Offshore rig blowout equipment often fails

[QueEx]

<font size="5"><Center>
Offshore rig blowout equipment
often fails, U.S. stats show</font size></center>

Newspapers Les Blumenthal
By McClatchy
Friday, April 30, 2010


WASHINGTON — A 1999 report commissioned by the federal agency that oversees offshore drilling suggests failures of underwater blowout preventers designed to stop oil spills like the massive one threatening the Gulf Coast were far from unknown, the chairwoman of a key Senate panel said Friday.

Citing a Minerals Management Service report, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said there were 117 failures of blowout preventers during a two-year period in the late 1990s on the outer continental shelf of the United States.

"To find out the ultimate failsafe weapon doesn't work is surprising," said Cantwell, who as chairwoman of the Senate Commerce Committee's oceans, atmosphere, fisheries and Coast Guard subcommittee will play a roll in any congressional investigation of the Gulf oil spill and the drilling rig fire that caused it.

The unclassified version of the 1990 report said the failures involved 83 wells drilled by 26 rigs in depths from 1,300 feet to 6,560 feet.

A similar report released by the agency in 1997 found that between 1992 and 1996 there were 138 failures of blowout preventers on underwater wells being drilled off Brazil, Norway, Italy and Albania.

Both reports are highly technical. Classified versions of the reports included proprietary information that was redacted before the reports were released publicly.

Cantwell's office said there were no newer studies, but a 2007 paper from the Minerals Management Service said between 1992 and 2006 there were 39 actual blowouts.

Blowout preventers, which can weigh up to 500,000 pounds and stand 50 feet tall, are bolted on the top of a wellhead on the seafloor and in an emergency can cut off the flow of oil to prevent a gusher. The blowout preventers can be activated by throwing a switch on the drilling rig. They are also supposed to activate automatically in the event of a major problem or, in some cases, can be activated by acoustic sound waves produced from a ship on the surface.

No one is sure what caused the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon off the coast of Louisiana to burst into flames on April 20 and sink two days later into the Gulf. The accident left 11 workers missing and presumed dead and 17 others injured. The blowout preventer apparently failed to cap the well, allowing an estimated 210,000 gallons of oil to escape daily.

The cause of the explosion and fire is under investigation, and efforts to activate the blowout preventer 5,000 feet below the surface have, so far, been unsuccessful.

The Orlando Sentinel reported Friday that BP officials were told by the crew on the rig that they had activated the blowout preventer before fleeing.

The Minerals Management Service plans to inspect all deepwater rigs in the Gulf within a week to ensure their blowout preventers and other emergency equipment are operating properly.

Cantwell said that both the Senate Commerce Committee and the Senate Energy Committee, of which she is also a member, will hold hearings on the Deepwater Horizon accident. Since the accident, she said she and her staff have been in constant contact with the Coast Guard.

The senator said the 1999 Minerals Management Service report "detailed fairly regular failures" of blowout preventers.

"I think they will try to paint this as an infrequent occurrence," she said. "They are not."

Cantwell previously led the opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

"The spin back then was it could be done (drilling) safely," she said. "People say it's like inserting a straw in the ground. Well, accidents happen. In a highly sensitive area, the question is how safe can it be?"





http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/04/30/93250/us-report-found-failure-of-offshore.html

 

[QueEx]

• 1999 study commissioned by the Minerals Management Service that discusses the 117 blowout preventer failures observed during the study period in the late 1990s

• 2007 article by Minerals Management Service employees on the incidents of actual blowouts

 

[muckraker10021]

This oil well explosion disaster is another example of Corporatism and Washington Leadership run amuck…according to the Wall Street Journal; internal company memos show the Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig Platform was missing a key piece of Safety Back-up Equipment used to cap a blown-out well during a drilling operation.

This Remote Activated Device, called an ACOUSTIC SWITCH, is considered a weapon of last resort when it comes to sealing off ruptured offshore wells, but isn’t required on platforms operating under U.S. laws DUE TO REGULATIONS REMOVED DURING THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION

The Acoustic Switch’ is used by all other industrialized nations, but not considered mandatory by U.S. Regulations, since mid 2001 most likely because of oil industry money (lobbyist) influencing the Bush administration.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704423504575212031417936798.html

This 'Miss Me Yet?' billboard with former President George Bush is turning drivers' heads on I-35 in Minnesota

 

[QueEx]

Excerpts from: Offshore rig blowout equipment often fails, U.S. stats show

• <font size="3">there were 117 failures of blowout preventers during a two-year period in the late 1990s on the outer continental shelf of the United States.</font size>

• <font size="3">The unclassified version of the 1990 report said the failures involved 83 wells drilled by 26 rigs in depths from 1,300 feet to 6,560 feet.

</font size>

• <font size="3">A similar report released by the agency in 1997 found that between 1992 and 1996 there were 138 failures of blowout preventers on underwater wells being drilled off Brazil, Norway, Italy and Albania.

</font size>

• <font size="3">a 2007 paper from the Minerals Management Service said between 1992 and 2006 there were 39 actual blowouts.

</font size>

• <font size="3">the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon off the coast of Louisiana to burst into flames on April 20 and sink two days later into the Gulf . . . The blowout preventer apparently failed to cap the well, allowing an estimated 210,000 gallons of oil to escape daily.

</font size>

 

[toyracer]

Here's one that won't make it to CNN, MSNBC etc.

http://blog.al.com/live/2010/05/fire_boom_oil_spill_raines.html

Despite plan, not a single fire boom on hand on Gulf Coast at time of oil spill

If U.S. officials had followed up on a 1994 response plan for a major Gulf oil spill, it is possible that the spill could have been kept under control and far from land.

The problem: The federal government did not have a single fire boom on hand.

The "In-Situ Burn" plan produced by federal agencies in 1994 calls for responding to a major oil spill in the Gulf with the immediate use of fire booms.

But in order to conduct a successful test burn eight days after the Deepwater Horizon well began releasing massive amounts of oil into the Gulf, officials had to purchase one from a company in Illinois.

When federal officials called, Elastec/American Marine, shipped the only boom it had in stock, Jeff Bohleber, chief financial officer for Elastec, said today.

At federal officials' behest, the company began calling customers in other countries and asking if the U.S. government could borrow their fire booms for a few days, he said.

A single fire boom being towed by two boats can burn up to 1,800 barrels of oil an hour, Bohleber said. That translates to 75,000 gallons an hour, raising the possibility that the spill could have been contained at the accident scene 100 miles from shore.

"They said this was the tool of last resort. No, this is absolutely the asset of first use. Get in there and start burning oil before the spill gets out of hand," Bohleber said. "If they had six or seven of these systems in place when this happened and got out there and started burning, it would have significantly lessened the amount of oil that got loose."

In the days after the rig sank, U.S Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry said the government had all the assets it needed. She did not discuss why officials waited more than a week to conduct a test burn. (Watch video footage of the test burn.)

At the time, former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration oil spill response coordinator Ron Gouguet -- who helped craft the 1994 plan -- told the Press-Register that officials had pre-approval for burning. "The whole reason the plan was created was so we could pull the trigger right away."

Gouguet speculated that burning could have captured 95 percent of the oil as it spilled from the well.

Bohleber said that his company was bringing several fire booms from South America, and he believed the National Response Center discovered that it had one in storage.

Each boom costs a few hundred thousand dollars, Bohleber said, declining to give a specific price.

