BP's estimate of the Macondo Blowout

What Did BP think the flowrate of Macondo was while it was still flowing into the Gulf?

Well, there’s now an answer to that question.  This document is related to the Riser Insertion tool where dispersant would be injected into the wellhead.  You want to inject dispersant at an optimum ratio to the oil flowing.  For example, let’s say for every 10 barrels per day flowing, you want to inject 1 gallon of Corexit.  If you’re planning on injecting 10 gallons of Corexit, you then probably think there’s 100 barrels per day flowing. 

Take a look at Page 4 (and also note the document is dated July 6th, while the well was still flowing):

Bingo.  BP’s working assumption on the flowrate of the Macondo blowout DURING THE BLOWOUT was 53,000 Barrels per Day, which, by the way, also happens to be nearly spot on to the government’s spillrate calculation during the trial.  

UPDATE: I've had this conversation a few times with people.  Most everyone assumed BP lied about the flowrate during the blowout.  I paid very close attention and, if you watched closely, it usually wasn't BP making the "5,000 Barrels per day" estimate of the flowrate. It was usually a USCG officer saying, but they were always standing right next to BP, especially Doug Suttles:


I've repeatedly told folks that, if you paid very close attention, BP didn't actually lie about the flowrate. They used a USCG officer as a shield to save themselves a few nickels.  That's not lying; that's far worse.  It's cowardice.

Quick BP Trial Update

BP Executive Found Not Guilty on the only count the judge didn't throw out.  

Both the judge and the defense attorneys had harsh words for the prosecution team.

CSB Video on the Macondo Blowout

The CSB has shed some new light to the subject.  The report is a very interesting read.

I still don't buy that the CSB thesis on the BOP failure (buckling via effective compression with an operable Deadman) is more plausible than the one suggested by the USCG (no working Deadman, pipe string buckling via rig drift off, BSR activation most likely by the ROV intervention), but it is plausible and there is some data to support the CSB version.  Both are completely plausible and it's mostly a judgement call on which is the more likely culprit (something not at all unusual, given the paucity of hard data).

Overall, there isn't much new that would effect BP, Transocean, etc. (although Transocean's maintenance people look like a bunch of Bubba's that don't know what end of a wrench to turn), but it raises some serious questions about BOP design that the industry at large needs to answer.

Courtwatch, BP Edition, Part 3

Four years ago, what we'd come to call the Macondo blowout / Deepwater Horizon / the BP Oil Spill occurred. The Atlantic / 4 Years Ago, Photo Essay

Previous Edition: Part 2

First off, a quick conviction update: A BP manager who was in charge of spill response has plead guilty to insider trading charges. His was an obvious crime. You've got to be pretty blatant to get the SEC to come after you. He sold all of his shares very early on after the well blew out and all of his family's shares. That's a little too flagrant for the SEC to give you a pass.

Probably the phase with the most variability is the "how much spilled" phase (NY Times: In BP Trial, the Amount of Oil Lost Is at Issue - Nice summary). Note that many of the fines are on a per barrel basis, so, if more barrels were spilled, bigger fines. I believe it's $1,100/barrel under regular negligence and, if gross negligence is found, it's over $4,000/barrel. By fudging their estimates, it's argued BP can best limit their total liability. Here's more on the sparing over the spillrate estimates.

Before I go into what I viewed in the courtroom, I'll point out this very important factoid: Actually, they kinda DID have a meter. During the last stages of the blowout, a capping stack with 2 orifices of known size were fitted to the top of the well. One of the two orifices was fitted with a pressure gauge that discharged directly to the GoM while the other was routed to the collection system of the Disco Enterprise & Q4000. There was a pretty good gauge of how quickly the well was flowing at that point in time (~50,000 barrels/day).

The person (Dr. Tom Hunter) that noticed the lineup and made the initial calculations was actually a nuclear weapons engineer. He had a PhD from Wisconsin and held roughly the same position as Dr. Oppenheimer had. He worked for Sandia National Labs and was a part of a taskforce led by DOE to fix the blowout and monitor BP's actions. I actually got to sit in the courtroom for some of his testimony. He retired about midway through the blowout and decided to stick around to help make things right, despite being paid by nobody to do so. His testimony was pretty amazing. If a lawyer could sit down and dream up the most reputable witness possible, Dr. Hunter would be high on that list. He definitely spoke like an engineer (he wasn't very polished and kinda stuttered), but his command of the numbers was firm. His testimony cemented the government's position pretty well early on in the spillrate phase of the trial. BP didn't spend a lot of time cross examining him and was probably just glad he was off the stand. I would have liked to see BP try impugning his integrity, after all, Dr. Hunter was just in charge of making sure US Nuclear Weapons go boom. The best testimate to Dr. Hunter's integrity is that his calculation, which was made with not much more than a 4-function calculator in the field while the blowout was going on, was never questioned by anyone, even scientists and engineers on BP's dime.

Here's the final government report on the spillrate:
Federal Government Report on Oil Spill [PDF]
For reference: ~4.9 million barrels total
Note that the government narrowed in on a single number which was then subjected to peer review and was published far in advance of the trial. For a ballpark figure, it amounted to an average of ~50,000 barrels/day.

