[pasttense]

"The Deepwater Horizon oil spill (also referred to as the BP oil spill, the BP oil disaster, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and the Macondo blowout) was an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on the BP-operated Macondo Prospect, considered the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry, estimated to be between 8% and 31% larger in volume than the earlier Ixtoc I oil spill. Following the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, which claimed 11 lives, a sea-floor oil gusher flowed for 87 days, until it was capped on 15 July 2010. The total discharge is estimated at 4.9 million barrels (210 million US gal; 780,000 m3)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_ ... _oil_spill
I'm sure quite a few people here followed this with great interest (myself at The Oil Drum).

Anyone have any thoughts on whether or not it could happen again, changes in oil drilling practices, changes in regulation, recovery from environmental damage, and/or other topics?

[agramante]

Absent the US adopting UK-style safety-case management (and I don't know if a change that big from our current regulatory regime would require an act of Congress...in which case, good luck wi'that), I think the biggest incentive oil companies have to not recklessly cause that kind of spill again is simply the force of the market. The PR would be so horrible for another big blowout--at least in US territorial waters--that the company might not survive.

I consider the wall street crash of 2008 and the Macondo blowout of 2010 to be products of precisely the same damn-the-risks, no-accountability mindset, only BP was identified as the cause of undeniable destruction, whereas wall street was able to slip by unscathed by creating sufficient doubt and confusion as to its malfeasance. An oil slick is much more readily identifiable than values collapsing due to derivative fraud.

[John_A]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pasttense', '
')Anyone have any thoughts on whether or not it could happen again, changes in oil drilling practices, changes in regulation, recovery from environmental damage, and/or other topics?

[ROCKMAN]

A – “I think the biggest incentive oil companies have to not recklessly cause that kind of spill again is simply the force of the market. “ Actually in the grand scheme of things that’s very little incentive compared to financial loss. Forget anything of the magnitude of BP’s monetary loss. A blow out offshore with no spill or loss of life (and thus no “Film at 11”) can easily cost a company several $million to $10 million which wouldn’t include the loss of well that may have cost $10+ million by that point. And forget about an event as serious as a blowout. If a Deep Water well just takes a “kick” (oil/NG flows to the surface while drilling) and the BOP activates , ends the situation and they recover to go back to drilling: that can easily take several days to a week. At a daily ops cost of $700k to $900k per day you can see how expensive just taking a kick can be. There are hundreds of kicks taken in wells drilling in the Gulf Coast every year that the public never hears about. Fortunately only a very small percentage gets away from them and blows out.

And then there’s the potential loss of a company’s license to drill on fed lands. No company has the right drill a well offshore. You have to be certified by the feds. And they withdraw a company’s certification any time they feel it’s appropriate. And there is no appeal system. For a company that does nothing significant other than offshore drilling such a penalty would put them out of business. And then there are private companies like mine: we don’t have to give a crap what the public thinks of us. We don’t have stock or gas stations to boycott. My only incentives to be safe is not loss my owner $millions and not kill/cripple any of my hands. Enough reasons for me. LOL.

And then there’s an even bigger incentive to not be reckless by the hands out on the rigs: not burning to death or being crippled for life. LOL. Hands tend to try real hard to not make mistakes when doing so might kill them.

[Plantagenet]

I was struck throughout the event at just how incompetent and feckless and generally useless the government regulators were.

Yes, BP and Transocean and Halliburton cut corners and caused the accident. But what in heck happened to the government regulators who were overseeing the whole process and supposedly protecting the workers and the environment?

The whole permit process was a farce. The Macondo well was the deepest well ever drilled in the GOM, and it was being done in an entirely new area, but the government regulators gave BP an exemption from the EIS process, so they never had to plan and present in advance how they were going to deal with potential problems at this very deep well. Regulators also inspected the Deepwater Horizon rig before drilling and then signed off on all aspects of the drilling process----so if there were problems with the Blow out preventer or the drilling itself either the inspectors missed it or didn't give a darn. The head of the MMS was a recently appointed Obama lawyer who knew nothing about oil or drilling and had obviously been put in his job only so he could collect a cushy salary---he was totally out of his depth. Then when the blowout started the government team released absurdly low estimates of the size of the leak for two weeks, reflecting either yet more incompetence or some kind of dumb attempt at a coverup done with BP, until independent university scientists using satellite imagery proved the spill was 10x bigger then the government spokesman was saying. And of course later there were the tons and tons of carcinogenic dispersants, which the government gave BP yet another waiver from environmental laws so they could dump them at the leak site and further pollute the GOM.

