BP Macondo (Gulf of Mexico) Oil Spill

Discussion in 'World Events' started by Saint, May 18, 2010.

  1. occidental Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    46
    The justice department disagrees.

    justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/December/10-ag-1442.html
     
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  3. adoucette Caca Occurs Valued Senior Member

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    Actually, the Justice Dept sued 9 companies, so you can't use that to claim that BP broke any specific regulation and given the wording I don't think you can find a regulation that requires one to "use the best available and safest drilling technology to monitor the well’s conditions", but if you can, point it out.

    In any case it will be interesting to see what regulations, if any, the Justice dept actually trys to prove were broken, I've yet to see one that has been specifically pointed out, but feel free to show one that was.
    But of course, in a civil suit like the Justice department brought, there is no requirement that any regulation has to have been broken for BP and TransOcean to be held liable for damages.

    For instance, BP chose to use a long-string production casing in a deep, high-pressure well with multiple hydrocarbon zones instead of using a cement liner over the uncased section of the well, but there is no regulation requiring they do that, and their well plan was approved by the MMS.

    For instance BP decided that six centralizers would be sufficient to maintain an adequate annulus for cementing between the casing and the formation rock, even though modeling results suggested that more centralizers would be needed. The risk of course is the cement job would fail, but there is no regulation specifing the number of centralizers they had to use.

    For instance BP didn't ask Halliburton to run a bond log after cementing to assess cement integrity in the well, but there is no regulation that requires them to do so. They in fact did what the regs required, the Negative Pressure Test, but unfortunately the people onboard the rig MISREAD the test results.

    This is KEY, as this was why they missed the fact that the cement job had failed and began pumping the mud out which ultimately led to the blowout, but this was a basic HUMAN ERROR and there is no regulation that says "You Can't Screw Up".

    The second point is that most of these allegations appear to be related to the procedures and equipment that the TransOcean DWH Rig Drillers were responsible for since TransOcean personel were responsible for monitoring of the well during mud removal and the condition of the BOP and the emergency/control procedures employed/not employed on that fateful night.

    Arthur
     
    Last edited: Jan 4, 2011
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  5. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    I was unaware BP was not directly responsible for the actions on the rig... I thought it fell to BP since they were the "overseer" in this instance, but that TransOcean was just as responsible?
     
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  7. occidental Registered Senior Member

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    46
    Sure. Page 15.
    justice.gov/usao/lae/news/2010/downloads/complaint_12152010.pdf
    PART 250—OIL AND GAS AND SULPHUR OPERATIONS IN THE OUTER CONTINENTAL SHELF
    Subpart D—Oil and Gas Drilling Operations
    General Requirements


    § 250.401 What must I do to keep wells under control?

    You must take necessary precautions to keep wells under control at all times. You must:

    (a) Use the best available and safest drilling technology to monitor and evaluate well conditions and to minimize the potential for the well to flow or kick;

    (b) Have a person onsite during drilling operations who represents your interests and can fulfill your responsibilities;

    (c) Ensure that the toolpusher, operator's representative, or a member of the drilling crew maintains continuous surveillance on the rig floor from the beginning of drilling operations until the well is completed or abandoned, unless you have secured the well with blowout preventers (BOPs), bridge plugs, cement plugs, or packers;

    (d) Use personnel trained according to the provisions of subpart O; and

    (e) Use and maintain equipment and materials necessary to ensure the safety and protection of personnel, equipment, natural resources, and the environment.

    [68 FR 8423, Feb. 20, 2003]
     
    Last edited: Jan 4, 2011
  8. occidental Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    46
    They all have contracts that make them equally responsible for an accident, but their contracts are void if they can prove negligence.
     
  9. adoucette Caca Occurs Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,829
    BP is financially responsible for whatever happens, but the reality is that BP personnel on the rig are not Drillers, Mud Pushers or even cement experts (Halliburton), so in reality the people who had actual responsibility that night for the drilling operations and monitoring of the well and use of the emergency equipment to contain the blowout was nearly all TransOcean personnel.

    Arthur
     
  10. adoucette Caca Occurs Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,829
    No they don't.
    Halliburton has a particularly iron clad contract that absolves them of damages and even the Justice dept didn't bother to sue them.
    Why would they take on any blame since cement jobs are KNOWN to fail and every blowout is preceeded by a cement failure?

    The POINT of the tests is to determine if a cement job has failed and then re-cement the well.

    Which is what didn't get done on the rig that night because the simply misread the Negative Pressure Test results and thought the cement job was holding.