In the leadup to the spillrate portion of the trial, BP played a little dance with the numbers. They constantly complained that the government's figure was too high, but not saying by how much nor would they expose their own reports until just before the spillrate portion of the trial. Off the top of my head, it wasn't until about 3 weeks prior that they posted their number on their website.
BP Report on how much oil spilled
For reference: ~3.26 million barrels total
Note that BP actually had about 3 different numbers, all of which coalesced around ~40,000 barrels/day. Both the Feds and BP agreed on the total oil collected by the capping stack before the well was finally shut off.

The initial shock was, 'wow, BP's number isn't much different from the Feds.' Everyone expected a super-lowball estimate from BP, but actually (in large part because of Dr. Hunter) they were pretty hemmed in by that final flowrate measurement, which everyone agreed was about as accurate as possible under the circumstances. The biggest difference between is the Feds assumed a constant or decreasing flowrate; BP's report argues that the flow rate kept increasing over timer due to erosion. Since the endpoint is fixed, they were just arguing over the slope of the curve (pointing up or pointing down). The Feds claimed that reservoir depletion was the governing factor. BP argued that erosion of the partially-closed BOP rams was what governed the flowrate.

As I mentioned, I saw some of the Federal witnesses (the Feds went first). I also got to see a couple of the BP flowrate estimate witnesses. The later was using an OLGA model. He was pretty reputable. He had (as memory serves) the highest of the BP estimates.

The first BP witness, however, was a haughty British geology professor out of Imperial College of London. He had the lowest of the BP estimates and depended on reservoir modelling for his results. He used equations of his own derivation based upon first principles. I got to witness some of the cross examination which (I think) was done by the same young prosecutor that led Mix's prosecution. He tore into the Brit professor, going into how much money BP had donated to Imperial College, how he used to work for BP, how his flowrate estimate was only lately published and wasn't peer reviewed. The professor, who didn't handle the pressure well, retorted, 'well, it was posted on the internet and I've received some really nice comments from people.' Not exactly as impressive as a peer-review.

What will Barbier do? The levels of uncertainty on this measurement are far beyond what scientists are usually comfortable with. There's no question I think that the Federal estimate is more reliable, but if Barbier would just take the mean of the two estimates, I wouldn't have a big problem with that. How much oil spilled?

Billions of dollars are on the line (a $16 Billion dollar question). Many of those dollars are reserved for coastal restoration in Louisiana. What choices Barbier makes will be worth paying attention to for a number of reasons.

NOTE: Some minor edits after publishing.

UPDATE: The dates for the final phase of the main BP trial were just announced today:

Richard Thompson (@rthompsonMSY) tweeted -
"Mark your calendars: Phase 3 of #BP oil spill trial, the "penalty phase," to begin 1/20/15 and end 2/5, per order issued this morning."

More story here.

Courtwatch, BP Edition, Part 2

Courtwatch, BP Edition, Part 1

Part 2:

The main portion of the trial concerns civil liability and Clean Water Act fines, etc.  Ed Crooks of the Financial Times has been covering the trial extensively.  There's also been periodic tweeting/writeups from Mike Schleifenstein and others with the TP.  One TP reporter (Richard Thompson) jumped ship to The Advocate and has headed up their coverage.  

There's been plenty of coverage of the main trial.  Billions of dollars are at stake.  Much hinges on how Barbier rules. Louisiana, for example, is putting most of its hopes of funding coastal restoration on the trial.  

I've attended, off and on, since the first day of the trial.  I've by no means attended nearly as often as the reporters covering the trial.  I usually follow their tweets as much as I can, but they're getting a more complete picture than I can try and portray.  What I do have that few others in the room have is an engineering background; when an expert witness describes how he set up his OLGA model, I'm the only guy in the room whose eyes won't glaze over.  

I'll just add a few insights from the first phase of the trial for now:

* First off, I was shocked at the number of lawyers who were taking advantage of the WiFi to check up on their Facebook pages in the middle of Barbier's courtroom.  I've been told by a friend that those were likely the BP Corporate Counsel who are only attending the trial because they have to.  They're basically around to sign checks and make sure nothing goes too far off the rail.  All of the actual trial litigation is contracted out.  

* Speaking of contracted lawyers, BP decided to recruit their main lawyer on Phase 1 from Bear Bryant's Alabama football team.  Let me tell you, football players make great lawyers.  

No, not really, he made a total mess of the trial.  It was embarrassing how often he was unprepared or late or just plain wrong.  I realize that "whoever wins the most objections" doesn't win a trial and that many objections are brought up knowing they won't be sustained by a judge, but Brock batted below the Mendoza line on objections.  He always seemed to walk around with complete confidence in himself, no matter what, though.  He probably knew how much BP was pumping up his bank account.  Fortunately for BP's shareholders, he was shunted off to the side in the second phase of the trial, but he made a mess of the first phase, in my (non-lawyer) opinion.  

* Dr. Bea testified early in the first phase.  His health is going downhill, but he's still amazing to listen to.  BP attacked him pretty hard at the end of his testimony, but didn't land a single hit (IMO).  

