Deepwater Horizon - Transocean Oil Rig Fire

Offshore
6362

[QUOTE=Infomania;48251]Thanks Earl,

I am wondering, if the VBR and Hydril were closed successfully, then, why did the floorhands indicate that when they initially ran up to the rig floor the well was flowing out of the riser, something they had never seen before and had not trained to circumvent. They were only trained to stop a blowout from within the drill string.

I don’t recall the employee names, just recall reading their account of the situation just before the fecal matter hit the fan.[/QUOTE]

I don’t know. Here’s the summary from the DNV report:

Prior to the loss of well control on the evening of April 20, 2010, the Upper Annular (UA) was closed as part of a series of two negative or leak-off tests. Approximately 30 minutes after the conclusion of the second leak-off (negative pressure) test, fluids from the well began spilling onto the rig floor. At 21:47 the standpipe manifold pressure rapidly increased from 1200 psig to 5730 psig. The first explosion was noted as having occurred at 21:49. At 21:56 the Emergency Disconnect Sequence (EDS) was noted to have been activated from the bridge. This was the final recorded well control attempt from the surface before the rig was abandoned at 22:28.

The Upper VBRs were found in the closed position as-received at the Michoud facility. There was no documented means of ROV intervention to close the Upper VBRs. ROV gamma ray scans on May 10, 2010, confirmed that the ST Lock on the port side Upper VBR was closed. Scans of the starboard side ST Lock on the Upper VBRs were inconclusive. Measurements of the ST Lock positions performed at the Michoud facility confirmed that both ST Locks on the Upper VBRs were closed. Evidence supports that the Upper VBRs were closed prior to the EDS activation at 21:56 on April 20, 2010.

A drill pipe tool joint was located between the Upper Annular and the Upper VBRs. With both the Upper Annular and the Upper VBRs closed on the drill pipe, forces from the flow of the well pushed the tool joint into the Upper Annular element. This created a fixed point arresting further upward movement of the drill pipe. The drill pipe was then fixed but able to pivot at the Upper Annular, and horizontally constrained but able to move vertically at the Upper VBRs. Forces from the flow of the well induced a buckling condition on the portion of drill pipe between the Upper Annular and Upper VBRs. The drill pipe deflected until it contacted the wellbore just above the BSRs. This condition would have most likely occurred from the moment the well began flowing and would have remained until either the end conditions changed (change in Upper Annular or Upper VBR state) or the deflected drill pipe was physically altered (sheared). The portion of the drill pipe located between the shearing blade surfaces of the BSRs was off center and held in this position by buckling forces.

As the BSRs were closed, the drill pipe was positioned such that the outside corner of the upper BSR blade contacted the drill pipe slightly off center of the drill pipe cross section. A portion of the pipe cross section was outside of the intended BSR shearing surfaces and would not have sheared as intended. As the BSRs closed, a portion of the drill pipe cross section became trapped between the ram block faces, preventing the blocks from fully closing and sealing. Since the deflection of the drill pipe occurred from the moment the well began flowing, trapping of the drill pipe would have occurred regardless of which means initiated the closure of the BSRs.

Of the means available to close the BSRs, evidence indicates that the activation of the BSRs occurred when the hydraulic plunger to the Autoshear valve was successfully cut on the morning of April 22, 2010. However, on the evidence available, closing of the BSRs through activation of the AMF/Deadman circuits cannot be ruled out.

In the partially closed position, flow would have continued through the drill pipe trapped between the ram block faces and subsequently through the gaps between the ram blocks. When the drill pipe was sheared on April 29, 2010, using the CSRs, the well flow pattern changed to a new exit point. At this point, the flow expanded through the open drill pipe at the CSRs and up the entire wellbore to the BSRs and through the gaps along the entire length of the block faces and around the side packers.

Cheers,

Earl

6363

Like I have been saying, those who think the flow was constant from day one are probably full of it!!

ACTIONS TO STOP FLOW MAY HAVE MADE THE SITUATION WORSE

http://mobile.nola.com/advnola/pm_29227/contentdetail.htm;jsessionid=B8F0455942817D4612D107D3A4E1C698?contentguid=LdX3dYPq

My thoughts:
Normal Wells brought on line often take weeks or months to stabilize production.
This one was probably no different, as it took some time to clean itself out and to erode larger channels in the areas that failed in the BOP.
Also, as days went by, production peaked and then slowly decreased as reservoir pressure began to decrease.

6364

Thanks for posting that DNV summary Earl. I’ll have to read it several times to try and fully grasp the sequence of events.

Currently working only off my iPhone so I am a bit lazy about tracking things down or making extensive comments on the forum.

6365

I understand all that’s been reported and a little more but the general public is going to want to know the answer to the same question I had about 2 hours after the DWH blew. In plain and simple language…

  1. Why didn’t the “blow out preventer” prevent the blow out?

The culture and attitudes that caused this disaster to digress to the point of needing the BOP will be debated forever and knowing the industry as I do I don’t expect much change from either the industry end or the “regulatory” end. But the public and everyone working on rigs deserves to know that the BOPs are the fail safe they are claim to be.