    While possible, the proof of this, considering the rig is gone (and much of the data with it) makes this a tough challenge.

    Arthur
     
  11. adoucette Caca Occurs Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,829
    Well that's a regulation that over half the existant wells can be shown to be in violation of because most of the BOPS in use don't have 2 Blind Shear Rams, so they aren't using "the best available", so this will get down to interpretation, but even so there is no clear indication that they violated any of these regs, just that the Justice Dept is PILING ON.

    Further, most of these things all deal with the DRILLING operations, which was what TransOcean was responsible for.

    Or consider that they were to monitor the well continuously, and that was done by TransOcean (in theory), but yet they still missed the fact that oil was coming up the riser for over an hour.

    How did that happen?

    We still don't know because a lot of the people who could answer these questions were killed that night.

    Arthur
     
  12. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    This kind of challenge is normally met by way of serious investigation, including the coercion of subpoenaed testimony and evidence from all concerned, involved, knowledgeable, or present at the time of the calamity.

    With modern availability of phone records, emails, etc, such challenges are perhaps not as tough as in years past - requiring only the political will.
    When evidence has carefully not been obtained, or even seriously sought, its non presence is persuasive of very little.
     
    Last edited: Jan 5, 2011
  13. adoucette Caca Occurs Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,829
    Except it is being carefully studied and the evidence is being obtained:

    http://www.oilspillcommission.gov/
    http://www.wadisasternews.com/go/site/3043/
    http://www.nae.edu/Activities/Projects20676/deepwater-horizon-analysis/36918.aspx
    http://www.csb.gov/investigations/detail.aspx?SID=96&Type=1&pg=1&F_All=y
    Then there is the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement ongoing forensic analysis of the recovered BOP
    Then there are the detailed studies done by BP, TransOcean and Hallibuton.
    And now the Civil Trial by the Justice Dept.

    Arthur
     
  14. occidental Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    46
    Fortunately the justice department doesnt care about the opinion of some guy on the internet.
     
  15. adoucette Caca Occurs Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,829
    And they don't care what you think either, which is why they are also suing TransOcean, the DRILLERS, as most of those things you listed were TransOcean responsibilities.


    BP has got a lot of heat on the type of well they designed, but the fact was, through out the sealing of the well, including the Top Kill, the well integrity was never breached, so BP isn't going to lose on that score, the long single string uncemented design held up. BP will get a hit over the use of only 6 centralizers, but that was a low level decision and apparently both Halliburton (the cementer) and shoreside BP technicians agreed that it would most likely work AND that they would of course test the cement job to insure it was holding before removing the mud that held the oil in place in the reservoir.

    The risk they thought they were taking was having to re-cement the well, not that the drilling crew on the rig would misread the Negative Pressure Test and also choose to not do the Bond Log and then also do such a poor job of monitoring the outflow of the well so as to miss the movement of hydrocarbons up the well for over an HOUR. This last point is key, because with 23,000 ft of pipe between the reservoir and the ship, the TransOcean Rig operators had plenty of time to MONITOR the well, see that it was kicking and pump heavy mud back down the well to again bring the well under control (as it was BEFORE any cement was applied). But, by they time they realized that oil was coming up, they didn't have sufficient pipe and pump pressure to overcome the pressure in the well. In addition, BP can argue that though they designed the well, that by leasing the AWARD WINNING Deep Water Horizon and Drilling Crew and Drilling equipment from the priemier drilling company, TransOcean, and the priemier Cementing company (Hallibuton) to actually drill and then cement the well, that they in fact were using the "best available" equipment/people for the job.

    TransOcean is also likely to get a big hit on what appears to have been poor maintainence of the BOP. As it turns out, this piece of equipment owned and operated by TransOcean, failed in most of the ways it could: both the EDS (emergency disconnect system) designed to separate the lower marine riser from the rest of the BOP and the automatic sequencers controlling the shear ram and disconnect failed to operate, and potentially more importantly, TransOcean made changes to the BOP stack, but then misfiled these engineering changes, and so for 10 days they were trying to operate the BOP's rams from the surface and get the BSR to engage they were using out of date schematics and doing nothing but engaging a non-functioning "Test Ram".

    What do you think the outcome of the trial will be if the result of the still ongoing forensic analysis is that the BOP would have stopped the flow (or substantially reduced it) if TransOcean had maintained their BOP properly (no dead battery, no leaking hydraulics) and if TransOcean's misfiled engineering changes to the BOP hadn't caused the 10 day delay allowing very high pressure gas/oil/mud outflow to erode the Blind Shear Ram thus making it ineffective?