* The most interesting portion of the first phase of the trial was the duel between two expert witnesses: Dr. Bourgoyne and Dr. Alan Huffman.  Dr. Bourgoyne wrote the book on drilling engineering and is Professor Emeritus at LSU in Petroleum Engineering.  Dr. Bourgoyne was BP's expert witness, but the Feds coaxed plenty of testimony out of him highly damaging to BP, IMHO.  Dr. Alan Huffman is a geophysicist and arguably the world's leading expert on pore pressure prediction.  Dr. Huffman was an expert witness for the Feds. What I found extremely interesting was Dr. Huffman and Dr. Bourgoyne went at each other like two bulls in a pasture only big enough for one.  They had multiple rebuttal reports to each other's findings.  Here's one of Dr. Huffman's I found online.  All of the reports are out there if you go searching for them.  It blew me away that you'd have two experts at the top of their field banging away at each other like that.  The thrust of Dr. Huffman's testimony was BP drilled in a reckless manner, even before the failed cement job began.  The thrust of Dr. Bourgoyne's testimony was BP operated with standard industry practice up until the cement job, then there some recklessness occurred (he sort of waffled around on whether he thought it was gross negligence).  He did say  it was the worst job at kick detection he'd seen in his entire life (a good drilling crew will detect a kick in under 6 barrels; on Macondo, over 600 barrels entered the wellbore before any action was taken).  Some of what each said at the time went over my head, but I was actually attending a graduate level petroleum engineering course at the time and would ask the professor in that course for background and could then later put the pieces together better.  I have no opinion in which was more right, but both made great points (neither was all that helpful to BP) and I was honored to have heard both testify.   If you want to listen in person to Dr. Huffman talk about pore pressure prediction and fracture gradient (which was also his primary expertise at the trial), you can go to the Tulane Engineering Forum on April 4th.  When Dr. Huffman and Dr. Bourgoyne were testifying, I had a lot of crappy Subway at my desk, but it was worth it to hear every minute I could.  I learned a lot.

* Judge Barbier's handling of the trial was magnificent in my opinion.  He worked very, very hard to keep all the personalities in line.  This trial could easily have blown up into a giant circus.  He hasn't hesistated to step on toes in order to bring lawyers to heel.  He's also been a marathon runner as far as pushing forward and not taking every little excuse for a recess or an early 2-hour lunch.  His handling of the trial, just from a logistical standpoint, has been masterful.  Furthermore, when he asks witnesses questions, they are short, insightful, and more than once I found him asking a question I wanted asked.  Thus far, he has done just about the best job you could reasonably ask a judge to do.  

Here's a Reuters summary of Phase 1 of the trial. A Wikipedia entry on the BP Litigation.  

I'll try to do an update on the second phase later.  I also hope I've separate my opinion on what occurred vs. what actually occurred well enough.  

Note:  Some minor changes after publishing for clarity.

Courtwatch, BP Edition, Part 1

So, one thing about living in a democracy is that the courts are open to the public.  Anyone can walk right in and (so long as you are well behaved) observe the proceedings.  No star chambers in this country (Welp, maybe NSA excluded).  

Anyway, what I wanted to talk about a case that's very important going on right now.  No, not the Nagin trial.  The various BP trials have been going on for the past few months at the Federal Courthouse on Poydras.  One of the largest, most profitable corporations on earth is on trial and any member of the public can come in and watch the proceedings.  

There have been 4 main public trials thus far:

1- The USCG/MMS Board of Inquiry, held partly at a hotel in Kenner and broadcast on CSPAN.  Not really a trial and the final report isn't (directly) admissible in court, but somewhat similar.  I was at home sick for a few days and watched a substantial portion of it and was amused at expensive corporate defense lawyers trying to file objections during the proceedings only to have the Coastie running the proceedings tell them to sit down and shut up.  One of the BP lawyers in the proceedings popped up quite a bit later.  

2- The main portion of the BP trial is going on at the federal courthouse on Poydras and Judge Barbier is supervising the proceedings.  Barbier has been extraordinarily open with the proceedings, as this Lens report details.  An overflow room with WiFi, live transcripts... Barbier is bringing a very stodgy bench into the 21st Century.  

Phase 1 focused on dividing the liability between the defendants: BP, Halliburton, Transocean, and (to a lesser degree) Cameron and Weatherford.  

Phase 2 focused on how much oil flowed (since many of the fines are on a per barrel basis) and how quickly BP acted in stemming the flow.  One interesting caveat of the second phase: it was everyone vs. BP; Halliburton, Transocean, etc. joined forces with the government to bang on BP.  

Phase 3 has yet to happen.  

No final rulings (liability, flowrate, etc.) out of the main trial have been made to date by Judge Barbier.  

3- The trial of Kurt Mix, a BP engineer who was not involved in drilling Macondo, but was involved with the capping of the well.  He was accused (and convicted) of obstruction of evidence.  There's also the somewhat related guilty plea of a Halliburton manager named Anthony Badalamenti .  

4- The (yet to begin) trial of the two BP company men on the Deepwater Horizon on manslaughter charges (amongst other charges).  February 5th is the start of that trial.  Judge Duval will handle that trial.  

