Deepwater Horizon - Transocean Oil Rig Fire

[AHTS Master]

BP SAYS IT SLOWED THE OIL LEAK
MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) - Oil spill update: BP official Jeff Childs says the company has been able to deploy a ram that clamps around the drill pipe at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Childs says that maneuver has slowed the flow of oil in and around the pipe.

“This morning, we were able to actuate the annular (ram), which clamps around the drill pipe, and shuts off flow in and around the drill pipe, and we’ve seen a noticeable reduction in the flow. That’s very good news, it means those rams are functioning,” explained Childs.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o></o>
Childs says the company is still trying to activate a second ram, called a shear, which would stop the flow entirely.

Childs is a BP executive who is based in Alaska. He works with at least one person who was involved in the Exxon Valdez spill. That 1989 disaster was the worst spill on record, with more than 11 million barrels of crude released into Prince William Sound<o></o>

This is False info according to the USCG and BP.

[Alabama Slammer]

This is the video associated with the post from the BP exec.
http://www.fox10tv.com/dpp/news/gulf...d-the-oil-leak

[Alabama Slammer]

I stand corrected, they have just revised the report as noted in the above link. Sorry for the tag

[jbtam99]

I've seen some comments on here indicating that a OSV was DP'd off the rig when the blowout occurred... I know the Joe Griffin (one of the boats on BP's contract) was tied up here in Fourchon. Anyone know what boat was working the rig when all this happened? Just curious more than anything.

[nomad]

Greetings all,

In 1985 there was a not entirely dissimilar blowout incident involving the Zapata Lexington that resulted in a fire and several fatalities. Without going into the voluminous details (you can read those later, if so motivated), I'll quote out a couple key phrases from two reports which are both available on the web (see links below):

Quote 1 (MMS report):

"The loss of well control that occurred when gas that was trapped in the BOP stack rapidly expanded as it migrated up the riser was the probable cause of the accident. If the BOP stack between the No. 1 annular preventer and the No. 3 BOP had been completely filled with gas (8.16 bbls), an estimated volume of 725 bbls of gas were possible at the drill floor."

This well was 13,000 ft deep (TVD) and in 1465 feet of water, and this is an 88x expansion. The situation at the Horizon site would have been capable of delivering far more gas from the internal BOP volume (assuming the BOPs had roughly the same content - a bit of a reach, I admit) at the surface. Fully expanded, we can reasonably expect that the gas volume could be equal to roughly 1/2 of the total riser volume.

Quote 2 (LSU report):

"It is likely that the accident occurred because the rig crew was not expecting the violent release of gas from the marine riser at the surface and had not prepared for this situation. Furthermore, it is likely that the crew believed that the procedure followed for the removal of trapped gas from the BOP stack was successful and that any gas remaining would be small in volume and could be easily handled as they had done previously on wells drilled in more shallow water depths."

Clearly, the crew had identified some evidence of anomalous gas and followed a procedure to mitigate the issue. It took an after-action study by university investigators using several computer simulations to clarify that the flow rates, pressure profiles, and fluid volumes recorded prior to the event were actually telling a different story than that perceived by the crew at the time of the event.

Sometimes events and conflicting evidence pile up faster than our - or our control systems - ability to analyze and respond them, and then, ship happens.

I've seen (and empathize with) the raw nerve reaction to the "human error" term in the previous posts, so I don't resurrect it lightly. For clarity: when I use it, human error is an analytical term, not a tool for assigning blame. Blame is for lawyers, PR spin doctors, and nightly news anchorpersons.

MMS report: http://www.ocsbbs.com/accidents/86-0101.pdf

LSU report: http://www.mms.gov/tarprojects/008/008DC.PDF

Regards

[Clockwatcher]

<TABLE style="WIDTH: 100%; mso-cellspacing: 1.5pt; mso-yfti-tbllook: 1184; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in" class=MsoNormalTable border=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%"><TBODY><TR style="mso-yfti-irow: 0; mso-yfti-firstrow: yes; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes"><TD style="BORDER-BOTTOM: #ece9d8; BORDER-LEFT: #ece9d8; PADDING-BOTTOM: 1.5pt; BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent; PADDING-LEFT: 1.5pt; PADDING-RIGHT: 1.5pt; BORDER-TOP: #ece9d8; BORDER-RIGHT: #ece9d8; PADDING-TOP: 1.5pt" vAlign=top>Thought some on here would be interested in this scenario. Link to original post (not mine) is below.

