Oil execs quizzed on safety as BP tries new well fix
1 of 24. A small pollution containment chamber, known as ''top hat'', is loaded onto the deck of the motor vessel Gulf Protector at Wild Well Control Inc. in Port Fourchon, La, May 10, 2010.
Credit: Reuters/Petty Officer 3rd Class Patrick Kelley-US Coast Guard/Handout
WASHINGTON/PORT FOURCHON, Louisiana |
WASHINGTON/PORT FOURCHON, Louisiana (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers pressed oil executives about flaws in a crucial well safety device on Wednesday while BP scrambled with its latest deep-sea effort to control the huge Gulf of Mexico spill that threatens environmental disaster.
BP Plc said it hoped to have a small containment dome in place by late Thursday in hopes of staunching the oil flow from the Gulf floor.
BP, Transocean Ltd and Halliburton Co were all back in the hot seat in Washington over their responsibility in a April 20 rig explosion that killed 11 workers and triggered what could be the worst-ever U.S. oil spill if the crude keeps spewing unchecked into the Gulf.
A U.S. House of Representatives panel said it had uncovered significant problems with a safety control mechanism on BP's oil well that could have contributed to the accident.
Representative Bart Stupak said his panel's investigation showed the Deepwater Horizon rig's underwater blowout preventer had a leak and was not powerful enough to cut off the oil flow before the rig blew up.
Panel investigators spoke with officials of the company that made the blowout preventer and reviewed company documents, finding that the device on the Transocean-owned rig had been modified, making it difficult to operate after the accident.
"The safety of its entire operations rested on the performance of a leaking and apparently defective blowout preventer," Stupak said.
A race is on to contain the catastrophe with BP preparing another potential subsea fix. Meanwhile, oil is still gushing from the sea floor at a rate of about 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons/795,000 litres) per day and oil has reached at least four shorelines.
Shoreline cleanup and assessment teams said on Wednesday that crews found oil washing ashore at Whiskey Island in the western part of Louisiana's Terrebonne Bay, west of the Mississippi Delta. Crude had been found previously at the Chandeleur Islands and Port Eads in that state, as well as on Dauphin Island, Alabama.
An attempt to manoeuvre a "top hat" containment dome over the seabed leak -- the second such effort in days -- was under way. BP engineers have lowered it to the seabed and are hoping to start capturing oil in it by late Thursday.
The company is not guaranteeing it will work, citing the difficulties of working almost a mile (1.6 km) under the ocean surface.
BP also is drilling a relief well, which could take 80 more days. Within two weeks it aims to try to plug the leak by pumping materials like shredded tires and golf balls into the well at high pressure.
Despite the efforts, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he is unhappy with the inability so far to stop the leak.
"We're depressed, frankly, with what has happened here," he said after meeting with BP engineers in Houston. "There is a great deal of frustration."
Investors have cut the value of BP shares by more than $30 billion (20.2 billion pounds) since the accident, exceeding even the worst estimates of the spill's cost, reflecting uncertainty about how the calamity will play out.
BP shares fell 0.7 percent in London, while Transocean fell down 2 percent and Halliburton was up 1.8 percent in New York.
Fisheries and tourism, two of the Gulf's economic mainstays, along with birds, sea turtles and other wildlife, are threatened by the unfolding fiasco that could surpass the massive Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska in 1989.
LOCAL IMPACT
With most of the shrimping grounds near Grand Isle, Louisiana, shut down, Ronald Polkey was one of dozens of local fishermen waiting in line at the town's community centre on Wednesday, hoping BP will cut him a check.
"We're screwed this year for shrimp," Polkey, 42, said. "I took all the nets off my boat."
To make matters worse, he said, he left a temporary job laying boom when BP offered to pay him $2,000 a day for spill mitigation. He is still waiting to be put to work.
The White House proposed new legislation which foresees $188 million in one-time discretionary spending -- most of which will be covered by BP -- so assistance can be sped to those affected if the spill worsens.
It would also lift an existing cap on damage liability for the company responsible -- in this case BP -- relating to economic losses caused by the spill. The legislation also calls for a 1 cent-per-barrel increase in the tax that oil companies pay to an oil spill liability fund.
Protesters are becoming more active in Washington and the Gulf region. An activist group called Seize BP planned protests at the company's offices and other sites across the country on Wednesday to demand the government freeze BP's assets to ensure payment for the cleanup and compensation for those impacted.