I actually got to attend some of the trials in person.  I'd take off a bit early for lunch, walk over, listen to the trial, and then (depending on how much time I had left), choke down some lunch and walk back.  Some days, particularly during some of the more interesting testimony, I dawdled and was reduced to eating a crappy Subway sandwhich at my desk :-( .  

I'll start with describing the only trial to reach a conclusion first.  Kurt Mix was accused of obstruction of justice by the Feds.  Mix was one of BP's point men on the capping of the well.  He allegedly deleted emails that involved the flowrate estimation and made it harder for the Feds to make their case in Phase 2 of the main trial.  Loren Steffy, the accomplished energy journalist for Forbes and the Houston Chronicle, wrote up this background on the case as Mix's trial was about to start. Steffy wrote that the "Curious Case of Kurt Mix" didn't look like it would go well for the Feds.  

I only attended the Mix trial once, but it was very illuminating.  Judge Duval ran the proceedings.  Whereas Barbier was a bit cerebral, Duval was kind of frumpy and reminded me almost of a plumber.  Duval was fairly laid back in his management of his courtroom.  I walked into the courtroom shortly after reading the Steffy writeup and expected to see the Feds falling on their face and OH BOY WAS I WRONG!  

The prosecution team was led by a young white (Asian? his back was turned) prosecutor that I'd seen in the main trial.  He was sharp as a tack and led a devastating attack on Mix.  The prosecution was using Mix's responses on "radio buttons" relating to document retention in the aftermath of Macondo.  In a way, Mix was testifying against himself.  The prosecutors were outlining all the resources BP made available to help retain documents critical to trial.  The obvious message to the jury was Mix failed to take advantage of everything that was at his disposal.  What was also surprising is the main witness for the prosecution was BP's own in-house counsel for document retention.  A BP lawyer was throwing a BP engineer under the bus!  BP has been in the news lately for allegedly screwing over their own employees on their pensions, so I guess it isn't that surprising that one BP employee would throw another to the wolves like that, but I guess I figure I'd see them look out for their own a little better.  I guess not.  It ain't for nothing the Feds average an almost 90% conviction rate.  I learned subsequently that the lawyer leading Mix's prosecution was based out of DC and not locally.

In contrast to the prosecution lawyers, Mix's own lawyers weren't very impressive at all.  This is just my opinion and I might be wrong, but I got the sense that Mix knew things weren't going well and was leaning over to his lawyers for reassurance, and his lawyers were telling him, 'oh yeah, we've got those Feds on the ropes' (meanwhile, they're getting shellacked).  Memo to engineers: if you do screw something up don't hire your cousin Vinny to defend you.  It's better to be paying off big legal bills after an acquittal than to be spending time in the slammer.  After the conviction on 1 of the 2 counts, Mix's lawyers have filed motion after motion trying to get out from under the conviction, but I get the sense that they're trying to compensate for being so lackadaisical in the courtroom (you know, where it actually could have made a difference for Mr. Mix).  

Going on in parallel to the Mix trial was the plea of Anthony Badalamenti, a manager at Halliburton.  Mr. Badalamenti earned a civil engineering degree at Tulane in 1979 and apparently learned enough about cement to become the manager of Halliburton's Cementing Technology division by the time Macondo hit.  He plead guilty to ordering two subordinates to run simulations on whether or not the number of centralizers used on the Macondo cement job were very important to the performance of the cement job (answer: not very) and then to destroy the results of those tests and not turn them over as a part of the Macondo investigation.  There was a lot of talk about the centralizers during the USCG/MMS BoI, but they ultimately concluded that it wasn't a very big deal.  Halliburton did spend a lot of time promoting the 'BP didn't listen to our advise' theory and using the centralizer to bolster their case.  Badalamenti's actions didn't help, but ultimately didn't effect the outcome.  As a result, Judge Zainey was in a forgiving mood and handed Badalamenti a $1000 fine and probation.  "I'm truly sorry for what I did," said Badalamenti.  That was quite nice of Judge Zainey.  

If Mix had chosen to cooperate more, you have to wonder if he'd have gotten Badalamenti's generous treatment.  If Mix had better lawyers, he might have gotten off, like Steffy and myself was expecting.  Instead, he was the first individual convicted in relation to the Macondo Blowout.  

Note: some minor edits for grammar and spelling.

A Hole in the Bottom of the Sea

A Hole at the Bottom of the Sea: The Race to Stop the BP Oil Gusher

A Hole in the Bottom of the Sea focuses on the post-blowout oil spill response (capping, top kill, top hat, etc.). In Fire on the Horizon, the rig didn't blow until page 200 or so. In this book, the rig blows up on page 30 and the well intervention lasts past page 200.

The writer has a background as a science writer for National Geographic. On the plus side, that means he has a firm understanding of things like measurement uncertainty, error bars, etc. On the downside, he has no technical background so there are some errors that are pretty blatant (for instance, he confuses erosion and corrosion, two completely different processes) that still make it into this edition.

Note that I picked up the post-Fukushima paperback copy. This book has been through at least 3 editions, from what I gather. That probably fixed a lot of earlier errors.

The writer has one soapboxy-bit: 'We now live in an engineered world and we'd better accept it.' Achenbach also probably managed to have carnal knowledge of his thesaurus as he wrote this book.

