Regular WUWT commenter Jimmy Haigh, a geologist by trade, sends along a PDF that is a compilation of on the scene photos taken right after the explosion and in the following two days. I’ve converted it to web format. These were taken by people on the scene during the rescue and firefighting operation. There’s also a narrative, done by a person “in the know”. You won’t find this at AP or Reuters.
You may have heard the news in the last week about the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig which caught fire, burned for two days, then sank in 5,000 ft of water in the Gulf of Mexico. There are still 11 men missing, and they are not expected to be found.
The rig belongs to Transocean, the world’s biggest offshore drilling contractor. The rig was originally contracted through the year 2013 to BP and was working on BP’s Macondo exploration well when the fire broke out. The rig costs about $500,000 per day to contract. The full drilling spread, with helicopters and support vessels and other services, will cost closer to $1,000,000 per day to operate in the course of drilling for oil and gas. The rig cost about $350,000,000 to build in 2001 and would cost at least double that to replace today.
The rig represents the cutting edge of drilling technology. It is a floating rig, capable of working in up to 10,000 ft water depth. The rig is not moored; It does not use anchors because it would be too costly and too heavy to suspend this mooring load from the floating structure. Rather, a triply-redundant computer system uses satellite positioning to control powerful thrusters that keep the rig on station within a few feet of its intended location, at all times. This is called Dynamic Positioning.
The rig had apparently just finished cementing steel casing in place at depths exceeding 18,000 ft. The next operation was to suspend the well so that the rig could move to its next drilling location, the idea being that a rig would return to this well later in order to complete the work necessary to bring the well into production.
It is thought that somehow formation fluids – oil /gas – got into the wellbore and were undetected until it was too late to take action. With a floating drilling rig setup, because it moves with the waves, currents, and winds, all of the main pressure control equipment sits on the seabed – the uppermost unmoving point in the well. This pressure control equipment – the Blowout Preventers, or ‘BOP’s” as they’re called, are controlled with redundant systems from the rig. In the event of a serious emergency, there are multiple Panic Buttons to hit, and even fail-safe Deadman systems that should be automatically engaged when something of this proportion breaks out. None of them were aparently activated, suggesting that the blowout was especially swift to escalate at the surface. The flames were visible up to about 35 miles away. Not the glow – the flames. They were 200 – 300 ft high.
All of this will be investigated and it will be some months before all of the particulars are known. For now, it is enough to say that this marvel of modern technology, which had been operating with an excellent safety record, has burned up and sunk taking souls with it.
The well still is apparently flowing oil, which is appearing at the surface as a slick. They have been working with remotely operated vehicles, or ROV’s which are essentially tethered miniature submarines with manipulator arms and other equipment that can perform work underwater while the operator sits on a vessel. These are what were used to explore the Titanic, among other things. Every floating rig has one on board and they are in constant use. In this case, they are deploying ROV’s from dedicated service vessels. They have been trying to close the well in using a specialized port on the BOP’s and a pumping arrangement on their ROV’s. They have been unsuccessful so far. Specialized pollution control vessels have been scrambled to start working the spill, skimming the oil up.
In the coming weeks they will move in at least one other rig to drill a fresh well that will intersect the blowing one at its pay zone. They will use technology that is capable of drilling from a floating rig, over 3 miles deep to an exact specific point in the earth – with a target radius of just a few feet plus or minus. Once they intersect their target, a heavy fluid will be pumped that exceeds the formation’s pressure, thus causing the flow to cease and rendering the well safe at last. It will take at least a couple of months to get this done, bringing all available technology to bear. It will be an ecological disaster if the well flows all of the while; Optimistically, it could bridge off downhole.
It’s a sad day when something like this happens to any rig, but even more so when it happens to something on the cutting edge of our capabilities.
The photos that follow show the progression of events over the 36 hours from catching fire to sinking.
First, what the rig looked like.
The drilling mast has toppled over here – they usually melt pretty fast when fire breaks out.
Support vessels using their fire fighting gear to cool the rig.
From about 10 miles away – dawn of Day 1
Support vessels using their fire fighting gear to cool the rig – note the list developing
About noon Day 1 – List is pronounced now
Early morning Day 2 – Note the hole burned through the aluminum helideck
Day 2, morning – settling quite low in the water now – fuel and oil slick forming
See also satellite images of the oil slick here
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Tom in Co. says:
May 1, 2010 at 9:22 am
“So a highly unlikely and sudden explosion occurs on a state of the art drilling rig, on the eve of Earth Day, just a few weeks after an announcement of increased offshore drilling. I think that the investigation of this disaster should also include a background check of everyone involved just to be prudent.”