6366

http://gcaptain.com/bops-design-flaw-spill-freely?23210
By BEN CASSELMAN And RUSSELL GOLD

This is an excellent commentary. Questions have arisen and nothing is concluded! DNV, have published a ‘sitting on the fence’ report.
Nothing conclusive, plenty of conjecture! Beautiful drawings!
Are Cameron drawn into the conflict? Have they provided A BOP BSR which cannot perform its function?

I’m also very interested in the fact that all of the Rams on the BOP show erosion. This is only possible if the DP ‘collapses’ or all Rams were worn. Did the collapse occur after shut-in? Too many questions to ask and too many unanswered by DNV. They simply speak of upward forces offsetting the position of the DP causing BSR ineffective closure and seal. This is something for Cameron to address. Surely, Cameron never expect the pipe to be centralised!!

Nothing in the report offers a timescale of possible BOP events related to the blowout.

6367

BP PLC came within 1.4 inches or less of preventing the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, say engineers studying the safety device that failed in last year’s Gulf of Mexico disaster.

The device, known as a blowout preventer, was a massive set of valves that sat on the sea floor nearly a mile beneath the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which floated on the surface. It was equipped with powerful shears designed to cut through pipe and seal off the well in an emergency. Why the device failed has been one of the central mysteries of last year’s disaster.

In a report released Wednesday, engineers hired by U.S. investigators say they have solved it: The force of the blowout bent the drill pipe, knocking it off-center and jamming the shears. Rather than seal the well, the blades got stuck 1.4 inches or less apart, leaving plenty of space for 4.9 million barrels of oil to leak out.

The investigators concluded the blowout preventer failed as a result of a design flaw, not because of misuse by BP or any of the other companies involved, and not because of poor maintenance. The fail-safe device, the last line of defense against a disaster, wasn’t designed to handle a real-world blowout, according to investigators, who called for further study of the devices.

“They have to rethink the whole design,” said Elmer P. Danenberger III, who is not involved in the investigation, but oversaw U.S. offshore drilling rules until he retired in December 2009.

The investigators’ finding could be a problem for the oil industry. Drilling rigs around the world rely on blowout preventers, most of them with the same basic design as the one that failed on the Deepwater Horizon.

The report doesn’t address what caused the blowout itself. That has been the subject of several other major inquiries, which all have found that a series of decisions by BP and its contractors set the disaster in motion.

Even if the device had worked, it wouldn’t have saved the lives of the 11 rig workers killed in the accident. That’s because no one even tried to activate the shears until after massive explosions killed the men and crippled the rig. But the device could have mostly prevented the oil spill that began when the Deepwater Horizon sank two days after the initial explosion.

Drilling critics say the report is evidence of the industry’s endemic problems.

“This report calls into question whether oil-industry claims about the effectiveness of blowout preventers are just a bunch of hot air,” Rep. Edward Markey (D., Mass.) said Wednesday.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, the offshore drilling regulator, declined to comment on the report, but pointed to new, tougher safety rules adopted in the wake of the Gulf spill. Those rules require increased testing of blowout preventers, but don’t require that those tests be performed on bent or off-center pipe.

Erik Milito, head of exploration and production for the American Petroleum Institute, an industry group, said companies were still studying the report’s findings, but were confident existing blowout preventers were up to the task. He added that the industry has introduced new measures to make a blowout less likely and to contain a spill should one occur.

The new study was conducted by engineers from Norwegian risk-management company Det Norske Veritas, which was hired by federal investigators to examine the blowout preventer and figure out what went wrong.

Its engineers found that when workers aboard the Deepwater Horizon first detected a problem within the well on the night of April 20, they initially activated parts of the blowout preventer meant to grab onto the pipe and cut off the flow around it, but that don’t take the more extreme step of cutting the pipe entirely.

Those parts of the blowout preventer worked, but they couldn’t do anything to stop the explosive natural gas that had already flowed past the blowout preventer and were racing up to the surface. Once it reached the rig, the gas ignited, setting off a massive explosion that killed the 11 workers and knocked out the rig’s power, leaving survivors with no way to trigger the final fail-safe on the blowout preventer, the pipe-cutting shears known as blind-shear rams, while they were still aboard the rig.

Investigators aren’t sure when, but at some point, the blind-shear rams were finally activated. That could have been done either by the rig’s dead-man switch, which is meant to automatically trigger the shears when the rig loses its connection to the blowout preventer, or it could have triggered two days later when remote-controlled robots arrived on the scene. The shears activated successfully, but they didn’t seal the well. The investigators found that the shears didn’t work because they are designed to cut through pipe that is centered in the well. But the force of the blowout deformed the pipe, bending it and knocking it out of center, where the blades couldn’t fully cut it.