Sheesh!

[ROCKMAN]

P - All very true IMHO and all very sad.

Saw the first of a new HBO series this weekend: Newsroom. Used the Macondo blowout as the main story line. Did a rather accurate depiction of the initial event despite being written by a bunch of pinko commie liberals. LOL.

The only problem I saw was they were trying to stick too much blame on Halliburton. First let me clearly state: I don’t like Halliburton. They pissed me and my boss off years ago over a non-technical issue and it will snow in hell before I ever use them again. Unless of course they were the only company available at the time.

Here’s my account of what went wrong at Macondo which, based upon the testimonies that eventually came out, seems rather accurate. First some basic background for any newbies out there. The reservoir that blew out was at around 12,500 psi as I vague recall. There exact number isn’t critical. So why didn’t the zone start flowing and blowout when it was first drilled? After all there was no casing in the hole let alone any cement…good or failed. At numerous points in time there was a 10”+ hole from the reservoir to the drill floor with nothing to stop the oil/Ng from rushing up. Very simple: the column of drill mud in the hole provided a back pressure higher than the reservoir pressure. A very simple physical law: a fluid flows from high pressure to low pressure. The metric we use to define the drilling mud weight is ppg: pounds per gallon. Whish just as simple as it sounds. A 9.5 ppg (normal pressure) drilling mud weight 9.5 pounds per gallon of mud. The mud weight (MW) is designed to be greater than the reservoir pressure we anticipate drilling into. The effective pressure of a XXXXX” column of mud that weighs Y ppg is easily calculated. If I expect a reservoir will be at the equivalent pressure of 12 ppg I would drill it 14.5 ppg mud. Thus the pressure produced by that column of mud would exceed the reservoir pressure and thus would not flow up the hole. Again memories fade but I think the Macondo reservoir as around 11,500 psi which would equate to a 12.52 ppg and was drilled with a 14.5 ppg mud. Thus with no casing or cement the reservoir did not “come in”…flow up the well bore.

Halliburton cement failure: I gave a long explanation in another thread so I’ll make it very short: cement jobs fail all the time. In the last 24 hours cement has been tested and shown to be inadequate in probably 30+ wells around the world including offshore GOM. Neither Halliburton nor any other cement company will guarantee a cement job…never have…never will. Failure is so common we keep the equipment to fix it on the rig 24/7. Cement failure is a more common problem than all other problems combined…by a wide margin. H. et al will use the cement as specified by the operator and pump it according to the operators SOP. As long as H. et al follows those instructions they have no liability and will charge full price whether the cmt test positive or not. And the operator is required to test the cmt…not H et al.

Most have seen the testimonies regarding the argument on the rig as to whether the cement tested positive or not. Obvious it had not set proper and allowed the oil/NG to flow down the annulus (the gap between the casing and the rock) and flow up the well bore. But how could that happen if the mud in the well bore weighed enough to prevent such a flow? Easy answer: the fluid column did not weight more than the reservoir pressure. BP chose to replace some of the heavy mud with much lighter salt water. Again, very simple science: fluid flowed from higher pressure to lower pressure. This is called putting a well in an “unbalanced state”. Always consider a very unsafe condition. In 38 years I’ve never intentionally put a well into an unbalanced state while drilling. I’ve never seen another operator intentionally do it.

And the saddest part of the story: even with the cement not isolating the reservoir the well would not have blown out had they seen the “kick” (oil/NG flowing up the well bore) coming up. And how do we see the signs of a kick: shut the mud pumps off. If the mud from the well bore doesn’t stop coming out of the return line from the well bore then something must be pushing it out. I know that sounds simplistically stupid but that is the primary method for preventing a blow out and it isn’t the BOP (blow out preventer). The oil patch doesn’t consider the BOP to be the option of last resort but the option of worst resort.

It’s called “checking returns”: watching the mud flow after you turn the pumps off. I’ve drilled deep wells where I’ve had hands check returns thousands of times while drilling…virtually every time the pumps were turned off. And when drilling deep have two or more hands independently check returns. So what went wrong?

