Deepwater Horizon - Transocean Oil Rig Fire

Offshore
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[QUOTE=alcor;59212]Industry, has always welcomed the considered view of new thought and consideration provided by the universities and their great scholars. Much of this study is produced from the midst of various classrooms where brilliant minds gather to highlight what may have gone wrong on the Macondo well based on their understanding of events, purely theoretical, and yet, a fool dismisses their considered approach. I have only read the first two sections of their report but feel immediately that there are many observations which we on this site alone have already concluded. Nevertheless, fresh thought and input is always welcome, especially with the emphasis being on safety system engineering.[/QUOTE]

Er, permit to clarify some things about such studies. First, full disclosure: I have worked with the National Academy of Sciences for 20 years as a member of 10 studies and a reviewer for many more. This effort has earned me the honor of National Associate, which in turn grants me a free cup of coffee and restroom privileges whenever I’m in DC :slight_smile: So count me as a supporter. In any case, I think I’m qualified to tell the group how such studies are done.

The National Academy is not a University, although its committees, like this one, are often heavily populated by academics. The NAS was chartered (as they are fond of reminding people) by the US Congress during the administration of Abraham Lincoln. Its job is to provide technical and scientific advice to Congress. It consists of three parts: the Institute of Medicine, the National Academy of Engineering, and the National Research Council. This report was done by the NAE.

The process whereby a report is produced is extremely painstaking (and slow). A committee of volunteers is assembled with the emphasis on expertise and countervailing bias. So if there is someone who has advocated less regulation of industry the NAE staff will recruit someone who advocates more, and let them thrash it out in the meetings (which happens, believe you me). After collecting information, which usually includes lots of briefings by interested parties and possibly field trips, the committee hammers out the findings and recommendations. The report then goes to a completely independent review process, led by a volunteer coordinator who has not been involved at all in the deliberations. The committee members do not know who the reviewers are until after the report is released. Each comment by each reviewer must be explicitly addressed, either by a change to the report or by producing an argument to the coordinator that the reviewer has it wrong. The review coordinator reports to a completely independent staff organization within NAS. There is also a formal process whereby a committee member can submit a dissent to the conclusions of a report, and that dissent cannot be suppressed by the committee or the NAS staff.

The report then goes up through the chain of command of the NAE, in this case the various boards listed in the front matter of the report, and they often have something to say. So any NAS report is the product of many more people than just the committee, and you need to consider the backgrounds of the reviewers and the boards as well. I think that if you do that you’ll see that this thing was subjected to scrutiny by a lot more than a bunch of college professors.

Cheers,

Earl

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Deepwater contractor settles with BP for $250m - Telegraph

(shortened version)

By Emily Gosden
Last Updated: 9:19PM GMT 16/12/2011
Cameron International, the maker of the blowout preventer on the Deepwater Horizon rig at the centre of last year’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill, will pay BP $250m (£161m) to settle all claims in the accident.

BP has accepted a $250m (£160m) payment from one of its contractors over the Gulf of Mexico spill, in a settlement that raised hopes the oil major would not be found grossly negligent over the disaster.

Cameron International, which made the blow-out preventer on the Deepwater Horizon rig, agreed the settlement with BP. The oil major will in turn indemnify Cameron against all potential compensatory damages.

BP said the settlement was not an admission of liability by either party.

It is significant because of its implications for BP’s disputes with other contractors, and for the scale of civil fines, both of which have much higher financial stakes.

The biggest fines BP faces are likely to come under the Clean Water Act, with the maximum fine around four times higher in cases of gross negligence.

Analysts at UBS said they believed Cameron chose to settle because it “probably judged BP is unlikely to be found grossly negligent”. Were BP to have been found guilty of gross negligence, it would have potentially given Cameron grounds to avoid paying compensation costs.

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Blog: Deepwater Horizon: The National Academy of Engineering Report

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/12/m-deepwater_horizon_the_national_academy_of_engineering_report.html

December 16, 2011
Deepwater Horizon: The National Academy of Engineering Report
Bruce Thompson
The most definitive report yet on the Gulf oil spill has just been released.

This long awaited report by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) on the causes of the Gulf oil spill has been buried like a document dump on the Friday before Christmas. This is the final report by the NAE. It was initially empowered to do this investigation by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who then promptly ignored its preliminary findings when he imposed his unilateral drilling moratorium in May 2010.

Combined with the juicy news that BP has alleged in federal court that its cement contractor, Halliburton, has engaged in the destruction of physical evidence, a claim Halliburton has denied, this is guaranteed to become a hot button issue. The NAE report provides support for BP’s claim and a motive for Halliburton’s alleged improprieties.

The most important new information is a detailed examination of the nitrified cement that was used. A careful reading of the discussion of Compressive Strength of Foamed Cement and Un-Foamed Cement on pages 22-23 of the report is quite revealing.

The properties of Class H cement are well known. The properties of foamed cement are not well known and not easy to measure because of the compressibility of the foam. In principle, the compressive strength of foamed cement should be less than the compressive strength of unfoamed Class H cement, given the same curing conditions and additives. Testing has shown this to be true. The compressive strength of foamed cement has been shown to be approximately 35 percent of that Class H base cement under the same curing conditions (Gardner 2010). Testing done by Chandler Engineering (Sabens and Maki, Jr 2002) has shown that foamed cement begins to establish compressive strength at about the same time as the base cement (Class H in this case), but the strength of the foam continuously lags that of the base cement as curing time increases. Accepting these trends as representative, the committee created Figure 2-7 to show the compressive strengths of the various cement slurries. The Chevron (protocol 1) and Halliburton base slurry curves are taken from the laboratory testing done on those two un-foamed slurries. The curves for the two foamed cements are not from direct measurement, but assume the foamed cement compressive strength is reduced according to the foam protocol used in the Chevron test software (by a factor of approximately 35 percent). [SNIP]

Figure 2-7 shows the time at which the negative pressure test was started after cement slurries

were pumped into the Macondo well. The figure also shows a differential pressure of about 999 psi that was created between the reservoir pressure and the reduced hydrostatic pressure inside the casing during the negative test (see Appendix C for the calculation). Figure 2-7 indicates that the foamed cement using the Chevron data would have just barely established the strength required to resist crushing under the differential pressure imposed by the negative test, assuming that the cement was not contaminated or altered by other events. The foamed cement using the Halliburton base data and the foam algorithm would not have achieved sufficient compressive strength.