A new opinion poll showed that despite the oil spill 57 percent of likely voters agree that offshore drilling "is still a safe, reliable and cost-efficient method of producing oil." The poll also showed 53 percent thought expansion of offshore drilling will lead to increased environmental problems.
Cathy Norman of the Edward Wisner Donation, a land trust that owns the property that makes up the Port of Fourchon, the main harbour for the Gulf's deepwater oil and gas industry, said the area's shoreline already is "disappearing at an astronomical rate."
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast persistent southeast winds throughout the week, which have the potential to move new oil onshore.
(Additional reporting by Tom Doggett, Ayesha Rascoe and David Alexander in Washington, Steve Gorman in Grand Isle, Louisiana, Shaleem Thompson and Don Pessin in Venice, Louisiana, Verna Gates in Mobile, Alabama and Pascal Fletcher; Writing by Deborah Charles and Jeffrey Jones; editing by Bill Trott)
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Thanks for the note of how BP wants suggestion to flow in, but I will not do as asked. I am a seasoned veteran of the oil and gas industry, and know as much or more than most on the BP payroll now and for sure know more than the greenhorn engineers that have less than 10 years in the field.
Glad that I got the way BP says they want things done and that is fine with me, but I will not work that way. I want to be paid up front for my plan, process and the design of products needed to get the job done right the first time and right on time. And that is not the way BP is progressing at this time.
Otherwise I will remain to be vocal and publish the facts as the BP crew continues to ruin our Rich and Abundant Gulf of Mexico. I will not under any situation yield to lack of common sense in any form by any one. And at this time stupidity has been the proven way to not do things right the first time.
BP has proved to most they are full of BS and that is something and some people I will not be associated with. The truth with facts has not been a part of any plan for us to work with.
However, when the last song is sang I will still be here, but most at BP will be out looking for another job or have been indicted arrested and waiting trial.
Best Regards
Dwight Baker
Have you had enough of BP BS?
By Dwight Baker
May 11, 2010
Dbaker007@stx.rr.com
Eagles Eye View Aiming at Issues for We the People Advocates
Just received this from BP today, to try for them to explain why they have no intention in at looking at my plan or wanting others to know first hand all of the real problems not yet put forth.
Suggestions
What is being done with submitted suggestions?
Throughout the ongoing response efforts thousands of people across the globe have offered their ideas for stopping the flow of oil into the Gulf, containing or recovering it, or cleaning it up.
BP has established a process to receive and review submitted suggestions, on how to stop the flow of oil or contain the spill emanating from the Mississippi Canyon 252 well. Proposals are reviewed for their technical feasibility and proof of application.
More than 4,800 ideas have been proposed to date. Given this quantity of technical proposals suggested by industry professionals and the public, it may take some time to technically review each one.
All proposals submitted through the process defined below will be reviewed.
Failure to follow the process below will likely delay proposed solutions from being reviewed.
If you want to offer suggestions by phone:
Please call 281.366.5511. After each call, the caller will be sent a simple form to provide details. When the caller completes and submits this form, the proposal is sent to BP technical personnel for review.
If you want to offer suggestions online:
A suggestion submission form is available at: http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/clients/2931/319487.pdf. Follow instructions on the form.
For most timely review, please use this process to submit your suggestion.
What happens with your proposal?
· All proposals are reviewed for technical feasibility and application. Given the volume of proposals, this may take some time. A reply will be sent via email or fax to each caller informing them of the technical review outcome.
· Feasible solutions will be forwarded for additional consideration. Callers whose ideas are considered feasible will be advised by email that we will contact them if and when their support is needed.
Unified Command thanks each submitter for their interest and willingness to share their ideas.
MY TAKE TODAY May 11, 2010
Petrobas Brazil oil and gas Company has drilled completed and is producing oil and gas from depths at 8,000 feet deep on the seabeds. Petrobas buys equipment from around the world, as does BP to do the job.
So how can Petrobas do those things in deeper water than BP with success and BP cannot? People are the problem. Wall Street crew snookered us the people in the USA when they captured us with their lies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrobras
http://www.offshore-mag.com/index/article-display/3358042793/articles/offshore/subsea/latin-america/petrobras-contracts0.html
Good source for UP DATES
http://www.upstreamonline.com/live/article214055.ece
“This is the first time the industry has had to confront this issue in this water depth, and there is a lot of real-time learning going on,” BP’s chief executive officer, Tony Hayward, acknowledged at a news conference Monday. “The investigation of this whole incident will undoubtedly show up things that we should be doing differently.”
