Deepwater Horizon - Transocean Oil Rig Fire

Infomania · July 12, 2011, 2:33pm

If you work at sea or inland waters in U.S., on a drillship, barge or on a platform…read this entire article;
this is a long read but gives insight as to how you can have a very similar accident with similar injuries yet you or your survivors be compensated differently.

Read it all the way through. Workers need to work with their legislators to level the playing field. This is truly an injustice.

Louisiana Law Review

Death at Sea: A Sad Tale of Disaster, Injustice, and Unnecessary Risk
Thomas C. Galligan, Jr.*, 71 La. L. Rev. 787 (2011)

http://lawreview.law.lsu.edu/issues/articles/death-at-sea-a-sad-tale-of-disaster-injustice-and-unnecessary-risk/

(short excerpt follows, read the entire article and repost on other threads)

The staggering consequences of the Deepwater Horizon spill force America and the world to ask whether applicable United States laws are fair, consistent, and up to date. Do they provide adequate compensation to the victims of maritime and environmental disasters? And do those laws provide economic actors with proper incentives to ensure efficient investments in accident avoidance activities? Does the law appropriately hold tortfeasors accountable? Sadly, an analysis of the relevant laws reveals a climate of limited liability and

The law undercompensates, in part, because the Jones Act and DOHSA, as interpreted, do not provide damages to the survivors of Jones Act seamen and most others killed in high seas maritime disasters for the loss of care, comfort, and companionship suffered as a result of their loved ones’ deaths. Thus at the core of America’s undercompensatory maritime liability regime are two outdated statutes passed in 1920 that provide what is today miserly recovery for wrongful death. The limited recovery provided by the Jones Act and DOHSA are out of step with the majority American rule. And due to an exception in DOHSA and the difference between the legal treatment of a rig and a fixed platform, the entire system is internally inconsistent to such an extent that it is nonsensical, further adding to a regime of inconsistency, which will be explained further below.

Aggravating the situation and furthering the problem of undercompensation, as noted below, some courts have inappropriately relied on those recovery-denying wrongful death rules to further limit recovery of nonpecuniary damages in other maritime cases to which the Jones Act and DOHSA do not, by their terms, expressly apply. These failures to fully compensate victims raise basic issues of fairness and corrective justice. Is it right, consistent with modern law and values, and just to deny recovery for very real damages such as the loss of care, comfort, and companionship one suffers when a loved one is killed?
In addition, and critically, the failure to compensate raises important issues concerning tort law, deterrence, and accountability. If the law undercompensates the victims of tortious behavior, then economic actors, when deciding what to do and how to do it, face less than the total costs of their activities. This economic reality will, in turn and inevitably, lead to underdeterrence and increased risk. If the law does not hold people accountable, the risk of injury, death, and damage increases. The economist will persuasively point out that this combination of undercompensation and underdeterrence will cause increased risk and suboptimal levels (more than desired) of personal injury in any industry in which they prevail, including the maritime oil and gas industry.
In the maritime setting, the climate of limitation is exacerbated by the existence of the 1851 Ship Owner’s Limitation of Liability Act. That law allows a ship owner to limit its liability to the post-disaster value of a vessel, providing the relevant events occurred without the privity or knowledge of the ship owner. Predictably and rationally, the relevant maritime actor who knows it will be able to limit its liability will not take optimal precautions because it does not face all of the costs of its activities.

New_Orleans_Lady · July 12, 2011, 9:14pm

Huh? You talkin to me? Excuse me!!!

Infomania · July 13, 2011, 7:16am

…YyyyyeeesssSssSSS＼(^o^)／最後はなたあ、

Infomania · July 14, 2011, 12:53pm

Another BOP article that expounds ever so slightly on some of the latest findings referenced to the Deepwater Horizon BOP.

I’m wondering, are BOP theoretical function calculations sufficiently compensating for all mitigating factors.
Is the industry targeting minimum operating pressures or are they calculating optimal or most effective pressures for the worst case situation.

I think I am questioning BOP operating standards as a whole, meaning subsea and surface BOP’s operating offshore and on land; industrywide and worldwide.