Made of flame-retardant fabric, each boom has two pumps that push water through its 500-foot length. Two boats tow the U-shaped boom through an oil slick, gathering up about 75,000 gallons of oil at a time. That oil is dragged away from the larger spill, ignited and burns within an hour, he said.

The boom can be used as long as waves are below 3 feet, Bohleber said.

"Because of the complexity of the system and the obvious longer production time to build them, the emphasis is on obtaining and gathering the systems," he said.

Bohleber said his company has conducted numerous tests with the Coast Guard since 1993, and it is now training crews on the use of the boom so workers will be ready when they arrive.

"We're arranging for six to be shipped in. We keep running into delays. Hopefully, they will be here by Wednesday to be available for use on Thursday. Bear in mind, two days ago, we thought they would be here today."

 

[Fuckallyall]

Hey Que, I'm back. My thoughts:

1. This is another case of nobody being at the switch. Contrary to Muck's stance, the government is supposed to have contingencies in place, especially considering how much money they make off of selling the rights to drill.

2. The aquisition of energy is usually a dangerous and dirty business. Bt what would we do without it ?

 

[double1]

I have a cousin who works for a company that is responsible for certain safety check in the oil industry. He told me that they no longer serviced oil platforms because their company that the owners of the platform provide a certain amount of insurance to the workers and they refused, so they cancelled their contracts working on platforms... and yes Bp was one of them...you see right now they are basically monitoring themselves.

its really all about the money and they do take chances to keep pumping.

 

[QueEx]

Hey Que, I'm back. My thoughts:

1. This is another case of nobody being at the switch. Contrary to Muck's stance, the government is supposed to have contingencies in place, especially considering how much money they make off of selling the rights to drill.

2. The aquisition of energy is usually a dangerous and dirty business. Bt what would we do without it ?

<font size="3">Well damn. Speaking of blowouts.

Look who the wind, just blew in!

Welcome back.

QueEx
</font size>

 

[QueEx]

This is another case of nobody being at the switch. Contrary to Muck's stance, the government is supposed to have contingencies in place, especially considering how much money they make off of selling the rights to drill.

I think the primary responsibility for insuring that things don't go wrong and for fixing or cleaning up things if they do, rests with the company/industry that engages in the conduct that produces or increases the harm. Of course, I wouldn't disagree that government has a role -- but I believe that government's role is primarily regulation, especially safety regulation). But you raise interesting questions over what the government's role should be:

• A lot of things can go wrong with offshore drilling. Which contingencies is the government supposed to be on-guard against ? ? ?

• Should the government be on-guard against all of them, whether known or unknown, or just some of them ???

• If the government should have contingencies in place, does that relieve industry of having contingencies in place for its misdeeds???
  
  
  • should industry and government share the load ???
  
  
  • How should responsibility be allocated so as to prevent needless or wasteful overlap of responsibility (while leaving other areas uncovered); and
  
  
  • Who is to allocate responsibility ???

. . . the government is supposed to have contingencies in place, especially considering how much money they make off of selling the rights to drill.

When the government, whether state or federal, sells rights to extract oil, gas or minerals -- it is really leasing out a piece of the public's ownership to the entity, i.e., oil companies, who want to extract or take the public's oil, gas or minerals and convert the same for its use and profit.

• Should not the lease or extraction payments go to the public's benefit -- instead of being set aside to clean up industry's fuck-ups ???

• Why should the people's profits be on the hook to guard against contingencies, known or unknown to it (but which may be known to the industry) ???
  
  
  • Doesn't this just invite industry to not protect against the harm it can cause -- because the public is on the hook???).
  
  
  • If the public is to be primarily responsible for cleaning-up, doesn't that just mean the public is giving the oil and gas to the companies, for free ???

QueEx

 

[QueEx]

<font size="5"><center>
Report adds to doubts
about key oil rig safety equipment</font size></center>

McClatchy Newspapers
By Les Blumenthal
Wednesday, May 5, 2010


WASHINGTON — As offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere boomed, a 2003 report warned that the industry wasn't taking time to find and fix the problems that commonly plagued blowout preventers — the supposedly failsafe mechanisms designed to stop oil spills such as the one now threatening the gulf coast.

The report, delivered at an industry conference seven years ago and uncovered by the office of Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., was co-authored by the then-director of technology development for Transocean, the company that owned the Deepwater Horizon rig that caught fire on April 20 and sank two days later.

Though the accident's cause remains unknown, an apparent malfunction of the blowout preventer, which sat on the wellhead beneath 5,000 feet of water, has allowed more than 200,000 gallons of oil to escape daily, creating a massive spill.

<font size="3">"There is clear evidence that the oil industry has been well aware for years of the risk that blowout preventers on offshore rigs could fail," said Cantwell, who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee's oceans, atmosphere, fisheries and Coast Guard subcommittee.</font size>​

However, Earl Shanks, the Transocean executive who co-authored the report, said in a telephone interview with McClatchy that there've been improvements over the past seven years.

"In my opinion, the equipment has gotten better," Shanks said.

Cantwell isn't so sure.

A more recent 2008 report authored by officials of BP America and Transocean and published by the Society of Petroleum Engineers raised new questions about whether the blowout preventers on deepwater wells such as the one the Deepwater Horizon was drilling could have a new problem.

Blowout preventers, or BOPs, which weigh 500,000 pounds and are roughly as tall as a five-story building, activate rams that punch a hole in the pipeline connecting the well to the surface, and then block the pipeline. The rams, the report said, may have "difficulty shearing today's high-strength, high toughness drillpipe" used in deepwater wells.

The 10-page 2003 report, delivered at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston that year, suggests that the industry was so focused on drilling that it was willing to pay higher maintenance costs to keep rigs operating and avoid downtime rather than address some of the fundamental problems with the blowout preventers.

"Floating drilling rig downtime due to poor BOP (blowout preventer) reliability is a common and very costly issue confronting all offshore drilling contractors," the report said, adding that every major disruption could cost $1 million.

The report said the reliability issues were directly related to the fact that drilling companies didn't have detailed design and functional specifications to give companies that manufactured blowout preventers.

The preventers were being rushed into the field with limited testing, and if one malfunctioned, the pressure to keep drilling meant it was fixed with little time spent trying to figure out what had caused the malfunction.

"Because of the pressure on getting the equipment back to work, root cause analysis of the failures is generally not performed," the report said. "In many operations, high maintenance is accepted as a necessary evil to prevent downtime."

The report said the problems were mostly with the control system that activates the large rams that punch through the pipe to stop the flow of oil. The control system has electrical and hydraulic components. The electrical circuits activate the hydraulic equipment that moves the rams. Each blowout preventer has two complete control systems as a backup.

"History has shown that more subsea problems have been associated with hydraulic components than the electrical," the report said. Hydraulic problems can only be fixed by bringing the top half of the blowout preventer to the surface.

Crews on the Deepwater Horizon have said they activated the blowout preventer from the deck of the rig before fleeing. The blowout preventer is also equipped with sensors that should trigger a shutdown automatically. U.S. rigs, unlike those in Norway and Brazil, don't have to be equipped with a device to pick up an acoustic signal sent from the surface that also can activate the blowout preventer.

"The control system has historically been a problem area," Shanks said during the telephone interview from Houston, where he's an industry consultant. "The preventer itself is just a big hunk of metal."

With wells now being drilled in the deep ocean, blowout preventers have been equipped with additional safety features, Shanks said.

