Overview And Analysis Of The Catastrophic Macondo Oil-Well Blowout
Introduction
On April 20th 2010, a mix of mud, seawater and gas from hydrocarbon exploded from an oil well being drilled by the Deepwater Horizon oil rig during completion activities at the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico. The catastrophe which is accountable for the death of 11 oil workers and ultimately leading to the submergence of the rig and a major uncontrollable spill of oil into the sea for months; key aquatic and littoral environments of animals, plants and other organisms were adversely affected. The crew on the rig and companies associated – BP, Halliburton and Transocean attributed the blowout to some difference in opinion on the capping methodology. Generally, a minimum of two cement plugs will be poured and made hard in the channel before withdrawal of the drilling mud from the wellbore as a precautionary measure to help stop unexpected explosion of oil and gas. Eventually, the rig engineers resolved to withdraw the mud prior to introducing a second cement plug which resulted in an explosion. The loss of lives and the environmental impacts have enforced a retrospection of the drilling associated risks by evaluation of the local, national and global legislations resulting from this disaster. It is recommended that the safety should be paramount when it comes to drilling activities and associated risks should be as low as reasonably practical (ALARP). Also recommended is a cost effective way mobile offshore drilling units (MODU’s) could be designed or operated that would reduce risks and prevent such catastrophe witnessed in the Gulf of Mexico from future reoccurrence.
Overview of events leading to disaster
The catastrophic Macondo oil-well blowout could be connected with eight pivotal extraneous circumstances. The explosion that caused the death of 11 people as investigated was precipitated by lack of standardisation, design deficiency, human error, non-performance of safety critical systems put in place to avert incident in these areas: The use of substandard cement composition as confirmed by BP at the base of the Borehole failed to establish a shut-in, hence oil and gas started to discharge; the manual control valve adapted to isolate the well at the base of the channel which had a two-way cap filled with cement and connects to the deck was unable to stop the oil and gas flow when manually shut off thereby enabling oil flow to the deck; the team on-board wrongly interpreted different pressure tests performed to ascertain well status thereby deducing that the well parameters were under check; about 50 minutes prior to the catastrophe, the well went out of control but the crew at the deck who detected this did not interpreted the flow towards the surface due to a surge in the well as a leak; barely 8 minutes prior to the blowout, the teams attempt to close a mechanically controlled valve called the Blowout Preventer (BOP) which is positioned on the ocean bed on top of the well borehole and has functionalities of shutting, controlling and monitoring wells to prevent blowout was not successful and this resulted in a mixture of oil and gas permeating onto the rig floor; the team on board could possibly have channelled the mud and gas elsewhere but the rig discharging it without risk overboard which would have given the team more time to contend with the impending danger perhaps the effect of the blowout would have been minimal contrary to channelling the mud and gas to a mechanical equipment called the mud gas separator (MGS) which has the primary functionality of separating insufficient gas from a flow of mud. The MGS was speedily overburdened and combustible gas overtook the rig; the on-board gas detection system which is a safety critical barrier that normally activates an alarm on sensing smoke as well as initiating the shutdown of ventilation systems stopping gas from making a potential likely to cause combustion failed; the control lines the team on board was using with an aim to shut the safety valves in the blowout preventer was damaged by the explosion. Nonetheless, the unique safety mechanism of the blowout preventer (BOP) in which two distinct set-ups are designed to shut the valve spontaneously on loss of contact with the surface, one set-up had a drained battery while the other had a non-functional controller hence the BOP remained in an open state.
Immediate and long-term impacts of the disaster
A study carried in two littoral regions ; Baldwin county and Franklin county which are local communities within the explosion region with the purpose of evaluating the impact of the Deepwater Horizon disaster on health had ninety-three participants from these communities being investigated for one year following the spill. Family circumstances and history, as well as anxiety status questionnaires, were handed out. Feedback indicated that psychiatric health complications lingered especially for the individuals whose source of revenue depletion subsisted as a result of the spill. Impatience and pessimism became greater with each passing day with this class of local populace with 89.66% of the populace in the revenue depletion class having anxiety scores indicative of analytically notable range and 83.7% having scores indicative of notable.