Not seeking to blame anyone here, just asking, can we just get input from the wisest and the brightest with the most experience in the field to followup on this. (note that my qualifications would likely EXCLUDE “government experts”)

article follows…

Questions raised about Deepwater Horizon equipment
07/11/2011 7:48 PM

http://mobile.mysa.com/mysa/db_41313/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=qU7nw3W4&storycount=14&detailindex=5&pn=&ps=

The hydraulic system that powered the blowout preventer at BP’s failed Macondo well may never have had the capacity to stop last year’s Gulf of Mexico spill or any other such emergency, investigators say.

But that possible deficiency — and other findings about the equipment used as a safeguard on thousands of wells — may never get a full airing.

A government-run examination of the device ended in March, and a second round of testing was open only to the Justice Department, the oil spill victims and the three companies connected to the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

“It’s only fair to the industry that they know what happened,” said Gordon Aaker, president of Kingwood-based Engineering Services.

He said too many questions about the Macondo blowout preventer remain for the companies that use similar devices to be confident of avoiding a repeat of the April 20, 2010, disaster.

Engineering Services took part in a four-month government-led examination of the blowout preventer, or BOP, on behalf of the Chemical Safety Board, an independent agency that also is probing the disaster.

That probe was meant to aid a federal investigation into the root cause of the explosion that killed 11 workers and the resulting oil spill that dumped 4.9 million barrels of crude into the Gulf last year.

To lead the testing, the government hired forensic analysis firm Det Norske Veritas, which concluded in March that cutting rams on the blowout preventer were unable to slash through and seal a pipe that had buckled and been pushed askew by flowing oil and gas.

BP sought additional tests. A federal judge barred the Chemical Safety Board and its investigators from that second phase of testing, which ended late last month. It is unclear whether findings from the second phase of testing will be included in a report expected late this month from a federal investigation team or will be made public in any other forum.

Det Norske Veritas’ report from the initial four-month examination of the device left unanswered questions, including precisely why a key component called the upper annular failed to seal around drill pipe at the Macondo wellhead on the ocean floor.

Had that annular sealed, it might have kept gas from traveling up a mile of pipe to the Deepwater Horizon, where it ignited.

Investigators at Engineering Services also want to know more about the hydraulic system that powered the blowout preventer’s automatic shut-in systems. They have questioned whether the system ever had enough pressure stored in containers called accumulator bottles to drive shear rams through the 65/8-inch-diameter drill pipe that was used at the site.

While the stored pressure met existing industry standards and federal regulations, it was substantially lower than indicated on Cameron drawings for the rig. Engineering Services investigators said a higher pre-charge pressure would have been relatively easy to set and would have provided an energy reserve.

Without enough pressure, any automatic shut-in activation of the BOP risked a partial, incomplete shearing of the pipe and a gusher such as the one in April 2010.

Bill Ambrose of Transocean’s North American division insisted that the hydraulic pressure stored in the accumulator system was sufficient to power the shearing rams.

alcor · July 14, 2011, 4:34pm

Analysis from Berkley:

But, there is a great deal of information in the DNV report (long, but worth the effort). It appears pre-charge was fine. I haven’t got to the bit where they reveal if volume was sufficient, in their qualified opinion! Will post later.

http://www.deepwaterinvestigation.com/external/content/document/3043/1047291/1/DNV%20Report%20EP030842%20for%20BOEMRE%20Volume%20I.pdf

Infomania · July 15, 2011, 1:26pm

BP implements voluntary safety standards for Gulf drilling updated
Houston Chronicle - 8:53 AM

http://mobile.chron.com/chron/db_40687/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=PMI387MU&storycount=19&detailindex=1&pn=&ps=

(excerpt below…link above is to complete article)
BP today vowed it would take new steps to safeguard all of its deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico as part of a bid to reassure federal regulators the company can prevent a repeat of the lethal blowout at its Macondo well last year.

The London-based oil giant said it was voluntarily implementing the safety changes, which go beyond drilling requirements the federal government imposed in the wake of last year’s Deepwater Horizon disaster. BP also has to meet the new standards for any oil and gas operations in U.S. waters.

In a release announcing the move, BP said the voluntary…

Earl_Boebert · July 15, 2011, 3:13pm

I’m in the process of correlating the various reports (dunno what I’m going to do with the result, but it keeps me off the streets :-)) Anyhow, I have three questions:

How common is it to encounter a kick during the temporary abandonment phase, vs. during drilling?
I’ve searched extensively for the following data, and will now settle for wild guesses: in all the drill rigs in all the oceans of the world, how many times a year do you think some BOP somewhere activates (commanded or automatically) its Blind Shear Rams? Fingers of one hand? Tens? Happens every day?
If you do active the BSRs, what is the process for returning the well to its previous state?

