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Page added on June 7, 2014
Flawed drilling gear still in use after BP oil spill
Design problems with a blowout prevention system contributed to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster, and the same equipment is still commonly used in drilling four years after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, according to a report issued by the federal Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board.
The board concluded that the “blowout preventer” — a five-story-tall series of seals and valves that was supposed to shear the drill pipe and short-circuit the explosion — failed for reasons the oil industry did not anticipate and has not fully corrected.
Despite improved regulation of deep-water drilling since the disaster, the board found that problems persist in oil and gas companies’ offshore safety systems.
“This results in potential safety gaps in U.S. offshore operations and leaves open the possibility of another similar catastrophic accident,” said Cheryl MacKenzie, lead investigator of the safety board inquiry.
The blowout of BP’s Macondo well in April 2010 killed 11 men and spewed nearly 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, making it the worst offshore oil disaster in United States history. Several federal commissions have investigated the missteps that occurred on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the days and hours leading up to the explosion, which investigators said had its roots in corporate mismanagement and inadequate government oversight of the oil industry.
The chemical safety board, which examines industrial accidents but lacks regulatory authority, focused its inquiry on the blowout preventer and safety practices. The blowout preventer, or BOP, sits on the ocean floor below the drilling rig. The drilling pipe from the platform runs through the blowout preventer into the earth and toward the oil and gas deposits.
If oil or gas, which is under high pressure underground, accidentally comes up the well bore and pipe, the blowout preventer is supposed to cut off the flow higher up to the platform. In the case of the Deepwater Horizon, the lower valves in the blowout preventer closed, letting pressure continue to build, which eventually bent the drill pipe, the safety board study found.
The last line of defense, a “blind shear ram” device inside the blowout preventer, could not cut the pipe effectively, and “actually punctured the buckled, off-center pipe, sending huge additional volumes of oil and gas surging toward the surface,” the safety board said in the report released Thursday.
Since the spill, at least one company, GE Oil and Gas, has designed a new blowout preventer that can cut a similarly bent pipe, but many rigs continue to use the same equipment found at Deepwater Horizon, the report said.
“The failed design of the blowout preventer has not been addressed, and many existing rigs rely on the same design that failed on Deepwater Horizon,” said Jackie Savitz, vice president of U.S. oceans at Oceana, an environmental group. “At the same time, measures that could truly prevent spills, or improve spill response, were passed over.”
The American Petroleum Institute and the Interior Department, which oversees offshore drilling, countered the report, asserting that considerable improvements had been made to offshore safety practices after the gulf oil spill.
“There is nothing here that hasn’t already been exhaustively addressed by regulators and the industry,” said Brian Straessle, a spokesman for API, the industry’s largest trade group. “The report appears to omit significant facts and ignores the tremendous strides made to enhance the safety of offshore operations.”
8 Comments on "Flawed drilling gear still in use after BP oil spill"
rockman on Sat, 7th Jun 2014 9:58 am
“The last line of defense, a “blind shear ram” device inside the blowout preventer”. WRONG: it isn’t the “last line of defense”… it’s the worst line of defense. Always has been…always will be IMHO. The BP blowout didn’t happen because the BOP didn’t function properly. They didn’t have chance to activate it before the oil/NG reached the drill floor and exploded. No system can be designed to handle such a situation.
And blaming cement failure is a hollow excuse. Cement failure is such a common problem that the repair tools are kept on the rig 24/7. I once consulted on GOM where the cement failed 22 times in the same zone, was “squeezed” (attempted to fix). The 23rd squeeze job failed and the well was plugged and abandoned…after spending $48 million.
The well blew out because BP didn’t not have sufficient mud weight in the well bore to put enough back pressure on the reservoir to keep it from flowing. We even have a standard term for it: being underbalanced. I’ve had many wells where the cement job initially failed at this stage. But the well didn’t flow because I had enough mud weight/back pressure to prevent it. In 4 decades I’ve never seen an operator intentionally put a well at this phase of the operation into an underbalanced state. I know exactly why BP did so but too long to explain. But the entire motivation was to save money.
As I’ve said before I’ll never understand why, given the huge and very public argument on the rig about leaving the well underbalanced, when there was a serious concern the cement had failed. But I’ve been on offshore rigs in the shut down phase and understand the distractions.
But how easy would it have been to realize the well was coming in? Very: mud is pumped down the drill pipe and flows back up the annuals. Turn the pumps off (we call this “checking for flow”) and the drill mud should top coming out. If it doesn’t stop it can only mean one thing: something (oil, NG or salt water is pushing it out of the well bore: the well is “coming in”. Actually not that rare of an occurrence. And typically the BOP is activated; the well is just “shut in”: all the valves are closed. The a standard “kill procedures” is begun which usually means pumping a heavy enough mud down the well bore to top the flow. And then, sometimes, the pressure is bled off. This might even require send oil/NG to an emergency flare line to be burned off. A tad unnerving but SOP in such situations.