The findings could be good news for BP, which has argued the disaster was at least partially attributable to the failure of the blowout preventer, which was owned and maintained by rig owner Transocean Ltd. and built by Cameron International Corp. A BP spokeswoman said: “We support efforts by regulators and the industry to make BOPs more reliable and effective.”

The report could also be good news for Transocean, which said Wednesday the “findings confirm that the BOP was in proper operating condition and functioned as designed.” Earlier investigations have questioned the company’s maintenance of the blowout preventer. But the new study found that any maintenance flaws didn’t explain the device’s failure.

The report could turn attention back to Cameron, which has until recently escaped most scrutiny. The company said Wednesday the device “was designed and tested to industry standards and customer specifications.”

The oil industry has long known that blowout preventers were prone to failure, especially as drilling has moved into deeper water, requiring thicker, tougher pipe. In 2004, a study commissioned by federal regulators found that only three of 14 newly built rigs had blowout preventers that could squeeze off and cut the pipe at the water pressure likely to be experiencedat the equipment’s maximum water depth.

“This grim snapshot illustrates the lack of preparedness in the industry to shear and seal a well with the last line of defense against a blowout,” the study said. The Wall Street Journal first reported the study’s findings in a story last May.

The study singled out Cameron for relying on calculations to determine the needed strength of shear arms using “shear forces lower than required or desired in many cases.”

In testimony before the presidential commission investigating the spill last year, Bill Ambrose, a Transocean executive, said blowout preventers weren’t designed to cut off a flowing well.

“It is somewhat like snipping a fire hose with a pair of scissors,” Mr. Ambrose said. “The blind shear ram is not designed for that particular condition.”

Some experts said the report emphasized the need to avoid blowouts in the first place.

“The issue is not the BOP,” said Tadeusz Patzek, chairman of the petroleum engineer department at the University of Texas, “but making sure the BOP never has to be activated in such circumstances. You don’t want to rely on a single device between you and eternity.”

[B]By BEN CASSELMAN And RUSSELL GOLD – Copyright 2011 Dow Jones[/B]

[B]There’s so much in this report to comment on I don’t know where to start! Every single statement offers the opportunity for…challenge. How can the legal establishment prosecute the whole industry’s apparent failings? Society is desperate for one culprit, and yet, as each stone is turned new revelations suggest the industry is blighted with widespread engineering failure!
From my own point of view, I don’t think this is the case. But, I can only speak for the vessel I work on!
Do I believe in the BOP on my vessel? Absolutely, I test it to the maximum potential surface pressure on each well+10%!
I’m still perplexed as to why TO feel a flowing well can’t be shut in and sealed effectively? This bothers me because it suggests that all BOPs are not designed for this purpose. Hopefully, Cameron will offer a response at some point. Today, is good![/B]

6368

[QUOTE=alcor;48336]http://gcaptain.com/bops-design-flaw-spill-freely?23210
By BEN CASSELMAN And RUSSELL GOLD

This is an excellent commentary. Questions have arisen and nothing is concluded! DNV, have published a ‘sitting on the fence’ report.
Nothing conclusive, plenty of conjecture! Beautiful drawings!
Are Cameron drawn into the conflict? Have they provided A BOP BSR which cannot perform its function?

I’m also very interested in the fact that all of the Rams on the BOP show erosion. This is only possible if the DP ‘collapses’ or all Rams were worn. Did the collapse occur after shut-in? Too many questions to ask and too many unanswered by DNV. They simply speak of upward forces offsetting the position of the DP causing BSR ineffective closure and seal. This is something for Cameron to address. Surely, Cameron never expect the pipe to be centralised!!

Nothing in the report offers a timescale of possible BOP events related to the blowout.[/QUOTE]

Precisely the type of questions that need to be answered.
Having DNV check out the BOP was silly. It would be like having ABS checking out the thing. They both are dependent on the likes of the major parties involved for their livelihood. They might be able to find fault with Cameron and survive, not so BP or some of the major drillers like TOI.
All the parties including the ‘regulators’ are smart folks and they know the attention span of the press and public. Things are getting back to “normal” now. There will be changes though. Probably a few more forms to fill out for the workers and a couple of more slogans. They’ll probably even fire a few rig workers for not having on the right kind of gloves or wrong color sticker on their hat, BUT, I’ll bet you there are some of the same BOPs as was on the DWH operating with everyones approval.
S.O.S.