Spot On, Tom! You mirror my own thinking. It may prove to be a series of tragic coincidences but my ‘spider senses’ are tingling…. We have seen enough ‘monkey wrenching’ and deliberate arson by environmental terrorists over the last 3 decades to justify our concerns.
@Bob paglee says:
May 1, 2010 at 11:37 am
That’s exactly what the shear rams were supposed to do. The rig had 4 BOP’s. The shear rams are like a vice grip with sharp blades. If the BOP valves fail to stop the flow, the shear rams are supposed to pinch off the tubing.
It’s been over a year since I read “State of Fear”… But I’m having that same feeling.
But… The odds against this being sabotage are just about as high as the odds of this being a perfect storm of Murphy’s Law.
I know that they tried to close the valve with a submersible robot. Anyone know if this means a remote cut off switch would not have worked even if installed?
Thank you for the excellent narrative and photographs. Sometimes, despite our best efforts and precautions, tragedy strikes. I have seen many frightening, knee-buckling things in my life and this ranks right at the top of the list. The photos are chilling; a virtual Hell’s Inferno at sea. God rest the souls of those men lost and praises for the brave souls who fought the fire and those attempting to mitigate the effects of this disaster.
In chatting with one my contacts in Louisiana, he indicated that a failure in the cement which cemented the liner, could cause chunks to rise and lodge in the BOP stack preventing the hydraulic rams from being able to wedge the pipe shut. The failsafe valves just crimp the drilling line. If this can’t be done, then there is leakage. It’s at least partially done, as the well could flow as much as 50,000 boepd if it was wide open.
For those who are curious, boepd is barrels of oil equivalent per day (there are light hydrocarbons along with the oil and gas).
sorry about the tragic loss of life involved.lets hope they can get control of the situation quickly before to much damage is done
Great photo essay – it did the rounds at work a few days ago and satisfied at least some imponderables.
It seems there’s predictably a lot of misinformed remarks in the media. A couple of points of contention:
1. The provision of acoustic activation of the BOP can hardly have helped – the BOP was evidently provided with a ‘fail-safe’ automatic shut in trigger in the event of loss of communication with the rig (which is also the raison d’etra of acoustic activation), the crew attempted to shut in the well manually from the bridge prior to evacuation and repeated attempts to shut in using ROVs directly manipulating the BOP have failed – for reasons still unclear the BOP rams physically can not be closed, so it’s entirely academic whether one extra activation method was provided or absent. (It’s like complaining that a car didn’t have air bags after it has been crushed by a freeway collapsing during an earthquake)
2. The BOP may be faulty, but it will have been successfully function tested and pressure tested routinely in line with the prevailing local regulations (not sure what those are in GoM having yet to work there), so it seems unlikely – but once the BOP is raised and inspected, should it be found to be obviously faulty, then heads shall surely roll.
3. More likely the BOP can’t close due to obstruction – could be a liner hanger blasted upwards during the blowout which lodged in or damaged the ram cavities (?) without knowing the details, the ‘steel casing’ cemented prior to the explosion is likely to have been a liner (hangs of a sort of annular clamp anchored at depth in the well rather than hanging off the wellhead at seafloor).
4. Someone asked about some conflicting figures (10,000′ vs 18,000′): The rig is rated to operate in water depths of 8,000′, and is rated to drill to a maximum depth of 30,000′, see http://www.deepwater.com/fw/main/Deepwater-Horizon-56C17.html?LayoutID=17. The total depth of the well is circa 18,000′.
5. It was asked ‘why put out the fire?’; if left burning the rig would have structurally failed and sunk any way, better to try and extinguish the fire and then begin well control operations at surface, without the complication of a bent and broken riser leaking in three locations deep underwater. There is (or was) also the matter of searching for the eleven crew still missing, in addition to a comparatively easier investigation after successfully killing the well.
Unfortunately it would appear that the fire water destabilised the rig causing it to list and sink (recall the capsising of the SS Normandie in New York harbour under similar circumstance in the 1930s).
