12 Issue 1/2013 Insight
Blowout prevention The response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster has spurred an innovative solution, reports Jason Knights. Between April and July 2010, an estimated 4.9 million barrels of crude oil gushed from the damaged Macondo well into the Gulf of Mexico following the explosion that killed 11 workers and destroyed the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. This was, according to President Obama, the worst environmental disaster America had ever faced. By the time the leak was stopped, oil had affected more than 1,000 miles of coast in five US states, seriously damaging local fishing and tourist industries – as well as the reputation of the offshore oil and gas sector. Something had to be done to make sure it never happened again. A new US government department – the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) – was set up, which has implemented the most aggressive and comprehensive offshore oil and gas regulatory reforms in American history. Spotlight on BOP The disaster was the result of a blowout, and ‘the blowout was the product of human error, engineering mistakes, and management failures’, according to the official report of the US government’s Oil Spill Commission. This put the spotlight on the failure of the well’s blowout preventer (BOP). A BOP is a large, specialised valve used to seal, control and monitor an oil or gas well. It can be the size of a double-decker bus
and, in the case of the Macondo BOP, weigh up to 400 tonnes. It is there to prevent the uncontrolled release of oil or gas and is critical to the safety of the crew, the rig and the environment. It is the final line of defence. BOP failures are uncommon, but far from unknown: there have been a few major incidents since the Deepwater Horizon. Failures can be electrical, hydraulic or mechanical. But whatever the cause, failure in such a complex system, controlling 500,000–750,000 pounds of ram force in water that might exceed 9,000 feet deep, can pose a catastrophic risk of fire, explosion and death. When a problem is detected in a BOP system or component, a decision has to be made whether to pull the BOP to the surface for inspection – or not. Such decisions are made on the basis of some understanding of what the problem might be and a risk assessment of the potential seriousness of the fault. But such decisions can also have significant cost implications. According to Duco de Haan, CEO of Lloyd’s Register Energy – Drilling: “The operational cost of drilling a deep water well typically ranges from US$1 million to US$1.2 million a day. In some of the ultra-deep water projects, it could take 8–12 days – or even longer – to secure the well, recover and repair the BOP, re-run and then re-test it before resuming operations. So, one incident could cost US$14 million.” The annual cost to the industry of pulling up BOPs runs into many hundreds of millions of dollars.