranting for now, if someone could kick my soapbox out of the way so I don't trip over it later I would appreciate it.

[CPTdrillersails]

FraRig, I absolutely agree with you that any old-school land rig mentalities (or old school shallow water/well mentalities for that matter) have no place in the highly technical ultra deepwater operations being planned & carried out in today's D & E environment. As you correctly pointed out, the technology on the cutting edge is rapidly exceeding the training of the folks in the field trying to deal with the challenges which arise. This is why I really do not understand the lack of real engineering personnel on the rigs (North sea included) these days. Remember the early days (think Sedco) when we were all learning about deepwater drilling & the subsea engineers on the rig actually had an engineering degree & helped design & test all the equipment. I am wondering if this catastrophe will bring back those days.

I know we are bitching, complaining & getting distracted by the blame game here & it seems like for the last few days we are all just going back & forth saying "yes it is . . . . . . .no it isn't. . . . . yes it is". I think part of the problem is that we all keep doing the same thing you just did. O & G is O & G, if you work on the rig in a subsea position as you allude, and it effects you personally, as you have also alluded "some ignorant as%hole in a Stetson hard-hat playing the big man and dictating that: This is the way it's gonna happen!" doesn't that make it a problem within OUR industry as a whole? Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to single you out or pick on you because we have all been doing the same thing; just saying maybe we should all quit with the you guys vs. us guys BS and try and figure out how we are going to fix OUR industry on a world-wide scale so we can all continue to feed our families. I know the NORSOK regulations are much stricter in some regards & that things there have vastly improved in that area, but it wasn't painless & it sure wasn't voluntary (think Piper Alpha).

It has become VERY obvious to the whole world that, despite claims by everyone involved, we in the GoM operating theater (remember - one company's accident effects the public's opinion of us all regardless of how different our policies & procedures may be) obviously did not learn as many lessons as we gave lip service to from the Piper Alpha disaster & this seems to be true at all levels (& yes, I know it was a completely different scenario, but it was another incident that shocked the world and placed the public & government's focus firmly on our industry).

I am not trying to throw out a plea of "why can't we all just get along" because most of the folks here are rig & boat trash and as such we like to bitch & pick & cuss & agrue with each other as part of our daily fun, but what I am saynig is I think we need to keep the good, honest disemination of information & facts up so we can all figure out what happened to learn from the mistakes which were made, at whatever level, so this never happens again.

Okay, I'm done ranting for now, if someone could kick my soapbox out of the way so I don't trip over it later I would appreciate it.

I'm not saying it is simple, but you could divorce safety enforcement responsiblities from production personnel as I pointed out in a previous post. This is standard practice in refineries (which BP and other O&G companies have experience with) and in pipeline operations (which other O&G companies have experience with).

All you offshore experienced people are talking past each other because you obviously haven't worked in a safety conscious culture before. The companies you have worked with however do have that experience, they just aren't bothering to apply it to drilling. Instead they (and you) are making it all about the personalities and the scapegoats, and "who didn't have the cojones".

I said earlier that the hubris in this industry is detrimental. Is that sinking in yet?

[bnhpr]

FraRig, I absolutely agree with you that any old-school land rig mentalities (or old school shallow water/well mentalities for that matter) have no place in the highly technical ultra deepwater operations being planned & carried out in today's D & E environment. As you correctly pointed out, the technology on the cutting edge is rapidly exceeding the training of the folks in the field trying to deal with the challenges which arise. This is why I really do not understand the lack of real engineering personnel on the rigs (North sea included) these days. Remember the early days (think Sedco) when we were all learning about deepwater drilling & the subsea engineers on the rig actually had an engineering degree & helped design & test all the equipment. I am wondering if this catastrophe will bring back those days.

I know we are bitching, complaining & getting distracted by the blame game here & it seems like for the last few days we are all just going back & forth saying "yes it is . . . . . . .no it isn't. . . . . yes it is". I think part of the problem is that we all keep doing the same thing you just did. O & G is O & G, if you work on the rig in a subsea position as you allude, and it effects you personally, as you have also alluded "some ignorant as%hole in a Stetson hard-hat playing the big man and dictating that: This is the way it's gonna happen!" doesn't that make it a problem within OUR industry as a whole? Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to single you out or pick on you because we have all been doing the same thing; just saying maybe we should all quit with the you guys vs. us guys BS and try and figure out how we are going to fix OUR industry on a world-wide scale so we can all continue to feed our families. I know the NORSOK regulations are much stricter in some regards & that things there have vastly improved in that area, but it wasn't painless & it sure wasn't voluntary (think Piper Alpha).