One would also be reluctant to extinguish a gas fire (I do not know the composition of the reservoir fluid, but where there’s oil, there is normally also gas) for fear of the unburnt gas igniting or exploding again subsequently. Offshore survival training, including rudimentary fire fighting, undertaken every two or three years in Australia, Brunei, Norway and UK has always advocated not extinguishing a gas fire for this reason – fire fighting is limited to keeping the surroundings cool and preventing the spread of the conflagration until the fire is extinguished by stopping the flow of gas.
6. Muppets in the media persistently talk of 5000bbl per day being ‘pumped’ into the sea (as if it’s deliberately?) – the oil is flowing out due to reservoir pressure, no pumping is involved. It is also misleading to describe drilling relief wells as ‘experimental’, the original well proposal to the MMS would have been rejected if at least one or two suitable locations had been identified for drilling relief wells.
7. It is premature to try and determine the cause of the blow out, much less apportion blame. BP and Transocean have been unfairly criticised for describing this accident as ‘unforeseen’. How a well blows out so suddenly and so violently after being cased and cemented, that the crew working on the rig crew and shaker deck is lost without the well being shut in is not simple to diagnose, let alone predict – the verdict of the investigations will point to a freakish set of events occurring simultaneously or in rapid sequence. No doubt one or more management decisions or procedures will be retrospectively called into question, but such is the benefit of 20/20 hindsight.
Contemplate one aspect of the Cullen Report (Investigation of the Piper Alpha disaster); who would have though that rubber mats on stairs for the benefit of divers could play such a part in the destruction of a production platform?
8. The question of the ‘climate impact’ of this disaster has predictably been raised. It should be obvious – nothing, nichevo; nada; sweet Francis Allen. The fire did not eject sufficient particulates to high enough altitude to cause even local solar dimming.
Actual environmental impact on the other hand – ye Gods, but compared with a reactor melt-down?
9. There is criticism of the lack of information, which has actually been quite good. Contemplate though that eleven people have been lost, a still youthful rig has been lost and environmental disaster is unfolding. Don’t expect to hear any detailed description of the sequence of events that caused this being quoted soon – the investigation is now of a criminal nature (does anyone have charges of manslaughter to answer?) such investigations will not be compromised by prematurely releasing information merely to satisfy our curiosity – we’ll have to await the investigation’s findings to know for sure what happened and why.
The best website ever, once again. Thank you Anthony and all the other posters who have such great information about this disaster, the technical aspects of these rigs, and how they work. I’m fascinated.
“They will use technology that is capable of drilling from a floating rig, over 3 miles deep to an exact specific point in the earth – with a target radius of just a few feet plus or minus. ”
They will use technology capable of drilling from a floating rig, to a specific point over 3 miles deep– with a target radius of just a few feet plus or minus.
They will drill from a floating rig, to a point over 3 miles deep- within a just a few feet of their target.
They will drill within a few feet of their target- over 3 miles beneath a floating rig.
So many wasted words. Blather obscures the wonder.
Looks like they couldn’t get close enough to cool the fire effectively.
Every human endeavour has risks attached to it. Something as simple as changing a light-bulb can prove to be fatal given the right circumstances. The more complex the endeavour then the greater the risks involved. In every major project people die or are maimed; those involved accept the risks but loose the bet.
Unfortunately we now live in a risk averse society where there must always be someone to blame. There is no acceptance that completely unforeseen circumstances can lead to catastrophe as appears to have happened in this instance. Conspiracy theorists are going to have a field day about an incident which occurred, despite the very best efforts of all involved.
The only compensating thought is that the private company involved is doing a lot more a lot faster than any government or governmental agency could do.
steve says: “As tragic as this is, I still can’t get “Michael C(r)ighton’s “State of Fear” out of my head. Just finished it a week ago. Eerie.”
Yeah, it’s a great book. I just finished “Next.” Also good.
Lowell says (May 1, 2010 at 9:38 am)
“I follow another blog written by an oil industry insider who has a good perspective on comparable situations. ”
Thanks for the OpenChoke link. Interesting stuff. The author also scoffs about calling it “Obama’s Katrina” and scoffs at the idea of it being a greenie conspiracy, here.
The accident is horrendous and shows how hard it is to get this oil, the truly appalling part of this tragedy was BP actions early on when they frist said it was not leaking and turned down gov help, and then (intentionally??) underestimated the spills size so the right equipment was not brought in.