Thanks in advance.

Cheers,

Earl

Infomania · July 15, 2011, 9:07pm

Earl,
I’m sure you know this already…
The last Baker Hughs rig count as of July 11th.
United States : 1905
Canada : 394
International : 1158

The odds of you getting the information you are seeking are slim.

I doubt that there exists a worldwide agency or clearing house that has access to or collects this data from the rigs noted above.

Additionally, my suspicion is there is little sharing between the oil companies, drilling contractors or subcontractors, especially in reference to near misses or other significant events, at least in the past forty years. The reporting situation may be different now, but, a meaningful data base for the past several decades is probably non-existent.

For example, the MMS or BOEMRE data base from for the Gulf of Mexico from September 1972 to present lists 296 incidents for all types of drilling, production and construction operations. I would think 100 reportable incidents or more PER YEAR would be more realistic.
I worked in the Gulf for several years and there were near miss and true incident stories being shared daily on crew boats, heliports, boat landings, chopper rides and on platforms.

I worked for a completions, production logging, and free point back off subcontractor both as a field engineer and a troubleshooter. Sometimes I might be on three different structures for three different companies with three different drilling subcontractors within a week; from Texas to Alabama; on land; inland waters and offshore so I was exposed to a large cross section of operations in the oil patch.

Manually counting fatalities in the MMS data base = about 80 fatalities accounted for not including 17 fatals in a helicopter crash on a platform.

http://www.gomr.boemre.gov/homepg/offshore/safety/safealt/safemain.html

Searching the NTSB aviation accident database for all helicopters operating in/around the Gulf of Mexico, Part 135: Taxi and Commuter for roughly the same time frame yields 104 records meeting your search criteria. Rough count, These air accidents account for 88 fatalities. expanding the search a bit to include accidents from bases in Louisiana the fatality count increases to 112 and the number of incidents increase to 152. This would not account for incidents on land for flights out of Texas, Mississippi or Alabama airfields.

http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/index.aspx

My point is there COULD be a good MMS incident data base as shown in the NTSB example, but I’m afraid there isn’t.
It’s hard to believe more worker fatalities occurred enroute to and from the rigs and platforms than occurred during their 7 or 14 day hitches at the work sites.

alcor · July 16, 2011, 6:08pm

BP has vowed to include the following standards in order to ensure no further Deepwater Incidents:

[LEFT]1.BPXP will use, and will require its contractors involved in drilling operations to use, subsea blowout preventers (BOPs) equipped with no fewer than two blind shear rams and a casing shear ram on all drilling rigs under contract to BPXP for deepwater service operating in dynamic position mode. With respect to moored drilling rigs under contract to BPXP for deepwater drilling service using subsea BOPs, the subsea BOP will be equipped with two shear rams, which will include at least one blind shear ram and either an additional blind shear ram or a casing shear ram.

2.Each time a subsea BOP from a moored or dynamically-positioned drilling rig is brought to the surface and testing and maintenance on the BOP are conducted, BPXP will require that a third party verify that the testing and maintenance of the BOP were performed in accordance with manufacturer recommendations and industry recommended practice (API RP 53).

3.BPXP will require that laboratory testing of cement slurries for primary cementing of casing and exposed hydrocarbon-bearing zones relating to drilling operations of deepwater wells be conducted or witnessed by a BPXP engineer competent to evaluate such laboratory testing, or a competent third party independent of the cement provider. BPXP will provide laboratory results to the applicable BOEMRE field office within a reasonable period of time.

4.BPXP’s Oil Spill Response Plan (OSRP) will include information about enhanced measures for responding to a spill in open water, near-shore response and shoreline spill response based on lessons learned from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
[LEFT]BP has also implemented several actions that demonstrate commitment to excellence within its operations.

These include:

•Establishing a real-time drilling operations center in Houston.

•Assessing and increasing well control competencies.

•Collaboration with groups like Clean Gulf Associates and Marine Spill Response Corporation to augment and enhance industry response technology and capabilities.

•Support of the Marine Well Containment Company with containment knowledge, equipment and staff.

