8 replies to this topic

[ankur2061]

Dear All,

An environmental catastrophe of monumental proportions has occured in the Gulf of Mexico due to the explosion in BP's subsea oil well.

Lot of measures are being undertaken to contain the spill & prevent it's spread.

I wonder whether amongst the containment measures undertaken has there any thought been given to spray oil gelling agents which form thick gels & are easy to scoop & dispose.

One such powerful gelling agent is Aluminium salt of Dialkyl phosphate which leads to rapid gellation.

Does anyone have pictures, videos of the GoM oil spill disaster.

Regards,
Ankur.

[Jiten_process]

dear ankur,

i have just gone through some videos of the same in youtube.

there are may videos for this accident...u may find it informative


there they have explained couple of measures that could be taken up.





this is really very unfortunate accident that has happend...huge casualties took place to the environment and more than that, the big worry is the subsequent casualty that will took place due to this spill in coming time.

[Art Montemayor]

The on-line dictionary defines “castrophe” as:

1. The final event of the dramatic action especially of a tragedy;
2. a momentous tragic event ranging from extreme misfortune to utter overthrow or ruin.

From what I have gathered of the event, ever since the day it occurred, I believe – from my engineering experience – that it was totally avoidable and therefore not a misfortune or an unavoidable tragedy. Rather, I believe it was a result of incompetent management of an engineering operation and badly planned, executed, and reacted to.

An oil well blow-out is nothing new or unknown in Texas. We have known them, dealt with them, and designed appropriate equipment and engineering actions to deal with the phenomena. Blow-out preventers are available and designed for this type of potential occurrence. In this particular case, we are finding out more and more each day that the event could have been prevented. The results could also have been mitigated or lessened with proper planning and training. All of these engineering tools were not exercised (as time has obviously proven) and the price now has to be paid for bad decisions and management. The bad results are not a strange occurrence to the British Petroleum organization. Read some of my past postings on their safety management record.

The next correction that I make is to the use of the phrase “the explosion in BP's subsea oil well”. This is not correct as written. What took place was an explosion ON BOARD THE DRILLING PLATFORM – not in the subsea location. The tragic result is that 11 men lost their lives because of this drilling “excursion”.

I am just as concerned as anyone about the environmental results. But my main concern is about the shabby and ill-planned operation, as well as the lack of pre-planned and prepared rescue and remedial engineering teams and equipment that should have been available immediately once the event occurred. This, in my opinion, should be standard operating practice when taking on such a risky operation in such deep waters and at a time of year in the Gulf of Mexico that everyone of us who live here know is within a “risky” window of weather changes. Had this operation been planned and prepared-for as the risky operation it was, the blow-out might have well been prevented. The final report has not been filed and it won’t be available for many months yet, but the truth is that we in Texas and Lousiana know full well how to drill in deep waters – and do it safely. We've done it safely hundreds - if not thousands of times before. The problem(s) is one of controlling and managing the operation to ensure that all goes well and any negative event is mitigated. That takes a lot of money and costly engineering effort. That is the part that right now stands out as suspiciously being avoided.

The recovery and cleanup of all the crude oil that has been emitted by the run-away well is an on-going process and if all our available and possible resources are correctly being applied, the application of spray oil gelling agents should have already been evaluated. In fact, I have to assume that all the possible state-of-the-art recovery procedures should already have been known, studied, and prepared PRIOR to starting the drilling operations – if we are to believe that BP has a competent and capable drilling management operation.

[ankur2061]

Dear All,

I just received some pictures on the GoM oil spill disaster. These are revealing as well as scary.

Have alook at the attachments.

Rgards,
Ankur.

[Zauberberg]

As for the most of tragedies, this could have been avoided - particularly having in mind extremely poor safety management in BP.
I have got an e-mail from on of my friends, quoting an interesting discussion at Linked-In website. Perhaps it is worth posting it here and hear some good points.

Several people in the same forum point to poorly educated people from anywhere being employed/hired in the GOM by the many companies to save money.

Max Acosta:
Ok, guys. Here we go. I have worked the Gulf of Mexico and International for 38 years. The following are the reasons this happened and why it is not being capped.
1. Haliburton Packer - Faulty seals. They knew this going in. They had a few kickbacks before the explosion. Packer should have been replaced.
2. Cameron - BOP. They do not always send out a Cameron Rep. to inspect the BOP before a new well. The rig company does this. If they would have, this would have been caught: Faulty fail safe. Not enough fluids in accumulator.
3. MMS - Ok'd inspection of BOP even though it was not safe to use. The MMS is famous for flying out to platforms and rigs to scare the hell out of the people on there. They just eat lunch, take a nap, and leave. They do let you know when you will be audited, so you can get your stuff together. And they do know where the good food is in the Gulf.
4 Transocean - For continuing the work on the well when they knew before hand they had a problem. And for telling the Rig Superintendent to go ahead with the BP plan to kill the well with heavy salt water instead of heavy mud, even after the Rig Superintendent said it would not work.
5. BP - Drilling Engineer for telling Transocean to proceed with the above method. He should be shot! Transocean for going ahead with it. But, I think a fine job by the Rig Superintendent for telling them it would not work, even on the phone with his office after the rig blew and he was in his life raft. Put yourself in his place. Do it or get fired. I don't know what his family situation is, maybe he needed the job. Myself. I would have closed the BOP's, evacuated the rig, and found a new job.
6. Obama - Instead of calling oil and gas industry professionals in and pick their brains for ideas, he has his Noble prize winner, and a bunch of scientist that have never seen a rig other than a picture, not mentioning being on one. Even if he resurrected Einstein, I think old Albert would tell him he was an idiot.
Did anyone contact Cameron to see if they could modify a BOP to set on top of the one in place, clamp in place by use of hydraulics, then close the rams? I don't think so.
Now the IRS is looking for the people that got money from BP so they can get taxes from them!