If you're interested in the well intervention (and only the well intervention) this is a great book, but the definitive Deepwater Horizon book has yet to be written. I'm waiting on David Hammer to write it...

Also-
Grover sings "A Hole in the Bottom of the Sea"

USCG/MMS Final Report on the Loss of the Deepwater Horizon

Full Report here.

Direct link to PDF of main body of Report.

There's nothing big in the report that we haven't already seen somewhere thus far.

David Hammer's Wrieup. Hammer focuses on the difference between the Presidential Commission (no subpoena power, said it was a systemic problem) vs. the USCG/MMS (later USCG/BOEMRE) Report (which had subpoena power and focused on very specific errors they "laid at BP's feet").


As I read through the report, I found the most interesting part is where they go through the CFR's (Code of Federal Regulations; The LAW on how to do everything) and they systematically list the CFR's that were violated and why. They also go through the ones that need to clarified. CFR's tend to be written by lawyers (or at least engineers with lawyers looking over their shoulder) and tend to use notoriously impenetrable language. Clarification of CFR's is a great idea for a part of regulatory reform.

One of the post-Macondo regulatory changes was a shift from a prescriptive-regime (do X, Y, and Z and you're assumed to be safe) to putting the onus on the companies to prove they've managed risk on a systematic basis (the North Sea's regulations are along these lines). I personally don't have too much of an opinion as to which is "better" and BP looks like it would have screwed up either way.

Note that it was published the same day as the report about the BP Geophysicist testifying in a deposition that they "missed" a 2-foot gas zone hundreds of feet above the top of the cement plug. She "assumed" that it was passed to the rig for them to modify their P&A procedures. BP now claims that it was a water-bearing instead of gas-bearing zone.

Another thing to note is that the lead investigators are being held back, probably to preserve their testimony for the (imminent?) indictments of BP management (or at least quintuple fines under the "gross negligence" clause). Another recent development: BP puts in for their first post-Macondo drilling permit. BP's been a minority partner on a few wells, but this is the first one where they are the operating company (with their own company men on the rigs running the show). The Sunday Money section in the Times-Pic had more about the drilling push by BP.

Going forward, I see all but the largest independents squeezed out of the Gulf and deepwater drilling left to the majors (Shell, Exxon, etc.). This was a transition that was underway well before Macondo, but the post-Macondo world (insurance, regulation, increasing technical challenge) really accentuates. The other guys are discovering they really don't have the manpower to put together permits that can withstand post-Macondo scrutiny. Here's an erl industry exec that says BOEMRE isn't holding back permits for political reasons, they're just checking them very thoroughly. Here's gCaptain's reprinting of an excellent WSJ article about getting back to work in the Gulf.



And as a side note, the NTSB has released their report on the fatal California gas pipeline explosion. The keys were very old, substandard pipe. It was an intra-state pipeline, so there was never any requirement to hydrotest the pipe (an incredibly important safety procedure in ASME Pressure Vessel Code).

The Moratorium 8

Here's the names of the 8 drilling rigs that have left the Gulf since the Moratorium was put in place. To note:

* 1 was already scheduled to depart for another area
* 3 were new, 5 were more than 24 years old, and some were more than 30 years old. 20 years is generally a good lifetime for a rig; 30 is sometimes done if prices are favorable and there's been good maintenance and 10-year overhauls. The new rigs will hurt (the 3 that left were among the best in their respective fleets), but the others were so long in the tooth, you'd almost say good riddance. Diamond had a lot of legacy drillships left over from New Orleans-based OEDECO that probably shouldn't be operating in the second decade of the 21st Century. They'll eventually be replaced by newbuilds very soon. There's a MODU building boom going on in Korea, thanks mostly to generous government subsidies and financing for customers.

Note that there have been some rigs that have come TO the Gulf since the Moratorium, although almost all are jackups leaving shallow-water Mexico to drill a series of promising shallow water gas fields on the US side.

BP, meanwhile, still hasn't gotten a SINGLE drill permit since the moratorium. Most other operators now have all their drillships back in operation, but BP's only drilling is being done where they are a minority operator. Either the BOEMRE is deliberately shoving aside anything with BP written on it (unlikely) or it's yet another indicator that BP lags behind in technical competency. BP desperately wants to avoid "gross negligence" charges (and the quadrupled fines that go along) and this (in my opinion) is yet another nail in that coffin.

The worrying about "Economic Survival" seems to be past, but the Moratorium may yet teach us some interesting things about drillship construction and BP's operating practices.

Macondo-related Observations

I've been thinking over the whole Deepwater Horizon/Macondo/Moratorium mess and here are a few thoughts.

The Long-string vs. liner tieback issue made no difference in the blowout and the number of centralizers had very little effect, BUT the entire episode is very illustrative of BP's management. Time and time again, BP was putting things together at the last second with little oversight on the big picture.

BP's internal emails are the most illustrative of the anarchy that reigned in BP's organization:
-------
"One of BP‘s top cement experts also described ―the typical Halliburton
profile‖ as ―operationally competent and just good enough technically to get by." - Ref. (PDF)
-------
“Are you going to fire me?” - Ref.
-------
You seem to love being the victim. Everything is someone else’s fault. You criticize nearly everything we do on the rig but don’t seem to realize that you are responsible for every(thing) we do on the rig.