BP had a major spill in Alaska about two years back, which they admitted was due to poor pipeline maintenance, and then an explosions at a refinery that took several lives. BP has issues, and we all paying for that.
I don’t believe in conspiracies in this manner.
The Piper Alpha disaster for example was caused by 2 workpermits that got seperated. They removed the safety valve of Condensate pump A for maintenance, the job was not finished when the night shift started and the permit stating that the job was not completed and that pump A was not to be switched on got lost somehow.
There was however a seccond permit stating that the overhaul of pump A had not yet started. Then suddenly Condensate pump B stopped, since a permit was found that stated that work on pump A had not yet started they switched on pump A to continue operations thinking that all was still in working order and safe to operate. Nobody noticed the missing safety valve.
167 men lost their lives that night.
If there’s an end of the spill pipe that is sticking out from the seafloor, cannot a simple hose be attached and let the oil travel along it to the surface, at which point it can be put in a container vessel and salvaged? That would serve two purposes–prevent any further spilling and keep the oil as a resource. Certainly the buoyancy of the oil would help in the process.
Bob Paglee,
I was thinking exactly along these lines, which is why I began searching for more technical info than what’s available in the standard news sources.
My thought was to use hydraulic rams instead of screws, but basically the same idea.
Do this roughly 1450 feet above the sea floor , 40-50 feet below the point where the riser is bent and leaking, then if you’re able to choke off a good portion of the flow, and it it doesn’t risk a huge explosion, use ROVs to place shaped charges to cut off the riser 10-20 feet above the pinched area. Finally, use the ROVs to place a steel plug inside the riser, and weld it into place remotely (if possible).
it’s a tragedy for sure. to date, only two of the eleven who died have been named. may that all rest in peace.
Few clues to fate of oil workers
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8654222.stm
politically, there are no winners. the explosion put paid to the energy bill for now, as BP, ConocoPhillips and Shell were to join the environmental groups six days after the explosion:
EEI, three oil companies to back climate bill; top 10 highlights of Kerry proposal
http://views.washingtonpost.com/climate-change/post-carbon/2010/04/by_juliet_eilperin_the_nations.html
obviously BP could not be trotted out under the circumstances.
offshore drilling has also taken a hit for now.
let’s hope there is some turn for the better and the damage is minimised as much as is possible. and let’s hope the remedial choices do not make the situation worse.
Thanks, the pictures are great but sad, sorry for those lost and injured.
This may come across as a naive question, but, what was the probable initial (possibly explosive) event, and then what was the progression to the platform itself.
If you can, speak to pressures, types of gases etc. that might be involved.
Also, specifically, how does a BOP work?
.
I was in Hiroshima 20 years after WWII. You’d never know it had been nuked, except for the monument. This gulf spill will be cleaned up and forgotten about in 2 or 3 years. It’s not the end of the world or even the end of the gulf coast. Folks need to take a longer view of things like this.
Sure it’s locally messy, and will cost some folks some money, and I’m sorry about the injuries and deaths, but for most people it’s a minor inconvenience at worst. Get a grip.
How about some math?
Say we have 5,000 bbls a day spread along 100 miles of coast. That is 50 bbls per mile. Every day. At 42 gallons per bbl that is 2,000 gallons per mile or about .4 gallon per foot. Not too bad for one day. If it goes on for a couple of months not good immediately. A lot of wild life will be killed. And then as time goes on bacteria will start eating the oil and the food chain will blossom.
If the oil spreads more – that is good. If a lot evaporates – good. If a lot can be captured before it reaches the coast – good.
Policyguy, It would be insane to stop drilling because of a disaster. Why not prohibit cars because of road accidents, or getting out of bed in the morning. Bring on a universal night-time curfew to prevent crime.
You can see where this cowardly attitude leads.
Yes, this is a disaster, and 12 people died. Sh*t happens; has happened before; will happen again. Problems and emergency were foreseen and safety features put in place; they didn’t work. We must investigate what happened and adapt our safety procedures and then resume deep sea drilling.
Curiousgeorge says:
May 1, 2010 at 3:04 pm
The proble, Curious, is that the current US regime will grab this disaster as an excuse to curtail US exploitation of its own energyh resources. For some reason, this current cabal of Democrats hate cheap energy for the masses. They want to shut down the production of electricity and fuel; Obama himself has said so, as have his supporters and apparatchiks; it’s that simple.