It has become VERY obvious to the whole world that, despite claims by everyone involved, we in the GoM operating theater (remember - one company's accident effects the public's opinion of us all regardless of how different our policies & procedures may be) obviously did not learn as many lessons as we gave lip service to from the Piper Alpha disaster & this seems to be true at all levels (& yes, I know it was a completely different scenario, but it was another incident that shocked the world and placed the public & government's focus firmly on our industry).

I am not trying to throw out a plea of "why can't we all just get along" because most of the folks here are rig & boat trash and as such we like to bitch & pick & cuss & agrue with each other as part of our daily fun, but what I am saynig is I think we need to keep the good, honest disemination of information & facts up so we can all figure out what happened to learn from the mistakes which were made, at whatever level, so this never happens again.

Okay, I'm done ranting for now, if someone could kick my soapbox out of the way so I don't trip over it later I would appreciate it.

Good discussion.

A few one liners from 4 ultra deepwater rigs I've worked on.

Offshore ultra deepwater is more often than not..."Charlie flying the spaceship" lets be frank. Just came through with the scoop on the DCL drive off. The sr dpo, left to burn one, reference system went pear shaped, and Charlie watched the spaceship fly off.

The BOP has been unjustly demonized by BP, but lets not get distracted....You cannot mitigate stupidity. No matter what the new regs are, hoops, requirements etc. They will not keep the stupid people from burning rigs down....

Keep up the good discussion...

[AH-Fuhrer]

Funny you should mention West Texas land rigs, Did you know that 75% of U.S. land rigs use MPD whereas less than 25% of offshore rigs do, even though the consensus is that MPD is much safer? Have you ever used an SBOP? I think there’s a serious flaw to deepwater drilling in general, not necessarily specific to the GOM.

Maybe you have missed the fact that most DEEP Water drilling relies on computer controlled Dynamic Positioned vessels.

The cruise-control in that monster, fuel inefficient, truck that you probably drive home in every night..is a baby compared to what's used out in the real world.

Here we go guys.... the rig goes on drive off....and

"err Bubba... are we supposed to be pulling that BOP with us?"

[Corky]

A little of BP/AMOCO/GoldmanSachs history :

Thanks Chris, Highly informative.

[pumpjack hand]

Maybe you have missed the fact that most DEEP Water drilling relies on computer controlled Dynamic Positioned vessels.

The cruise-control in that monster, fuel inefficient, truck that you probably drive home in every night..is a baby compared to what's used out in the real world.

Here we go guys.... the rig goes on drive off....and

"err Bubba... are we supposed to be pulling that BOP with us?"

Good point AH. Petrobras currently uses an SSD (subsea safety device), lower taper stress joint, and adapter joint.


The rig personnel interacting with design engineers must differentiate an evolution from a revolution style of pushing the envelope, and it’s hard (but possible by spending enough time reading) with fast paced emerging technologies to get a good overview of the cutting edge, but since we’re all wired to the information highway we can easily use search terms like SSD (subsea safety device), RCD (rotating control device), deepwater dual-gradient MPD, parasite string, subsea annulus returns pump, deepwater SBOP (surface BOP).

I haven’t yet figured out the engineering reason (if there is one) that new deepwater rigs favor using the SSD with a SBOP instead of a fully functional SSBOP and a back up SBOP.


One way to get an overview is from an 875 page book like Advanced Drilling and Well Technology (SPE 2009) where the experts condense all the papers and journal articles for you. The chapter on Managed Pressure Drilling by Don. M. Hannegan (Weatherford International) says things like:


>>Deepwater Surface BOP Application of MPD- The initial purpose of drilling from a moored semisubmersible or a dynamically positioned drillship with a surface BOP was to enable wells to be drilled in water depths greater than the depth rating of the rig when using a subsea BOP stack (Gallagher and Bond 2001). However, drilling with a surface BOP enables many of the same MPD technologies otherwise available only to fixed rigs to be expoited in deepwater. High pressure and usually smaller-diameter casihg serves as the marine riser (Leach et al. 2002).


……MPD, on the other hand, has caused many in the industry to rate it second only to horizontal and directional drilling as having promise to be one of the most influential technologies over the next twenty years.


With data from a significant number of case histories globally, a risk assessment study by a joint industry project (DEA 155 2008) concluded the following about applications of MPD from all types of offshore rigs:


“Properly applied, has a high probability of mitigating most, if not all, drilling related risks.”


“Continues to demonstrate a bright future.”


“Is as safe or safer than current drilling technologies.”


“Is a sophisticated form of well control and deserves a balanced quality appraisal of risks-positive and negative.”