FIGURE 2-7 Uncontaminated cement compressive strength tests (DP = differential pressure). Source: Committee
(See FIGURE 2-7 & bottom of post)

In simple English, when the crew of the Deepwater Horizon replaced the drilling mud in the riser above the blowout preventer and upper section of the production immediately below (down to a depth of about 8,300 feet) with lighter sea water, they created a hydrostatic pressure at the very bottom of the well (in the shoe track) that was 999 pounds per square inch less than the pressure of the formation. As you can see in figure 2.7, the Halliburton foam algorithm (HAL Foam Algorithm) line is below that value at the time the test took place (about 900 psi at 16.4 hours after the cement was pumped into place). It is also apparent that allowing more time for the cement to cure had little additional effect. Contrast that to the curve for the un-foamed Halliburton cement (HAL base Cmt). At 16.4 hours the foamed cement has a compressive strength of about 900 psi and is steady but the un-foamed cement is about 2700 psi and rising, peaking at about 23 hours. So experience would have made them expect a compressive strength of 2700 psi when all they had was 900 psi.

It was the failure of the crew to recognize this dramatic reduction in compressive strength that led directly to the blowout. The cement was not strong enough to withstand the 999 psi pressure differential and broke during the negative pressure test. While the transcripts of the Joint Investigative team (JIT) have been hidden behind afirewall making linking impossible, but the gist of the testimony by the various witnesses was that none of them had used foamed cement at the depth of this well, 18,000 feet. Combined with an abnormally high percentage of nitrogen in the mix, which resulted in a lower compressive strength, they were in totally uncharted territory. Add in that very few of the men had ever performed a negative pressure test because the standard practice was to wait until the well was being completed, at a later stage of construction, before going to an "unbalanced’ condition and it is no surprise that the crew was confused. They did try to close the blowout preventer after mud was spewing onto the deck, but the gas had risen above the blowout preventer so it had no way to stop the gas that had already flowed past it. The crew’s fate was sealed when the diesel engines sucked in the flammable natural gas/air mixture, over-revved and exploded.

The most obvious lessons learned ought to be:

  1. If no one has done the procedure before, get qualified technical experts to teach you how before attempting to do it! Ask questions!!

  2. Never use a nitrified cement with such a high percentage of nitrogen in it a pressure barrier!

  3. If you have never done a negative pressure test before, you have never actually confirmed the quality of the cement job in the shoe track. This is why the prevalent cement failure mode is an annular blowout, negative pressure tests were quite rare and by the time you unbalance a completed well you want the gas to flow, so it matters not whether the flow is through perforations in the production casing or U-tubing up through the shoe track.

  4. A huge amount of effort was wasted on the expectation that this was an annular blowout, when it was a “wet shoe” blowout. A timely attempt at a “top kill” would have succeeded and stopped the flow of oil into the Gulf in mid-May.

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[QUOTE=Infomania;59293]Deepwater contractor settles with BP for $250m - Telegraph

(shortened version)

By Emily Gosden
Last Updated: 9:19PM GMT 16/12/2011
Cameron International, the maker of the blowout preventer on the Deepwater Horizon rig at the centre of last year’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill, will pay BP $250m (£161m) to settle all claims in the accident.

BP has accepted a $250m (£160m) payment from one of its contractors over the Gulf of Mexico spill, in a settlement that raised hopes the oil major would not be found grossly negligent over the disaster.

Cameron International, which made the blow-out preventer on the Deepwater Horizon rig, agreed the settlement with BP. The oil major will in turn indemnify Cameron against all potential compensatory damages.

BP said the settlement was not an admission of liability by either party.

It is significant because of its implications for BP’s disputes with other contractors, and for the scale of civil fines, both of which have much higher financial stakes.

The biggest fines BP faces are likely to come under the Clean Water Act, with the maximum fine around four times higher in cases of gross negligence.

Analysts at UBS said they believed Cameron chose to settle because it “probably judged BP is unlikely to be found grossly negligent”. Were BP to have been found guilty of gross negligence, it would have potentially given Cameron grounds to avoid paying compensation costs.[/QUOTE]

It will be interesting to see if the Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee desires a fee on this…

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Toxic legacy: Russian oil spills spread devastation | Anchorage Daily News - The News Tribune

http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/12/17/1949780/toxic-legacy-russian-oil-spills.html

NPR.org, December 18, 2011 · USINSK, Russia (AP) — On the bright yellow tundra outside this oil town near the Arctic Circle, a pitch-black pool of crude stretches toward the horizon. The source: a decommissioned well whose rusty screws ooze with oil, viscous like jam.

This is the face of Russia’s oil country, a sprawling, inhospitable zone that experts say represents the world’s worst ecological oil catastrophe.

Environmentalists estimate at least 1 percent of Russia’s annual oil production, or 5 million tons, is spilled every year. That is equivalent to one Deepwater Horizon-scale leak about every two months. Crumbling infrastructure and a harsh climate combine to spell disaster in the world’s largest oil producer, responsible for 13 percent of global output.