<HR align=center SIZE=1 width="100%">

The following has just been passed to me which may explain some things (especially whether a liner or full string was run):

This well had been giving some problems all the way down and was a big discovery. Big pressure, 16ppg+ mud weight. They ran a long string of 7" production casing - not a liner, the confusion arising from the fact that all casing strings on a floating rig are run on drill pipe and hung off on the wellhead on the sea floor, like a "liner". They cemented this casing with lightweight cement containing nitrogen because they were having lost circulation in between the well kicking all the way down.
The calculations and the execution of this kind of a cement job are complex, in order that you neither let the well flow from too little hydrostatic pressure nor break it down and lose the fluid and cement from too much hydrostatic. But you gotta believe BP had 8 or 10 of their best double and triple checking everything.
On the outside of the top joint of casing is a seal assembly - "packoff" - that sets inside the subsea wellhead and seals. This was set and tested to 10,000 psi, OK.
This was the end of the well until testing was to begin at a later time, so a temporary "bridge plug" was run in on drill pipe to set somewhere near the top of the well below 5,000 ft. This is the second barrier, you always have to have 2, and the casing was the first one. It is not know if this was actually set or not. At the same time they took the 16+ ppg mud out of the riser and replaced it with sea water so that they could pull the riser, lay it down, and move off.
When they did this, they of course took away ...... hydrostatic on the well. But this was OK, normal, since the well was plugged both on the inside with the casing and on the outside with the tested packoff. But something turned loose all of a sudden, and the conventional wisdom would be the packoff on the outside of the casing.
Gas and oil rushed up the riser; there was little wind, and a gas cloud got all over the rig. When the main inductions of the engines got a whiff, they ran away and exploded. Blew them right off the rig. This set everything on fire. A similar explosion in the mud pit / mud pump room blew the mud pumps overboard. Another in the mud sack storage room, sited most unfortunately right next to the living quarters, took out all the interior walls where everyone was hanging out having - I am not making this up - a party to celebrate 7 years of accident free work on this rig. 7 BP bigwigs were there visiting from town.
In this sense they were lucky that the only ones lost were the 9 rig crew on the rig floor and 2 mud engineers down on the pits. The furniture and walls trapped some and broke some bones but they all managed to get in the lifeboats with assistance from the others.
The safety shut ins on the BOP were tripped but it is not clear why they did not work. This system has 4 way redundancy; 2 separate hydraulic systems and 2 separate electric systems should be able to operate any of the functions on the stack. They are tested every 14 days, all of them. (there is also a stab on the stack so that an ROV can plug in and operate it, but now it is too late because things are damaged).
The well is flowing through the BOP stack, probably around the outside of the 7" casing. As reported elsewhere, none of the "rams", those being the valves that are suppose to close around the drill pipe and / or shear it right in two and seal on the open hole, are sealing. Up the riser and out some holes in it where it is kinked. A little is coming out of the drill pipe too which is sticking out of the top of the riser and laid out on the ocean floor. The volumes as reported by the media are not correct but who knows exactly how much is coming?
2 relief wells will be drilled but it will take at least 60 days to kill it that way. There is a "deep sea intervention vessel" on the way, I don't know if that means a submarine or not, one would think this is too deep for subs, and it will have special cutting tools to try to cut off the very bottom of the riser on top of the BOP. The area is remarkably free from debris. The rig "Enterprise" is standing by with another BOP stack and a special connector to set down on top of the original one and then close. One unknown is if they get a new stack on it and close it, will the pregnant dog broach around the outside of all the casing??
In order for a disaster of this magnitude to happen, more than one thing has to go wrong, or fail. First, a BallS**tty cement job. The wellhead packoff / seal assembly, while designed to hold the pressure, is just a backup. And finally, the ability to close the well in with the BOP somehow went away.

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http://drillingclub.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=wellcontrol&thread= 4837&page=14#13353<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o></o>

[Jeffrox]

FYI,

Washington, DC - In response to the Deepwater Horizon incident, Congressman Jeff Miller (FL-01) launched a new web hub totally dedicated to keeping the residents of Northwest Florida informed of the latest developments related to the oil spill and the community. The Deepwater Horizon Hub will be continually updated with breaking news, images and emergency contact numbers.

