Deepwater Horizon - Transocean Oil Rig Fire

Offshore
2221

Anyone notice aht looks like downhauls/guys/tethers from the tophat leading >downward< visible on the Skandi Herc 6 feed? ( Maybe more visible on feeds from ‘other’ than the BP site itself)

Also - hypothetically, if there were to be a suddenly remembered , functioning valve in the stack that could now be closed, this would be inadvisable because of backpressure concerns with the well structure/casing/wellhead/BOP stack integrity?
If so, why was BP blindly making repeated attempts to activate the various BOP rams/shears in the early days following the incident?

2222

[QUOTE=Observer;35423]OSHA citations against BP: 760. Against ExxonMobil: 1.

That’s about all anyone needs to know about BP’s safety culture.[/QUOTE]

Thx for posting this. As someone who’s spent some time as an Exxon employee working offshore, I’ve often wondered how we measured up. Wow. At times we felt like maybe the muckity-mucks were just giving lip-service to our safety concerns and suggestions, but in reality, Exxon walked their talk, in my opinion. (It has been several years…)

I’ve been poring over MMS Safety reports in the GOM, Pacific, etc., along with third-party reports. The one name that keeps popping up with fines and incidents has been BP. Trying to be fair, I have wondered what this number means in relationship to their overall operations, (footprint) etc, and how they stack up to other big operators. This number really speaks for itself. I’ve spent quite a bit of time collecting evidence of BP’s abysmal safety record. It’s bad. more to follow.

2223

[QUOTE=Laurence Cuffe;35458]Short answer, yes I do.
Longer answer, broadening the context and terms of reference. Consider the airline industry, many players, strung regulation, and a culture of open analysis of each safety failure. This is a combination which has made airtravel, despite our misaligned perceptions of risk, one of the safest ways to travel.
It didn’t get that way by saying every time there’s a major disaster, we put the airline out of business.
We’ve got to move on and build a system which is better than what we have, and do so by incorporating what we can learn from this.[/QUOTE] What if someone told you they had personal first hand knowledge of hundreds of cases of falsified documentation given to the government & other operators which have bought production properties form BP? Would that have any impact on your thinking about BP’s credibility & your view of loss of perpective & someone spewing venom ?

2224

I would tell you to call this nearest US attorney and report the fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud. Have you done that or are you an accomplice?

[QUOTE=company man 1;35464]What if someone told you they had personal first hand knowledge of hundreds of cases of falsified documentation given to the government & other operators which have bought production properties form BP? Would that have any impact on your thinking about BP’s credibility & your view of loss of perpective & someone spewing venom ?[/QUOTE]

2225

[QUOTE=rlanasa;35467]I would tell you to call this nearest US attorney and report the fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud. Have you done that or are you an accomplice?[/QUOTE]
Wow! look who showed up? It is people like you which will keep me form revealing my true identity & what I have done in this business & how I know what I know. I will suffice it to say this. I knew 4/20/10 would come to BP. I didn’t know the date. I just knew it was an inevitable situation. I will also say where there’s smoke there’s fire & there is plenty of fire. In response to another of your BP apologists remarks meant to intimidate the weak, I will say how can one of many victims be an accomplice ?

2226

If your serious, and have the courage to do so, I think I could locate an environmental lawyer who could take it further. If your not, I think its worth thinking about all the people in the 20th century who ended up doing very evil things because they felt they had no option. I don’t buy the victim bit, an awful lot of the people who went down in Nuremberg felt that way too.

2227

[QUOTE=Laurence Cuffe;35471]If your serious, and have the courage to do so, I think I could locate an environmental lawyer who could take it further. If your not, I think its worth thinking about all the people in the 20th century who ended up doing very evil things because they felt they had no option. I don’t buy the victim bit, an awful lot of the people who went down in Nuremberg felt that way too.[/QUOTE]
How about Auschwitz, Docchaw, & the many other camps where people were butchered for being the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time. Were they villains or victims ? I have seen how big BP’s war chest is in all of this. They are in the process of bribing their way out with the federal government of the United States. Do you think I would for one second trust an environmental attorney, when by my own actions to do the right thing & protect people & the environment I had to sweep any evidence under the rug for forever ? Give me a break. There is the way things ought to be & there is the way things are. I fight the battle as hard as I can without becoming a dead hero.
Editr: I tell you what. Why don’t you, instead of questioning my courage & conviction, question your own courage & conviction & join me in ponting out the obvious to bring these bastards to justice. Then when I see I have a fighting chance I will jump out & beat the living shit out of them with their own ball bat. How would that work for you?