Oil, stubbornly seeping through rusty pipelines and old wells, contaminates soil, kills all plants that grow on it and destroys habitats for mammals and birds. Half a million tons every year get into rivers that flow into the Arctic Ocean, the government says, upsetting the delicate environmental balance in those waters.

It’s part of a legacy of environmental tragedy that has plagued Russia and the countries of its former Soviet empire for decades, from the nuclear horrors of Chernobyl in Ukraine to lethal chemical waste in the Russian city of Dzerzhinsk and paper mill pollution seeping into Siberia’s Lake Baikal, which holds one-fifth of the world’s supply of fresh water.

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BOPs scrutinised in latest Macondo report - Upstream Online

http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/article294253.ece#.Tu0MuCk59tA.aolmail

Blowout preventers, which are supposed to seal off an oil well in an emergency, must be redesigned to prevent failures like the one last year at BP Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the finalreport of a technical panel.BOPs scrutinised in latest Macondo report
News wires 14 December 2011 23:50 GMT
The US government and the energy industry had “misplaced trust” in the ability of blowout preventers to act as fail-safe mechanisms, a committee of the National Academy of Engineering and National Research Council said in a report today, according to Bloomberg.

The 57 foot (17 meter) valve systems, which stand atop deep-water wells, weren’t designed or tested for the conditions that existed when the Macondo well exploded, the news wire said.

“It failed to stop the blowout because of its design and operational shortcomings,” the committee reported. “There is an urgent need for those shortcomings to be corrected.”

The 400-ton system built by Cameron International Corp. was four years overdue for maintenance and hadn’t been disassembled and refurbished since the Deepwater Horizon was commissioned in 2001, Jason Mathews, a member of a joint U.S. Coast Guard-Interior Department investigative panel, said during an April 6 hearing in Metairie, Louisiana.

Cameron invented blowout preventers in 1922 and “the evolution of this expensive and long-lived piece of equipment appears to have been limited,” according to today’s report. It “was neither designed nor tested for the dynamic conditions that most likely existed at the time that attempts were made to recapture well control” at Macondo.

There’s no industry standard or independent certification for blowout preventers as there is for household circuit breakers, another safety device designed to prevent fires, Roger McCarthy, a panel member and engineer based in Palo Alto, California, said today in a telephone press conference.

More rigor is needed to understand the potential demands on a subsea blowout preventer, Donald Winter, the committee chairman, said in today’s press conference. Engineers need to build in better instrumentation so that operators can identify what’s going on at the wellhead, he said.

“It’s not a matter that’s going to be accomplished in a very short period of time,” Winter said.

The report, requested by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, is the latest in a series of three government probes of the disaster. President Barack Obama appointed a commission to investigate the spill and the Coast Guard and Interior Department held their own joint inquiry.

A November 2010 interim report by the same committee issuing today’s findings said key staff overlooked signs of a failed cement plug that led to the blowout. It accused BP, its contractors and federal regulators of weak oversight. Today’s report proposes new procedures and regulation of well design and offshore rigs.

Today’s report “is consistent with the consensus that has emerged from every official investigation,” BP, based in London, said today in an e-mailed statement. “The Deepwater Horizon accident was complex and the result of multiple causes involving multiple parties.”

It also calls for redesign of blowout preventers to allow for “robust and reliable cutting, sealing and separation,” as well as new testing and maintenance procedures.

The government in September 2010 required drillers to have third-party verification that blowout preventers are capable of cutting off pipes, as well as having the ability to remotely close off the valves.

The report “has helped to affirm the tremendous efforts we have made in the last 18 months to raise the bar for safety and oversight of offshore oil and gas operations,” Salazar said in a statement. “The work we have done to implement rigorous new offshore drilling and safety rules and reform offshore regulation and oversight is in line with the recommendations of the committee.”

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Farron Cousins | Report Partially Blames Federal Government For Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig Explosion

Report Partially Blames Federal Government For Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig Explosion

Perhaps one of the most honest assessments of last year’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion reveals the numerous failures of both industry and the federal government in the worst marine oil disaster in U.S. history.

The U.S. Department of the Interior sanctioned the report, compiled by more than a dozen experts operating with the temporary group called the Committee for Analysis of Causes of the Deepwater Horizon Explosion, Fire, and Oil Spill to Identify Measures to Prevent Similar Accidents in the Future (The Committee). And while the experts on The Committee identified failures we’ve documented in the past - particularly the shoddy design of the well’s blowout preventer - the committee highlighted plenty of new information as well.

Noting again that it was sanctioned by the federal government, it’s interesting that this was one of the first reports to explicitly implicate the federal government’s irresponsible actions as a cause of the massive oil disaster that followed the explosion:

The regulatory regime was ineffective in addressing the risks of the Macondo well. The actions of the regulators did not display an awareness of the risks or the very narrow margins of safety.

As DeSmog has reported in the past, the federal government’s role in the disaster can be traced all the way back to 2001, when then-Vice President Dick Cheney was holding his secret Energy Task Force meetings with oil industry executives.

During those meetings, the industry insiders in attendance helped the Vice President draft legislation that would eviscerate basic health and safety standards that protected workers and the public from the oil industry’s reckless practices.

Among the regulations that were revoked was the requirement for offshore rigs to maintain an acoustic switch – a device that would explode and seal off an oil well permanently in the event of a blowout. There was no acoustic switch installed on the Deepwater Horizon rig. Triggering the switch makes the well no longer usable.

Another failure of the government involved the actual rig inspections. Again, our previous reports revealed that the regulators charged with insuring the rig’s safety allowed the oil companies to fill out their own inspection reports in pencil, with the regulators going back over them in pen after they were sent back.

While these aspects were not specifically mentioned in the new report, it does at least put some blame on the government.