You seem to think that running is more important that well control.

... (Sims, the only BP engineer with a PE, to John Guide*, - Ref.
-------
Out of all those emails, though, this pair takes the cake:
---
I believe there is a bladder effect on the mud below an annular preventer as we discussed. As we know the pressure differential was approximately 1400-1500 psi across an 18 ¾″ rubber annular preventer, 14.0 SOBM plus 16.0 ppg [pounds per gallon] Spacer in the riser, seawater and SOBM below the annular bladder. Due to a bladder effect, pressure can and will build below the annular bladder due to the differential pressure but cannot flow – the bladder prevents flow, but we see differrential pressure on the other side of the bladder.

Now consider this. The bladder effect is pushing 1400-1500 psi against all of the mud below, we have displaced to seawater from 8,367′ to just below the annular bladder where we expect to have a 2,350 psi negative pressure differential pressure due to a bladder effect we may only have a 850-950 psi negative pressure until we lighten the load in the riser.

When we displaced the riser to seawater, then we truly had a 2,350 psi differential and negative pressure. - Robert Kaluza, BP Night Company Man on the Deepwater Horizon who was on duty when the well blew, explaining the "bladder effect"
---
Mike,

?????????????????????????????????????????
?????????????????????????????????????????
?????????????????????????????????????????
?????????????????????????????????????????
?????????????????????????????????????????
?????????????????????????????????????????
?????????????????????????????????????????
?????????????????????????????????????????
?????????????????????????????????????????
????????????????????

Regards,

Pat - response by Patrick O'Bryan, Drilling VP for BP North America - Ref.
-------

When everyone was trying to get off the rig to safety, nobody had a knife to cut the painter line that connected the liferaft to the rig. The liferaft was tethered to a sinking ship, nobody could find the safety knife on the raft, and BP's "Strict No-Knife Policy" was the only corporate policy of BP's that actually worked. There have been stabbings offshore (there are some surly characters offshore), but the "Strict No-Knife Policy" is typical big company bullshit that needs to stop. Every time I've been offshore, I've had a knife on hand (Leatherman Wave).

Another thing that's disgusted me: according to the testimony of multiple individuals, the USCG-certified Master on the Horizon told other crewmembers to leave an injured man behind on the rig before he jumped into the waters alone. No way to put it nicely; that was pretty shitty on his part and I have a feeling the Coasties will string his ass up for it.

Fortunately, a few things DID actually work. There were a few individuals who really stuck their neck out, for example, the Chief Mate (who kept one of the lifeboats on the rig until it was full to capacity, despite howling protests of those already inside) and the Chief Electrician (who, along with others, rescued the injured man mentioned above and kept his liferaft from drifting into the fire).

The US-flagged M/V Damon Bankston crew really are heroes. The more and more I read about the incident, the more I'm convinced that if it weren't for their quick response, there would be more than 11 dead. The Damon Bankston also had one INCREDIBLY important tool the Deepwater Horizon lacked: a fast rescue craft. The Deepwater Horizon tagged one of their large, slow, ungainly 75-man lifeboats as their "rescue craft" (in case of man overboard, etc.). The Damon Bankston had a dedicated, quick-launching, high performance (several hundred horsepower in a tiny craft) FRC that was also capable of rescuing incapacitated swimmers in rough waters** (a capability the Deepwater Horizon lacked). Every offshore platform I've ever been on has had a FRC (and all were constructed before the Deepwater Horizon). Now, there are some differences in a platform and a DP-rig, but still, the Horizon SHOULD have been designed with a FRC, in my professional opinion.

The US Coast Guard also blasted the flag-state of the Marshall Islands for lax enforcement of standards (which also turned out to have a few holes in them). The "flags of convenience" (nicknamed "Flags of Corporate Convenience") concept has never really set well with me. What I also don't like is there's been a push to drop Panama, who has slightly increased their regulatory requirements, for countries with even less regulation. I'm especially appalled by the idea of landlocked countries (like Mongolia) regulating merchant ships. The Russians and the Chinese lately seem to like Bolivia and Mongolia for some of their merchant ships. It just doesn't seem right to have a Marshall Islands-flagged ship sitting in US waters, when the ship was had never operated outside US waters and would NEVER operate in Marshall Islands territory. Note there's a USCG-led QUALSHIP initiative to up the standards on Flags of Convenience, but I'm not sure how effective it has been. Why not just use US-flagged drilling vessels (or at least require 30% or so of them be US-flagged)? I can name at least 1 modern US-flagged deepwater drilling rig in operation.

