FEATURES
 

DEEPWATER HORIZON
Deepwater Horizon - The Investigation
The Deepwater Horizon and the Late MMS.
The Deepwater Horizon - PR and Politics
The Deepwater Horizon - Forces at Work
The Deepwater Horizon - Where Are We Now?
ROVs, Risers and Mud
The Deepwater Horizon - Later
Something about the Deepwater Horizon Accident
Channelling the Oil Leak
Preventing Fires and Explosions on Offshore Installations

OTHER ACCIDENTS
The Loss of the Normand Rough
The Bourbon Dolphin Accident
The Loss of the Stevns Power
Another Marine Disaster
Something About the P36
The Cormorant Alpha Accident
The Loss of the Ocean Express

OPERATIONS
The Life of the Oil Mariner
Offshore Technology and the Kursk
The Sovereign Explorer and the Black Marlin

SAFETY
PFEER and the Dacon Scoop
Human Error and Heavy Weather Damage
Lifeboats & Offshore Installations
More about PFEER
The Offshore Safety Regime - Fit for the Next Decade
The Safety Case and its Future
Jigsaw
Collision Risk Management
Shuttle Tanker Collisions
A Good Prospect of Recovery

TECHNICAL
The History of the UT 704
The Peterhead Connection
Goodbye Kiss
Uses for New Ships
Supporting Deepwater Drilling
Jack-up Moving - An Overview
Seismic Surveying
Breaking the Ice
Tank Cleaning and the Environment
More about Mud Tank Cleaning
Datatrac
Tank Cleaning in 2004
Glossary of Terms

CREATIVE WRITING
An Unusual Investigation
Gaia and Oil Pollution
The True Price of Oil
Icebergs and Anchor-Handlers
Atlantic SOS
The Greatest Influence
How It Used to Be
Homemade Pizza
Goodbye Far Turbot
The Ship Manager
Running Aground
A Cook's Tale
Navigating the Channel
The Captain's Letter

GENERAL INTEREST
The Sealaunch Project
Ghost Ships of Hartlepool
Beam Him Up Scotty
Q790
The Bilbao OSV Conference

THE DEEPWATER HORIZON - WHERE ARE WE NOW?

By Thursday 10th June I am beginning to feel a bit sorry for BP, now Beyond Petroleum rather than British Petroleum. I always thought that, despite their generally overbearing attitude, they could look after themselves, but how can one protect oneself from the invective issuing from the mouth of no lesser person than the President of the United States, who has repeated this day that he will keep his boot on the throat of the offending company, which is BP America - formerly Amoco.  The President is also suggesting that BP should meet the unemployment benefit for the people who have been put out of work by his moratorium on exploration drilling in water depths of over 500 feet. This was an instruction issued for political reasons, and  does not have much bearing on reality - lets face it America is short of oil and uses more than it should. In addition there seem to be about fifteen congressional committees waiting to get at anyone from BP that they can.

On the positive side the latest plan, to directly cap the BOP of the Deepwater Horizon with a specially constructed piece of well control equipment connected to the Discoverer Enterprise is working pretty well. They say that they are recovering about 12000 bbls a day - this is approximately 2000 m3, and at $70 a barrel the value for the recovery is about $840,000 per day, but I did not intend to get into money. The Discover Enterprise was the first of Transocean's deepwater drill ships to be constructed and was based on an FPSO hull, so it has considerable storage space for the oil. BP are also working on a system to recover more oil using the previously installed manifold connected to the Deepwater Horizon choke and kill lines. And if you have just become a visitor to my site for the first time it will be necessary to review the older articles on this topic to find out what I am talking about. The say that this new modification will keep the system operable as the hurricane season approaches. Alarmingly they say that the hurricane season has already started, but in fact one does not usually see any high winds until late August in the region.

But amidst all this political posturing and undignified shouting one should remember that eleven of the Deepwater Horizon crew members lost their lives in the accident, and that the rig is now on the seabed 5000 feet below the surface, and that there is little chance of recovering any part of it. It may be that there are ROVs already looking at the wreck, but if so we are not being told. The US Minerals Management Service has been good enough to publish two sternly written letters from very important American admirals, reminding BP of what the government expects of them, and two days of witness interviews have also been published. These took place at the end of May, and provided just a glimpse of what took place before the explosion and during it.

There appears to have been some disagreement between the BP supervisor on the rig and the senior Transocean drilling personnel about whether the mud in the riser should be displaced with seawater. And it may be that this disagreement was based on the lack of certainty about the status of the well. Interestingly the senior BP supervisor has not given evidence on the basis that his testimony might incriminate him - known as "taking the fifth". It also seems that it was one of the main engines which ended up being fuelled by gas and which blew up, and caused the ignition of the well fluids, and the eventual loss of the rig.

The focus of many of the questions from the US Coast Guard  was on compliance with the ISM Code (International Ship Management Code), and the senior BP safety man interviewed did not know what this was. He is an occupational health man and this may be an indication of the focus in the offshore industry on slips trips and falls. For years the measure of safety on an oil rig has been the number of days which have passed since there was last an accident which resulted in the injured person being prevented from working - an LTA (Lost Time Accident). Today most companies have slightly more sophisticated systems, but the principal has remained the same. The means of measuring the safety of a unit has been the number of minor accidents which have taken place - however measured. The less of these one has, the more chance there is of the rig being hired.

The lack of these minor accidents provides a sort of comfort feeling, since the traditional approach has always been that they are the bottom of a triangle the upper point of which would be an accident of catastrophic proportions - such as the Deepwater Horizon. However in my research for my book "Supply Ship Operations" I found an article by a Professor Groeneweg of Leiden University who suggested that the emphasis on occupational accidents has, if anything, reduced the possibility of the identification of major hazards.

However, I realise that I am getting into the politics of safety on which I have pretty strong views, and now may not be the time. But it will be, and one hopes that the investigations which take place will be thorough and that they will result in the appropriate changes in the Minerals Management Service, or indeed some other body's systems which will improve workplace safety on offshore installations in the Gulf of Mexico. The means of the saving of life is not always the same as the the means of prevention of pollution, so they should keep the priorities in view.

Vic Gibson 10th June 2010.

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