2228

[QUOTE=OldHondoHand;35463]Thx for posting this. As someone who’s spent some time as an Exxon employee working offshore, I’ve often wondered how we measured up. Wow. At times we felt like maybe the muckity-mucks were just giving lip-service to our safety concerns and suggestions, but in reality, Exxon walked their talk, in my opinion. (It has been several years…)

I’ve been poring over MMS Safety reports in the GOM, Pacific, etc., along with third-party reports. The one name that keeps popping up with fines and incidents has been BP. Trying to be fair, I have wondered what this number means in relationship to their overall operations, (footprint) etc, and how they stack up to other big operators. This number really speaks for itself. I’ve spent quite a bit of time collecting evidence of BP’s abysmal safety record. It’s bad. more to follow.[/QUOTE][I] I can tell you first hand Exxon & Mobil are the finest companies I ever worked for. I can also tell you that while Chevron has done a lot of things to piss me off personally they put their actions where their moutha are the same as Shell. That’s my story & I’m sticking to it.[/I]
[I]Edit: You talk about a company that had a cultural challenge. That was Chevron. First they bought out Gulf, not so bad. Then they had to take on TEXACO ? Answer that one Alcor. HTF could Chevron pull it off with Texaco & you keep giving BP a free pass with AMOCO ? Horsehocky. [/I]

2229

[QUOTE=company man 1;35472] Do you think I would for one second trust an environmental attorney, when by my own actions to do the right thing & protect people & the environment I had to sweep any evidence under the rug for forever ? Give me a break. There is the way things ought to be & there is the way things are. I fight the battle as hard as I can without becoming a dead hero.
[/QUOTE]
I’m trying hard, but I dont understand the circumstances which make this make sense. It does strike me that if you have something specific about BP, then this is probably one of the better times to air it.
Its just my experience that a lot of crap stuff is done by guys who dont think they are evil, but are opperating in CYA mode.
Rebuilding a corporate culture is not easy. geting out of group think, is also not easy. But unless you understand history, and that includes technical history, you are destined to repeat it.

2230

[QUOTE=Alf;35456]
It did however re-surface again today (in another news article). Also, another news article quoted Mr Vidrine’s age as 67 years old.
.[/QUOTE]
What an old fossil… Wait! I’m 67! And I’ve been in the middle of and responsible for successful offshore MPD operations in the North Sea in highly depleted reservoirs… Damn, I must be too old to do that stuff. I’ll quit it now.

2231

More oil is starting to show up on the beaches now. How is the oil getting there? Is it oil that made it to the surface and getting pushed onto shore? Is some of the oil that is traveling in the plumes starting to come to the surface and getting pushed to shore? A combination of the two?

2232

GOOGLE Thermoclines Gulf of Mexico. The GOM is full of thermoclines and levels of water at different densities. It is very easy for the oil to get traped for a time between these dramatic levels. Overtime upwelling and the change in water depth will force some of the trapped oil to the surface. We will see oil from this washing ashore all over the world for decades.

[QUOTE=alvis;35476]More oil is starting to show up on the beaches now. How is the oil getting there? Is it oil that made it to the surface and getting pushed onto shore? Is some of the oil that is traveling in the plumes starting to come to the surface and getting pushed to shore? A combination of the two?[/QUOTE]

2233

http://mfile.akamai.com/97892/live/reflector:46566.asx?bkup=54013

They have been working on getting this socket seated onto this bolt for some time now. Why don’t you just bump your machine to rotate the socket until it seats onto the bolt.

Are they practicing?

2234

[QUOTE=jmccaski;35475]What an old fossil… Wait! I’m 67! And I’ve been in the middle of and responsible for successful offshore MPD operations in the North Sea in highly depleted reservoirs… Damn, I must be too old to do that stuff. I’ll quit it now.[/QUOTE]

Did you use a SBOP (surface bop) with your MPD (managed pressure drilling)? Think an SBOP would have helped the crew control Macondo well? Think the closed loop sensors available w/MPD would have helped the crew identify the kick earlier?

I’m thinking if a crew is subjected to this kind of risk by just following management and supervisor instructions they should be entitled to have improved control of their safety.