•Sharing the company’s experience in simultaneous operations, which incorporated the unprecedented use of remotely operated vehicles and close quarters management of marine response vessels and activities.

•Collaboration with BOEMRE, the Ocean Energy Safety Advisory Committee, the Center for Offshore Safety and others in a joint technology program focusing on BOP systems.

BP is focused on implementing these new voluntary standards in the Gulf of Mexico and expects to share information on these standards with regulators and operators in other countries as part of its ongoing sharing of lessons learned.

[/LEFT]

alcor · July 16, 2011, 8:41pm

[QUOTE=Earl Boebert;52652]I’m in the process of correlating the various reports (dunno what I’m going to do with the result, but it keeps me off the streets :-)) Anyhow, I have three questions:

How common is it to encounter a kick during the temporary abandonment phase, vs. during drilling?
[B]90% of kicks occur while drilling or tripping. Temporary abandonment is quite unusual but not unheard of. The rig which drills the well normally completes it. However, it’s not unusual for a rig to drill part of a well and then the next rig inherit the completion phase.
[/B]
I’ve searched extensively for the following data, and will now settle for wild guesses: in all the drill rigs in all the oceans of the world, how many times a year do you think some BOP somewhere activates (commanded or automatically) its Blind Shear Rams? Fingers of one hand? Tens? Happens every day?
[B]It varies from well to well. For example, some wells only see the Shear Rams closed when testing the BOP every two weeks. I’ve seen the BSR being closed 45 times (we record the cycles) on the wells we just drilled and the BOP was down for 4 months. Then, when it was brought to surface we tested the shearing capability and we managed to cut with 1500 psi closing pressure. So, despite considerable use, the Ram cut and tested as per design.

[/B]3. If you do active the BSRs, what is the process for returning the well to its previous state?
[B]Because the BSR has been activated, we are blind as to volumes and pressure below. So, before opening the BSR we have to use the high pressure Choke or Kill Line to check for any build-up of pressure. In the past, we have tended to minimise the use of the BSR, so that, when required, it fulfills its purpose. Testing is normally every two weeks but API and other guidelines may take precedence.
[/B]
Thanks in advance.

Cheers,

Earl[/QUOTE]

Hope this answers some of your questions 'though I doubt the information is industry-wide practice. There are standards which each BOP manufacturer establishes, and each is quite different.

Infomania · July 17, 2011, 11:51am

Halliburton Bullish Enough to Grow Horns

You might want to make Halliburton (NYSE: HAL) your “pal-iburton” ahead of its second-quarter earnings report, expected out before the market opens Monday, July 18th.

Though shares are trading at all-time high levels, analysts argue the stock may still hold value as recent M&A and crude prices suggest further upside.

The Houston, Texas-based oil and gas service provider should report earnings of 72 cents per share on revenue of $5.66 billion. Such earnings would be an 18 percent sequential gain from 61 cents per share last quarter, and a 36 percent rise from the same period last year.

Shares were mostly flat through the quarter, gaining 2.5 percent; the stock is 4 percent higher since.

Data from Streetinsider’s Rating Insider has eight analysts with a Buy rating, two at Neutral, and none suggesting to Sell. The average analyst price target is $65.70, with a low of $58 and high of $81. Halliburton shares have traded in a range of $27.31 to $54.55.

Infomania · July 17, 2011, 12:30pm

Republican blasts feds’ plan to go after offshore contractors, service firms

Published on July 15th, 2011
Written by: Jennifer Dlouhy

Louisiana Rep. Jeff Landry tangled with a top Obama administration official today over the regulator’s plan to expand the government’s oversight of coastal drilling to include oil field service firms, rig suppliers and other offshore contractors.

At issue is a plan by the head of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement to punish contractors that behave badly. The approach, first outlined by bureau director Michael Bromwich earlier this year, represents a big shift in the government’s treatment of contractors who work with oil companies offshore.

Historically, the federal offshore energy agency — previously known as the Minerals Management Service — has focused on leaseholders and operators. Other federal agencies, such as the Coast Guard, separately regulate entities such as drilling rigs and their owners. The traditional system has the virtue of being clear-cut and straightforward, Bromwich said at a House Natural Resources Committee hearing today.