The new report also lays plenty of blame at the feet of the companies involved with the Deepwater Horizon rig, which were BP, Transocean, and Halliburton:

The actions, policies, and procedures of the corporations involved did not provide an effective systems safety approach commensurate with the risks of the Macondo well. The lack of a strong safety culture resulting from a deficient overall systems approach to safety is evident in the multiple flawed decisions that led to the blowout…

The (blow-out-prevention) system was neither designed nor tested for the dynamic conditions that most likely existed at the time that attempts were made to recapture well control. Furthermore, the design, test, operation, and maintenance of the (blow out prevention) system were not consistent with a high-reliability, fail-safe device.

Earlier this year, rig-owner Transocean attempted to claim in their own report that the blame for the explosion and oil leak should be levied at BP and Halliburton, and that the Transocean-owned blowout preventer was fully operational. An additional Transocean reporttried to lay the blame for the explosion on the rig workers.

The new report also comes on the heels of a recent lawsuit filed by BP claiming that Halliburton was attempting to destroy evidence of their shoddy cement work prior to trial.

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Farron Cousins | What Was Missing From the Oil Spill Commission’s Report

Earlier this week, the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling released their final report on the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. For those of us who had been following the story, there was nothing new in the report – BP, Halliburton, and Transocean cut corners on safety measures; They received warnings from crew that there were numerous problems, and that the whole disaster should make us take a good hard look at offshore drilling. I’m a little sensitive about this subject because I am a lifelong Gulf Coast resident. While most people only read about the disaster or saw clips on the news, I was living through it, watching tar balls roll up on the beaches I’ve played on since I was an infant.

The report does point some fingers, but the pointing ends with companies like BP, Halliburton, and Transocean. That is the equivalent of blaming Ford if a drunk driver gets into a wreck. In that situation, you have a driver at fault, a bartender who didn’t take away someone’s keys – a collective group making poor decisions. In the Gulf oil disaster, the driver was Dick Cheney, and the bartender was Chris Oynes. Yet strangely enough, neither one of those people were mentioned once in the Oil Spill Commission’s 382-page report.

To understand the full story, you have to understand the involvement of both Oynes and Cheney. Chris Oynes oversaw all oil and gas leasing in the Gulf of Mexico for the Minerals Management Service (MMS) for twelve years, meaning he personally oversaw the lease given to the Deepwater Horizon rig. It was during this time that Oynes made a name for himself in Republican politics by allowing oil companies to buy cheap leases to drill in the Gulf of Mexico without paying any taxes on their revenues. According to the resulting Congressional hearings on the matter, the oil companies claim that they repeatedly told Oynes that he needed to be charging taxes, but he refused. When asked by the Congressional committee about this, Oynes told them that he simply forgot to charge taxes. But his gifts to the oil industry didn’t end with the estimated $10 billion tax break. He also allowed the oil companies to fill out their own inspection reports in pencil. Oynes would then have his staff trace over in ink, giving the impression that they were actually doing their jobs.

In a normal scenario, this should have gotten Oynes booted out of the agency. But in 2007, Dick Cheney personally saw to it that Oynes receive a promotion to become the associate director for Offshore Energy and Minerals Management at MMS. Oynes was the perfect fit for Cheney, as Cheney himself had been working for years to dismantle regulations on the oil industry and allow them to write their own rules.

And this is where the plot thickens. During Dick Cheney’s secret energy task force meetings in 2001, he allowed oil industry executives to help draft legislation that would allow them to operate with almost no oversight (and the oversight that did occur came from cronies like Chris Oynes.) One of the most important rules that they wrote for themselves was that they didn’t have to include an acoustic switch on offshore oil rigs – a device that blows up and seals off a well permanently in the event of a blowout. According to attorney Mike Papantonio:

“An ‘acoustic switch’ would have prevented this catastrophe - it’s a failsafe that shuts the flow of oil off at the source - they cost only about half a million dollars each, and are required in off-shore drilling platforms in most of the world…except for the United States. This was one of the new deregulations devised by Dick Cheney …”

So here we have two of the biggest culprits in the BP oil spill saga, and yet neither one of them was mentioned in the commission’s final report. This isn’t to say that the report won’t have a positive impact – it makes a very strong and compelling argument about the need for greater regulation and inspections of oil rigs in order to prevent future catastrophes. But it also claims that the oil industry is too important to the Gulf region (which really only means Louisiana and Texas) to shut down completely.

Overall, I’m unhappy with the report for omitting the underlying cause of the disaster, which would be 8 years of government deregulation and industry self-regulation permitted by an Executive Branch that was so deeply embedded in the oil industry that the two were indistinguishable.

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[QUOTE=Infomania;59390]Farron Cousins | What Was Missing From the Oil Spill Commission’s Report

[snip]

The report does point some fingers, but the pointing ends with companies like BP, Halliburton, and Transocean. That is the equivalent of blaming Ford if a drunk driver gets into a wreck. In that situation, you have a driver at fault, a bartender who didn’t take away someone’s keys – a collective group making poor decisions. In the Gulf oil disaster, the driver was Dick Cheney, and the bartender was Chris Oynes. Yet strangely enough, neither one of those people were mentioned once in the Oil Spill Commission’s 382-page report.

[snip]

[/QUOTE]

Not strange at all. Such considerations are explicitly outside the National Academy charter; technical and scientific conclusions only. Edit: Unless explicitly stated in the charge to the committee.

Cheers,

Earl

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Shell spills 13,000 gallons while drilling near Deepwater Horizon site

http://mobile.al.com/advmobile/pm_29193/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=R6MoleXk

Ben Raines, Press-Register12/19/2011 3:19 PM

Shell International spilled 13,000 gallons of oil and drilling fluids into the Gulf on Sunday while drilling an exploratory well near the site of last year’s Deepwater Horizon accident, according to a federal report on the spill.