6369

It appears,that the all the “government studies”, are carefully avoiding “malicious intent” . A lot of " could have been, should have been, and maybe’s". However, in my humble opinion, if I had a ‘‘boss’’ who made my work enviroment where I was scared to call ‘‘time out’’, or if I suspected something was just “not right”, and being the “worm” that I am, I was “sure” my superiors " knew better", and I lost my brothers, like these guys did, I would hope someone would go “for the jugular”, because these ass holes, don t deserve to just get off with just paying off, with their blood money!!!
[B]The Road to Deepwater Horizon[/B]

Eighty four days after it began, with probably 180 million gallons spilled, the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico may be at an end. BP’s new cap should stop the flow. But the questions over the oil giant’s record endure. Company insiders, past and present, say the Deepwater Horizon disaster was all too foreseeable. They describe a culture of arrogance and risk-taking spanning decades. Profits, it seems, always come before safety and whistle-blowers are intimidated, pressured out, or fired. Though CEO Tony Hayward promised to make the company safer when he took over in 2007, the pressure to cut costs intensified as he struggled to please shareholders amidst an economic downturn. <cont’d>…http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/13/the-road-to-deepwater-horizon.html

6370

THREE TRANSOCEANIC EMPPLOYEES RESISTING OIL SPILL INQUIRY

eccerpt:
Three Transocean employees are resisting subpoenas to testify beforea federal panel investigating why critical safety equipment on the company’s drilling rig failed to stop last year’s oil spill.

The employees and their attorneys have not responded to government subpoenas issued more than two weeks ago and have signaled that they will not appear before the inquiry, led by the Coast Guard and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.

6371

DOJ Recruiting Prosecutors in BP Oil Spill Investigation

http://www.mainjustice.com/2011/04/01/doj-recruiting-prosecutors-in-bp-oil-spill-investigation/

In another sign that criminal charges are likely to arise from last year’s disastrous explosion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Department of Justice is seeking one or more experienced federal prosecutors to work on its Deepwater Horizon Task Force, based in New Orleans.

The DOJ said in a “vacancy announcement” that prosecutors experienced in technical and scientific matters are preferred, and that they should be prepared for an initial one-year commitment, which could be extended.

The latest development is not a surprise, since in announcing civil actions last December against BP Exploration and Production Inc. and other companies in connection with the disaster (see Main Justice’s report), Attorney General Eric Holder left open the possibility of criminal charges.

Eleven men were killed in the explosion last April on BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil well. For many weeks afterward, oil continued to gush into the gulf, creating one of the worst environmental disasters in recent years as it killed birds, fish and other wildlife and threatened the livelihoods of many people living along the Gulf Coast.

There has been recent speculation that some BP executives might even face manslaughter charges, although it is far more likely that the company rather than any individuals might face criminal counts, according to experts interviewed for an article on AOL News.

6372

Transocean gives safety bonuses despite deaths in Gulf of Mexico oil rig explosion

http://savethegulf.gulflive.com/savethegulf/db_101513/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=PI7DrtQU

The Associated Press
Published: Apr 2, 2011 5:05 PM

Transocean Ltd. gave its top executives bonuses for achieving the “best year in safety performance in our company’s history” – despite the explosion of its oil rig that killed 11 people and spilled 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

The company said in a regulatory filing that its most senior managers were given two thirds of their total possible safety bonus.

Transocean noted “the tragic loss of life” in the Gulf when the rig operated by BP PLC exploded last April. But it said the company still had an “exemplary” safety record because it met or exceeded certain internal safety targets concerning the frequency and severity of its accidents, according to the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday.

Safety accounts for a quarter of the executives’ total cash bonuses. The total bonus for CEO Steve Newman last year was $374,062.

According to calculations by The Associated Press, the total value the company assigned to Newman’s compensation package was $5.8 million.

That figure includes an $850,000 base salary – a 34 percent increase from the prior year; perquisites of $622,057, which includes housing and vacation allowances, among other things; and the $374,062 bonus. Also included in the figure are stock options valued at $1.9 million and deferred shares valued at $2 million when those awards were granted in March 2010.

Transocean’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion on April 20 in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 workers and set off the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

A commission appointed by President Barack Obama earlier this year said the explosion was caused by a series of time and money-saving decisions by Transocean, BP and oil services company Halliburton Inc. that created an unacceptable amount of risk.

In the regulatory filing, the company said its bonuses were appropriate as a way to recognize its executives’ efforts in “significantly improving the company’s safety record” and implementing a new internal planning system.

Those efforts have “enabled the company to maintain its financial flexibility during a challenging period, while, at the same time, positioning the company for sustained growth in the future.”

The Associated Press formula calculates an executive’s total compensation during the last fiscal year by adding salary, bonuses, perks, above-market interest the company pays on deferred compensation and the estimated value of stock and stock options awarded during the year. The AP formula does not count changes in the present value of pension benefits. That makes the AP total slightly different in most cases from the total reported by companies to the SEC.

The value that a company assigned to an executive’s stock and option awards for 2010 was the present value of what the company expected the awards to be worth to the executive over time. Companies use one of several formulas to calculate that value. However, the number is just an estimate, and what an executive ultimately receives will depend on the performance of the company’s stock in the years after the awards are granted. Most stock compensation programs require an executive to wait a specified amount of time to receive shares or exercise options.