The qualifications of the DNV experts called in to investigate the BOP vs. the qualifications of BP's experts called in to knock the DNV BOP report was interesting. The DNV experts had an incredibly impressive resume. One of the leaders had a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from Vandy and the other leader worked on the King's Cross Investigation. The King's Cross fire was a fairly standard trash fire that suddenly and unexpectedly flashed over and killed 31 people. The ins and outs of why was new to science (the Trench Effect, related to the Coandă effect) and it was even written up in my Fluid Dynamics textbook in college. It was literally an investigation so thorough it rewrote the textbooks. BP on the other hand put up one guy who had 'a year or two of engineering school before dropping out and working on rigs for 30+ years.' The expert was also a longtime contractor, not an actual BP employee. BP's expert completely flubbed basic materials science questions (that any senior in engineering could answer) to the point where the board stopped asking him questions. The BP expert wasn't a moron and he did have some interesting points about the DNV report, but nothing that undermined the DNV report in any significant way.

The damage thus far from the Moratorium has been greatly exaggerated, but I'll still be waiting to see what happens a few years down the line. A lot of these big deepwater projects have years-long lead times. Also, note that not every permit was actually drilled in the past and there always been a flow and ebb tide with drilling. Somedays, the rig count is high and rig dayrates are on the rise. Sometimes, everyone packs up and heads somewhere else or stacks the rigs in storage. I will say that the biggest benefit of US offshore oil isn't necessarily the jobs or the tax revenue (although those are important), but the effect on the Balance of Payments. Petroleum purchases are a HUGE portion of the US trade deficit and a big drag on the dollar (on the same level as the budget deficit?). Petroleum purchases are so huge, you often see disclaimers like 'non-petroleum trade deficit' in the fine print of charts in the WSJ, etc.

There's a quote in one of my favorite engineering disasters books, Inviting Disaster by Chiles. It goes something like 'operating on the cutting edge of technology is privilege conveyed on high-tech industries and those industries must protect and nourish that trust if they expect to stay in business and not have their franchise closed after too many failures dumped in societies lap.'*** That's a lesson the offshore industry must heed, or face the consequences. More costly errors and near misses cannot continue.

______________
* The de facto leader on the Macondo well. Some video of John Guide testifying here.

** Note that the waters were completely calm the night of the blowout, but the Damon Bankston did have to fish out incapacitated swimmers, a capability the Deepwater Horizon's lifeboats would have been unable to perform alone.

*** It's near the end of the book. I loaned out my copy right now, so I can't nail it word for word at the moment, but I'm sure that's the gist of it.

The Montara Blowout: "A failure of sensible oilfield practice 101"

The Montara blowout happened in 2009 in Australia. It was 74 days before well control was re-established, but it was about an order of magnitude smaller than Macondo, so there has been much less scrutiny.

A couple of days ago, the Australian Government released their Report [PDF].

The Oil Drum has a nice summary.

Some interesting notes:
* The report placed the blame almost entirely on PTTEPAA (Thailand's Nationalized Oil Company). Numerous red flags were ignored. The government did not mince words: "the way that PTTEPAA operated the Montara Oilfield did not come within a ‘bulls roar’ of sensible oilfield practice". {Personally, I wonder how much the global shortage of experienced petroleum engineers to supervise projects has played a part in both this blowout and Macondo.}
* Because PTTEPAA is not exactly a household name and no personnel lost their lives, there's been much less attention paid than BP's Macondo Blowout. The Oil Drum says the Aussies should be paying more attention, because it was near the Great Barrier Reef and it could have been a whole lot worse.
* The proximate cause of both disasters was failure of untested cement barriers. Both cement jobs failed to achieve proper zonal isolation, both operators (PTTEPAA and BP) relied on a single barrier to protect them (removal of mud w/o a second cement plug), and failed in well intervention efforts after the well started kicking.
* The cement contractor in both Macondo and Montara: Halliburton. It's interesting to note, though, that the Australian Report completely exonerates Halliburton. {Note that there are also relatively few contractors that do downhole cement. There's Halliburton, BJ Services, Schlumberger, and that's about it. Halliburton provided all of the cement for both relief wells BP drilled, including using their infamous nitrogen-foamed cement [but only on the shallow casings; conventional cement was used to block off Macondo]}.
* The use of dispersants was discussed in the Montara report. They concluded that the use was warranted as the less of two evils.
* In both Macondo and Montara, there were good rules on the books, but nobody, government regulator (MMS) or operator (BP/PTTEPAA) looked at them. In both Macondo and Montara, government regulators would OK whatever the operators asked for in minutes. BP and PTTEPAA's casing engineers totally ignored extensive internal casing design guidelines and operated in a cavalier and ignorant mode of 'git 'er done' without actually knowing what they were doing.

National Academy of Engineering Preliminary Report on the loss of the Deepwater Horizon

NAE Report (PDF)

Excellent report. I don't have as much time as I'd like to go through it in detail, unfortunately.

A couple quick notes:
* I like how it emphasizes the importance of the delicate fracture gradient to the cementing operation. Any idiot could throw cement down a hole, but with this setup, too much cement (too heavy) would fracture the formation, lose the cement, and not seal the hole. Too little cement, no seal in the hole, boom (what happened). Hitting it right on the nose was what a well engineered cementing plan was supposed to do.
* Personnel shifting around so much is a sign that a company doesn't take something seriously. I watched the engineers testify on CSPAN back in August and I'll say that there was at least 1 engineer who looked like he knew what he was doing (also, the only one who had a P.E.). Unfortunately, he was only on the job for about 2 weeks before the well blew. Whoops.
* Training. OTJ isn't going to cut it anymore for personnel running half-billion dollar assets, drilling $100 million wells, with tens of billions of dollars in consequences for mistakes.