Cantwell isn't convinced. She said Congress needs to take a close look at the Minerals Management Service, the agency within the Interior Department that regulates offshore oil and gas drilling.

"We need to make sure this administration does not operate MMS like the Bush administration," Cantwell said. "Let's make sure this isn't too cozy a relationship between the regulators and the industry."


http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/05/05/93600/2003-oil-industry-report-warned.html

 

[QueEx]

Boaters make their way along the edge of the oil slick in
the Gulf of Mexico.

 

[Fuckallyall]

I think the primary responsibility for insuring that things don't go wrong and for fixing or cleaning up things if they do, rests with the company/industry that engages in the conduct that produces or increases the harm. Of course, I wouldn't disagree that government has a role -- but I believe that government's role is primarily regulation, especially safety regulation). But you raise interesting questions over what the government's role should be:

• A lot of things can go wrong with offshore drilling. Which contingencies is the government supposed to be on-guard against ? ? ?

• Should the government be on-guard against all of them, whether known or unknown, or just some of them ???

• If the government should have contingencies in place, does that relieve industry of having contingencies in place for its misdeeds???
  
  
  • should industry and government share the load ???
  
  
  • How should responsibility be allocated so as to prevent needless or wasteful overlap of responsibility (while leaving other areas uncovered); and
  
  
  • Who is to allocate responsibility ???

When the government, whether state or federal, sells rights to extract oil, gas or minerals -- it is really leasing out a piece of the public's ownership to the entity, i.e., oil companies, who want to extract or take the public's oil, gas or minerals and convert the same for its use and profit.

• Should not the lease or extraction payments go to the public's benefit -- instead of being set aside to clean up industry's fuck-ups ???

• Why should the people's profits be on the hook to guard against contingencies, known or unknown to it (but which may be known to the industry) ???
  
  
  • Doesn't this just invite industry to not protect against the harm it can cause -- because the public is on the hook???).
  
  
  • If the public is to be primarily responsible for cleaning-up, doesn't that just mean the public is giving the oil and gas to the companies, for free ???

QueEx

I'm sorry, I wasn't clear. I agree with you that the primary responsibility lies with the industry, but the Gov't. is the entity with the final responsibility to act reasonably in protecting the public interest. Funding a failsafe with money made from doing virtually nothing while your citizens are put at risk should be one of them. Or, at least take reasonable efforts to insure that what they tell you is true. They did neither. The government did not act when they knew that the blowout preventers did not work. Instead of just pointing fingers at the industry for fielding faulty equipment, they should be wondering why did they let the industry keep operating with faulty equipment (Toyota acceleration issue anyone?)

 

[QueEx]

The government did not act when they knew that the blowout preventers did not work.

What do you think the government should have done at that point ? ? ?

Instead of just pointing fingers at the industry for fielding faulty equipment, they should be wondering why did they let the industry keep operating with faulty equipment (Toyota acceleration issue anyone?)

I agree. It seems reports of faulty blowout preventers go back to 1999. Either fix/redesign them or come up with something better. Looks like government oversight was severely lacking. But I've seen several reports that the industry has spent millions on lobbyist and campaign donations.

QueEx

 

[muckraker10021]

....In truth, culpability for the disaster can more accurately be laid at the Bush Administration's doorstep. For eight years, George Bush's presidency infected the oil industry's oversight agency, the Minerals Management Service, with a septic culture of corruption from which it has yet to recover. Oil patch alumnae in the White House encouraged agency personnel to engineer weakened safeguards that directly contributed to the gulf catastrophe.

The absence of an acoustical regulator -- a remotely triggered dead man's switch that might have closed off BP's gushing pipe at its sea floor wellhead when the manual switch failed (the fire and explosion on the drilling platform may have prevented the dying workers from pushing the button) -- was directly attributable to industry pandering by the Bush team.

Acoustic switches are required by law for all offshore rigs off Brazil and in Norway's North Sea operations. BP uses the device voluntarily in Britain's North Sea and elsewhere in the world as do other big players like Holland's Shell and France's Total.

In 2000, the Minerals Management Service while weighing a comprehensive rulemaking for drilling safety, deemed the acoustic mechanism "essential" and proposed to mandate the mechanism on all gulf rigs.

<span style="background-color:yellow"><B>Then, between January and March of 2001, incoming Vice President Dick Cheney conducted secret meetings with over 100 oil industry officials allowing them to draft a wish list of industry demands to be implemented by the oil friendly administration. Cheney also used that time to re-staff the Minerals Management Service with oil industry toadies including a cabal of his Wyoming carbon cronies.</B></SPAN>

<span style="background-color:yellow"><B> In 2003, newly reconstituted Minerals Management Service genuflected to the oil cartel by recommending the removal of the proposed requirement for acoustic switches. The Minerals Management Service's 2003 study concluded that "acoustic systems are not recommended because they tend to be very costly."</B></SPAN>

The acoustic trigger costs about $500,000. Estimated costs of the oil spill to Gulf Coast residents are now upward of $14 billion to gulf state communities. Bush's 2005 energy bill officially dropped the requirement for the acoustic switch off devices explaining that the industry's existing practices are "failsafe."..........

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/sex-lies-and-oil-spills_b_564163.html

 

[QueEx]

Feds knew of Gulf spill risks in 2000

<font size="5"><center>
Feds knew of Gulf spill risks in 2000,
document shows</font size></center>

McClatchy Newspapers
By Shashank Bengali
June 8, 2010


<font size="3">WASHINGTON — A decade ago, U.S. government regulators warned that a major deepwater oil spill could start with a fire on a drilling rig, prove hard to stop and cause extensive damage to fish eggs and wetlands because there were few good ways to capture oil underwater.</font size>

The disaster scenario — contained in a May 2000 offshore drilling plan for the Shell oil company that McClatchy has obtained — is now a grim reality in the Gulf of Mexico. Less predictably, perhaps, <SPAN style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">the author of the document was the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, the regulatory agency that's come under withering criticism in the wake of the BP spill for being too cozy with industries it was supposed to be regulating</span>.

The 2000 warning, however, indicates that some federal regulators were well aware of the potential hazards of deepwater oil production in its early years, experts and former MMS officials told McClatchy.

Yet over the past decade, the risks faded into the background as America thirsted for new oil sources, the energy industry mastered new drilling technologies and the number of deepwater wells in the Gulf swelled into the thousands. Then-President George W. Bush ushered in the new era with an executive order on May 18, 2001, that pushed his new administration to speed up the search for oil.

"I think it was certainly overwhelmed by the excitement of all the oil and gas that was starting to show up in the seismic studies and the technical excitement of how to drill these reservoirs," said Rick Steiner, a veteran environmental scientist who reviewed the document for McClatchy. "I think that had a way of subduing the real concern about the risk of these things."

The Shell plan, which Greenwire, an environmental news service, first reported last week, described a worst-case scenario for a deepwater blowout that in several instances reads like a preview of what's happened since BP's Deepwater Horizon rig began spewing crude into the Gulf seven weeks ago.

While noting that a major blowout was very unlikely, the Shell plan said: "Regaining well control in deep water may be a problem since it could require the operator to cap and control well flow at the seabed in greater water depths . . . and could require simultaneous firefighting efforts at the surface."

The BP disaster started when the drilling platform exploded, sending a towering wall of flames into the sky and killing 11 workers before it sank.

