Ok i've read much of this, and i'm going to try and present as much of the facts as possible to the situation. Firstly, apologies if i came across like the environmental issue was minor and not important, of course this is not the case.
In my industry, safety and environment are the No. 1 priorities. I can promise you now, people working offshore in the Oil and Gas industry know more about environmental systems then most, and they care more. If i did something that endangered either of the above, i would never work in the industry again.
I understand they are saying that this is the worst offshore incident environmentally after exxon valdez - but this is so wrong it's not true. In the 60's, a well blew out offshore san diego and now that, was an oil spill.... look it up and that my pedigree chums is why california is against offshore exploration. However, that was so long ago in terms of technology and safety regulations that it is almost irrelevant these days.
That brings me on to the natural seepage thing. This is a fact, worldwide, more oil seeps naturally from the seabed into the ocean then is spilt through exploration. An example of this is San Diego bay .... and also, la breaer (sp) tar pits in los Angeles, that's crude oil... naturally seeping to the surface.
In San Diego bay, Oil can easily be found on the beaches in small clumps... this is from natural seepage. Yet, amazingly, people still were blaming Chevron for this... so what did they do, they went in and developed a method of capturing this.... collecting a few thousand barrels a year...extra $ easily. Environmentalists claimed this was because of Chevrons exploration activities.... wrong, it's natural.
Anyway - I digress.
Tuesday night at approximately 10pm, The Deepwater Horzion (a Transocean, deepwater drilling - NOT Production platform i.e. does not store, process or in anyway do anything with crude oil- Rig) was finishing off cementing in to place the final runs of Production Casing on the Maconda EXPLORATION well. Ok, so what this means - You have a prospect, identified by various deep earth seismic techniques etc. This reservoir, like many in the GoM is what is known as a sub-salt reservoir. I.e. it is beneath huge salt deposits... mostly these are in the Miocene.
Drilling these subsalt wells can be tricky, as passing through the salt regions, the wells can become unstable and you can lose mud pressure (Maintaining a positive hydrostatic head of pressure down the hole is essentially what prevents blowouts during drilling... i.e.Mud Pressure at depth = 25,000psig> Resevoir pressure at depth = say 20,000 psig,) to the formation.
However, in this case, all of that had been completed, they were tripping out of the well, they were in the upper regions, very close to the surface, constructing the final well head assembly (steel casing get's cemented into the hole in different arangements to allow for down hole tooling and controls etc when they come back to produce from the well. So they were not drilling anywhere near the actual sand face of the reservoir, they were the height of a commericial airliner above it.... think about that for a second.... all of this with a 5 1/2" steel tube....
what happened at precisely 10pm, is massively unknown and by the sounds of it, something very freak..... thousands of similar wells are drilled and capped like this every year, in the same region. BUT something deep downhole let rip and the reservoir pressure suddenly overcame any kind of hydrostatic head and well, there you go.
Next however is the BOP issue. Now this are fully autonomous, safety critical pieces of equipment, comprising many fast closing, high pressure valves. However, they may of only been rated to the maximum known shut in pressure of the reservoir... With a rapid excursion and upset condition such as this, the dynamic loads on the stack components could of easily exceed the rated loads and stresses the stack is designed for, imagine an 18,000 ft column of oil (density typically c.800 kg/m3) travelling at close to the speed of sound up a string....
The BOP can also be operated by the driller - there is a big red button in the dog house (drill control center) called the career changer in the industry. You hit that, you shut in the well and all equipment down it, and disconnect the rig... essentially it could float away....
This would of happen in less then a blink of an eye, and would of been so unexpected. The well is deemed as pretty stable at this point... those 11 guys would of been working on the drill floor, and would of heard an incredible noise, but before being able to even do anything, i suspect they were probably vaporised in the massive explosion. This is the really tragic part.... as much as i know everyone thinks of some kind of kind of neglect in procedure etc, the more i think about it, this could of just been a super tragic accident... but we don't know and won't know until we simply know more.
There will be a full investigation, the MMS will coordinate and all companies involved will help as best they can, because the way we do things in offshore oil, is all based on lessons learnt, what can we do better, safer, cleaner. The money and technology investment is incredible.... I love working in the oil industry... even though it's dangerous, it appeals to my adventurous, exploratory nature, like you guys, i love that, wether its running around the mountains or whatever.
I was due actually going to be on the Horizon tomorrow, as it was supposed to have moved off the location and do a job for our team. I knew most of the bp guys on it, and so it's a little close to home...
I'll keep those posted who want to know as things come out into the open.