So what went wrong? Simply no one was watching the mud reruns when the pumps were turned off. Usually 2 or 3 individuals have this responsibility. In fact the first one to notice a problem was a boat captain. They were pumping the mud from the rig to his boat. He radioed the rig and old them to stop pumping…his tanks were full. The rig told him that wasn’t possible because they hadn’t pumped enough mud because the rig tanks were still full. The reasons there was too much mud was that it was being pushed out of the well bore by the oil/NG. Unfortunately no one connected the dots and the oil/NG blew through the drill floor. Once it exploded the BOP wouldn’t function properly. No system could IMHO.
bobinget on Sat, 7th Jun 2014 10:52 am
Thanks Rockman. That was one of the clearest explanation offered… For Macondo’s blowout.
It’s cold comfort to know, the next big deep water mistake will be different. I can imagine like freeze
hardened ‘O’ rings that brought down a space shuttle launched at Cape Canaveral, drilling in sub freezing Arctic waters will offer greater challenges than 88 degree GOM waters.
rockman on Sat, 7th Jun 2014 12:01 pm
Bob – True but the greater danger is still human error IMHO. The vast majority of accidents I’ve seen weren’t a problem with the hardware…it was the “software”… people. Imagine laying in your bunk 150 miles offshore trying to fall asleep while thinking about an alarm system that’s been turned off because the driller got tired of resetting it after each false alarm.
I don’t have to imagine it.
About 37 years ago I watched them haul a young hand’s crushed body off the drill floor. A length of casing they were running slipped from the hoist system. Not a rare event. Which is why the floor hands are supposed to step back 10′ away from the drop zone with every lift. He didn’t. He died because he didn’t take a few seconds to move. Often the deadly mistakes on a rig are just that simple.
I’m sitting on a drilling well in S Texas right now. I really don’t think much about mechanical problems. But I never stop watching the hands. I’ve never had a hand seriously injured (no “lost time accidents”) let alone killed. I like to retire with that record intact. LOL.
surf on Sat, 7th Jun 2014 1:11 pm
While all of the above comments are correct, if the blowout preventer had worked there would have not been spilling into the gulf for months. Yes we would still have the loss of life but the animals and the communities would have not been significantly impacted.
Furthermore if the blowout preventer had worked there might have been fewer deaths.
I have read the failure analysis report and from a mechanical engineering perspective the flaw is easy to fix.
rockman on Sat, 7th Jun 2014 4:37 pm
Surf – The problem is what you envision as a blow out. The oil/NG flowing up the well bore is not a blowout per se. Technically it’s a producing well. Once the oil/NG/pressure reached the BOP it was essentially destroyed. Here’s how the Chemical Safety Board recently characterized the incident: “The CSB report said pipe buckling likely occurred during the first minutes of the blowout and that the BOP’s blind shear ram attempted to cut the pipe, but the pipe buckling prevented the shear ram from cleanly cutting and sealing the pipe. The shear ram actually punctured the buckled, off-center pipe, sending huge additional volumes of oil and gas surging toward the surface.”
The best silly analogy I can offer is complaining about a faulty air bag in a car that immediately explodes into flames after getting hit and you die. Even if the air bag didn’t malfunction you’re still dead. BOP’s, even when they aren’t damaged, have nasty habit of malfunctioning. But when drill pipe is rammed into a BOP at 10k+ psi and it’s buckled and jams the shears it ceases being a BOP. It becomes very expensive hunk of nonfunctional metal. More from the CBS: “The findings reveal that pipe buckling could occur even when a well is shut-in and apparently in a safe and stable condition. The pipe buckling–unlikely to be detected by the drilling crew–could render the BOP inoperable in an emergency.”
By the time the oil/NG reached the drill floor and exploded the BOP on the sea floor couldn’t be functioned. This is one of the main problems with the system: though there are some automatic functioning once control from the surface is lost (like when the sh*t blows up in your face and kills you) but the pipe buckling prevented this backup system. “Despite the multiple maintenance problems found in the Deepwater Horizon BOP, CSB investigators ultimately concluded the blind shear ram likely did close, and the drill pipe could have been successfully sealed but for the pipe buckling.”
Despite the BOP damage the crew could have still prevented the explosion, deaths and pollution if they had just monitored the mud returns and shut the well head in. If they had the oil/NG would not have been blown all over the drill floor where some ignition source touched it off.
Despite all the mechanical problems the human error of not properly monitoring for mud returns allowed the situation to get out of control. And how have I dealt with potential well flow on my wells? Even when there’s zero concern about a potential well flow I have a flow check made every time the mud pumps are turned off. This could be many hundreds if not thousands of times on an individual well. Takes about 1 minute to do it. And in addition to the hand responsible for doing the flow check I usually have at least one other hand double check. How much does this “excessive safety procedure” cost? Not one f*cking penny. I know it sounds cruel but it’s why I have very harsh feelings for the hands on the Deepwater Horizon that failed to do their job. Some of them possibly paid with their lives.