But the government also can’t turn its back on egregious behavior just because it’s by a rig owner, cement contractor or any other service firm, Bromwich said. “I just don’t think that is a responsible way to behave as a regulator.”

Landry, R-La., didn’t like the idea.

“I’m concerned about you wanting to extend your reach into these service contractors,” he told Bromwich.

Landry noted that drilling vessels already are regulated by the Coast Guard. And he insisted that contractors that behave badly will face repercussions from their customers and the public.

“Doesn’t it make sense . . . from a financial standpoint that you’d be able to regulate just the operator, so you could point the finger directly at the responsible party?” Landry asked. “And if the operator fails to oversee his contractors or service companies, then that’s the operator’s fault.”

Landry said that going after contractors would upset the traditional chain of command in the oil and gas industry, which puts operators at the very top.

“I get concerned when the federal government just wants to reach in” on more of our industry “when clearly the chain of the ecommand, especially in the oil and gas industry, is that the operator is the guy in charge,” Landry added.

But Bromwich outlined a scenario in which “a contractor or service company concealed all the bad things it was doing from the operator, and (that oil company) really had no way to know.”

“In that case,” he said, “it makes no sense to me that a regulator is going to decline to take action against the contractor.”

The plan has met resistance from other lawmakers on Capitol Hill. A House bill to fund the Interior Department during the 2012 fiscal year would bar the ocean energy bureau from spending any money to go after contractors unless it explained its authority to Congress. That stops short of an outright ban — but it does indicate some lawmakers’ skepticism.

Bromwich sought to quell some of that fear today.

“I know there’s a lot of concern . . . suggesting that this is going to be a revolution, that this is going to be the new dominant strain in our regulation,” Bromwich said. “It couldn’t be further from the truth.”

“We intend to go, in most cases, directly against the operator,” he added. But Bromwich said contractors could be the target of enforcement actions “in a select number of cases when the behavior by the contractor or the service company strikes us as extremely egregious and were going just against the operator strikes us as silly and misguided.”

New_Orleans_Lady · July 21, 2011, 7:51pm

[B]BP rig worker excused from testimony[/B]

                              One of the two BP well site leaders on the Deepwater Horizon at the  time of the deadly April 20, 2010 blowout has been excused from  testifying in the massive civil lawsuits surrounding the accident. Donald Vidrine, one of the two BP workers on the rig overseeing the  drilling operations, was excused from testifying “for medical reasons”  according to a filing made by Magistrate Judge Sally Shushan on  Thursday.

Vidrine’s medical records were placed in the court record under seal for the parties to review, according to the filing.
Robert Kaluza, the other BP well site leader on the rig, took the 5th in the depositions earlier this month.
Vidrine is best known for allegedly having an argument with Transocean manager Jimmy Wayne Harrell over procedures the morning of the accident. Harrell later downplayed the incident.
More than a dozen individuals have been interviewed by attorneys for the many parties involved in the suit, including former BP Chairman Tony Hayward. Others have taken the 5th, including Harrell and Halliburton cement engineer Jesse Gagliano.
According to attorneys familiar with the proceedings, individual who wish to take the 5th are forced to sit through what can be hours of questioning from the plaintiff’s lawyers in the case and repeat that they are invoking their 5th Amendment rights.
Vidrine was excused from testifyingbefore the joint U.S. Coast Guard/Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement hearings held previously, while Kaluza took the 5th in those proceedings through his attorneys. http://fuelfix.com/blog/2011/07/21/bp-rig-worker-excused-from-testimony/

New_Orleans_Lady · July 22, 2011, 8:12pm

[B]Friday, Jul. 22, 2011[/B]

[B]Senate panel opens door for BP rig workers’ families to sue[/B]

Maria Recio - McClatchy Newspapers

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             WASHINGTON — The Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday approved a bill to  help the families of the 11 victims of last year's Deepwater Horizon blowout by  changing outdated federal maritime laws, one going back to the 1850s, to make it  possible to recover damages from BP, rig operator Transocean and rig  subcontractors.
The Deepwater Horizon Survivors' Fairness Act would amend the Jones Act and  the Death on the High Seas Act to allow the victims' families to claim  non-compensatory damages, such as pain and suffering and loss of companionship.  Both laws prohibit such claims. The bill also would change the Shipowners'  Liability Act of 1851, which limits a vessel owner's liability to the value of  the vessel and its freight.      