Stay informed by clicking here to visit the new Deepwater Horizon Hub.

[company man 1]

I have been posting the past few days as well as reading a lot of the posts on this blog & I have to say the one posted a couple above this one is the scenario I agree with the most. I don't believe the hanger seals were ever set in the casing head fully. Due to the shear weight of the casing the seals could have been set in the head just one inch or less& still tested perfectly. I say this with 15 years experience as a previous tool hand having set hundreds of sets of seals in packers & casing heads. I believe there had to be retardant placed in the cement to keep it from setting prematurely & this cement should have been given 24 hours at least to harden before performing a negative test & displacing out with seawater. I also believe that a tool joint was spaced out in the shear rams. This is a no-no in spacing out for any type of dispalcement procedure, but may have been permitted due to the point in the process the rig was in ( displacing the riser with seawater to disconnect). I also believe the casing seals did not blow until there was a sufficient amount of time in an underbalance condition like until the riser had just about been completely circulated out before the caing seal blew & allowed a massive amount of gas to expand & blow the riser dry & explode. As for the BOPs not working, it is possible that everyone responsible for operating them was either killed or injured in the blast & any others who may have had the opportunity to shut in the well may have assumed the other person on duty ( who was already hurt or killed) was possibly involved in well control or would surely close the shear rams. Anyone knows that on a job like this you better be sure of what you are doing or functioning the shears can do more harm than good.
Having speculated all this & understanding that this crew was topnotch at doing their jobs, I have to say it was a confluence of all the right circumstances happening together that contributed to this disaster. So what can be done to prevent this type of future occurrance? First, all subsea casing heads should have a polished bore at least 4' long so that while it is being stung in it can be circulated & after there is a positive indication from pressure build up the pressure can be bled & the casing slacked off enough to ensure that it is positively seated in place. 2nd, on a deep hole such as this a sufficient amount of time should be given for the cement to set. at least 24 hours to give any retardants sufficient time to deactivate & allow the cement to harden & form a sufficient bond with the hole. Then secondary testing & negative tests should be performed. 4th & certainly not least, the deeper we have to go to explore for oil the more risks we run of having somehting like this happen. When it does the costs are insurmountible. BP will pay an extremely heavy price for this well. Maybe so heavy it will bankrupt their company. However, we all pay when something like this happens in our industry. Therefore, we should have two sets of shear rams in all deep water wells. There has been much talk about the redundancy of safety systems on this rig, yet they are dependant on a safety system with only one "surefire failsafe valve". If a tool joint happens to be in the the way of the shear rams anytime when a well takes a kick, then they become useless as they can not shear a 3" thick solid piece of pig iron such as a tool joint or other x-overs & subs that are run into the wells of today. Therefore, double shear rams spaced out 10' apart allowing for tool joint spacing should be used.
I know some of these things sound tedious, costly, & unneccessary, but when you count them against the cost of just one catastrophe like this, they are a small price to pay for prevention. It is my fervent hope that an engineer with some considerable amount of stroke with a major oil company or the IADC or a ranking member of the MMS will read these recommendations & make them SOP for future deep water operations as I can't due to my position in this business. Rant over.

[cmjeff]

I've seen some comments on here indicating that a OSV was DP'd off the rig when the blowout occurred... I know the Joe Griffin (one of the boats on BP's contract) was tied up here in Fourchon. Anyone know what boat was working the rig when all this happened? Just curious more than anything.

The Edison Chouest boat Damon B Bankston

[BMCSRetired]

The Edison Chouest boat Damon B Bankston

Not quite right. The DAMON B. BANKSTON is a Tidewater boat. I talked to some of the crew after the explosion. They had a door (unsure if it was watertight or not) blown in but still managed to pick up 97 people.

Nothing but respect for a crew that can survive an explosion and save 97 people.

[Orniphobe]

Nothing but respect for a crew that can survive an explosion and save 97 people.

Well said, Senior. Thank you Damon Bankston and others that were there.

I hope the investigations, all of them (CG, MMS, bp, Transocean) look at what they did different here, than on Piper Alpha, Ocean Ranger, and others. Everyone that wasn't in the line of fire, plus some that were, got off, despite all the damage. The media hasn't picked up on this that I see.

