[QUOTE=alcor;37271]Frarig,
A note relating to the change of use of the BOPs:
BP asked TO for the conversion. Would this have to approved by MMS?
BP would pay for this conversion.
Who did TO engage with to perform the conversion?
Should TO have gone through Cameron in order to maintain the BOPs as per operational requirement?
My understanding is that Operators suggest what they want and Contractors deliver. Who they seek to deliver the requirement is covered by the Operator financially.
Complete tests are performed at surface prior to running the BOP. Why were the anomalies not found prior to requirement. And, were the functional problems known to TO and BP?
What were the known functional problems? Was BP informed, and did they carry on with the well regardless?
This may help with the ongoing enquiries.[/QUOTE]
Alcor, this is kind of what I meant when I said I have more questions than answers. I’ll do my best to respond, with appropriate caveats:
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I’ve never worked with a SSTV and I haven’t worked in the GoM since the late 90’s, before SSTV’s were in use, so I don’t know for a fact if there would have to be MMS approval for their use. I’m guessing here (and will try to confirm within a few days), but I’d imagine that Hydril and Cameron will have designed these things for their respective BOPs and then received some kind of blanket ‘fit-for-purpose’ approval from the relevant authorities. In other words, fitting a SSTV might be no more of a big deal than fitting a new fail-safe valve or any other kind of pre-approved component. I will try to confirm this.
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Yes, as you know, Transocean would need to provide whatever systems BP required for the well if they wanted the contract. BP would probably pay for it one way or another, but I believe it would be TO engineers who liaised with Cameron (in this case) to either supply a new or a modified double that could accept the SSTV. Since they were operating in the GoM, this would have been done directly with Houston. In other regions, Brazil or UK say, most BOP repair/modification work would be carried out by a local Cameron workshop, operating to the same standards as Cameron USA. We hope…
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Interesting question. I know that Stena carries a full-time Cameron hand on at least some of their rigs, working as a fully integrated part of the SS department. It’s a difference in maintenance philosophies between the two companies for sure. In my experience, the big nuts and bolts of the stack don’t usually present problems that the rig guys can’t handle, nor does routine maintenance and repair. For more esoteric problems, eg. in the pods and the control systems, TO will call on Cameron or Hydril as required. So I guess TO has decided that it’s more cost-effective to call the experts when they need them rather than to have an expert on board full-time who spends half his time cleaning the workshop…right or wrong, I don’t know.
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I don’t know why the alleged problems weren’t discovered prior to deploying the BOP. You will know yourself that stacks are tested top to bottom several times before they get wet, and that the tests should be witnessed and signed off by the company rep. It worries me, as I alluded to in my earlier post, that several things (wrong piping on the ROV panel, dead battery in one of the pods, loose fitting on the shear-ram supply) somehow weren’t found before they ran it. That’s not to say that any one of those factors caused the BOP ‘failure’, but it does indicate that there may have been issues with maintenance and I don’t want to believe that. I want to believe even less that these faults were found during between-wells maintenance or testing and were either not reported or were ignored higher up the chain.
Again, there’s too much we don’t know. I’ve told you what I can, and if I can get any more information in the next couple of weeks I will post it here. Right now, I’ve got 5 hours to sleep before I catch a boat, so I’m off to the sack.