The 2000 Shell plan also cautioned that an oil gusher wouldn't behave the same way in deepwater as one would in shallow water, where most drilling to that point had been done. "Spills in deep water may be larger due to the high production rates associated with deepwater wells and the length of time it could take to stop the source of pollution," it said.

Among its other warnings for a drill site less than 140 miles southwest of BP's Deepwater Horizon:

• The chemical dispersants required to clean up a major spill would expose adult birds to a combination of oil and dispersant that could "reduce chick survival."

• "Fish eggs and larvae within a potentially large area of the northern Gulf would be killed."

• In certain weather and oceanographic conditions, a large blowout could have "severe adverse impacts" for wetland areas.

• Not all the spilled oil would rise to the surface, and "there are few practical spill response options for dealing with submerged oil." It predicted that gas surging from a blowout could form hydrates and remain deep underwater, a likely cause of some toxic subsea oil "plumes" that scientists have identified in the BP spill.

"That's pretty prophetic," Steiner said.

Dennis Chew, a marine biologist who helped prepare the plan but has since retired after 21 years with the MMS, studied it again this week and said: "Bottom line, this (BP) blowout was preventable." However, he blamed the accident on human error and BP "cutting corners."

The Department of Interior didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

Chew and two other members of the team that prepared the Shell plan told McClatchy that MMS scientists had analyzed the potential impact of deepwater blowouts as far back as the late 1990s.

• "Ten or 15 years ago, there used to be 200-page (environmental impact statements) on nothing but spills," Chew said. "It got to where people got tired of wading through them."

• The 2000s, however, ushered in an era of aggressive, government-backed offshore oil production. In May 2001, Bush, acting on recommendations from the oil industry, signed an executive order that required federal agencies to expedite permits for energy projects and paved the way for greater domestic oil exploration.

<SPAN style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">The rush to drill in deep water swept aside warnings from MMS scientists and others</SPAN>, experts said

"It's the fault of both the industry and the government," Steiner said. "If they had taken it seriously, they would have been ramping up production of safer blowout preventers and emergency procedures on board. They would have said, 'There's a 0.01 percent chance of this but that's enough for us, because this would be catastrophic.' "

As the agency that manages offshore drilling on the outer continental shelf and collects revenue from drilling leases, the MMS's regulatory failures and cozy relationship with the oil industry have been well documented. Its director, Elizabeth Birnbaum, resigned last month, and Obama administration officials have said the agency will be split into three branches to avoid conflicts of interest.

McClatchy reported last week that the MMS under the Obama administration had approved dozens of deepwater exploration plans that downplayed the threat of blowouts to marine life and fisheries. After McClatchy's inquiries, the administration ordered oil companies to resubmit the plans with additional safety information before they'd be allowed to drill new wells.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a watchdog group, reported last month that BP's spill response plan erroneously listed seals and walruses as "sensitive biological resources" in the Gulf — suggesting that portions of BP's plan were cut and pasted from Arctic exploratory documents — and cited a Japanese home shopping website as one of its primary equipment providers.

Steiner found flaws in the 2000 Shell plan, too. It offered optimistic projections of the possibility of a deepwater blowout being bridged, or naturally sealed by sliding rock on the seafloor. It also said that a blowout from exploratory drilling would last only two days, supposedly due to bridging.

"This plan, like all of them, underestimates risk and overestimates the effectiveness of the response," Steiner said.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/06/08/95535/feds-knew-of-gulf-spill-risks.html

 

[QueEx]

<font size="6"><center>
BP played big role </font size><font size="5">
In Alaska blowout preventer probe</font size></center>


McClatchy Newspapers
By Richard Mauer
Saturday, June 26, 2010


<font size="3">ANCHORAGE, Alaska — When two Alaska state agencies received complaints in 2005 that a BP drilling contractor routinely cheated on tests of blowout preventers and that BP knew it, the agencies let BP and the other company accused of wrongdoing join the investigation.

Records show that attorneys and officials of BP and its contractor, Nabors Alaska, sat in with, or even in place of, state investigators when witnesses were interviewed. In at least three instances, after witnesses confirmed allegations, company lawyers took them aside for private conversations. One Nabors employee recanted his statement immediately after emerging from his private meeting with a Nabors attorney, state records show.​

The Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission ultimately ruled there was no widespread pattern of wrongdoing and declined to levy penalties.

But a review of the investigation now, in light of the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, raises new questions about BP's role in a probe that focused on blowout preventers, the 500,000-pound piece of equipment whose failure was critical to the catastrophe now unfolding in the Gulf.</font size>

In reports and e-mails written at the time, BP representatives referred to the inquiry as a "joint investigation" by the "team" of BP, Nabors, the commission and the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.

In recent interviews, Commissioner John Norman and investigator Jim Regg of the state conservation commission said BP's characterization was wrong. But Norman and Regg could point to no document in the five volumes of their investigative file where a state official objected to BP's use of the term.

On the contrary, the files show that nearly all 34 named witnesses were interviewed with at least one company official or attorney present. At other times, there were at least as many company officials on hand as state investigators.

Norman and Regg said the presence of the company officials during the interviews was for the convenience of the workers, who all worked shifts on the North Slope. The scheduling practice meant the workers only had to appear once for both the internal company inquiries and the state investigations. Norman said his agency's final report was completely independent of the one produced by the companies.

Critics suggest, however, that the presence of the BP and Nabors attorneys show a desire by all parties to prevent a thorough investigation of what whistleblowers alleged was common practice.

Long-time Alaska oil industry critic Chuck Hamel, who made the 2005 allegations public in complaints to Congress and the commission, says there are parallels to the Gulf blowout, including accusations that BP took shortcuts to save money and that regulators were too close to industry.

The commission's case file, which contains even the handwritten notes taken by three commission investigators, includes a Feb. 10, 2005, e-mail to Norman, then chairman of the commission, from BP's manager of health, safety and environment in Alaska, Len Seymour. Attached to the e-mail were the company's "talking points," setting forth what BP planned to say if a reporter asked about the investigation.

The first "key message" in those talking points: "An ongoing investigation is being conducted by a multi-disciplinary team comprised of ADEC (Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation), AOGCC (Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission), BP and Nabors."

Norman's only response was an e-mail he sent to a commission assistant when he forwarded the talking points. "For incident investigation file," Norman wrote.

According to documents in the file, at least seven Nabors employees appeared to confirm the initial allegations, reporting they saw incidents of falsified blowout prevention tests on company rigs in the previous couple of years.

At least five employees provided the names of Nabors operators and supervisors whom they saw cheating or who appeared to condone it, the records show. One Nabors driller admitted falsifying two tests himself.

But when the commission issued its decision and order on the matter on June 2, 2005, it said it could not validate "anecdotal reports" of widespread cheating and cited only the two admissions by the single driller, who lost his job.

The commission found the violations "were isolated, not condoned or authorized by Nabors, and not harmful to personnel, the environment or the recovery of hydrocarbons," and decided against levying a civil fine against Nabors. Instead, the commission assessed Nabors $10,000 to partially recover the costs of the investigation. Nabors paid up without an argument.

The roots of the 2005 investigation go back to 2001, when a portable, self-propelled rig that cost Nabors about $25 million in 1998 caught fire and burned while crawling from one drilling pad to another. Nabors and its insurers sued Firestone, manufacturer of the rig's eight huge tires, alleging a tire rupture was responsible.

Firestone countered that Nabors knowingly overloaded the tire.