Jordan Robertson of The Associated Press wrote this report.

6373

http://savethegulf.gulflive.com/savethegulf/db_101513/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=k30VKZ3a

Jonathan Tilove, The Times-Picayune
Published: Apr 2, 2011 12:06 PM

Photo 1 of 1
Attorneys for two Transocean employees who are refusing to appear before next week’s hearing in New Orleans of the Joint Investigation Team looking into the Deepwater Horizon blowout say they are outraged by pressure being applied by the federal government on Transocean to try to force their testimony.

Transocean counsel Steven Roberts, replying Thursday to a letter from Michael Bromwich, director of the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, said that both Transocean employees, James Kent and Jay Odenwald, are being represented by private counsel and “their participation is, therefore, beyond Transocean’s control.”

But in a letter Friday to Transocean President and CEO Steven Newman, Bromwich wrote that “the mere fact that Messrs Odenwald and Kent are represented by individual counsel does not mean you are impotent to influence their decisions whether to cooperate with the investigation and testify at next week’s hearing.”

“Indeed,” Bromwich said, “you have a range of incentives and actions available to you to influence that decision, including the threat of personnel actions up to and including termination for failure to cooperate. In my experience, senior corporate executives committed to a culture of compliance and cooperation make creative and aggressive use of those incentives and sanctions.”

Bromwich reminded Transocean’s boss, “As we continue to review the criteria for allowing companies to operate offshore, their record of commitment to compliance and cooperation will play an important role.”

Matt Hennessy, the Houston attorney for Kent, called that “outrageous.”

“The government is telling a corporation that it should consider firing someone for a legitimate exercise of his rights,” Hennessy said.

“To have BOEM threatening Transocean to threaten my client to get him to testify is sort of unbelievable,” said Michael Walsh, the Baton Rouge lawyer representing Odenwald.

The Joint Investigation Team of BOEMRE and the Coast Guard issued subpoenas for Kent and Odenwald. But, according to their attorneys – and contrary to Bromwich’s assertion in his communication with Transocean – those subpoenas were not, and could not, be served because both men live outside the New Orleans area in which they could legally be delivered.

The lawyers said that the testimony from their clients is no longer necessary or relevant.

Kent is an asset manager for Transocean, whose zone of responsibility included the Deepwater Horizon rig. Odenwald is a senior subsea engineer, who was in charge of the blowout preventer on the Deepwater Horizon.

In his letter to Bromwich, Roberts noted that the testing of the Deepwater Horizon’s BOP has confirmed that it was in “proper operating condition” and “functioned as intended,” but that “high pressure from the well created conditions that exceeded the scope of BOP’s design constraints.”

Nonetheless, he assured Bromwich that Transocean will be sending Mike Fry, a BOP expert, to the hearings in the New Orleans.

“He did his job,” Walsh said of Odenwald, noting that he could not recommend his client travel to New Orleans so the investigators “can beat up on him some more.”

“Based on the way the hearings have been run – more spectacle than fact-finding – on my advice he is not going to participate in that spectacle,” Hennessy said of Kent.

But in his Thursday letter to Transocean, Bromwich wrote “this is less a legal issue than one whether Transocean recognizes its moral and corporate responsibility to cooperate with an investigation into the causal factors of the most significant oil spill in Untied States history.”

Executives with Transocean Ltd. received two-thirds of their target safety bonus after the company had its “best year in safety performance” despite the explosion of its Deepwater Horizon rig that left 11 dead and oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

The information came from a security filing from the world’s largest offshore-rig company.

The newspaper said safety accounts for 25 percent of the equation that determines the yearly cash bonuses, along with financial factors including new rig contracts.

The payout contrasts with that for 2009, when the company withheld all executive bonuses after incurring four fatalities that year “to underscore the company’s commitment to safety.”

A spokesman for Transocean told the Journal that “The statements of fact in the proxy speak for themselves, but they do not and can not adequately convey the extent to which everyone at Transocean is keeping the families of the men who lost their lives at Macondo in their thoughts and prayers as we approach the first anniversary of the incident.” Nine of the 11 dead worked for Transocean.

•••••••

Jonathan Tilove can be reached atjtilove@timespicayune.com or202.383.7827.

6374

[B]ExpYou are in: Home » News Item

<H2>Exploration: Beyond Macondo[/B]

Friday, April 01, 2011
Written by OilEdge
“Everything is safe until it goes wrong”
A quote reputedly from the well-known mountaineer Joe Simpson

I have remained somewhat reluctant to delve into the findings on the Deepwater Horizon tragedy as there always seems to be still more evidence, and more reports, to emerge.

However, we should note that an important report appeared from DNV last week which was somewhat obscured by the ‘noise’ about the UK Budget’s impact on the North Sea oil & gas industry.