The area where the well was being drilled is about 20 miles from the site of the BP oil spill. Shell is working in water more than 7,000 feet deep. The well was being drilled by the Deepwater Nautilus, according to federal records. That rig is owned and operated by Transocean, the company that owned the Deepwater Horizon rig.

While a report Shell filed Monday morning with the National Response Center states that the company spilled 7,560 gallons of oil and 5,829 gallons of synthetic drilling fluids, company spokesperson Kelly op de Weegh said late Monday afternoon that no oil was spilled.

“Shell can confirm it has a loss of (13,398 gallons) of drilling fluid from a booster line, which provides additional drilling fluids and is separate from the wellbore itself,” read an emailed statement op de Weegh sent Monday afternoon. “The leak was isolated, stopped and remedial action has been approved… which includes temporarily abandoning the well, pulling the riser and making appropriate repairs.”

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement dispatched inspectors to the scene Monday, according to a spokesperson.

The National Response Center report lists “equipment failure” as the cause of the spill. The report states that the release was caused by “a leak in the boost line,” and describes the fluid spilled as a mix of drilling mud and “base oil.”

A boost line is part of the blowout preventer located on the seafloor around a well head. Typically, the boost line is used to inject drilling mud into the riser to help carry rocks and other debris to the surface, or to help maintain control of pressure in a well.

The report states that drilling was stopped and the well was secured.

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<><><><><><><><><>

I’m sure the writer was not aware of the valuable info you provided here, however, as you further alluded to: “Edit: Unless explicitly stated in the charge to the committee.”
In my opinion the charges formulated to the committee should have included the authority to/ and been DIRECTED TO investigate ALL THE CONTRIBUTING FACTORS including the errors and omissions of the MMS and Coast Guard relevant to this fiasco, such as the example Coast Guard report i included below the following personal diatribe.

Additionally, the MMS “rubber stamped” changes in procedures(one time in 20 minutes) that were questionable at best, such as authorizing the setting of the top plug 3,000 feet deeper than necessary (deeper than anyone involved had ever experienced) AND signing off on a plan to swap out 8300’ of 14.2# drilling mud with lighter seawater without having the top plug set in place ANYWHERE, AND my favorite is allowing the positive pressure test to commence about 12 hours after the cement job was completed followed by an EXTREME negative pressure test beginning at about 16 hours after the cement job was completed. No one seemed aware that a positive pressure test on green cement can in fact damage an otherwise “good cement job” and cause it to fail later, especially if 4 hours later the cement job is then subjected to extreme negative testing conditions.
<><><><><><><><><><>

COAST GUARD REPORT EXAMPLE

New GAO Report on Offshore Energy Infrastructure Security | Maritime News | Maritime Executive Magazine

(a short summary of a LONG report)
While the Coast Guard has identified 57 facilities as falling under its security regime, it had generally not conducted inspections of these facilities as required by the agency’s regulations. GAO found that Coast Guard had only conducted about 13 to 45 percent of the required facility inspections, depending on the year. There were a variety of reasons for these lapses by the Coast Guard, including confusion over which units should conduct inspections, confusion over which type of facilities should be inspected, units not tracking which specific facilities were coming up for inspection, and reliance on the owners and operators to tell units when they needed inspections. In addition, the Coast Guard’s database for planning, conducting and managing such inspections had a number of limitations in terms of the consistency, accuracy, duplication and definitions of the data. Without procedures in place to ensure that required inspections are completed, the Coast Guard was not in a position to know if offshore facilities were meeting their security requirements.

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Here’s the project scope, from the National Academies web site:

At the request of DOI, a National Academy of Engineering/National Research Council (NAE/NRC) committee will be convened to examine the probable causes of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, fire, and oil spill in order to identify measures for preventing similar harm in the future. The NAE/NRC committee’s review will focus on an assessment of technologies and practices and include the following tasks:

 1.  Examine the performance of the technologies and practices involved in the probable causes of the explosion, including the performance of the “blowout preventer” and related technology features, which ultimately led to an uncontrolled release of oil and gas into the Gulf of Mexico;

 2.  Identify and recommend available technology, industry best practices, best available standards, and other measures in the United States and around the world related to oil and gas deepwater exploratory drilling and well completion to avoid future occurrence of such events.

Cheers,

Earl

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Hope all is well with all of you and your families.

We Wish You a Merry Christmas

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Cameron Loses Appeal to Scuttle BP Gulf Spill Trial Plan

By Margaret Cronin Fisk
December 27, 2011 1:14 PM EST

Cameron International Corp. (CAM) lost its appeal to derail the February nonjury trial over which companies should be blamed for the 2010 BP Plc oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit rejected Cameron’s claim that U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier wrongly cited maritime law to allow him to conduct a nonjury trial over liability for the incident. Cameron contended that claims against the company fall under the federal Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which allows for a jury trial.

“The district court did not clearly err in concluding that the limitation proceeding is within the court’s admiralty jurisdiction,” the three-judge panel said in a one-paragraph decision yesterday. The court rejected review of other issues raised by Cameron.
Cameron asked the appeals court to throw out the existing trial plan and rule that the company has a right to a trial before a jury. Yesterday’s ruling removes a possible obstacle to the nonjury trial before Barbier that is scheduled to begin Feb. 27 in New Orleans to determine liability and apportion fault.

Damage Claims
Barbier plans two subsequent nonjury phases on the size of the spill and efforts to contain it. Test jury trials on damages would follow, the judge said. Cameron, which settled damage claims with BP this month, said the trial plan violates its constitutional rights.