As the lawsuit progressed through state court, Nabors employees were called to provide deposition testimony in advance of a trial. During one, the Firestone attorney asked Nabors employee Mike Mason and co-worker Tony Escobar if Nabors ever falsified records.

Both men said daily logs were routinely falsified, such as reporting that safety drills took place when they hadn't. More seriously, they testified that tests of blowout prevention devices were often falsified on Nabors rigs if state inspectors weren't present to watch.

The blowout prevention system consists of a series of valves and other controls designed to shut down a well if subsurface pressures become unmanageable. They prevent gushers like BP's erupting Gulf well. Under commission rules, the complete system had to be tested at least every other week. Drilling must stop for the tests

In the test, pressure is applied to each valve, first at low pressure, then high - up to 5,000 pounds per square inch. To pass, the valve must hold the pressure for at least five minutes.

The test is automatically recorded on a circular chart. A mechanical pen records the pressure as the chart slowly rotates on a clock motor, turning about an inch every five minutes.

Cheating was so common, the men said, that it had a name: "chart spinning."

If a valve was leaking, Escobar testified, a driller would quickly spin the chart with his hands so the pressure loss wouldn't be documented and the time and expense required to replace a valve would be saved. Mason said the charts were spun even when the valves held pressure so that a five-minute test could be done in a minute or less.

A full test of all the valves normally took four or five hours. Mason said chart spinning could reduce the rig's idle time by several hours.

Regg and Norman said that from the onset, they considered it possible that the case involved criminal conduct. Among possible charges: falsification of business records, a misdemeanor, Norman said.

Despite the possibility of criminal charges and the fact that BP was already on probation from a federal criminal charge related to hazardous waste dumping by another drilling contractor, BP and Nabors were part of the state investigation from the beginning.

BP brought in an official from its Houston office, Gregory Mattson, BP America's head of discipline on well drilling and completion. Mattson, now based in Baku, Azerbaijan, was in Anchorage recently, but didn't respond to e-mails or telephone messages seeking comment for this story.

BP also assigned its outside attorney, Amy Menard, and Seymour, the health, safety and environment operations manager in Anchorage, to the case. Seymour, too, didn't respond to call. Menard referred questions to a BP lawyer, who also didn't respond.

Nabors brought in its then-associate counsel in Houston, James Lank, along with its Anchorage human resources manager, Belinda Wilson, and its Anchorage health, safety and environment manager, James Haynes.

Current Nabors spokesman Denny Smith didn't return several calls seeking comment. Lank, now general counsel for a Houston company that manufactures drilling rig components, didn't return a call left at his office.

Regg said the main reason for involving the companies was logistics; they helped solve the difficulty of scheduling interviews with workers who spent two weeks on the Slope, then two weeks off.

Despite the participation of BP and Nabors, commission investigators didn't always get the companies' cooperation. In a handwritten note in the file, commission inspector Jeff Jones said he'd asked Haynes of Nabors to delay two interviews of Nabors employees for an hour so he could finish monitoring a test on another rig. Haynes refused, Jones said.

"I asked him to take good notes and give me a copy," Jones said.

Curiously, one question in a standard set of questions posed by commission investigators asked workers to describe their relationship to Hamel, the industry watchdog. Regg said he wasn't trying to uncover Hamel's sources — something the oil industry in Alaska had tried over the years, including once setting up a sting using private investigators.

"Nothing nefarious there at all," Regg said. "We're just trying to establish what they knew about the allegations."

Many of the witnesses said that while they had witnessed cheating in the past, they hadn't seen it recently.

But five employees in addition to Mason and Escobar said they had seen chart spinning on Nabors rigs within the previous few years.

Notes indicate that the direct participation of BP and Nabors in the interviews affected the statement of at least one witness.

A Nabors "floor man," someone who works on the rig floor, said he had seen cheating twice within the last year. "I've seen them spin the charts," he said.

At that moment, according to the notes of both Jones and Regg, BP attorney Menard interrupted the testimony.

"Amy Menard called a break and (the Nabors floor man) went and talked in private w/James Lank," the Nabors attorney, according to Jones' notes.

When the floor man and Lank emerged 12 minutes later, the witness' account had changed. The floor man said that perhaps what he had observed was the driller somehow adjusting the chart pen — with both hands on the paper chart.

Jones noted that the floor man had his hands over his face and looked "very uncomfortable."

Lank called two of the other Nabors employees, an operator and a motorman, into private sessions beyond the earshot of state investigators after they too said they saw test cheating, according to the notes.

In the end, Regg said, none of the witnesses reporting the chart spinning was credible except for the driller who admitted doing it himself. The driller, who now works on a rig overseas, declined to comment for fear of losing his current job.

The problem with proving a pattern of falsification, Regg said, was that no one who claimed to have seen cheating could tie it to a specific test on a specific day. Without that evidence, there could be no case, he said.

The commission's final report was issued June 2, 2005. Commission records show it considered fining Nabors $25,000, but settled on the $10,000 assessment.

In addition to paying the penalty, Nabors agreed to more stringent test procedures to prevent chart spinning in the future, and BP vowed to supervise its contractors more closely.

"I have zero tolerance for anybody falsifying," Norman said. "If something is being falsified, that to me is the highest form of crime. The flip side to that, we have people who come in and self-report. If they do, we take that into consideration."

Norman also cited the agency's big fines levied against BP around the same time - $1.2 million for a fire at a well that severely injured an employee, $102,500 for failing to report a high pressure event on a well, among others - as evidence it wasn't afraid of Alaska's largest oil company, and the company that pays for most of the commission's $5.6 million annual budget through regulatory fees.



http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/06/26/96606/bp-played-big-role-in-alaska-blowout.html

 

[QueEx]

Oil Spill: BP & Haliburton "Knew of Defect"

<font size="4">
Questions on stability of cement in gulf oil well </font size><font size="5">

before explosion</font size>​

​

Washington Post
By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 29, 2010


Hours after a presidential commission raised new questions about the safety
of the cement mixture intended to temporarily seal BP's Macondo exploration
well, oil field service giant Halliburton said the final version of the mixture did
not undergo a foam-stability test.

The presidential commission investigating the mammoth oil spill said Thursday
that <SPAN style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">the cement mixture repeatedly failed lab tests before the April 20
blowout. </span>

As early as February, Halliburton was getting poor results in lab tests of
the recipe for the cement it was planning to use, according to evidence
collected by the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
and Offshore Drilling.

<SPAN style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">Three separate tests suggested that the mixture would be "unstable,"</span>
according to a commission staff letter released Thursday. Halliburton notified
BP by e-mail about only one of the tests before the well explosion, according
to the commission. <SPAN style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">The two companies went ahead with the cementing job
anyway. Its failure became the first in a cascade of factors leading to the
accident.</span>

FULL STORY

 

[QueEx]

Re: Oil Spill: BP & Haliburton "Knew of Defect"

<font size="5
">Halliburton admits skipping test

before Gulf blowout</font size>​

​

USA Today
Oct 29, 2010


Halliburton Co. has acknowledged skipping a critical test on the cement
used to seal BP's oil well before its catastrophic Gulf blowout that caused
the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history

President Obama's oil spill commission revealed Thursday that tests
performed by the company before the April 20 blowout, which killed 11
workers, showed the cement was unstable. Halliburton was BP's
cementing contractor.

In a statement late Thursday, Halliburton said it did not conduct a
stability test on the final cement mix after a last-minute change by BP
added more of a certain ingredient. Previously, it said tests showed the
cement to be stable.