A growing number of upstream technologists are of the opinion that MPD is the way that all wells should be drilled. The stage is set for the significant uptick in offshore MPD applications to continue its momentum in the minds of offshore-drilling decision makers.<<

[bigmoose]

Interesting read today: http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2...s-gonna-happen

The sailor, who Buzbee refuses to name for fear of costing him his job, was on the ship's (rescue ship) bridge when Deepwater Horizon installation manager Jimmy Harrell, a top employee of rig owner Transocean, was speaking with someone in Houston via satellite phone. Buzbee told Mother Jones that, according to this witness account, Harrell was screaming, "Are you f_cking happy? Are you f__cking happy? The rig's on fire! I told you this was gonna happen." Whoever was on the other end of the line was apparently trying to calm Harrell down. "I am f_cking calm," he went on, according to Buzbee. "You realize the rig is burning?"
...snip
Buzbee told Mother Jones that the sailor's version of Harrell's phone conversation following the explosion was corroborated by a statement from a second crew member who says he also overheard the call. Both statements were taken in-person by Buzbee's investigator and safety consultant, who has interviewed some 60 people involved in the disaster, and signed by the witnesses, he said. Buzbee declined to make the full statements available to Mother Jones because, he said, "it is work product, meaning that it is something that I do not have to produce or disclose in litigation but that can be used at the right time in the litigation." He added that he intends to take a deposition from the crew members at a later time.

Seems like the government could subpoena the sat phone records from that vessel at that time... pretty clear pointer to the key guy on the mainland.

Another good ROV multi feed: http://data.plan9.de/akamai-bp-streams.html? this one only updates every minute, so you save your bandwidth. Click on the frame you are interested in, and you get it in Windows Media Player in realtime.

[rlanasa]

Anyone else seeing the media reports that the main leak on the sea floor has not been found?

[New Orleans Lady]

cnn reporting natural gas well explodes in johnson county texas ''breaking news''

[BLISTERS]

The 'other' spill BP will be keeping quiet Monday 31 May 2010 Greg Palast http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/i...iew/full/91000




With the Gulf Coast dying of oil poisoning, there's no space in the press for British Petroleum's most recent spill. Just last week over 100,000 gallons were lost at its Alaska pipeline operation. A hundred thousand used to be a lot. It still is. Last Tuesday, Pump Station 9, at Delta Junction on the 800-mile pipeline, busted. Thousands of barrels began spewing an explosive cocktail of hydrocarbons after &quot;procedures weren't properly implemented&quot; by BP operators, say state inspectors. &quot;Procedures weren't properly implemented&quot; is, it seems, BP's company motto. Few in the US know that BP owns the controlling stake in the transalaska pipeline. Unlike with the Deepwater Horizon rig, BP keeps its name off the big pipe. There's another reason for the company to keep its name off the pipe - its management of it stinks. The pipe is corroded, undermanned and &quot;basic maintenance&quot; is a term BP has never heard of. How does BP get away with it? The same way the Godfather got away with it, bad things happen to folks who blow the whistle. BP has a habit of hunting down and destroying the careers of those who warn of pipeline problems. In one case, BP's CEO of Alaskan operations hired a former CIA expert to break into the home of whistleblower Chuck Hamel, who had complained of conditions at the pipe's tanker facility. BP tapped his phone calls with a US congressman and ran a surveillance and smear campaign against him. When caught, a US federal judge said BP's acts were &quot;reminiscent of nazi Germany.&quot; This was not an isolated case. Captain James Woodle, once in charge of the pipe's Valdez terminus, was blackmailed into resigning from the post when he complained of disastrous conditions there. The weapon used on Woodle was a file of faked evidence of marital infidelity. Nice guys, eh? Two decades ago, I had the unhappy job of leading an investigation of British Petroleum's management of the Alaska pipeline system. I was working for the Chugach villages, the Alaskan natives who own the shoreline slimed by the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker grounding. Even then, a courageous, steel-eyed government inspector, Dan Lawn, was hollering about corrosion all through the BP pipeline. I say &quot;courageous&quot; because Lawn kept his job only because his union's lawyers have kept BP from having his head. It wasn't until 2006, 17 years later, that BP claimed to have suddenly discovered corrosion necessitating an emergency shutdown of the line. It was pretty damn hard for BP to claim surprise in August 2006 that corrosion required shutting the pipeline. Five months earlier, Lawn had written his umpteenth warning when he identified corrosion as the cause of a big leak. BP should have known about the problem years before that - if only because it had taped Dan Lawn's home phone calls. I don't want readers to think BP is a British marauder unconcerned about the US. The company is deeply involved in US democracy. Bob Malone, until last year the chairman of BP America, was also Alaska State co-chairman of the Bush re-election campaign. Bush, in turn, was so impressed with BP's care of Alaska's environment that he pushed again to open the state's Arctic wildlife refuge to drilling by the BP consortium. You can go to Alaska today and see for yourself the evidence of BP's care of the wilderness. You can smell it - the crude oil is still on the beaches from the Exxon Valdez spill. Exxon took all the blame for the spill because it was dumb enough to have the company's name on the ship. But it was BP's pipeline managers who filed reports that oil spill containment equipment was sitting right at the site of the grounding near Bligh Island. However the reports were bogus - the equipment wasn't there and so the beaches were poisoned. At the time, our investigators uncovered four-volumes worth of faked safety reports and concluded that BP was at least as culpable as Exxon for the 1,200 miles of oil-destroyed coastline. Nevertheless, we know BP cares about nature because it has lots of photos of solar panels in its annual reports - and it has painted every one of its gas stations green. The green paint job is supposed to represent the oil giant's love of Mother Nature. But CEO Tony Hayward knows it stands for the colour of the Yankee dollar. In 2006, BP finally discovered the dangerous corrosion in the pipeline after running a &quot;smart pig&quot; through it. The &quot;pig&quot; is an electronic drone that BP should have been using continuously, though it had not done so for 14 years. Another &quot;procedure not properly implemented.&quot; By not properly inspecting the pipeline for over a decade, BP failed to prevent that March 2006 spill which polluted Prudhoe Bay. And cheaping out on remote controls for its oil well blow-out preventers appears to have cost the lives of 11 men on the Deepwater Horizon. But then failure to implement proper safety procedures has saved BP not millions but billions of dollars, suggesting that the company's pig is indeed, very, very smart. Greg Palast investigated charges of fraud by BP and Exxon in the grounding of the Exxon Valdez for Alaska's Chugach Natives. This article appeared at buzzflash.com