Senko:
They did not knock a cap off, but the ROV closed a vent that was supposed to be used to prevent hydrating. If they would have put lines and nozzles inside the first containment dome and pushed methanol or extremely hot water in there it would still be working, and a minimum of oil would be in the Gulf.
By the way, Kevin Costner came up with a great idea and BP will buy all he has. He even got to testify before Congress! Too bad that method has been in use since WWII on board Navy vessels to seperate the water from the diesel. And is still used today on diesel driven vessels.

I look at all the jobs available on rigzone and other sites. You must have a degree. For some jobs, you can have a degree in Fashion, as long as you have a degree. You've just read what I've had to say. My degree is 10 years of on the job training, and 28 years of Inspection, Consulting, and Project Management. I've been sitting for 9 months waiting on a job. Maybe I'll become a movie star, and come up with some idiotic idea!

[Zauberberg]

Also look at: http://news.bbc.co.u...da/10317116.stm

[djack77494]

Since we're trying to figure out who is at fault, let us not forget the president of BP. In my opinion, he should have jumped up, publically proclaimed how important resolution of the problem is, and followed up by moving to the Louisiana Gulf Coast. There he should have stayed directly directing the day to day recovery operations until final resolution. Instead he gets in the news by attending a yacht race in England. Sorry, I know the guy has a life (and a yacht), but he lost a lot of credibility by pursuing the path he took. Even if he had "moved" to Louisiana, I would have expected him to maintain close to his normal routine, but the PR would have made all the difference in the world.

[ankur2061]

Dear All,

An intersting link about how the BP "Deepwater Horizon Well" designs may not have been certified & stamped by registered PE's is available at:

http://www.eng-tips....d=275850&page=1

Regards,
Ankur.

[Art Montemayor]

All:

The topic of this thread is Oil Containment and the following recent article covers this subject from another perspective: oil recovery using old technology known to us all (API Separators & 3-phase separators).

New Orleans, Louisiana (CNN) -- A ship billed as the world's largest skimming vessel will continue testing its abilities in the Gulf of Mexico Sunday. (Art's note - This ship is said to be "4 football fields long and 1 football field wide". This is a bad description. What is probably meant is "it is equivalent in length to the length of 4 football fields; it is equivalent in width to the length of a football field." An American football field is 360 ft long by 160 feet wide. Another interpretation is that it is 1,440 ft long by 160 ft wide.)

If A Whale's tests in a 5-by-5-mile area north of the underwater gusher are successful, the massive ship could play a key role in oil cleanup efforts.

The boat, which swallows water with oil then separates it, can skim about 21 million gallons of oil a day. That’s at least 250 times the amount that modified fishing vessels currently conducting skimming operations have been able to contain, according to Taiwanese company TMT shipping, which owns the vessel.

Initial results from tests are expected Monday, TMT spokesman Bob Grantham said.

Meanwhile, a shift in winds beginning Sunday could send more weathered petroleum toward sensitive shores in Mississippi and Louisiana, the Coast Guard said.

Bad weather over the past few days has significantly hampered cleanup efforts.

“The weather is one challenge you can't defeat,” Coast Guard Adm. Paul Zunkunft said.

Ribbons of oil stripe the water for miles, but waves Saturday were still too high for boats -- 550 stood ready -- to skim oil off the water.

“At the Coast Guard, we do take it personally. It is portrayed as mission failure any time oil washes ashore,” he said.

Zunkunft said he will put the skimmers back to work as soon as the sea calms.

Researchers have estimated that between 35,000 and 60,000 barrels (1.5 million to 2.5 million gallons) of oil have been gushing into the Gulf daily since April 20, when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and sank off the coast of Louisiana.

The A Whale arrived in the Gulf on Wednesday and has been awaiting approval to join in cleanup efforts.

The skimmer works by “taking in oily water through a series of vents, or jaws, on the side of the ship and then decanting the intake," Grantham said. “In many ways, the ship collects water like an actual whale and pumps internally like a human heart.”

Zunkunft said he is also calling in reinforcements, including 300 new skimmers in the next two weeks.

For the 12-hour period from midnight until noon Saturday, approximately 7,980 barrels (335,160 gallons) of oil were collected and about 4,155 barrels (174,510 gallons) of oil and 28.3 million cubic feet of natural gas were flared, BP said.

The company said about 25,290 barrels (1,062,180 gallons) of oil were recovered Friday.

CNN's Allan Chernoff contributed to this report.

*This article and a video can also be accessed if you copy and paste the entire address below into your web browser: http://cnn.com/video...kimmer.cnn.html