The cement mix's failure to prevent oil and gas from entering the well
has been identified by BP and others as one of the causes of the Deep-
water Horizon oil rig's explosion which triggered a catastrophic oil spill,
reports the Associated Press.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2010/10/halliburton-skips-test-bp-blowout/1

 

[QueEx]

Re: Oil Spill: BP & Haliburton "Knew of Defect"

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[thoughtone]

Re: Oil Spill: BP & Haliburton "Knew of Defect"

I guess those "Market based solutions" ain't worth a damn!

 

[playahaitian]

Re: Oil Spill: BP & Haliburton "Knew of Defect"

Just posted this on the main board

Halliburton and BP knew risk before spill



The two biggest and some would say evil companies have destroyed the eco system (and assited in waging wars that will economically cripple our country)

Do we as citizens just don't care.

In a democratic society are we really powerless to do anything if we did?

Why do we still vote?

Is the electoral college a joke?

This is so frustrating and we still blame Obama when as soon as he entered office we as a people immediately stopped being civically responible and actively involved in politics...

since he has been elected I have tried to volunteer more, follow local elections, write local politicians, etc.

But damn this right here shows you the level of shit we are under and if any of these companys will ever pay.

Opinions?

__________________________________________________ _______________

Halliburton and BP knew risk before spill

By Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington, Sylvia Pfeifer in London and Sheila McNulty in Houston

Published: October 28 2010 20:45 | Last updated: October 28 2010 22:30

Halliburton and BP had data weeks ahead of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill that showed the cement mixture the companies used to seal the well was unstable, but did not act on the information, according to a report by the US National Commission investigating the Macondo spill.

Tests performed for the investigative panel by industry experts strongly suggested that a mixture that was identical to the base cement slurry that Halliburton used on the well was not suitable. The deficiency “may have contributed” to the blow-out, which killed 11 men and pumped nearly 5m barrels of oil into the sea.

The first official finding by the federal panel raised new questions about why neither BP nor Halliburton verified the safety of the cement used before the cementing job was complete. Legal experts with knowledge of the matter say investigators at the US Department of Justice will use the commission’s probe as an important factual record.

Halliburton, which served as a contractor to BP and was responsible for cementing the well, has stated publicly that tests it performed on the cement mixture showed it was stable. But investigators on Thursday said in a letter to the commission’s board that Halliburton documents contradicted those claims. Shares in the US company fell 8 per cent in the news.

In a press release, Halliburton said it did not believe that cement issues were the cause of the well rupture.

According to investigators, two cement tests that Halliburton conducted in February, which used a slightly different composition, showed the design was “unstable”. The result of one of the failed tests was emailed to BP on March 8 in a technical report, though investigative staff said there was no evidence that Halliburton highlighted the result.

Halliburton conducted two additional tests in April, seven days before the blow-out, which showed the cement was unstable, though the data did not appear to have been provided to BP. A final test – which may have been completed only after the cement was already poured into the well – found that the cement design was stable. The information was reported to BP after the explosion.

“The cement job may have been pumped without any lab results indicating that the foam cement slurry would be stable,” the letter said. “BP and/or Transocean personnel misinterpreted or chose not to conduct tests [to identify cementing failures] at the well.”

BP, Halliburton and Transocean, which owned the rig, did not comment.

BP’s own internal report highlighted the failure of the cement job, while Halliburton has claimed BP’s well design was principally at fault.

 

[QueEx]

Re: Oil Spill: BP & Haliburton "Knew of Defect"

<font size="5"><center>
Oil companies' new Gulf drilling plans</font size><font size="6">
called inadequate</font size></center>

Last year's oil spill took a heavy toll on the Gulf Coast's
economy. (Michael Granberry/Courtesy Sandestin Golf
and Beach Resort/MCT




McClatchy Newspapers
By Renee Schoof
and Kevin G. Hall


WASHINGTON — Oil companies recently turned in their first plans for exploratory drilling in deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including new information the government has required since last year's BP blowout about how they'd try to prevent and cope with another oil disaster.

The oil companies that want to explore the seabed below the deep water say they've learned from last year's accident and have better plans in place than they did a year ago, when an explosion at an oil rig set off the nation's worst oil accident.

Environmental groups, however, cite several reasons those plans fall short: The system to capture oil at a broken wellhead still hasn't been proved in the very deep waters; systemic problems with blowout preventers haven't been solved, and companies were too optimistic about how quickly they could drill the kind of relief wells that ultimately plugged the BP spill.

The plans for the new exploratory wells come as Republicans are using high gas prices to push the Obama administration into speeding up permit approvals and expanding drilling.

Government regulators put three exploration plans up for public review earlier this month. The three plans — from Shell Oil, Statoil, the Norwegian state oil company, and BHP Billiton of Australia — follow the government's new regulations by spelling out details of what worst-case scenarios the companies expect, how they calculate it, what they've done to reduce the risk of a blowout and what they'd do to stop the oil if prevention failed.

The Department of Interior's drilling regulatory agency on March 21 approved the first exploration plan — one by Shell Offshore Inc. to drill three wells at 2,950 feet deep. Secretary Ken Salazar said that it met a "strong new standard for safety and environmental protection."

Larger Image



Environmental groups express concerns during the review period, which ended this week.

"We're being told don't worry, we have these new safety standards. But when you look at what it is, what they have to prove, it's not very satisfying," said Jackie Savitz, director of pollution campaigns at Oceana, an ocean conservation group that opposes an expansion of offshore drilling.


Shell Oil, Statoil and BHP Billiton say they have a new system to cap and contain oil in case of an accident and that they'd be able to drill relief wells faster than the five months BP needed last year for the Macondo well.

The exploration plans must be approved before companies can apply for permits to drill. Regulators have approved permits to drill 10 deep-water wells since a post-spill moratorium was lifted.

Oceana and another group, Environment America, argued in written comments that the companies underestimated the time it would take them to drill a relief well. BHP Billiton said it would take 81 days; Statoil said 62 days; and Shell said 128 days.

The environmental groups argued the time probably would be longer, meaning that more oil would flow over a longer period than the companies' plans show.

They said that the government should require the companies to dig a relief well at the same time as they dig the exploratory well as a precaution or have a drilling rig standing by ready to dig. The companies told the government they each had two rigs that would be in the Gulf and could be called into service. The environmental groups said those rigs would be doing other work, which would delay them from getting started on a relief well.

The groups also said that blowout preventers can't be counted on, as shown when the device failed in last year's accident. They also said it's not clear how long it would take to contain oil in an accident.

Shell, Statoil and BHP Billiton all are members of Marine Well Containment Co., a Houston-based consortium that says its containment system is ready for deployment, could operate in 8,000-foot depths and could process 60,000 barrels of oil per day.

The plans don't say how long it would take to cap a broken wellhead. Shell's plan, for example, says only that the equipment could be brought in rapidly.

Marine Well Containment Co. was formed last July. It owns and maintains a containment system that it says is significantly better than previous systems in the Gulf. Houston-based Helix Energy Solutions Group Inc., whose equipment was used in the BP spill, also has equipment to cap a well in deep water.

"The big change compared to how things were before Macondo is that we now have a capping and containment solution for each and every well. That is a big change," said Ola Morten Aanestad, a Statoil vice president and spokesman in North America.