Update: Gullfaks C Report Finished by Statoil. Blowout averted by "sheer luck". After overbalanced drilling caused a poorly-constructed casing to crack, the well lost mud, losing control. Cuttings plugging the production screen was the only thing that stopped another blowout.

"They're all dead"

H/T AZ.

Treme vs. After the Catch

First off: Pistolette reviews Treme. Go read it.

I've been watching Treme and it definitely has its moments, but all in all, I'm finding that quite a few born-and-bred locals, including myself, are lukewarm about it.

------------

Contrast Treme's depiction of New Orleans with Deadliest Catch's "After the Catch". Let's be honest, while Treme is an artistic piece put together by HBO's premier 'auteur', After the Catch is a way for Discovery to milk a few more nickels out of one of the top products, but the results have been fantastic.

For those of you that don't know, this year's ATC is being filmed at the Blue Nile here in New Orleans. Here are some of the funny moments from ATC so far:
* Phil's sons (and all the other captains, as well) talk about New Orleans being the perfect fisherman's town ("The bars! They never close!").
* As opposed to Treme, which beats you over the head with New Orleans culture, ATC just sort of presents it and there it is, like the gumbo cooking segment.
* They had a Chalmatian shrimper on the show and he took Sig and Keith shrimping and, while they didn't catch a thing, they had a blast. What was amazing is Sig, totally unscripted BTW, was blow away by the fact that these fisherman have their house right on the water with the boat tied up by the back and go out shrimping for these big hauls in only 10 or so feet of water. Sig's feeling was, 'that's the life. What have I been doing wrong all these year?' {The obvious, 'Wow, it would be a shame if we lost this' was left for the audience to figure out instead of throwing the brick at them.}

* The same Chalmatian shrimper told the Deadliest Catch captains about surviving Katrina and about how being fishermen is a genetic disorder. While Treme is depicting New Orleanians as running around fucking everyone except who they're supposed to ("Do what you wanna...") with their "defective work ethic", here you have ATC presenting a real, heroic portraits of South Louisianians to Middle America in a way you can honestly be proud of. The guys from the Time Bandit praising Louisiana shrimpers is the best defense against bullshit like this: Michael Savage Calls the Gulf Oil Spill Victims Welfare Deadbeats.

Video of the Deadliest Catch captains being interviewed about their time along the Gulf Coast:
CNN Video

NOTE- Some minor edits after posting.

Great Macondo Blowout reporting from an unlikely source...

... A video game show:

Video Game - E3 2010 - AOTS Exclusive

Beats some of the stuff the big guys have done.

Yet more studying...

Yet more studying...
Originally uploaded by Noladishu

I've done lots of trips to Rue for coffee and studying.

Well, I've put in my application to LAPELS to take the P.E. Exam in October. I'm still awaiting word that the application is 100% complete. They go through the forms with a fine-tooth comb. They give you an extra month after the initial due date to make sure the application is complete.

Next, I'll have to register with NCEES. That's the national board that proctors the actual exam. They have a $150 fee. One thing I just realized is there has been a rule change. Now, when you register in July, you have to pick which subset for the afternoon you want to do on the exam in October. Sort of nuts, if you ask me. It used to be that you could mix and match problems based off what you felt confident or at least you could flip through the books and see what the problems looked like first. Not anymore.

As a MechE, I have 3 choices for the afternoon section:
HVAC
Machine Design
Thermofluids

Machine Design is probably the "easiest", but as I've worked problems, I've found it's entirely too easy to make mistakes on those types of problems. The P.E. Exam is now 100% multiple choice with no credit for just missing a sign or something like that.

HVAC is surprisingly quick. I like that I can get an answer (right or wrong) in a reasonable amount of time for just about any question.

Thermofluids is the closest to what I do at work. It's probably what I'm going to take on the exam, primarily because of my familiarity with it. The disadvantage is that there can be some extremely complicated 15-state thermodynamics problems and even the easiest heat transfer problems take forever to do.

I have to pick what I do in October in July.

-------------
More P.E. news:
Professional engineers provide the needed link between industry and public welfare
NCEES response to the Deepwater Horizon incident. Note that Mark Hafle, BP's engineer that designed the well, is not a P.E.

Tony Hayward Goes Before Congress Tomorrow

Good luck. You're going to need it.

Don't forget to come prepared.

Congress' letter to Tony Hayward. Well worth a read for all the details.

A couple more things to check out:

David Hammer has another fantastic article in today's Times-Pic. He's been a master of presenting the facts in an accurate, understandable way. I can't tell you how frustrated I get when I see some talking head on TV talking about how the well was in water that's "5,000 cubic feet deep" {facepalm}. Just about every article Hammer has cranked out has been great.

GQ Magazine: Boom. Checking in on a few of the lives effected by the explosion, including checking up on the families of the 11. Worth a read, especially the end.

Also, keep reading The Oil Drum for the most accurate, objective reporting on the spill.

In honor of Tony Hayward and this week's Treme episode