    Arthur
     
    Last edited: Jan 5, 2011
  16. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    If the Onion wrote that, the context would be at least appropriate. That you are presenting the perpetrators' self-investigations; the workings of committees and commissions that lack even minimal subpeona power and operate with political loading; the "investigations" of a Justice Department that has allowed the perps months to lawyer up and collude on their common story, has not subpoenaed records or evidence, has brought in by force no one for questioning, and arrested nobody; in all apparent sincerity - as if you really believe this is what the investigation of possible first degree negligent homicide and felony level destruction of property by organized criminals (as gang activity, it invokes special powers and methods of investigation) looks like,

    speaks volumes. Those silly little bits of political theater actually persuade you?
     
  17. occidental Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    46
    Thank you for your predictions for the new year arthur, but Ill wait for the trial to see how it turns out.

    Oh, and you do realize the safety award the "AWARD WINNING Deepwater Horizon" received was from the now disbanded and discredited MMS?
     
  18. occidental Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    46
    Thats why you think theyre suing "TransOcean"?(you do realize theres transocean holdings llc, transocean offshore deepwater drilling inc, and transocean deepwater inc?)

    According to the complaint filed by the government that I linked to, heres the defendants at this time:

    So obviously a number of companies are equally involved at this point.
     
  19. adoucette Caca Occurs Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
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    Yes they do, since they deal in what actually happened on that rig, and if you took the time to read their investigations you would know that, but instead you rely on your completely preconcieved notions of guilt.

    Arthur
     
  20. adoucette Caca Occurs Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,829
    Of course, but for brevity I think just writing TransOcean is permissible, you know like they do in the NY Times.

    Arthur
     
  21. fedr808 1100101 Valued Senior Member

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    6,706
    FINALLY, somebody else that actually bothers to do some real research. I've been making the same argument since around june and july. The fact is that we have heard nothing about the company that actually built the blow out preventer.

    And the fact is that BOP's are a rather poor "plan B". The reason is because they only work 90% of the time. The reason is because the drill pipes are stored individually and then attached together by means of a screw head and a female connecter. in order to prevent a change in the bore of the pipe these connecters are made significantly thicker then the rest of the pipe. That creates a very strong and sturdy seal. So strong in fact that if a blowout preventer were to engage the rams up against a connection point the rams will fail to cut through because it is too strong.

    Some time ago, in the early 2000's there was a study I believe that was held by a congressional committee to investigate the effectiveness of the blowout preventers used by the rigs in the gulf. If I had to make a guess it was in response to the hurricane season of hurricane Katrina where there was the threat and destruction of several rigs due to the hurricanes. It turns out that the metallurgy of the drill piping has been improving more quickly then the technology of the BOP. They found that many standard BOP's simply could not cut through some the newest high end drill piping even if they tried.

    Yet the investigation never led to any improvements, and if I had to wager a guess it was a Republican effort to save the oil companies time and money from having to upgrade.

    Its nice to meet someone whom is actually smart enough to do some real research rather then assuming everything that the media and society says.
     
  22. adoucette Caca Occurs Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,829
    Just like I've been waiting for the investigative reports to come out before assigning blame. You should try it sometime, you know, not joining in with the lynch mob by rushing to judgement before the facts are known.

    I think you will find that virtually all of the MMS people are in the new agency and doing just what they were before. A reorg is common in a situation like this, happens in companies all the time, but part of the requirement for the award was for not having accidents, so it doesn't really matter who gave it to them, the MMS might not have been a great regulator, but they did know how to count and the DWH had an excellent safety record, as well as the record for the deepest well ever drilled.

    What's becoming clear from the reports that I'm reading is that the regulations for drilling were always a decade or more behind what was going on operationally in the field, and because the field was always charting new territory, as in depth of drilling, both below the sea and below the seabed, they were always operating in somewhat uncharted territory.

    What is likely to come out of this is a new regulatory framework that slows down this process and keeps regulations more current with actual field work and is likely to be modeled after what is done today in our Nuclear industry.

    I'd pay particular attention to what the U.S. CHEMICAL SAFETY AND HAZARD
    INVESTIGATION BOARD has to say (they also investigated BP for the Texas Refinery disaster) as I think they will be very influential in shaping the new regulations.

    http://www.csb.gov/investigations/detail.aspx?SID=96&Type=1&pg=1&F_All=y

    Arthur
     

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