Heavy winds and choppy seas became another challenge on Monday, with workers on cleanup vessels forced to wear respirators to protect themselves from fumes coming from burning the oil slick. “This is a very challenging environment to work in,” Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer for exploration and production, told reporters at a briefing in Robert, La.
BP executives concede that containment has been easier than plugging the leak, which must be the ultimate solution to the problem well. Officials had hoped that a four-story, 98-ton containment dome deployed over the weekend would funnel 85 percent of the leak from the riser pipe to a pipeline connected to a containment ship. But it became clogged by an unexpectedly high buildup of gas hydrates, crystal structures that form when gas and water mix in the low temperatures and high pressures of deep ocean waters.
The containment vessel will be lowered while still attached to a drill ship. Kent Wells, a BP senior vice president for exploration and production, compared the operation to “heart surgery under 5,000 feet” of water.
As early as next week, the company is preparing to execute a technique called a “junk shot,” reconfiguring the crippled blowout preventer above the well and injecting golf balls, pieces of rubber tire, knots of rope and other materials to choke off the well.
If nothing else succeeds, BP has begun drilling one relief well and is planning another. One will intercept the leaking well and fill it with concrete to close it for good. But the wells take 90 days to complete.
“It’s clearly a situation that is serious for BP,” Mr. Hayward said. “The relief wells ultimately will be successful.”
Clifford Krauss reported from Houston, and Susan Saulny from New Orleans.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/11/us/11hearings.html?fta=y
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/11/science/11blowout.html?fta=y
HOUSTON — At 53 feet tall and 325 tons, the blowout preventer that occupies center stage in the worst American oil spill in two decades is a huge stack of equipment. But it is also a jumble of contradictions.
It’s simple: a brute monster capable of strangling a pipe, or in more desperate circumstances beheading it, to block the flow of oil and gas at enormous pressures from a formation deep underground. But it is also complex, controlled by an elegant brain of elaborate circuits custom built from pipes, not wires, and using hydraulic fluid instead of electrons.
Most of the time the device, commonly called a B.O.P., does little but sit on the seabed as drilling pipe and liquids travel through its main bore, which is usually about a foot and a half wide. But in the occasional frenetic moments when the B.O.P. is called into action it must work. Ordinarily no one ever hears about blowout preventers. Now the world has.
Blowout preventers are essential for drilling on land or underwater, and the rig accident has prompted talk of improvements, like use of modular parts or better materials. And the broader application of different drilling techniques may help operators become less reliant on the devices.
Catastrophic failures are rare, but the devices are not without problems. Hydraulic circuits can leak, seals can erode, and other problems can crop up when the devices are tested, as they are supposed to be regularly. And as the April 20 blowout in the Gulf of Mexico showed, a device’s redundant systems and backups may not help. Investigators still do not know exactly why this B.O.P., which was tested 10 days before the accident, did not do its job.
But there is currently no alternative to the use of blowout preventers on many wells. “As the second of two barriers to containing formation pressures, the B.O.P. is integral to doing our job,” said John Rogers Smith, an associate professor of petroleum engineering at Louisiana State University.
The key to safely drilling for oil or gas is controlling the pressure in the well hole. The primary method involves circulating special fluid, generically called “mud,” down through the drill pipe and back up the space between the pipe and a larger pipe called a casing.
The mud recipe can be altered to make it lighter or heavier as needed. As long as the hydrostatic pressure of the column of mud exceeds the pressure in the formation being drilled, the well remains under control.
But if the drill bit hits an area of higher pressure, there can be a surge of oil or gas into the mud — a “kick” in oil-speak. That is when operators on the drilling rig will activate the blowout preventer to block the upward flow of higher-pressure mud, which if not controlled can quickly be followed by oil and gas.
In the blowout preventer, one or more massive rams mounted perpendicular to the flow can be activated, sealing the space between the drill pipe and the bore of the preventer, covering the opening if there is no drill pipe or even shearing the pipe if necessary. Another device on the stack, a doughnutlike rubber ring called an annular preventer, can seal the space between the drill pipe and the bore but still allow the pipe.
However the flow is blocked, the mud can be diverted into a separate line with a valve called a choke. By closing this valve, the open loop of circulating mud becomes a closed one, and backpressure builds until it exceeds the pressure of the kick. Then heavier mud can be circulated and drilling can be resumed.
“The whole point of using the B.O.P. to react to a kick and control it properly is to prevent it from becoming a blowout,” Dr. Smith said.