He said that the industry and its regulators didn't approve of drilling a relief well in advance, "because every well has a risk and if you drill more than you need you're actually increasing the risk instead of reducing it."

But David Pettit, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, another group that filed critical comments about the plans, said Marine Well Containment's system is "not ready for prime time."

Pettit said NRDC, Sierra Club and other groups mainly argued that the government should do a more extensive environmental impact assessment than it planned to do.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement has 30 days to decide on whether to approve the plans or ask for more information. The agency must look at the amount of oil the companies think could flow and the specific characteristics of the well and decide whether they have the right equipment to be able to stop the flow at the wellhead, drill relief wells and clean up.

Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday offered amendments that they said would improve safety by requiring measures to prevent blowouts, but the amendments failed.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives is expected to pass legislation that would set deadlines for permit approvals in the Gulf of Mexico and open waters off Southern California, much of the Atlantic Coast and parts of Alaska to offshore drilling.


MORE DRILLING, LOWER PRICES?

Republicans argue that President Barack Obama's restrictions on drilling are leading to higher gasoline prices.

If the U.S. were to step up domestic oil production, would it make a difference on the price of oil? That's debatable and in some senses not completely knowable.

The price of oil is a global price, set by financial markets and not end-users or oil producers, although both can influence the price depending on circumstances. Oil prices went up to $114 a barrel this month because of unrest in Libya, even though Libya isn't a major producer and Saudi Arabia stepped in to replace the lost production.

In 2009 and 2010, the U.S. boosted domestic oil output — thanks mostly to deepwater drilling — after years of net declines. Oil prices peaked in 2008 and then collapsed along with the economy later that year. With the economy recovering, oil prices are back over $100 a barrel despite the greater U.S. supplies.

So if the U.S. was pumping another 500,000 barrels per day of domestically produced oil, few analysts think it would significantly lower oil prices.

That's not to say that additional U.S. supply would have no effect.

"It's definitely part of the equation," said John Kilduff, a veteran energy trader with AgainCapital in New York.

Kilduff and other traders think additional U.S. supply gets cooked into a complex equation that includes not only the risks of oil supply disruption in production regions globally but also the strength or weakness of the U.S. dollar. A less risky source of supply helps boost expectations of adequate supply, but this is weighed against other global factors such as risk and developments in currency markets.



http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/04/15/112246/oil-companies-new-gulf-drilling.html

 

[QueEx]

Re: Oil Spill: BP & Haliburton "Knew of Defect"

<font size="5
">Halliburton admits skipping test

before Gulf blowout</font size>​

​

USA Today
Oct 29, 2010


Halliburton Co. has acknowledged skipping a critical test on the cement
used to seal BP's oil well before its catastrophic Gulf blowout that caused
the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history

In a statement late Thursday, Halliburton said it did not conduct a
stability test on the final cement mix after a last-minute change by BP
added more of a certain ingredient. Previously, it said tests showed the
cement to be stable.

The cement mix's failure to prevent oil and gas from entering the well
has been identified by BP and others as one of the causes of the Deep-
water Horizon oil rig's explosion which triggered a catastrophic oil spill,
reports the Associated Press.

Halliburton admits destroying Gulf oil spill evidence​

​

Company will plead guilty to a criminal charge in Deepwater Horizon disaster

Halliburton has admitted destroying evidence in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and will plead guilty to a criminal charge, the Justice Department announced Thursday.

Under the plea agreement, which requires court approval, Houston-based Halliburton will also face three years' probation, pay the maximum fine of $200,000 and continue to cooperate in the Justice Department's criminal investigation of the April 2010 explosion and fire on the drilling platform, which killed 11 rig workers off Louisiana.

The Justice Department said it would not pursue further criminal charges against Halliburton or its subsidiaries.

Separately, Halliburton made a $55 million "voluntary contribution" to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

In a statement Thursday night, Halliburton noted that the Justice Department "acknowledged the company's significant and valuable cooperation during the course of its investigation, and the company has agreed to continue to cooperate ... in any ongoing investigation related to or arising from the incident."

The spill was the largest in U.S. history: Nearly 5 million barrels of crude oil poured into the Gulf before the sea-floor gusher was capped three months later.

Halliburton's energy-services subsidiary designed and built the well for BP. In early May, the company began an internal investigation to determine whether the number of "centralizers" — metal collars that help keep the well pipe centered — played a role in the blowout. Halliburton recommends installing 21, but BP chose to use just six.

Halliburton ran 3-D computer simulations in May and June 2010, and both times the results indicated there was little difference between the two scenarios. Employees were then directed by unidentified individuals to destroy the simulations, the Justice Department said.

The Deepwater Horizon Task Force was unable to recover the computer simulations.

Halliburton and BP have blamed each other for the cement job that failed to seal the Macondo well.

In a separate statement regarding its contribution to the fish and wildlife foundation, Halliburton said: "Sustainability is at the core of the Company's long-term success and is embedded throughout our business. Our contribution to NFWF demonstrates our commitment to making a positive environmental impact on our world and a strong commitment to our local communities."
​

SOURCE

 

[Upgrade Dave]

Gulf rig explosion: Natural gas leaks have stopped, as probe continues

The explosion and fire at a natural gas rig off the Louisiana coast raise new questions about the role of blowout preventers and overall safety of drilling operations in the Gulf.
By Chelsea B. Sheasley, Correspondent / July 25, 2013


The natural gas rig that was burning and leaking off the Louisiana coast is under control, according to federal regulators.

Natural gas has stopped leaking from the well and the fire has decreased to a small flame fueled by residual gas at the top of the well, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) and the Coast Guard announced Thursday. The agencies said the leak stopped due to bridging, a well condition where small pieces of sediment and sand flow into the well path and restrict and ultimately stop the flow.

Investigators are still determining what caused the natural gas blowout and subsequent fire, and don’t expect to have immediate answers. But the accident is already raising questions about the role that blowout preventers played – and whether safety standards in the Gulf Coast have improved since the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster.


The rig’s owner, Hercules Offshore, told The Wall Street Journal that the crew tried to shut down the well using a blowout preventer, but weren’t able to complete the work before they had to evacuate for their safety.

The blowout preventer, designed to shut off out-of-control oil and gas wells, draws particular scrutiny because it was the blowout preventer on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that failed to work properly, leading to the biggest offshore oil spill in US history.

In 2010, calls were made to improve blowout-prevention equipment and offshore safety practice, but the degree to which effective changes have been made – or need to be made – is still debated.

In April, the commission originally appointed by President Obama to investigate what happened in the Deepwater Horizon explosion and what could be done to prevent another, released a followup report grading the Obama administration, Congress, and the offshore drilling industry on their response to the disaster.

The administration earned a B, the offshore drilling industry a B-, and Congress a D+.

Frances Beinecke, a member of the commission and president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, explained in an article on the Energy Collective that the administration earned its grade for moving quickly to reorganize criticized federal bureaus and implementing new safety rules, while Congress earned its failing grade for passing only one piece of legislation related to the BP disaster, the Restore Act that directs 80 percent of BP’s fines under the Clean Water Act toward restoration projects in the Gulf.

Others argue that the less new federal regulation the better. Earlier this month, nearly a dozen Republican lawmakers pressed regulators to get input from the industry before proposing new blowout preventer and safety standards, The Wall Street Journal reported. Lawmakers were “concerned that new technology requirements may force energy companies to retire their existing equipment prematurely.”