2235

Frarig, you know a lot about who and what’s going on, so can you give me some info please? We saw the Sr. Drllg Eng who designed both the casing and cement jobs on that well be interrogated by BP, T.O., Halliburton, and MMS at the Coast Guard hearing. He knew that some higher ups approved both those designs, but under oath he didn’t know how high it went nor who it was up higher. Please tell me.

If you can help me out with that I’ve got another one for you, thanks.

pumpjack, although I’d love to know, I’m afraid I have no idea how high it went. I’d imagine it went as high as is normal for individual well approval, which would be several significant levels below the CEO of a company the size of BP (or any other major oil company).

I’ll apologize in advance for going off on a tangent from your post… 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.

I may well be wrong. This personal experience of mine might just have been bad luck. I don’t know. What I do know, for a stone fact, is that the attitude developed on West Texas land rigs has no place on technically-challenging deepwater wells. This environment is entirely unforgiving, and there is simply no place for the old-school bullsh*t. The technology involved in drilling these things is already running way ahead of the average rig workers’ experience – the last thing you need is some ignorant as%hole in a Stetson hard-hat playing the big man and dictating that: This is the way it’s gonna happen!

What I’ve been saying is, understandably, unpalatable to most Americans on this forum. For those who feel offended, I apologize. However, I wouldn’t be saying it if I didn’t believe that there is a serious problem in your approach to deepwater drilling.

Instead of taking the easy and politically expedient approach of vilifying one particular (foreign) company, 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.

Too much to ask, maybe?

2236

A little of BP/AMOCO/GoldmanSachs history :

Sir [U]John Browne [then CEO BP[/U]] had bought [U]Amoco[/U], an ailing corporation, in 1998 as part of his inspired dash for growth. Over the previous seven years, as BP’s oil reserves declined in Alaska and the North Sea, Mr. Browne talked about his plan for a succession of bold acquisitions and championing of risk to save BP from gradual extinction. By 2005, Mr. Browne’s ambition to transform BP into a powerful challenger to Exxon itself seemed to be materializing.

To cut costs, Mr. Browne had not replaced hundreds of engineers who had left and committed BP to rely more on sub-contractors. Brilliantly, he had simultaneously [U]rebranded BP with the sunburst logo as “Beyond Petroleum,” [/U]an environmentally friendly corporation blessed by a green destiny. The[U] explosion at Texas City [/U]endangered that dream.

In the aftermath of the explosion, a blame game erupted.[U] BP was the biggest oil producer in America [/U]and the [U]most successful operator in the Gulf of Mexico[/U], and its reputation was at risk. The company was accused by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, an independent federal agency, of cutting the costs for safety and maintenance to increase profits. His response was rapid. Amoco’s engineers and executives, the British executive told his fellow BP directors, were themselves responsible for negligence and “cultural misunderstanding.” Former employees of Amoco, which was now part of BP, rejected any suggestion of their personal culpability.

BP-- all is well says CEO Sir John Brown, oops, got caught lying to a judge, yer outta here says the Board of Directors, valiantly trying to cover their butts.
[Wikipedia: On 6 January 2007, Browne won his first interim injunction against the allegations by his former homosexual lover Ashley Staines being published. He later disclosed being"terrified" that his sexuality would be revealed publicly. (Courts ruled that he could not prevent Associated Newspapers from printing allegations about his romantic life and alleged misuse of company funds.) A week later it was announced that [U]his retirement date had been brought forward [/U]to July 2007 and that he would be succeeded by [U]Tony Hayward[/U]. Lord [U]Browne resigned from BP[/U] on 1 May 2007, and resigned as a non-executive [U]director of Goldman Sachs [/U]on 10 May 2007.]

As the head of BP’s production during the Texas City saga, [U]Tony Hayward[/U], Mr. Browne’s successor, has already visited the Houston command centers monitoring the explosion at the Mocando site in the Gulf of Mexico. As the oil spill now hits the Louisiana coast, Mr. Hayward may be mindful of his predecessor’s eventual failure to limit the repercussions of successive accidents.

2237

[QUOTE=Frarig;35483]pumpjack, although I’d love to know, I’m afraid I have no idea how high it went. I’d imagine it went as high as is normal for individual well approval, which would be several significant levels below the CEO of a company the size of BP (or any other major oil company).