      The Death on the High Seas Act, which dates to the 1920s, effectively  prevents the victims' families from suing BP, Transocean and the other companies  involved by limiting compensation to funeral expenses and lost wages.
The bill also allows the injured workers and families of victims to bring  suit without a final judgment in the Transocean limitation of liability action,  which the company filed in May 2010 and would limit its liability to just under  $27 million.
The bill only affects the specific victims of the Deepwater Horizon  explosion.

Read more: http://www.macon.com/2011/06/08/1640285/senate-panel-opens-door-for-bp.html#ixzz1StWDx1Md

Infomania · July 22, 2011, 8:19pm

Alcor frequently advised us that it was the [B]REDNECK, COWBOY[/B] culture in the Gulf of Mexico that was the cause of the Deepwater Horizon incident.
Apparently the North Sea has it’s share of [B]“REDNECKS[/B]” also.

Also, shame on you Shell Oil Company. Your sorry record in the North Sea should be made part of the record in your testimony before the U.S. Congressional Committee shortly after the BP incident.

Oil and gas spills in North Sea every week, papers reveal

http://m.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jul/05/oil-gas-spills-north-sea?cat=environment&type=article

Documents list companies that caused more than 100 potentially lethal; and largely unpublicised; leaks in 2009 and 2010

Rob Evans, Richard Cookson and Terry Macalister
The Guardian, Tue 5 Jul 2011 22.34 BST
Serious spills of oil and gas from North Sea platforms are occurring at the rate of one a week, undermining oil companies’ claims to be doing everything possible to improve the safety of rigs.

Shell has emerged as one of the top offenders despite promising to clean up its act five years ago after a large accident in which two oil workers died.
Documents obtained by the Guardian record leaks voluntarily declared by the oil companies to the safety regulator, the Health and Safety Executive(HSE), in a database set up after the Piper Alpha disaster of 6 July 1988 which killed 167 workers. They reveal for the first time the names of companies that have caused more than 100 potentially lethal and largely unpublicised oil and gas spills in the North Sea in 2009 and 2010.

They also deal a significant blow to the government’s credibility in supporting the oil industry’s fervent desire to drill in the Arctic. Charles Hendry, the energy minister, has said operations to drill in deep Arctic waters by companies such as Cairn Energy off Greenland are “entirely legitimate” as long as they adhere to Britain’s “robust” safety regulation.
Shell has been at the forefront of plans to drill in the Arctic waters of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas.

The documents, released under freedom of information legislation, record leaks classed by the regulator as “major” or “significant”, which, if ignited, could cause many deaths.
The two rigs with the most frequent oil spills are owned by Shell and the French conglomerateTotal. Shell executives regularly claim in public that safety is their most important commitment. Last November, Peter Voser, the Shell chief executive, said: "Safety is, has been, and forever will be, our number one priority. It is our core value."
The Shell-run platform responsible for the most spills, Brent Charlie, first began pumping oil in 1976 from its location 115 miles (180km) north-east of Scotland.
The documents record seven leaks on it over the two-year period, with the worst happening on 26 April last year when four tonnes of leaked gas from one of its columns led to a shutdown of production.

On another occasion, on 30 September 2009, safety inspectors ordered Shell to stop producing oil from Brent Charlie after gas leaked from its ventilation system. Last Friday, the HSE formally threatened to close down some operations on Brent Charlie within two weeks over undisclosed safety issues. Since January this year, Shell has stopped exporting oil from the rig and three others in the Brent oilfield as the company struggles to put right safety problems.

Critics say the oldest rigs, built in the 70s when oil was found in the North Sea, are the most dangerous and fear safety is neglected as the platforms come to the end of their productive commercial life. Shell came under intense criticism over its safety record in 2006 when a judge ruled that it could have prevented the deaths of two men if it had properly repaired a hole in a corroding pipeline on a platform in the Brent field. In the same year, one of Shell’s own safety consultants, Bill Campbell, alleged that safety procedures in the North Sea had been ignored for years.

Shell’s then chief executive, Jereon van der Veer,admitted in a private email at the time that the company had a second-rate safety record and pledged to spend substantial sums of money to improve it.

A Shell spokesman said: “No spill is acceptable and we have made progress. We work closely with regulators and invested over a billion dollars in recent years to upgrade facilities across the North Sea to continue this improvement of our performance.”