The environment was adversely affected as a result of the oil spill at about 5000 feet depth which polluted and altered the dynamics of the deep water natural territory. Elements like an oil-biodegradation, tidal wave and dispersants minimized the littoral spillage effect. Nonetheless, over 200km of the littoral and shores were impacted. Fact findings substantiates that the spill resulted in a plethora of biotic changes in as much as the dreadful situation predicted over the course of time did not occur, the sea birds and tidal marsh populace were really impacted but were tough and able to outlive the spill effect, observations show negligible debasing of seafood’s. Researchers are however perturbed about the effect the spill will have on large fish breed, sea turtles, whales and dolphins over time.
As a result of the enormous surge in the number of personnel affected by the spill, it became exigent for organisations involved in the Deepwater horizon disaster to briskly set up an all-inclusive scheme of monitoring for disease and affliction, this was done in collaboration with the health department and Louisiana hospital. A sentry watch was set-up to appraise and follow up unbearable health conditions communicated across to the hospital emergency helpdesk, physicians and Louisiana poison centre.
Evaluating the impact of laws resulting from disaster
The President Barrack Obama government instituted the present day Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and Enforcement (BOEMRE) as a substitute for the Mineral Management Service (MMS) within the bounds of the Department of Interior (DOI) Because of an alleged comment that the MMS did not have adequate mechanism to make sure that the oil companies comply to safety and environmental roles. A twenty six week embargo on offshore and deep water drilling works was decreed and a national commission which constituted individuals from opposition parties were assigned to investigate the BP Deepwater Horizon spill. The proposal from the team put together by president Obama led administration came up with operating guidelines for BP and its subcontractor and vendors in two key fields:
- Drilling and Well Operations Practice (DWOP) and Operating Management System
- Contractor and Service provider Assurance As a fallout of this, the US secretary of interior superintends and oversees exploration, leasing, development and mineral reserve production on the Gulf of Mexico (GoM).
The totality of oil and gas operations are concerns of supervision by some federal law and BOEMRE regulations, DNV policy and the EPRINC proposals.
BOEMRE regulations
The BOEMRE revised drilling guidelines associated to blowout prevention, casing and cementing, well intervention, document and control as well as plugging. The drilling safety guidelines provides for well control equipment and wellbore integrity checks but was regarded as expensive because the overhead per operator was $183.4 million. The BOEMRE also issued the workplace safety rule on the 15th of October 2010 proceeding with the safety and environmental management system (SEMS) earlier presented to by the MMS in 2009 by way of integrating findings emanating from the Macondo well incident. The new rule made thirteen components of the API’s RP755 imperative. The workplace safety rule subsumed four pivotal areas that preceding regulations did without:
- Management of Chance
- Hazard Analysis
- Operating Procedure
- Mechanical Integrity
Det Norske Veritas (DNV)
DNV is a multinational establishment that proffers risk management and ancillary service. In reaction to the Macondo catastrophe, it issued a situation paper to buttress its consideration as the pivotal direction of a credible United States offshore safety regime.
Energy Policy Research Foundation, INC (EPRINC)
EPRINC is a non-interest-yield establishment that researches on the dynamics of energy market with bias to oil and gas, similar to DNV’s submission, ENRINC proposed that a performance-centred safety regime is contemplated because it is an inducement for a more rugged and robust safety culture.
Conclusion
The Macondo catastrophe exposed the safety dearth in which the oil and gas industry operations functioned inclusive of the government’s failure in regulating offshore safety. Investigations of the catastrophic occurrence pointed at a lot of issues from mechanical failure to human error, safety concerns, lack of team synergy, poor judgement. The main aspect that requires immediate attention is the failure of leadership on board and lack of robustness of emergency and safety plan.
Recommendations
There should be training and re-training of offshore going personnel evaluating their physical and mental state of health to ensure mental alertness while performing safety critical jobs offshore. There is also need for oil and gas industries to establish an unclouded administration for seamless statistics dissemination and understanding. The incident response plan should be adapted to be a methodological not bureaucratic. BP needs to re-evaluate, re design and implement new redundant safety components for well shutdown.