“There is not a claim against Cameron that does not implicate our right to a jury trial under the Seventh Amendment,” Russell Post, a Cameron attorney, told the judges at the hearing Dec. 22 in federal court in Dallas. That amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees citizens’ and companies’ rights to jury trials in civil disputes.
“We’re going to decline to comment,” Rhonda Barnat, a spokeswoman for Cameron, said today.

The April 2010 Macondo well blowout and explosion killed 11 workers and caused the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. The accident spawned hundreds of lawsuits against BP and its partners, including Cameron, Transocean Ltd. (RIG), the Switzerland- based owner and operator of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that exploded, and Halliburton Co. (HAL), which provided cementing services.

Combined Suits
The lawsuits for injuries, economic and environmental loss are combined before Barbier in New Orleans. The judge has cited maritime laws as the basis for his decision to review liability issues without a jury.
Houston-based Cameron reported Dec. 16 that it had agreed to pay BP $250 million in exchange for the oil company’s indemnifying it from damage claims. The settlement doesn’t cover fines or penalties or punitive damages.
The appeals case is In re: Cameron International, 11-30987, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The lawsuits are combined in In re Oil Spill by the Oil Rig Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexicoon April 20, 2010, MDL-2179, U.S. District Court, Eastern District ofLouisiana (New Orleans).

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BP oil spill recovery money buys sports towels, Christmas lights, jingles

The Associated Press 12/29/2011 9:46 AM

PANAMA CITY BEACH, Florida — Sports towels and fleece blankets. A poker tournament. A $1 million Christmas display. A prom for senior citizens. BP gas card giveaways. A “most deserving mom” contest. And advertising, lots of advertising.

Florida Panhandle officials made the mix of eyebrow-raising purchases with $30 million BP gave them earlier this year to help tourism recover from 2010’s disastrous Gulf oil spill.

The money allowed seven area tourism bureaus to try promotions they could never have afforded otherwise, and it has propelled the Panhandle’s visitor counts to record numbers this year following a disastrous season right after the spill. The question now is what happens when the BP money dries up, most likely next April. The grants doubled and tripled the tourism-promotion budgets in these Panhandle counties, and officials worry the boost in visitors may prove fleeting.

“It is one thing to have your numbers go up when a tremendous amount of money is being put, not only in our economy, but in all of north Florida,” said Curt Blair, executive director of the Franklin County Tourist Development Council. “We will see after April whether part of this was a real recovery … or if we see fall-off. … Whether we’ve done that or if we’ve just propped up the market.”

BP announced the $30 million tourism grants in April. While the agreement for the $30 million doesn’t prevent Florida from pursuing any claims against BP or others, officials there decided a week later not to join other Gulf states in a lawsuit against Transocean, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig at the heart of the spill.

Florida’s tourism spending spree isn’t the first time that BP money has allowed government officials to snag items from their wish lists.

Separately, BP had already poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the four Gulf states in the months after the oil spill — with few strings attached. The Associated Press documented earlier this year how some of the $754 million given to local governments had been spent on tasers, SUVS and pick-up trucks, rock concerts, an iPad and other items with no direct connection to the oil spill.

In all, BP has given $150 million to Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi for tourism promotion since the oil spill, with the Sunshine State getting the lion’s share — $62 million.

In the case of the more-recent payout, Florida Panhandle counties have allocated more than $23 million of the $30 million through September, with $13.5 million used on for television, digital, radio and print advertising. The counties have also spent millions on a variety of attention-grabbing gimmicks, The Associated Press found through public records requests and interviews.

Some wonder whether the most extravagant promotions — such as Panama City Beach’s $1 million Christmas display — are worth it.

The seven counties spent $2.5 million on promotions alone.

In Pensacola, the BP money paid for $30,000 worth of sports towels and another $30,000 worth of fleece blankets given out at local sporting events. In neighboring Perdido Key, officials spent $300,000 on American Express gift cards for overnight visitors. They also purchased $12,500 worth of BP gas cards for tourists who present receipts showing they’ve stayed in the area, essentially putting BP funds back into the company’s pocket.

Alison Davenport, chair of the Perdido Key Chamber and Visitors Center, said the goal is to get tourists driving to the area next spring. “We had no hesitation in choosing BP gas cards over any others since BP’s grant money has made the incentivized travel promotion possible,” she said.

Okaloosa County, home to Destin and Fort Walton Beach, is giving away a trip to the Super Bowl and tickets to the BCS championship football game to drive traffic to its Facebook page. South Walton Beach also is giving away BCS tickets on Facebook.

Okaloosa County spent a half million dollars marketing and advertising Vision Airlines, which this year launched service from the Northwest Florida Regional Airport to several Southeast cities.

The grants have funded a half-dozen fishing tournaments, a poker tournament, a national flag football championship and a soccer tournament.

It has paid for contests galore.

Carol Daley, of Arlington, Texas, won a “Search for America’s Most Deserving Mom” contest from Okaloosa County. Her prizes were a one-week stay in Destin, roundtrip airfare, $1,000 for a spending spree and a 2011 Buick Enclave valued at more than $36,000. Ashley Spencer won a beach photo contest from South Walton Beach that netted her a $15,000 vacation. Franklin County officials sprinkled the area with clues and sponsored a GPS-aided treasure hunt.

A $166,000 Panama City Beach program includes a prom next month for senior citizens. The couple chosen prom king and queen from online submissions will get to invite two friends for a weekend at the beach.

The BP funding paid for almost 20 different festivals.

Santa Rosa County spent $80,000 on a sand-sculpting festival. The money is paying for the Pensacola area’s $120,000 Mardi Gras celebration next year, its $25,000 New Year’s celebration and a $540,000 music festival. Panama City Beach used the money for a $100,000 pirate-themed festival, a $1.3 million country music festival and a $425,000 Christian music festival.