Other major oil companies which are high in the spills league include the Danish conglomerateMaersk and Canadian firm Talisman, which both have a rig with five leaks. Four spills came from a rig known as Mungo Etap, which is owned by BP.

Whistleblowers have told the Guardian that the list of spills recorded in the documents is the tip of the iceberg. Other accidents are kept quiet, they claim, [B]because workers fear they cannot report them in case they lose their jobs.[/B] One veteran said that although everyone is formally told to report anything that goes wrong, staff adhere to an informal code to [B]remain silent to avoid a halt in drilling that loses money for the companies.[/B]

[B]The HSE documents also undermine claims by the major oil companies that last year’s Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 workers was unlikely to ever happen to them.[/B]

Jake Molloy, general secretary of the Offshore Industry Liaison Committee (OILC), a union representing North Sea workers, said Deepwater Horizon showed that “even the most up-to-date, cutting-edge safety technology can go wrong if it is not maintained properly and not operated by competent people”. He added: “We have been very lucky in the UK that we have not had another major incident with multiple fatalities. We have come very close on several occasions, very, very close. It is more luck than good management in some cases. Some operators don’t give a damn. Because of the high price of oil, they are cutting corners. Some of them are overdue for prosecution.”

Robert Paterson, health and safety director of the Oil & Gas UK, which represents the industry and aims to make Britain’s oil industry the safest in the world, said oil companies last year agreed to “redouble efforts to reduce the number of leaks by 50% over three years and many companies are building this target into their business plans”.
He rejected the whistleblowers’ concerns: “We believe there is a very high standard of compliance when it comes to companies reporting offshore incidents to the regulator and a constructive culture in the workforce when it comes to reporting health and safety concerns.”

The disclosures have provoked criticism of the government over its claims that regulation of the oil industry in the North Sea is one of the toughest in the world. Chris Huhne, the energy secretary, claimed in January that the UK’s safety and environmental regime was “one of the most robust in the world.”

Frank Doran, Labour MP for Aberdeen North, said: “Chris Huhne needs to have a rethink. There is a continuing problem, of particularly gas leakages, and that is a sign that the infrastructure in the North Sea is ageing and that maintenance and investment is still not sufficient to ensure the safety of offshore workers. There is still a long way to go.”

Infomania · July 22, 2011, 9:06pm

[B][B]Health and Safety Executive [/B]
[/B][B]OFFSHORE INJURY, ILL HEALTH AND INCIDENT STATISTICS [/B]
[LEFT][B]2009/2010 [/B]
[B][B][SIZE=2]Health & Safety Executive [/SIZE][/B][/B]
[B][B][SIZE=2]Hazardous Installations Directorate [/SIZE][/B][/B][B][/LEFT]
[B][SIZE=2]Offshore Division (OSD [/B]
[/SIZE][/B]

[B]Preface [/B]
[SIZE=2]This is the tenth report in a series of HID Statistics reports covering offshore injury and incident statistics, which continues from the previous OTO series. It is the fourteenth under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 1995 (RIDDOR), and presents data on injuries, diseases and incidents reported for the period 1 April 2008 to 31 March 2010

[SIZE=2][B]Copies of this report can be downloaded from HSE’s website at [/B]
[B]http://www.hse.gov.uk/offshore [/B]
[/SIZE][/SIZE]

Infomania · July 22, 2011, 9:35pm

I first posted this article in March 2011. sorta reiterates my post # 6344 earlier today;
Hypocrisy of Shell CEO Peter Voser on BP Gulf of Mexico disaster; Royal Dutch Shell plc .com

http://royaldutchshellplc.com/2011/03/26/36837/

New_Orleans_Lady · July 22, 2011, 9:39pm

Alcor frequently advised us that it was the REDNECK, COWBOY culture in the Gulf of Mexico that was the cause of the Deepwater Horizon incident.
Apparently the North Sea has it’s share of [B]“REDNECKS[/B]” also.

alcor · July 23, 2011, 5:16am

[QUOTE=Infomania;53026]Alcor frequently advised us that it was the [B]REDNECK, COWBOY[/B] culture in the Gulf of Mexico that was the cause of the Deepwater Horizon incident.
Apparently the North Sea has it’s share of [B]“REDNECKS[/B]” also.