In April, Ms. Beinecke wrote that both the BSEE and the drilling industry should be doing more about improving blowout preventer safety.

“The bureau is behind, though, in putting in place tougher rules on the design and operation of blowout preventers. That work needs to move forward quickly, to help make this critical piece of last-resort equipment safer and more reliable.

“The oil industry itself has created equipment to help contain a high-pressure blowout in deep water, a direct response to the industry's inability to plug the BP well in a timely way three years ago,” she wrote. “The industry, though, is still dragging its feet on the need to create an independent safety institute to help build a culture that puts safety first, all the time.”

Today's announcement follows earlier reports that the well's owner, Walter Oil & Gas, was planning on building a relief well to stop the flow. Forty-four workers were evacuated from the site Tuesday with no injuries reported.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2013/0725/Gulf-rig-explosion-Natural-gas-leaks-have-stopped-as-probe-continues


I know Que and I are the only people that care about this but this is why I'm against the Keystone Pipeline and feel it should never be allowed until the energy companies can prove they know how to fix leaks before the become environmental disasters of biblical proportions.

Hey, it's not just here but in Canada too

http://globalnews.ca/news/665576/pipeline-spills-more-than-5000-litres-of-oil-in-northern-alberta/

Pipeline spills more than 5000 litres of oil in northern Alberta


LITTLE BUFFALO, Alta. – An pipeline operated by Pennwest Exploration has leaked more than 5000 litres of oil in northern Alberta and co-ordination of clean-up efforts is being hampered by flooding at the company’s head office in Calgary.

The Lubicon Lake First Nation says Pennwest believes the spill took place on Saturday evening in an area that is the proposed location of future reserve lands.

It says the company initially said the spill affected surface waters and muskeg lands over 2.5 square kilometres.

But Lubicon Lake says the spill is now thought to be larger than initial estimates.

Pennwest is working to contain the spill but says the flooding in Calgary is having a negative effect on the management of the spill, particularly when it comes to communications.

Lubicon Lake Chief Bernard Ominayak says the safety of the first nation’s citizens and their environment is the “primary concern.”

Read more: Crude awakening, 37 years of oil spills in Alberta

 

[QueEx]

Gulf rig explosion: Natural gas leaks have stopped, as probe continues

The explosion and fire at a natural gas rig off the Louisiana coast raise new questions about the role of blowout preventers and overall safety of drilling operations in the Gulf.
By Chelsea B. Sheasley, Correspondent / July 25, 2013


The natural gas rig that was burning and leaking off the Louisiana coast is under control, according to federal regulators.

I didn't even know about this one

. . . been so engrossed with several municipal interests opposite an entity that wants to run an oil pipeline across the bed of a lake that supplies drinking water to 750K people, rather than take a more divergent route -- claiming the potential for harm is incalculably remote

 

[Upgrade Dave]

​

I didn't even know about this one

. . . been so engrossed with several municipal interests opposite an entity that wants to run an oil pipeline across the bed of a lake that supplies drinking water to 750K people, rather than take a more divergent route -- claiming the potential for harm is incalculably remote

You're shitting me. You gotta be. Nevermind, of course that's what they'll say.
Bruh, a Google search gave a bunch of spills in all kinds of places. I'm no longer surprised by energy companies greed but now I'm just angry at their recklessness and incompetence and the politicians that abet them.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/wisconsin-waters-threatened-by-tar-sands-crude-oil-expansion-b9944286z1-214318651.html

Worth noting: Tar sands developers want to triple production.

Enbridge's record merits alarm. Just 150 miles east of Milwaukee, our nation's largest inland crude oil spill began on July 25, 2010, devastating the Kalamazoo River near Marshall, Mich. Cleanup is still incomplete; costs are passing the billion-dollar mark.

For 17 hours, through three shift changes and multiple alarms going off, Enbridge employees in their Calgary, Alberta, control room did not shut down the pipeline. That only happened when a Michigan utility worker called. Meanwhile, 840,000 gallons of crude oil spilled.

Key information was only shared a week later: The spill was tar sands, not conventional crude oil.

Enbridge's pipeline 67, the linchpin of the whole plan, runs from Alberta to Superior. Its proposal doubles its capacity to 880,000 barrels per day.

At Superior, the pipeline splits. One pipeline bisects Wisconsin on its way to Delavan before continuing south. Some of its crude oil would go to Chicago-area refineries; most is destined for ports and refineries on the Gulf of Mexico.

Another pipeline runs eastward from Superior, before crossing under the Straits of Mackinac to connect to Detroit-area refineries — and others on the Atlantic Ocean.

Furthermore, Calumet Specialties, a Superior refiner, wants to ship 13 million barrels per year of crude oil across Lake Superior and through the Great Lakes on barges.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/05/02/1952171/exxon-spills-tar-sands-oil-again-in-missouri-cant-find-126000-gallons-spilled-in-arkansas/?mobile=nc

ExxonMobil has now confirmed that on Tuesday, the Pegasus pipeline that has been out of service since it spilled thousands of barrels of oil into Mayflower, Arkansas in March spilled some more into a yard in Missouri. In the town of Doniphan about 190 miles north of Mayflower, a resident reported seeing some oil and dead vegetation in the yard. Though small in scope, perhaps as little as 42 gallons, the spill is a reminder that oil is messy, tar sands oil particularly so, and transporting it across the country is extremely risky.

More pressing is the missing oil in Mayflower from the spill last month. The Sierra Club requested the accident incident report, which said that 3,000 barrels of oil (some 126,000 gallons) have not been recovered no matter how energetic Exxon’s response was:


Despite a massive cleanup effort in the Mayflower, Arkansas, neighborhood, the federal pipeline safety agency reports that ExxonMobil has recovered only 2,000 of the total 5,000 barrels of spilled tar sands crude. The accident incident report, which the agency shared with the Sierra Club after a Freedom of Information Act request, gives new insight into the size of the spill and the ineffectiveness of the cleanup effort. The report reveals that in total 83 people were evacuated from their homes, emergency response took 40 minutes, the pipeline was operating at 708 pounds of pressure when it burst, and 2,000 barrels reached local waterways.

The Pegasus pipeline was built to carry diesel fuel in 1947, Exxon converted the pipeline to carry tar sands crude and reversed its flow in 2006. In 2011, the federal pipeline safety agency fined Exxon $26,500 for failure to properly inspect a section of the line.

The report also states that even though there are at least 3,000 unrecovered barrels of oil, the current “estimated cost of public and non-Operator private property damage” is $0. At the same time, when ClimateProgress reported on the tax loophole that allows oil companies like Exxon to avoid paying into the federal Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund because tar sands oil is not classified as oil, Exxon’s response was that it was “paying all valid claims relating to the spill.” They even doubled down and tweeted as much. But Exxon’s opinion of what a constitutes a “valid” claim is key here.

The oil in this pipeline is not paying a cent per barrel into the cleanup fund created to be the backstop for corporate intransigence: “When the responsible party is unknown or refuses to pay, funds from the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund can be used to cover removal costs or damages resulting from discharges of oil.”

Last month, local residents filed a lawsuit against Exxon seeking $5 million in damages. The cleanup is still ongoing, and many residents have still not been allowed back into their homes a month after the spill. In fact, Exxon has offered to buy some of the affected homes

 

[QueEx]

You're shitting me. You gotta be. Nevermind, of course that's what they'll say.

I Shit you not! But you named the elements: Greed, recklessness, incompetence and worthless politicians.