Panama City Beach’s Christmas display includes the ice rink, a candy cane forest and an enormous lights display.

The BP money was more than tripled the tourism promotion funds normally spent by officials in Okaloosa County. It was double the regular $750,000 budget for tourism officials in Franklin County, home to Apalachicola. The $7 million Bay County got is more than double its normal $3 million budget.

“We wouldn’t have been able to do two-thirds of what we did without that BP grant,” said Mark Bellinger, executive director of the Okaloosa County Tourist Development Council. "We just never had the money in the past for television

Visitors came back in droves, though, in 2011. Okaloosa County had its best-ever June, July and September. In many counties, tourism is up as much as 20 percent over last year.

“It appears the … efforts have been successful,” said BP spokesman Craig Savage. “The campaigns, plus pent-up consumer demand have made 2011 a banner year for tourism in the Panhandle.”

Apart from the advertising the Panhandle tourism bureaus have purchased, BP is launching a new national television advertising campaign this week to outline Gulf cleanup efforts.

Florida State University professor Mark Bonn isn’t sure negative perceptions about the Panhandle will vanish so quickly, especially the further away the prospective visitor lives.

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http://www.alternet.org/rss/breaking_news/755394/us_eyes_first_bp__criminal_charges_over_gulf_spill%3A_wsj/
US eyes first BP criminal charges over Gulf spill: WSJ
US prosecutors are readying criminal charges against British oil giant BP employees over the 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident that led to the catastrophic Gulf oil spill, The Wall Street Journal reported online.

US prosecutors are readying criminal charges against British oil giant BP employees over the 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident that led to the catastrophic Gulf oil spill, The Wall Street Journal reported online.
The charges if brought and prosecuted by the US Justice Department would be the first criminal charges over the disaster.

Citing sources close to the matter, the Journal said the prosecutors are focusing on US-based BP engineers and at least one supervisor who they say may have provided false information to regulators on the risks of deep water drilling in the Gulf.

Felony charges for providing false information in federal documents may be made public early next year, said the Journal.

A conviction on that charge would carry a fine and up to five years in prison, the newspaper said.

The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) has already issued a second list of violations regarding BP’s operation of the Macondo well that blew out in April 2010, causing the worst maritime environmental disaster in history.

The US drilling safety agency has said it determined BP had failed to conduct an accurate pressure integrity test in one area of the well.

And in four different sections of the well, BP failed to suspend drilling operations at the Macondo when the safe drilling margin was not maintained, the agency said.

An explosion at the Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20, 2010, killed 11 people, and the well gushed oil into the ocean for 87 days, blackening the southern US shoreline and crippling the local tourism and fishing sectors.

By the time the well was capped, 4.9 million barrels (206 million gallons) of oil had spilled out of the runaway well 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.

In October the US government slapped BP, Transocean – the Swiss owner and operator of the drilling rig – and US oil services group Halliburton with citations for violating oil industry regulations in what is expected to lead to massive fines.

BP – which leased the rig and was ultimately responsible for operations – has spent more than $40 billion on the disaster and could still be liable for billions in fines, compensation and restoration costs.

In October, it recovered $4.0 billion in costs associated with the spill from US group Anadarko Petroleum Company, which agreed to transfer its 25 percent stake in the well to BP.

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BP employees could face criminal spill charges - Houston Chronicle
(very minor update to New Orleans Lady’s post)

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, according to people familiar with the matter, that federal prosecutors were preparing felony charges against several Houston-based engineers and at least one of their supervisors.

Charges under consideration could relate to providing false information in federal documents, with a penalty of up to five years in prison and a fine, the paper reported. It also said that prosecutors could decide not to bring charges against the individuals.

The Chronicle reported in September that the federal task force formed to investigate the Deepwater Horizon incident was looking into whether BP failed to properly report changes in the well’s pressure during drilling to regulators.

Chronicle sources said then that prosecutors were looking at an email sent by a BP geological operations manager to BP engineers about a week before the well blew out that indicated that the drilling crew had encountered different pressures than expected.

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Gulf Of Mexico Deep Drilling Thrives 18 Months After BP Spill
AP | 22 Hours Ago