Stepping back a bit, no doubt the CEOs of various other Majors have sound reasons in their minds for suggesting that the disaster was a ‘BP problem’….as though blow outs are new……
On the contrary, in 2005, an analysis of incidents in the Gulf of Mexico by researchers from Texas A&M University showed that offshore blowouts had continued at ‘a fairly stable rate’ since 1960 despite the use of BOPs.

Nor – I think – can we really be comfortable with a position which says that regulation is that much tougher in the UKCS and NOCS than in the US OCS and that therefore things are OK.
Regulation is necessary but not sufficient.

My personal view is that there seems to be an [B]industry problem[/B] and thus I want to make the case that we need to find technology solutions, as well as improving internal processes, setting new standards and so on.

Throughout the last 9 or 10 months, we have heard quite a lot about cement jobs and BOPs and I would like to begin by stepping through what I have heard about each of these:

[I]Cement jobs:[/I]
[ul]
[li]Their chemistry is sophisticated, reasonably well understood => Expert quality control is required.[/li][li]Cement Bond Logs can test that cement is set => They require insightful interpretation.[/li][li]Negative Pressure Tests can confirm well integrity => They require expert interpretation.[/li][/ul]
[I]BOPs:[/I]

[ul]
[li]Their role is to cut drill pipe in an emergency.[/li][li]Their Automatic Mode is the first line of defence……[/li][li]…followed by the so-called “Dead Man’s Handle” hard-wired from the drill floor…… in addition[/li][li]Norway & Brasil insist on back-up from ‘acoustic triggers’ – whereas the MMS has suggested that these could have problems when there was oil or mud in the water.[/li][/ul]
The aforementioned DNV report just concluded that:
[ol]
[li]The Deep Water Horizon’s BOP activated but failed to shear the drill pipe.[/li][li]There is a possibility that the Negative Pressure Test placed the BOP in a condition where shearing was hampered.[/li][/ol]This suggests to me that we need to consider not only individual technologies but the interaction between technologies……in what we might call a [B]Complex System[/B].

And raises two questions in my mind….
[ul]
[li]Whose job is it to affirm beforehand that the whole system will work?[/li][li]Can any individual comprehend the whole system, and respond quickly enough, if things go wrong?[/li][/ul]
In relation to the second question, I want to talk about Training and Communications.

Firstly, Training:
I am struck by the analogue with flying a modern military fast jet (those of you who know me well will know I have a family interest in this subject!) and by the extraordinary amount of time that pilots spend training, especially in simulators – simulators that can replicate more or less every eventuality that a pilot may face in flight and in combat.
Isn’t there a case for such intensive simulator-based training in our industry?

Secondly, Communications & Information Flow.
We may need to introduce a step-change in communications and information flow between onshore ‘command centres’ and drilling rigs (and indeed any remote installation) as many things come down to people not knowing the right information at the right time.
This implies getting better data to begin with, having systems to clean up data and make it easy to understand, systems to make this information easier to work with, for example more precise alarm systems, so that all available expertise can be brought to bear on remote operations, especially in anticipating and dealing with problems
– NASA’s Houston Mission Control and Apollo 13 come to mind!

I think we as an industry need to respond along these lines……because the alternative is not attractive.

Yes, the UK government believes current regulations are adequate…
BUT globally, regulators may well move in the direction of requiring operators to post a bond to deal with the cost of any spill. Bearing in mind that BP’s Macondo-related costs have just passed $12bn, these bonds would need to be quite large, beyond the scope of oil and gas companies capitalised at less than say $10bn or even $15bn. This has serious implications for small-medium sized oil and gas companies.

I began with a quote and I will finish with one. Let’s hope we don’t get reminded of the insight of President Ronald Reagan about the scariest words in the English language:
“Hi, I’m from the government and I’m here to help you”! http://www.oilvoice.com/n/Exploration_Beyond_Macondo/d1aa29ae0.aspx

loration: Beyond Macondo

</H2>

6375

New Orleans Lady’s Post 6108 includes a recommendation that states:
“Cement Bond Logs can test that cement is set => They require insightful interpretation.”

The following comments are NOT directed to New Orleans Lady. I am simply commenting that “running an accurate CBL” is not as simple as these academics, attorneys, and legislators
are making it out to be. It’s just not that cut and dried on green cement. Schlumberger and Halliburton do offer other cement evaluation porducts such as their Pulse Echo Cement evaluation and I have posted links to articles addressing these tests at the bottom of this post. The first item on their agenda might be to find the correct terminology when addressing complex issues such as this.

Traditional Cement Bond Logs, i.e. 20KHZ, 3-5’spacing acoustic logging will not indicate compressive strength on green cement. I think we used to wait on cement three days
before running CBL logs and even then the log showed minimal cement bond. Running the same log 3 weeks later usually showed the bond was greatly improved as the curing process continued. In other words, the compressive strength of cement will improve with time as the cement cures and simply running the log would have bought valuable time to allow the cement to cure to a higher compressive strength.