I'm on a half-built new drillship. What can I do now in the yard to make a difference? I'm curious about what worked and what didn't. How did the German Fassmer boats do (compared to the Chinese ones new ships have)? What let go on the aft boats/davits (the release gear or falls)? How did the rafts hold up to the heat? How do you get crew with broken legs and/or burns into a covered lifeboat? Was egress from the deck adequate (ladders, Donuts)? Would an FRC have helped? Did we learn anything about crowd management? She was built to NMD (Norwegian) rules... did that make a difference? How would those drillships with aft facing windows in the quarters and the bridge hold up? Were they rigged for H2S and did that help or hinder (each hand has their own SCBA)? What specific training made a difference? And so on...

We can learn from this as mariners. I'm as curious as everyone about the BOP, but I hope they're just as detailed at looking at the emergency systems and procedures.

[gonzopancho]

To Andrago

why would the bottom of the drill string have been closed?

[EEngineer]

No, I can not at this time. You are just going to have to take my word on it for the time being.

Roger that, Hoping and praying all goes as planned.

[Missin'lLink]

Hello all, long time lurker, first time poster. I have been following this on a number of boards. I have found this board to be among the most informative. I did get some information that may help some of you with knowledge fill in some blanks. This information came from someone that has inside information. Please don't ask who. Here is what I heard.


This well had been giving some problems all the way down and was a big discovery. Big pressure, 16ppg+ mud weight. They ran a long string of 7" production casing - not a liner, the confusion arising from the fact that all casing strings on a floating rig are run on drill pipe and hung off on the wellhead on the sea floor, like a "liner". They cemented this casing with lightweight cement containing nitrogen because they were having lost circulation in between the well kicking all the way down.
The calculations and the execution of this kind of a cement job are complex, in order that you neither let the well flow from too little hydrostatic pressure nor break it down and lose the fluid and cement from too much hydrostatic. But you gotta believe BP had 8 or 10 of their best double and triple checking everything.
On the outside of the top joint of casing is a seal assembly - "packoff" - that sets inside the subsea wellhead and seals. This was set and tested to 10,000 psi, OK.
This was the end of the well until testing was to begin at a later time, so a temporary "bridge plug" was run in on drill pipe to set somewhere near the top of the well below 5,000 ft. This is the second barrier, you always have to have 2, and the casing was the first one. It is not known if this was actually set or not. At the same time they took the 16+ ppg mud out of the riser and replaced it with sea water so that they could pull the riser, lay it down, and move off.
When they did this, they of course took away ...... hydrostatic on the well. But this was OK, normal, since the well was plugged both on the inside with the casing and on the outside with the tested packoff. But something turned loose all of a sudden, and the conventional wisdom would be the packoff on the outside of the casing.
Gas and oil rushed up the riser; there was little wind, and a gas cloud got all over the rig. When the main inductions of the engines got a whiff, they ran away and exploded. Blew them right off the rig. This set everything on fire. A similar explosion in the mud pit / mud pump room blew the mud pumps overboard. Another in the mud sack storage room, sited most unfortunately right next to the living quarters, took out all the interior walls where everyone was hanging out having - I am not making this up - a party to celebrate 7 years of accident free work on this rig. 7 BP bigwigs were there visiting from town.
In this sense they were lucky that the only ones lost were the 9 rig crew on the rig floor and 2 mud engineers down on the pits. The furniture and walls trapped some and broke some bones but they all managed to get in the lifeboats with assistance from the others.
The safety shut ins on the BOP were tripped but it is not clear why they did not work. This system has 4 way redundancy; 2 separate hydraulic systems and 2 separate electric systems should be able to operate any of the functions on the stack. They are tested every 14 days, all of them. (there is also a stab on the stack so that an ROV can plug in and operate it, but now it is too late because things are damaged).
The well is flowing through the BOP stack, probably around the outside of the 7" casing. As reported elsewhere, none of the "rams", those being the valves that are suppose to close around the drill pipe and / or shear it right in two and seal on the open hole, are sealing. Up the riser and out some holes in it where it is kinked. A little is coming out of the drill pipe too which is sticking out of the top of the riser and laid out on the ocean floor. The volumes as reported by the media are not correct but who knows exactly how much is coming?
2 relief wells will be drilled but it will take at least 60 days to kill it that way. There is a "deep sea intervention vessel" on the way, I don't know if that means a submarine or not, one would think this is too deep for subs, and it will have special cutting tools to try to cut off the very bottom of the riser on top of the BOP. The area is remarkably free from debris. The rig "Enterprise" is standing by with another BOP stack and a special connector to set down on top of the original one and then close. One unknown is if they get a new stack on it and close it, will the pregnant dog broach around the outside of all the casing??
In order for a disaster of this magnitude to happen, more than one thing has to go wrong, or fail. First, a BallS**tty cement job. The wellhead packoff / seal assembly, while designed to hold the pressure, is just a backup. And finally, the ability to close the well in with the BOP somehow went away.