I’ll apologize in advance for going off on a tangent from your post… 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.

I may well be wrong. This personal experience of mine might just have been bad luck. I don’t know. What I do know, for a stone fact, is that the attitude developed on West Texas land rigs has no place on technically-challenging deepwater wells. This environment is entirely unforgiving, and there is simply no place for the old-school bullsh*t. The technology involved in drilling these things is already running way ahead of the average rig workers’ experience – the last thing you need is some ignorant as%hole in a Stetson hard-hat playing the big man and dictating that: This is the way it’s gonna happen!

What I’ve been saying is, understandably, unpalatable to most Americans on this forum. For those who feel offended, I apologize. However, I wouldn’t be saying it if I didn’t believe that there is a serious problem in your approach to deepwater drilling.

Instead of taking the easy and politically expedient approach of vilifying one particular (foreign) company, 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.

Too much to ask, maybe?[/QUOTE]

Frarig, the Alcor has posted that the casing design was ”ambitious”. Are “ambitious” approaches to casing usually dreamed up by a Sr. Drllg Eng. or do they come from up higher, well how high is the question.

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.

2238

[QUOTE=alvis;35481]http://mfile.akamai.com/97892/live/reflector:46566.asx?bkup=54013They have been working on getting this socket seated onto this bolt for some time now. Why don’t you just bump your machine to rotate the socket until it seats onto the bolt.
Are they practicing?[/QUOTE]

Alvis I watched this until I had to go to a grad party 4 hours ago. With the blue impact wrench I watched them slowly bump it 2 or 3 times. They were not successful. BP here again are some serious suggestions.

  1. Mark a paint line on the OD of the socket at each of the 6 apex’s of the internal hex, then you know where the pointy parts of the socket is to align with the bolt head. Seemed an obvious thing to do to me. (Just saw that they did this, when I wrote it, I didn’t know they marked the socket.)

  2. Next time have a machinist take a carbide burr and round the entrance (open side) of the socket to the flats. It will weaken the socket a bit, but hey, you can’t even get it on now. Add a ramp to help you on, given the ROV’s dexterity problem. Another obvious modification to me.

  3. From watching operations at 11PM eastern: You don’t have enough clearance in the socket given the ROV’s dexterity. On this size socket another 1/16 inch or 3/32 clearance in diameter won’t make a difference. Have someone EDM the socket larger over the night. Add a relief groove on each apex of 1/16 radius. Heat shrink on a 1/4 inch thick wall 4130 tube to strengthen the socket from our EDM work. I just saw the socket size 3 11/16! That sure seems a bit oddball size. Man up it to 3 3/4 immediately, there is no difference on a bolt that big. If you round it off, we will reconsider.

Good luck, and I think they are practicing. Seeing if they can get the bolts off, and if they can; I think the flange is coming off the flex joint.

rlanasa if you want a consultant, I’m available. CM1 knows how to get a hold of me. Consider him my agent. :wink:

2239

[QUOTE=Laurence Cuffe;35474]I’m trying hard, but I dont understand the circumstances which make this make sense. It does strike me that if you have something specific about BP, then this is probably one of the better times to air it.
Its just my experience that a lot of crap stuff is done by guys who dont think they are evil, but are opperating in CYA mode.
Rebuilding a corporate culture is not easy. geting out of group think, is also not easy. But unless you understand history, and that includes technical history, you are destined to repeat it.[/QUOTE]
That is why I have gone on the offensive in this thread. I don’t know what your background is, but there are guys on here that can guess what I do. 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. The wells have been plugged & in many cases completely removed.This was mandated by MMS due to problems these wells had, which were finally discovered by MMS. I have a lot of respect for MMS, but understand they have a total staff to oversee the GOM which consist of at most 60 people & they police an area larger than the state of Texas. When they do try to bring pressure on a company such as BP, all the comapny has to do is make one phone call to a congressman & the problem goes away.
I have given all the information I dare on this thread or anywhere else to be able to maintain my anonymity & continue working in this business. I wish to God Allmighty I could give details & let even doubtors such as Frarig know. Then they would understand why I have taken this stand & say they identify. that is why it is important to hold these guys accountable now while the evidence is so crystal clear & obvious. Otherwise other operators will look at BP & say they got away with it, why not us ?

2240

//youtu.be/5RYNUnlG4K4

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? [U]Much respects[/U] 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?