Also, keep in mind that you can’t run the bond log or cement evaluation log in the shoe track so that is not tested and cannot be tested to my knowlege. You can however detect the Top Of Cement in the annulus and compare the CBL logged TOC elevation to the calculated TOC. A large difference there would indicate a problem. Top of Cement can also be detected on a temperature log and again can be compared To the calculated TOC. These downhole tools are run on wireline and can be run in and out of the hole fairly quickly compared to running pipe in the hole.

Another point of interest if the wireline tools had been run into the hole: I suspect that if the flapper valves did not convert, it is possible that TD (Total Depth) where the logger tagged bottom on his logging run might have been a few feet higher than anticipated when compared to the calculations and pipe tally. When the Gamma Ray on the GR/CBL log was correlated back to the open hole. A higher TD could have indicated that cement had flowed back in to the casing and that “things were not right” in the shoe area and also that the cement could have possible U tubed back into the casing decreasing the top of cement in the annulus. In other words, the combination of a higher than expected TD and a lower than expected Top of Cement would have indicated that some type of position swap had occured during the cementing procedure.

Consider the following excerpt from http://oilandgastraining.net/data/pe23/E1322.asp?Code=4094

“Circumferential imaging tools (e.g., Halliburton’s Circumferential Acoustic Scanning Tool (CAST-VTM) and Schlumberger’s Ultrasonic Imager (USITM)) employ single rotating head transducers to transmit and receive high-frequency ultrasonic pulses in the wellbore. These pulses are recorded and processed to obtain 360o profiles of casing and cement images in real time.”

Even roadway concrete (not cement) is generally not allowed to carry a any type of loading for seven days in most construction specifications. The same general type of guideline should apply to cement in well completions. WOC time (Waiting On Cement) should have firm hard fast specifications, and the the term [B][U]SHALL[/U][/B], (not should or may) used in the spec to indicate that it is not an option but a strict requirement and not a random option to the entire chain of command involved in cementing operations.
Jacking around with the hydrostatic pressure on this well by running the positive pressure test eleven hours after the cement job was completed seems to be dubious at best. Running some type of cement evaluation, (NOT necessarily a CBL) would have at least extended the setting time on the cement by 18-24 hours which in itself could have made a difference in the outcome.

Cement bond evaluation is an art unto itself and has been the subject of much controversey all the way back to the seventies. Here is a link to a Google search containing many interesting articles on the matter.

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&sugexp=llsfp&xhr=t&q=schlumberger+cement+evaluation+tool&cp=30&pf=p&sclient=psy&safe=off&aq=0v&aqi=&aql=&oq=schlumberger+cement+evaluation+&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=9eec5046aee15eaa

6376

An interesting article on Transocean’s Sedco 711 Rig relating to a similar incident 4 months prior to the Horizon blowout where the BOP successfully shut in the well…using the Annular, and the Middle Pipe Ram, suggesting that a well’s flow [U]can be isolated [/U]contrary to TO’s opinion! The pipe was not sheared.
I don’t think the BOP issue is resolved, and DNV have not proposed concrete conclusions.

I should add that the displacement plan and procedure ignored any form of volume control, exactly the same as the Macondo! Therefore, no surprise that Mud was spilling onto the drill floor before any action took place. No Volume Control: Anything can happen!
Shell was the Operator and You may recall how ‘they wouldn’t have completed a well like the Macondo in this manner’. Actually, they performed the two stage completion…and still ended up with a very serious well control problem. Hypocritical? Absolutely!

Is any of this new information? Perhaps, a certain amount of clarity…for the public! For those involved in the industry, [U]we[/U] all know how to control a well…and who is responsible when a well vents its spleen, who is at fault. It can only vent if the volumes are not managed. So simple, you wouldn’t believe it. And yet, there’s a circus of outside parties trying to decipher why the Macondo failed. The ‘circus’ formed an opinion in the early days, including Gov’t and Obama, and it may be hard to get them all to realise that all wells drilled can result in a Macondo-like catastrophe if volumes are ignored. It’s a very simple equation!
Volume control is well control!
Somebody, tell me I’m wrong! There isn’t a well control training organisation in existence today who have advanced alternative ideas on how to manage well control post Macondo. Blowouts, occur when volume control is lost or ignored. The buck stops with the company who fail to observe volumes!
It’s the Bible in our industry!

6377

Imagine the scenario confronting the crews on the DF, Shakers and Mud Pump Room when flow became very ‘obvious’. Their alarm must have been unbelievable. The ‘shock’ of realising the well was blowing would have been completely and utterly unbelievable. But, that would last no more than 1-2 seconds. Drillers respond immediately.
Immediate reaction would be to stop pumps and close the Annular and Variable Pipe Rams followed by the Diverter, as we are told by DNV, possibly taking another 45-60 seconds. That 45-60 seconds will have allowed the rapidly expanding gas to push the SW in the riser to the top of the derrick (and the OBM that was supposed to be from 8360 ft to bottom of the well). The BOP would be closed, but the gas would still be expanding forcing all the mud from the Riser. Soon enough, the ferocious impact of the expanding gas would have overwhelmed the crew on the DF, Shakers and Mud Pump Room. Gas would have pervaded the whole vessel due to line-up to the Poor Boy degasser instead of overside, even with the BOP shut in successfully, and the pop-offs on the Mud pumps will have triggered allowing gas to flow straight up the drill pipe into the Mud pump room.
The impact would have been colossal, a major earthquake on the vessel.

