What Happened?
Methane Bubble Triggers Disastrous BP Drilling Rig Explosion After Federal Requirements, Multiple Problems, and Safety Violations Are Ignored
Latest News on the Gulf Oil Spill
additional information by using our email contact form below. We will respond quickly and your question will remain strictly confidential.
In retrospect, say preliminary investigations into the BP oil spill disaster, BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling project in the Gulf of Mexico was an accident waiting to happen.
What happened? Because BP has not been forthcoming in providing information, federal investigators and the media have pieced together the story.
- A drilling rig operated by BP about 50 miles off the Louisiana shore exploded into flames on April 20, then sank two days later. Eleven oil workers were killed, 17 were injured, and more than 100 others were evacuated in life boats.
- The oil rig explosion unleashed millions of barrels of crude oil that have poured into the Gulf of Mexico, resisting BP’s tepid efforts to stem the flow, and contaminating nearly 400 miles of the coastal shoreline.
- Although a complete investigation is still underway, BP’s initial internal investigation blames a methane gas bubble, which escaped from the well, made its way up the drilling column, pushed through various barriers and seals, and exploded. Just hours before the explosion, an equipment reading indicated that gas was bubbling into the well, which could signal a blowout – but this warning was ignored.
- An early report, based on the account of oil workers on the rig, says that they had set, and then tested, a cement seal at the bottom of the well. As workers were preparing to set a second cement seal, a chemical reaction to the cement created heat and a gas bubble that destroyed the seal.
“Drilling for oil is a balancing act. If the pressure of the working
fluids in the well, or the strength of the concrete holding the pipeline
in place, cannot balance the immense pressure of the oil down
below, then things get very bad, very quickly.”
The Economist
May 8, 2010
- Moving from the highly-pressurized deep water at the bottom of the well to the lower pressure shallow waters, the bubble grew and intensified, bursting through seals and safety barriers along the way.
- Investigation two months later centered on the blind shear ram, a component of the blowout preventer with giant pincher-blades designed to cut through a drill pipe and seal the well in case of emergency. Deepwater Horizon’s blind shear ram failed, despite last-minute prodding from robotic submersibles.
- On the rig, first sea water in the drill column began shooting into the air as high as 240 feet. This was followed by gas that flooded a “mud room” of exposed ignition devices, causing a series of initial explosions and forming a cloud over the rig.
- The gas ignited oil coming from below, blowing massive engines and other equipment off the rig and ultimately setting everything on fire.
- Nine crew members on the rig floor died, in addition to two engineers. Among the 17 injured were BP executives onboard celebrating the project’s safety record and the well’s impending transition from exploration to production.
That’s the short story. But there’s much more: A back story involving other companies’ carelessness, earlier warning signs, safety violations ignored, and lax enforcement by the federal agency charged with oversight.
BP, the project operator that owns a 65% working interest in the well, leased the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig from the Swiss company Transocean Ltd. The Deepwater Horizon is a fifth-generation semi-submersible rig, touted as capable of performing in ultra-deep water and harsh environments.
A critical element in oil drilling is a blowout preventer designed to seal a well in an emergency and prevent an uncontrolled flow of gas or oil. The Deepwater Horizon rig’s blowout preventer, supplied by Cameron International Corp. of Houston, failed to operate. It did not have a backup system, remote control or acoustically-activated trigger – which the US oversight agency, Minerals Management Service (MMS), claims to “highly encourage,” but does not require.
As the investigation into the failed blowout preventer focuses on who knew what, when, it turns out that both the oil industry and MMS knew quite a bit – but did not act. A study commissioned in 2009 by Transocean indicated that deepwater rig blowout preventers failed 45% of the time. The blind shear rams themselves had failed in at least two major rig blowouts in the 1990s; subsequent studies partially funded by MMS indicated that even when everything appeared to check out, some blind shear rams did not perform.