I wasn’t there and I really don’t like saying this but it seems as simple as no one was watching the returns. If they had they would have seen the well taking a kick and could have shut it in to isolate the flow of oil/NG. I can make a guess why they weren’t paying attention: the hands were rigging down and preparing to move the Deep Water Horizon. Been there…done that. A mad scramble to get you inventory accounted, equipment stowed and get a seat on a chopper to the bank. Again stupefying simple: with the pumps off no mud should be coming out of the well.

But someone did see the well kicking but the evidence apparently wasn’t accepted by the rig personnel. The captain of a supply boat was having drill mud pumped into his storage tanks. He radioed to the rig to stop pumping…his tanks were full. The rig said he had to be wrong: they didn’t have that much mud in the rig tanks. And they didn’t: the excess mud was that being pushed out of the well bore by the kick. Apparently every bbl of drill mud had been displaced by the oil/NG.

No change in regulations, no additional inspectors, no better designed BOP’s, etc. can offset human error. One mandated change in protocol would make a big difference: never allow a well in that phase slip into an unbalanced state. BP did it to save a little money. I’ve already taken up a lot of space so I won’t explain further.

There were other critical issues and mistakes I skipped. A big one: the argument on the rig as to whether the cement test was being interpreted correctly. The hand losing the argument end with the statement: “Well, I guess that’s why we have BOP’s”. That was not a casual remark…it was said for a very specific reason and intentionally done so in front of witnesses. I’ve witnessed it before. I’ve used it twice myself. On one of those occasions it got my contract cancelled. It is not said lightly. It equates to pissing down the other guy’s pant leg. In such situations it can boil down to a matter of wills.

And what I will never understand is why the hands concerned about the test didn’t make a specific point of checking the returns. As I said checking returns is SOP without concerns over a possible bad cement job.

So to repeat my answer here as to the possibility of another Macondo: it could happen tomorrow. And do so regardless of increased inspections or new regs. We can never escape the consequences of human error. The only way to reduce the risk to zero is to never drill another well offshore. That’s for the citizens, through its political leaders, to decide. No company has the rights to drill in federal waters. It’s a privilege granted by the govt.

So that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Others will have different thoughts, of course.

[rockdoc123]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')o to repeat my answer here as to the possibility of another Macondo: it could happen tomorrow. And do so regardless of increased inspections or new regs. We can never escape the consequences of human error. The only way to reduce the risk to zero is to never drill another well offshore. That’s for the citizens, through its political leaders, to decide. No company has the rights to drill in federal waters. It’s a privilege granted by the govt.

[John_A]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', '
')Yes, BP and Transocean and Halliburton cut corners and caused the accident. But what in heck happened to the government regulators who were overseeing the whole process and supposedly protecting the workers and the environment?

[ROCKMAN]

Doc – If my fading memory serves me the cmt procedure as well as the entire temp abandonment protocol came from the BP office. They did have the standard pre-job safety meeting. That was where the argument over the validity of the cmt test and that “why we have BOP’s” statement was made. Like me you know you don’t piss into the driller super’s coffee cup in front of all the hands instead of behind a closed door unless you’re worried enough to take a chance on getting your butt run off. That’s why that conversation became so well known: done in front of a dozen hands or more with a variety of other service companies.

And again: if the concern was so great why wasn’t any extra effort made to be sure returns were being checked for a kick? Can you imagine any well you’ve ever been involved with that drilling or cementing underbalanced and there not being 2 or more hands watching returns every second?

[Oily Stuff]

I had the privilege of working as a blowout hand for the 2nd largest, single best well control company in the world for many years, around the world, onshore and off. That qualifies me to say this: I was not there on that floor when that event occurred and neither were any of you. Watching from afar or sitting at your computer watching streaming videos taken from an ROV does not make a blowout expert. I was up close and very personal with many blowouts in my career and I am no expert, not by a country mile. There were only 4-5 men in the history of the profession that I would ever call experts. All but one of them is gone. People have been speculating, guessing, second guessing and armchair quarterbacking this event for 3 years, plumb to death. I lost a friend out there. I have lost too many friends to things like that.

Regardless of why that happened out there what people need to take away from that tragedy, that accident, is to trust in human ability and have faith in human spirit. What BP, and Wild Well Control people did, how other DW engineers from Shell and Exxon assisted BP to partially contain that flow, to cap that well and top kill it, to intersect it at the liner shoe and kill it stone cold dead, in 5000 feet of water, was nothing short of a miracle. An engineering feat of immense proportion. If it happens again, and it will, those that needed to have learned from that tragedy, did learn. They will be better prepared. That's what matters, nothing more.