The consequence of not watching volumes allowed 1000 bbls of expanding hydrocarbon gas and oil to enter the wellbore before any action took place.
The time to take action is after 10-20 Bbls enter the well. But no control of the well was taking place. The first sign of something being wrong was when sufficient energy from the expanding gas allowed flow to rise above the drill floor, a completely astonishing situation for the crew on the vessel to witness. They would be hit with a massive amount of surface gas even if the BOP managed to close and hold back the flow, and the impact of that gas would have shattered the windows in the doghouse.

In a single moment, apparent peace became absolute mayhem!

6378

I hate to agree with an asshole. Well control does involve volume control, but Wellcontrol does not begin and end with volumes control. It starts at drawing table and safe implementation of a non-shonky well design including implementation. Well planners have to be constantly mindful of the maximum required integrity and not let cost control overide this fact. And Alcor will have to widen his boring narrow view of well control and take a look at the bigger picture if he sincerely wants to find the root cause of this problem and not pretend, or confuse fantasy with reality like as if he was on that rig on that fateful night with those hard working brave men.Either that or, or go apply his skills in Japan where it is badly needed right now. There’s several levels of prostitution and yours is the lowest I have ever encountered considering your tenacity at trying to warp what really happened on that rig. Are you totally impervious to shame you wanker ? You might appear human, physically, but beats me what type of spirit is housed in that body and mind of yours. I hope those men who died, whom you try so hard to pin the entire balme of this disaster on, pay you a visit just as you are start falling asleep or better still just beofre you wake up to a new dawn. Have a nice day.

6379

http://savethegulf.gulflive.com/savethegulf/db_101513/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=SIcmc4BM

BOP investigator admits to fault in model used in forensic examination

David Hammer, The Times-Picayune

Posted:04/04/2011 12:01 PM
The maker of the blowout preventer that failed to shut in BP’s blown-out Gulf oil well last year took aim at aforensic examination of its equipment, raising significant concerns about the models used by the inspectors.

The inspectors at Det Norske Veritas (DNV) used computer models to determine that the massive blowout preventer failed to stop the blowout because it couldn’t cut drill pipe that had shifted to the side.

The implication was that the BOP never had a chance and wasn’t designed to handle the intense pressures of a deepwater blowout.

But a lawyer for Cameron International, the BOP’s manufacturer, blasted the project manager for the Norwegian company hired to perform the autopsy during testimony in the Deepwater Horizon Joint Investigation hearings that reconvened in Metairie Monday.

The lawyer, David Jones, showed that a model used by examiners at DNV depicted an impossibility: In running the computer models of how a key set of slicers and seals would have malfunctioned, it placed the drill pipe where oil was flowing in a place where it couldn’t have been.

The model showed the drill pipe inside a wall of the BOP, and Neil Thompson, the project manager for DNV, was forced to admit it was an error in the model placement.

That, combined with Thompson’s acknowledgement that he’d “never laid eyes on a blowout preventer” before he began this examination, called into doubt some of the most critical findings of the report.

Thompson also admitted that his team never conducted tests to determine flow pressures or figure out what forces caused the pipe to deflect inside the BOP and muck up the works.

Some BOP experts have questioned why a set of pipe that was stuck in the BOP for two days after the accident would have shot up above the machinery after the rig sank. Thompson stumbled when Jones asked him repeatedly about how Det Norske Veritas determined a valve called the “upper annular” was closed. Testimony from surviving rig workers stated a different valve was the one closed.

Joining Jones in his skepticism of the forensic report was BP lawyer Richard Godfrey. He wanted to know whether there was any physical evidence that the 5.5-inch, heavy-duty drill pipe bowed in the middle, knocking it off-center. That’s a key hypothesis of the inspectors’ report.

Thompson said there was no physical evidence of the elastic bowing of the pipe. He said it was recovered as a straight, 28-foot piece because it would have straightened out after it was cut, about two days after the accident. Godfrey suggested that nobody in the industry had ever seen such “elastic buckling” of a drill pipe before. But Thompson said it’s a commonly understood concept of physics.

6380

When I initially read the report I thought some of the assumptions were horse manure. They talk about drill pipe like it is a straw or spaghetti.

Read parts to a friend who is a retired tubular goods salesman and he laughed his butt off at the implications.

6381

Infomania, that is incredible information!! Does that mean we need to Start Over?? Holy Cow!! What a farce!!