[bobcouttie]

I've seen (and empathize with) the raw nerve reaction to the "human error" term in the previous posts, so I don't resurrect it lightly. For clarity: when I use it, human error is an analytical term, not a tool for assigning blame.

Regards

Absolutely correct, and a point that needs to be made repeatedly. The objective is to determine what procedures, technology, training, whatever will reduce the chance of such errors being made in the future. Fixing blame does not reduce errors, fixing the reason for those errors saves lives. That's why it's important.

[stompk]

Anyone have any reports on how bad the oil is out there?

[ExCompanyMan]

IOn the outside of the top joint of casing is a seal assembly - "packoff" - that sets inside the subsea wellhead and seals. This was set and tested to 10,000 psi, OK.

So the key question is whose wellhead was it (anyone know?) and it should be noted that the pressure test was from top down; the gas came the other way. I always had issues with these pressure tests since it gave an false sense of security.

Company man: fully concur with your analysis of the cement failure. Have seen a land rig lost like that before when they forgot to close the wellhead's side-outlets after a cement job and only realized there was an issue when the cellar was full of liquid and the gas started to come out of the side outlets.

Pressure gauges should be installed on subsea sideoutlets. This would have indicated that the was a major pressure problem in the annulus.

[Emparri]

BP Stops 1 Area of Flow
BP today announced that it has stopped the flow of oil from one of the three existing leak points on the damaged MC252 oil well and riser in the Gulf of Mexico. While this is not expected to affect the overall rate of flow from the well, it is expected to reduce the complexity of the situation being dealt with on the seabed.

"At the MC252 well, using remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), a valve has been installed on the end of a broken drill pipe, one of the three points from which oil was leaking. The ROVs first cut the end of the pipe to leave a clean end and the valve, weighing over half a ton, was placed in position on the seabed. Overnight the ROVs completed securely joining the valve to the broken drill pipe and then closed it, shutting off the flow from that pipe. The ROVs will continue to closely monitor the well and remaining flow points to look for any changes.
In parallel, BP continues to make plans for the loading and movement of a first containment dome from dock at Port Fourchon, Louisiana out to the well site. It is planned to lower the dome over one of the leak sites on the seabed and then connect it by pipe to a specialist vessel at the surface. This system is designed to help capture the oil at the seabed and collect it securely for processing. The dome is currently expected to be lowered to the wellsite seabed in around three days' time allowing the process of testing and commissioning to begin. Only once this is complete will the effectiveness of the system be demonstrated."

Source: http://www.roughneckcity.com/Transocean_Horizon.html

[BMCSRetired]

Here is the first "dome" going out to the spill. Kinda looks like a suction pile. The other one is being built now.

Spill Dome..jpg

[ActivePatriot]

Is the containment option a lie?

Since this thread has many who are knowledgeable in the industry, I would like to know if this option is feasable or just a dog and pony show which is already known to be a failure.

I have posted this thread on our own website questioning exactly this:
http://activepatriot.org/index.php?topic=23.0

From my layman's perspective, it takes 5000 psi to suck the oil to the surface. Part of that is a static head pressure of 2165 psi. The rest is the Dynamic Head Pressure.

I have searched and found no pump out there capable of handling this psi with the flow 1500-1900 gpm needed to contain the spill.

Can someone show me credible linked sources for the technology and equipment that currently exists to do this?

I have searched far and wide and have not found it, therefore I must assume this is a known lie being perpatrated on an unknowing public.

There is no getting around the problem the 5000 foot depth creates. Pipe diameter, GPM are secondary factors to the depth.

Here's a good calculator for this: http://www.pumpworld.com/headcalc.htm