It time to move on.

[pec]

This is for Rockman about mud return flow monitoring:
I get that it is really important to watch. Important enough to have two hands watching. And I read about this before, but this time I realize a significant issue. The returns were flowing directly into a barge. I wonder where on the deck of the rig those assigned to watch could have stood in order to see the flow in the barge? Did the guys who were assigned the job of watching just wander about looking to a place where they could see into the barge, or what? Surely after a few minutes to doing that they would thought to report back to the boss that they had a problem. Maybe they were assigned to watch the outlet of a pipe the had nothing to do with returns, so they never had anything to report. Maybe no one was watching because no one was assigned to watch because of management hubris.

[agramante]

pec, you touch on an issue which Rock alluded to--the command structure. Even in the oilfield services industry (I'm not a driller, just an acoustical engineer) safety at the operation is stressed, hard and repeatedly. Stop-work authority. "If it doesn't feel right, it probably isn't." "Our goal is to send you home as healthy as you came out here." Endless mantras and repetitions of that thought. But what drove the rig to that accident was the corporate culture of minimizing costs by any means necessary, which expressed itself on the scene with the reckless decisions made by rig management. (If you've read any of the testimony from the Coast Guard hearings, you know that the most critical BP engineers--the guys in charge of the work flow, managing the safety and adequacy of each step--did not testify. And significant questions were raised about the choices they made, concerning the pressure test, the cement job, and the spacers.) Those managers' aggressiveness or caution would be a product of the corporate culture. Time is always money in the field, but how drastic is the tradeoff? How much pressure was being applied to the engineers and supervisors on the scene to hurry up a project about a month behind schedule? Were there threats, implied or explicit, to their career security if the project experienced any further delay? A rig hand has only so much power to make his environment safer if management is incorrectly saying, "We're good here, test is satisfactory, let's button up."

As to the gulf's biological recovery, NOAA is using valuable deficit dollars to continue monitoring the entire northern Gulf. Suffice to say that open-water systems show a lot of resilience. New, oxygenated, largely contaminant-free water circulates in and displaces much of what was there. And don't forget that roughly two tankers' worth of petroleum leaks naturally into the Gulf every year, albeit over the course of the whole year, and over a widespread area. But that's part of the point: an ecosystem and organisms are in place which can process oil spills. (One consequence of this was the lowered oxygen levels in water where there had been blooms of oil- and methane-consuming organisms.)

However, the problems become more chronic in the lower-energy-level areas, the marshes and swamps, where water residence time is longer, and the petroleum can seep into fine sediment (like how it still exists under the rocks and pebbles in Prince William Sound). The oil in places like that might never leave, until they erode away or are buried deep and become source rocks for yet more petroleum. Organisms which live there are now in a chronically polluted, and perhaps toxic, environment.

[rockdoc123]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')f it happens again, and it will, those that needed to have learned from that tragedy, did learn. They will be better prepared. That's what matters, nothing more.

[Oily Stuff]

Thank you, Rockdoc; no need to lecture me, however. Of course I understand how important it is to break down every aspect of any oilfield accident, especially one of such magnitude as the BP disaster. We have been doing exactly that, for 3 years now; volumes of testimony, full length feature films and countless books exist about the Macondo event. It seems to me we pretty much understand what happened, even the root causes, and know what needs to be done going forward. If you were to google subsea systems, for instance, I think you would be hard pressed to disagree that the offshore industry has made enormous progress since 2010 in being prepared for the next disaster.

Reopening the BP debate every Macondo anniversary invariably leads to criticism and the same old, tired blame game. People in the world can't get past what's wrong about the offshore industry. If you and others believe that is productive, please carry on, sir. I personally would rather focus on what is incredibly right about that industry. There are a whole bunch of brilliant, hard working men and women out there doing good things. They have earned our trust.

[dinopello]

2010 BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Is Still Contaminating the Gulf: Study

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')cientists recently made a stunning discovery that proves the effects of the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill are still widespread in the Gulf of Mexico.

During a recent study, as many as 10 million gallons of crude oil from the 210-million-gallon spill were discovered in sediment on the Gulf floor. The study was led by Jeff Chanton, Professor of Oceanography at Florida State University, who traveled some 60 miles southeast of the Mississippi Delta to perform the survey.

“This is going to affect the Gulf for years to come,” Chanton said. “Fish will likely ingest contaminants because worms ingest the sediment, and fish eat the worms. It’s a conduit for contamination into the food web.”