MMS’s lackadaisical approach to safety devices such as blowout preventers was just the tip of the iceberg where the Deepwater Horizon project was concerned. Post-explosion investigation reveals that MMS ignored permitting requirements, bypassed the federal agency that assesses endangered species, and exempted BP from providing environmental impact statements.
Evidence is mounting that MMS has been more than willing to collaborate with BP and other oil companies at the expense of public safety. Nearly ten years ago, extensive investigation by a Scandinavian research organization warned that all blowout preventers in deepwater drilling should have two blind shear rams. What did MMS do? Nothing. In 2003, the agency finally added a requirement for one blind shear ram, just as the oil industry itself was beginning to install two.
Another company, Haliburton Co., became part of the mix when it was hired to cement well walls in order to stabilize them. Haliburton, which is headquartered in Houston and Dubai, provides a variety of oilfield services. Reports indicate that, on the Deepwater Horizon project, Haliburton had finished cementing well walls and placed an initial seal, but had not completed setting the second cement seal when the gas bubble was created. Two possibilities occurred: the cement plug may have been faulty, or cement between the pipe and well walls may not have hardened properly.
Several weeks before the oil rig explosion, a series of problems surfaced that might have foretold the impending disaster. For example, Transocean’s blowout preventer developed a hydraulic leak, a control pod lost partial function, and there were some unexpected gas releases. But BP dismissed these problems as trivial and accelerated the drilling pace to make up for lost time.
BP is no stranger to safety violations or incidents that have taken lives and caused serious environmental damage. An official of the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) says BP has a “systemic safety problem,” citing numerous “egregious willful” violations.
BP’s poor track record on safety is well-documented. In the United States, two of the company’s refineries account for 97% of all willful violations in the refining industry. In the last five years alone:
- BP was fined $87 million for safety hazards at a refinery in Texas City, Texas which exploded in 2005 and killed 15 people, injuring 170. BP blamed low- and mid-level workers, but over the previous several years, employees had complained vigorously about safety risks. One employee noted: “If we do not achieve a significant improvement in the safety performance at the Texas City refinery, one of our co-workers or contractor employees will be killed within the next 3 or 4 years.”
- About $20 million in fines were incurred as a result of oil spilled from BP pipelines in 2006, the largest oil spill ever on Alaska’s North Slope. The investigation report concluded that BP “does not operate in a safe and environmentally sound manner.”
- In 2009, a year before the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion, BP was fined $2 million for operating without the proper equipment at oil fields on the North Slope.
- In June 2010, just a few weeks after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster, an independent investigation uncovered potential for yet another disaster, this time in Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay. Independent journalists with truthout, an Internet site that investigates critical issues, reviewed BP internal documents and interviewed more than a dozen BP employees. The accusations were startling, especially related to the November 2009 North Slope spill, which is still under criminal and civil investigation. Employees blamed irresponsible cost-cutting, unaddressed safety violations, lack of maintenance, and poor management for the 2009 incident. But that’s not all: Recognizing that “many lives are at stake,” employees worry that hundreds of miles of rotting pipe pose the risk of an even worse spill. Once again, they say, BP is completely unprepared.
Just weeks after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion, environmental watchdog Food and Water Watch joined a former BP subcontractor in suing the US government to force shutdown of another BP project in the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantis oil platform. The lawsuit claims that BP did not provide engineering documents sufficient for safe operation of the Atlantis rig, which is just 100 miles from the Deepwater Horizon operation.
Yet Interior Secretary Ken Salazar decided that the Atlantis project should remain operational while federal authorities investigate the allegations of safety violations. The Atlantis oil rig produces about 200,000 barrels of oil a day . . . potentially another in a long-line of BP disasters, just waiting to happen.
The law firm of Searcy Denney Scarola Barnhart & Shipley is available to consult with Gulf state residents and businesses that have sustained real or personal property damage and/or loss of income or earning capacity as a result of the BP oil spill disaster. If you or a family member has incurred substantial losses because of the oil spill, please fill out the contact form on this page, or call us at 1-800-780-8607. A member of our staff will call you back to schedule a confidential consultation with one of our attorneys, free of charge.