[alvis]

cnn reporting natural gas well explodes in johnson county texas ''breaking news''

Edit: short story on TX explosion (natural gas line). http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/06/07...e-rural-texas/

Pennsylvania well brought under control after natural-gas explosion

http://www.ydr.com/ci_15225732

[alvis]

A humor break..

http://www.theonion.com/articles/mas...from-bp,17564/

[New Orleans Lady]

thanks alvis...I needed that.

[alvis]

Does anyone have any more information on this? Where is the Senator receiving this information?

Oil and gas are leaking from the seabed surrounding the BP Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico, Senator Bill Nelson of Florida told Andrea Mitchell today on MSNBC. Nelson, one of the most informed and diligent Congressmen on the BP gulf oil spill issue, has received reports of leaks in the well, located in the Mississippi Canyon sector. This is potentially huge and devastating news.

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/20...-may-be-blown/

[OldHondoHand]

Head's up, Guys. Some of the rig survivors will be on AC360 (Anderson Cooper, CNN) tonite at 10:00pm Eastern.

[alvis]

http://mfile.akamai.com/97892/live/r...asx?bkup=23729

Are they placing some sort of acoustic/vibration sensor against the well?

Edit: the ROv task is "Inclinometer Readings"..

Edit2: I wonder why they would be checking this. Is it changing?

sensor..jpg

[Guppy]

I have been on many wells that operators have obtained from BP. I can say for sure they have violated many industry guidelines on safety in the past. I kept old well files & have reports on hard drives of computers that have since petered out that prove it. The only problem is I got rid of all the files about two years ago & the hard rives are petered out. It would take an army of investigators who care & knew what they were looking for to dig this evidence up.

First post here, but this caught my attention so I registered. Even completely dead hard drives can yield useful data. If the platters on those hard drives are still at least physically intact, there are all sorts of things a data recovery company can do to get that stuff off -- they can completely rebuild dead drives around the old platters if that's what it takes. It's expensive, could be hundreds of dollars per drive -- but if the documents really are dynamite, I imagine there are enough people sufficiently ticked-off at BP that you could pass the hat around.

[alvis]

First post here, but this caught my attention so I registered. Even completely dead hard drives can yield useful data. If the platters on those hard drives are still at least physically intact, there are all sorts of things a data recovery company can do to get that stuff off -- they can completely rebuild dead drives around the old platters if that's what it takes. It's expensive, could be hundreds of dollars per drive -- but if the documents really are dynamite, I imagine there are enough people sufficiently ticked-off at BP that you could pass the hat around.

I've been wondering how those hard drives would fair under 5,000 feet of water where the water pressure is over 2,000 psi. I would imagine sea water has made its way inside the drive and done its damage. Anyone?

Edit: Wrong hard drives.. My bad.

Thanks NOL.

I have my mind on the supposed missing data that wasn't eLogged..

[New Orleans Lady]

alvis, go back and read the entire statement by cm...,and you'll understand gu's post