[ROCKMAN]

dino - "The only part that surprises me is that it is called a stunning discovery. What did they think happened to all that oil?" Not only that but they also tend to avoid explaining that the remaining oil contamination is dispersed in at a level of a low number of parts per million. Still not good but it's also not giant blobs of oil sitting on the bottom. As far as it making it into to the food chain that's certainly true. But also true for the billions of gallons of oil that have leaked naturally from the sea floor of the eons.

[DesuMaiden]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dinopello', '[')url=http://www.weather.com/science/environment/news/oil-discovered-deepwater-horizon-spill]2010 BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Is Still Contaminating the Gulf: Study[/url]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')cientists recently made a stunning discovery that proves the effects of the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill are still widespread in the Gulf of Mexico.

During a recent study, as many as 10 million gallons of crude oil from the 210-million-gallon spill were discovered in sediment on the Gulf floor. The study was led by Jeff Chanton, Professor of Oceanography at Florida State University, who traveled some 60 miles southeast of the Mississippi Delta to perform the survey.

“This is going to affect the Gulf for years to come,” Chanton said. “Fish will likely ingest contaminants because worms ingest the sediment, and fish eat the worms. It’s a conduit for contamination into the food web.”

[ROCKMAN]

Pstarr - Sorry...you got the numbers wrong. From wiki: "The well was drilling a deep exploratory well, 18,360 feet below sea level, in approximately 5,100 feet of water."

IOW they had only drilled 13,270' "below the midline" (the seafloor). The last Deep Water well I sat on for Devon drilled 34,000' below the mudline. As far as drilling the rocks themselves the tech/difficulty is not a function of water depth. Had the.Macondo well been drilled in 100' of water instead of 5,100' and the down hole conditions the same the blow out would have happened just as it did. But dealing with capping the well after the explosion would have been EASIER in 100' of water but not EASY. In fact it probably still would have taken drilling the second "kill well".

You want deep and dangerous, here you go:

"Exxon Mobil, was there early on at Blackbeard West but retreated, frightened away by the high temperatures and pressures encountered at depths below the mud line in excess of 30,000 feet. Its lawyers were terrified of another Exxon Valdez should there be a blowout and the public relations disaster that would ensue. McMoRan’s CEO, James R. Moffett gained control from XOM, reentered Blackbeard West, went down another 2500′ and found a huge discovery starting this whole shelf play in earnest. The wells have proved challenging to drill and so far, even more challenging to complete and bring onto production."

And the water depth of this potential nightmare well...20'.

Now let's talk reservoir pressure. When drilling a well the drill mud "weight" is used to stop the oil/NG from flowing into the well bore. Measured in pounds per gallon . A "normal" pressure well takes about 9.5 #/gal. A "light geopressured" well...about 12.5 to 14 #/gal. A "hard geopresured well...16 to 18 #/gal.

Macondo - from
https://www.nae.edu/Publications/Bridge ... 62568.aspx

"The pore pressure decreased from about 14.1 pounds per gallon (ppg) in a saltwater-bearing reservoir to about 12.6 ppg in the deepest hydrocarbon-bearing reservoir. Therefore, the drilling mud weight had to be at least 14.1 ppg to prevent the flow of hydrocarbons from the saltwater reservoir."

Here's a sneak peak of future details: the Macondo reservoir, then behind casing, required 12.5+ #/gal to prevent it from flowing up the well bore annulus (the space between the reservoir and the casing). The cement pumped into the annulus is designed to prevent this from happening when the mud weight is reduced...as is done when completing the well. But the Macondo cement failed and did not prevent annular flow once the mud weight was lowered. This was the root of the argument over the questionable "negative pressure test". But understand that cement failure is THE most common drilling failure. So common the equipment (squeeze tool) used to fix the cement is kept on every drill rig. The Rockman has been on individual wells that had numerous squeeze jobs.

By replacing some of the drill mud with sea water the weight was not sufficient to hold back the reservoir pressure. This is called a well not "being in balance". With the cement not holding the oil/NG flowed up the well bore. But this is just the well " taking a kick" and not blowing out. Kicks happen hundreds of times every year in the GOM. Rarely do they turn into blow outs.

Here's the critical point: not once in 41 one years the Rockman has never left a well "not in balance" during this stage. Not once in 41 years has the Rockman seen any company leave a well "not in balance" at this stage.

Lots more details later.