The principle of using brute-force rams to control a well was developed nearly a century ago. “The basic function hasn’t changed,” said Bob Sherrill, who built and repaired blowout preventers for 20 years and now runs Blackwater Subsea, a Houston company that supplies personnel for deepwater work. “What has changed are the materials — they’ve gotten a lot more sophisticated, a lot stronger.”
They have also been made more corrosion resistant, to counteract problems caused largely by hydrogen sulfide gas found in oil deposits. Still, Mr. Sherrill said, the harsh conditions mean that preventers must be rebuilt every seven years or so.
“As you cycle these things back and forth, you end up with small scratches,” he said. “Cavities wear out.”
With Spill, Focus Turns to Well-Blocking System
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/11/science/11blowout.html?pagewanted=2&fta=y
Blowout preventers also changed when offshore drilling began in earnest in the 1950s and ’60s. Preventers used on land are far easier to repair, and the rams can be locked in place manually or closed with wrenches if hydraulics fails. In water, below about 1,000 feet, they can be serviced only by robotic submersibles, and locking the rams in place requires a second hydraulic system.
There is also no way to close them by hand if the hydraulics fails. So the control systems on subsea B.O.P.s are far more elaborate and redundant, with two identical pods on each stack.
Those pods are huge — 20 feet tall in some cases — and filled with a hundred or more hydraulic valves, electrically operated solenoids and other devices. The works are enclosed to protect them from pressure and moisture, but exposed, the gleaming array of pipes and switches, fabricated from high-strength steel, looks like a techno version of an old telephone operator’s console.
Graeme Reynolds, manager of B.O.P. controls at Oceaneering International, a company that is best known for its robotic submersibles used in deepwater work, said pods had to be custom-built for each blowout preventer.
“We can’t go into the industrial hydraulics market and buy stuff that will satisfy us,” he said. “It won’t meet our thermal criteria, it won’t meet our pressures. So we have to make all that stuff ourselves.”
As a result they can be extremely expensive — as much as $18 million or more for the controls on a typical deepwater B.O.P.
In normal use, the controls are activated by an electrical line that accompanies a hydraulic line running from the drill rig. If a decision is made to close a ram, a signal activates solenoids that open valves, allowing water-based hydraulic fluid to flow into the proper cylinders on the stack. Special pressure tanks on the drill ship called accumulators, which contain hydraulic fluid and a charge of nitrogen, provide a burst of power to close the rams, usually in about 30 seconds.
But the control pods have backup systems, including accumulators on the stack itself that can provide enough hydraulic power to close rams if power is lost from the surface. A deadman device fires some of the switches if both electric and hydraulic power are lost. (A 2003 report for the Minerals Management Service, the federal agency that oversees offshore drilling, found that deadman devices often were not armed because of fear that they would activate prematurely, necessitating costly fixes. BP said the deadman switch did not activate in the April 20 blowout.)
In Norway and Brazil, another backup is required: a switch that works on acoustic signals received from the drill ship. The industry in the United States has successfully fought proposals to require the switches, arguing that they are unreliable. And industry experts pointed out that in the current spill, if the regular and deadman switches could not activate the rams, an acoustic switch would not have worked either.
As a final backup, B.O.P.s must be able to be activated by robotic submersibles. So the control units have special valves that can use hydraulic fluid provided by the submersible using a probe called a hot stab. BP officials said that since the accident they had been able to activate some of the rams to some degree using this method.
If the blowout preventer is damaged or contains an unsealable section of pipe, the best hope for stopping the leak, other than drilling a relief well, is to route heavy mud around the preventer stack and into the well. This would involve first reconfiguring the preventer, something that is difficult but not impossible, experts say. BP officials say they are exploring this option.
Other than that, though, a damaged blowout preventer is really not repairable until it is brought to the surface.
Mr. Reynolds of Oceaneering has devised a modular system of swappable parts so that a submersible can “go down, grab a hold of something, pull it out and plug another one in.” The approach is similar to what NASA has employed to repair the Hubble. While it would not be useful in accidents like this, it would help with maintenance. But for the approach to really work, B.O.P.s would have to be redesigned.
For the industry, a different approach to drilling might mean less reliance on blowout preventers, although they would still have to be used.
In so-called managed pressure drilling, the wellhead is sealed by a rotating rubber cone, creating a closed-loop mud circulation system that allows for more precise control over pressures.
The technique raises other problems, and so far has not been used much with floating oil rigs or subsea blowout preventers, said Dr. Smith of L.S.U. “But it would allow us to respond faster to abnormal conditions,” he said.
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