IMHO checking for flow, not the BOP, is the last line of defense. If you have activate the BOP, even if it prevents a blow out, you’ve failed at your job. You just didn’t kill anyone…this time.
rockman on Sat, 7th Jun 2014 9:23 pm
In case folks missed my long winded point: the drilling systems aren’t “flawed”. But there is a limit to want they can accomplish. Autos have been made much safer to drive in the last 40+ years. Yet tens of thousands die each year in US accidents every year. So our cars are “flawed”? Airplanes? Commuter trains? Then name one system that isn’t “flawed”?
I revolt against such articles not in defense of the equipment…improvements can always be made. But I reject any effort to not cast the blame anywhere else but on the personnel on the rig. Again sounds cruel since so many died. Maybe some of them were negligent…maybe none. There was no good reason to put any of the safety systems to a test. The only bad reason was for BP to save some money by displacing some of the heavier mud before suspending operations instead of waiting to do so during the completion phase which is SOP. A very risky decision obviously. But the crew, the rig and the environment still could have survived had they monitored the well properly. How can another such accident be avoided if the real cause of Macondo is ignored?
surf on Sun, 8th Jun 2014 12:03 am
“I reject any effort to not cast the blame anywhere else but on the personnel on the rig”
Rockman I was not attempting to divert blame elsewhere. In fact I stated that I agreed with all of the above comments.
There are two aspects of safety:
1. Procedural safety such as not standing under a load that is being hoisted. While this works it will not always prevent injury or death.
2. Engineered Safety. This is where a device is engineered so that it cannot be used in a unsafe way or a piece of equipment designed to stop an unsafe release of energy (AKA a blowout preventer). Again it doesn’t always work
while neither will work 100% of the time, together they work much better at reducing accidents and death or injury.
The NTSB(National Transportation and Safety Board) was established to investigate accidents so that changes could be made to reduce the accident rate and death rate. The process the NTSB is part of has been extensively used by the airline industry. There has been a significant drop in major airline accident over the last few decades. Sometimes the changes are procedural. Other times they are engineering changes. However very often the changes are both procedural and engineering solutions.
“IMHO checking for flow, not the BOP, is the last line of defense. If you have activate the BOP, even if it prevents a blow out, you’ve failed at your job. You just didn’t kill anyone…this time.”
I agree with this statement but it should be pointed out that if you didn’t survive you would have not have the chance to learn from the mistake and teach others on how to do the job safely.
In regards to the drill pipe. It didn’t really buckle. It only moved a few inches to the side (the movement was less than the diameter of the pipe. It would have not taken much to force to push the pipe back into position or the shape of the shear could have been changed to accommodate pipe movement. there is no reason to continue using bad blowout preventers.
The government should require all blowout preventers be fixed or replaced prior to all drilling. They should also require procedural changes to help prevent the errors that occurred on the Deepwater Horizon. Otherwise the 11 people may have died in vain.
rockman on Sun, 8th Jun 2014 12:53 am
The CSB said the buckling drill pipe prevented the BOP of functioning properly. I’ll let you argue with them. Doesn’t change the fact that even with a non- functioning BOP the well rig would not have exploded, 11 hands would not have died and millions of gallons of oil would not have been dumped into the GOM if they had monitored the mud returns and shut the well in. Human error allowed a damaged BOP to cause the blow out. So again: human intervention is the last line of defense. And that goes back to before the well came in when some of the rig personnel thought the test on the cement was flawed but they were over ruled. Had they squeezed the shoe again and had gotten a good test the well would not have kicked, the BOP would not have malfunctioned and the well would not have blown out. If BP had not intentionally put the well in an unbalanced condition the failed cement would have not allowed the well to flow, the BOP to be damaged and the well to blow out.
That’s three different situations where poor human decisions allowed the situation go to he’ll in a hand basket.
And how about a real life/real time example…no sh*t. LOL. It’s 1AM and the tool pusher just woke me up from my nap on the couch in the directional driller’s trailer. One of the two mud pumps went down limiting the ability to handle a kick if it happened. Some would take the risk and keep drilling. I won’t: ordered them to pull back up out of the curve and wait on the repair. Might burn up a few hours and cost a bit of lost time money. Not a very dangerous situation. But I’m making sure no one dies tonight in a blowout. I don’t have a BP manager sitting in bed at home busting my balls for stopping the drilling. I just emailed my boss. He’s pissed with the drilling company…second time the pump went down in 5 days. But, like our owner, he puts safety above money.
And now I will continue my nap because I don’t have to worry if my BOP will work or not.