ALAMINOS CANYON BLOCK 857, GULF OF MEXICO (AP) — Two hundred miles off the coast of Texas, ribbons of pipe are reaching for oil and natural gas deeper below the ocean’s surface than ever before.
These pipes, which run nearly two miles deep, are connected to a floating platform that is so remote Shell named it Perdido, which means “lost” in Spanish. What attracted Shell to this location is a geologic formation found throughout the Gulf of Mexico that may contain enough oil to satisfy U.S. demand for two years.
While Perdido is isolated, it isn’t alone. Across the Gulf, energy companies are probing dozens of new deepwater fields thanks to high oil prices and technological advances that finally make it possible to tap them.
The newfound oil will not do much to lower global oil prices. But together with increased production from onshore U.S. fields and slowing domestic demand for gasoline, it could help reduce U.S. oil imports by more than half over the next decade.
Eighteen months ago, such a flurry of activity in the Gulf seemed unlikely. The Obama administration halted drilling and stopped issuing new permits after the explosion of a BP well killed 11 workers and caused the largest oil spill in U.S. history.
But the drilling moratorium was eventually lifted and the Obama administration issued the first new drilling permit in March. Now the Gulf is humming again and oil executives describe it as the world’s best place to drill.
“In the short term and the medium term, it’s clearly the Gulf of Mexico,” says Matthais Bichsel, a Royal Dutch Shell PLC board member who is in charge of all of the company’s new projects and technology.
By early 2012 there will be more rigs in the Gulf designed to drill in its “deep water” — defined as 2,000 feet or deeper — than before the spill.
In November, Perdido began pumping oil from a field called Tobago; the well begins 9,627 feet below the surface of the Gulf. No other well on the globe produces oil in deeper water and that’s about as deep as the Gulf gets. For drillers, that means the entire Gulf is now within reach.
“We are at the point where … depth is not the primary issue anymore,” says Marvin Odum, the head of Royal Dutch Shell’s drilling unit in the Americas. "I do not worry that there is something in the Gulf that we cannot develop … if we can find it."
From a distance, Perdido looks like an erector set perched on an aluminum can. This can, or “spar,” is a 500-foot-tall steel cylinder that sits mostly underwater, serving as a base for the equipment and living quarters above. It is stuffed with iron ore to lower its center of gravity, keeping the whole operation from bobbing in the water like a cork. The spar is tethered to the sea floor 8,000 feet below with ropes and chains.
Oil and natural gas are pumped to Perdido from nearby wells drilled by an onboard rig and from faraway wells drilled by satellite rigs. Water and other impurities are then removed from the oil and gas, which gets sent hundreds of miles through an undersea pipeline to terminals and refineries along the Gulf coast.
Perdido, which pumps the equivalent of 60,000 barrels of oil and natural gas a day, will eventually yield 100,000 barrels per day from 35 wells in a 30-mile radius, according to Shell. It will likely produce oil for decades — in all, as much as 360 million barrels of oil and 750 billion cubic feet of natural gas, according to Wood Mackenzie.
As global oil demand climbs past 89 million barrels a day and traditional onshore and shallow water fields are depleted, the deep waters of the Gulf and off the coasts of South America, West Africa and Australia are playing an increasingly important role.
In 2000, 1.5 million barrels of oil per day were produced from deepwater fields around the globe, or 2 percent of global production. In 2011, that number grew to 5.5 million barrels, or 6 percent of global production. By 2020, deepwater oil will account for 9 percent, according to IHS CERA.
The Gulf is attractive for many reasons. Its oil fields are enormous; it straddles the world’s biggest consumer of oil; it’s in a politically stable part of the world; and drillers can easily tap into a vast network of pipelines and refineries. Also, despite industry complaints, the cost of royalties, taxes and regulation in the U.S. are among the lowest in the world.
“Everybody wants to be there,” says Mohammad Rahman, the lead Gulf analyst for Wood Mackenzie.
By early 2012, there will be 40 deepwater rigs in the Gulf, up from 37 before the BP spill, according to Cinnamon Odell of ODS-Petrodata. BP received its first permit to drill in late October.
The Gulf produces an average of 1.5 million barrels of oil per day, according to Wood Mackenzie. That’s 27 percent of U.S. output and 8 percent of U.S. demand.
Thanks to more accurate imaging technologies, drillers are able to see under geologic formations that used to confound geologists. In June, ExxonMobil Corp. said it found 700 million barrels of oil — one of the biggest discoveries in the Gulf in last decade. In September, Chevron and BP also announced major finds, thought to be in the hundreds of millions of barrels of oil.
Many of the Gulf’s recent discoveries are in a geologic formation known as the Lower Tertiary, formed between 23 million and 65 million years ago. Perdido, which is operated by Shell and owned jointly by Shell, Chevron and BP, is the first to produce oil from this formation. Analysts say it could hold 15 billion barrels of oil.
As the BP disaster made clear, drilling in deep water presents difficulties and dangers. Last month a Chevron well in the deep waters off of Brazil ruptured and spilled 2,400 barrels of oil into the Atlantic after Chevron underestimated the pressure of the oil field it was tapping.
Perdido only recently reached its monthly production target after a year of operation because of difficulties getting oil and gas from the seabed to the platform. New devices designed to separate oil and gas on the sea floor have not performed as well as Shell hoped. It has taken months of adjustments made by underwater robots and other equipment on the platform to fix the problems.
Challenges like this have helped push the average cost of producing oil in the deepwater Gulf to $60 a barrel, according to IHS CERA, near the highest level ever. But with oil close to $100 a barrel, the expense is well worth it.
After all 35 wells are drilled for Perdido, its owners will likely have spent $6.2 billion on the project, according to Wood Mackenzie. But along with the risks, the Gulf offers great rewards: Perdido could ultimately generate $39 billion in revenue and $16 billion in profits.
Jonathan Fahey can be reached at http://www.facebook.com/Fahey.Jonathan .

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I have friends on there as well, hoping and praying for the best



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BP sues Halliburton for Deepwater Horizon oil spill clean-up costs
Oil group BP lays blame for Deepwater disaster on Halliburton’s cement work and seeks unspecified damages.

http://m.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jan/03/bp-sues-halliburton-over-deepwater?cat=business&type=article

Dominic Rushe in New York
The Guardian, Tue 3 Jan 2012 19.35 GMT

BP has handed the bill for clearing up the disastrous 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill to Halliburton, the US contractor it claims botched the cement work on the failed rig.
The oil group has filed a suit in New Orleans seeking “the amount of costs and expenses incurred by BP to clean up and remediate the oil spill, the lost profits from and/or diminution in value of the Macondo prospect, and all other costs and damages incurred by BP related to the Deepwater Horizon incident and resulting oil spill”, according to the filing.
BP did not specify the amount of damages it is seeking from Halliburton, which provided cement contracting services on the well in the Gulf of Mexico. But it previously estimated the clean-up will cost $42bn (£27bn). It has spent $14bn in the Gulf coast region cleaning up the spill with another $20bn set aside for economic claims and restoration work.
The oil firm wants Halliburton to pay damages “equal to, or in the alternative proportional to Halliburton’s fault,” to cover clean-up costs and any government fines BP may face.
A Halliburton spokeswoman said: “Halliburton stands firm that we are indemnified by BP against losses resulting from the Macondo incident.”