Thread: Deepwater Horizon Blowout

There was a blowout on Transocean's Deepwater Horizon Semi Submersible last night and it appears all 130 or so hands have been accounted for. There were some critically injured with reports still coming in.



The rig is (was) operating in the Gulf of Mexico ~50 mile offshore Louisiana

HOUSTON—The U.S. Coast Guard said Friday that oil appears to have stopped gushing from a well on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, lessening the likelihood of a major environmental catastrophe.
Officials also said they were halting the search for the 11 missing workers feared to have died in the explosion and fire.
"We have just made a very difficult decision to suspend the search," said Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry in a news conference late Friday. She added that the search would be reactivated if there are any indications that point to survivors.


Coast Guard Says Oil Leak Stopped - WSJ.com


A grim episode indeed. My condolences go out to the families of the lost.

The BOPs were supplied by Cameron and failed to actuate during the well event... Workers could not even manually close the subsea BOP...

It's only just begun...

Here we go...

AOL News - Error

White House Declares Halt on New Offshore DrillingUpdated: 5 minutes ago

(April 30) -- The White House said today it is halting all new offshore drilling in U.S. waters until there's an "adequate review" of a massive 600-mile wide oil slick that has begun to lap up on Louisiana's coast.

The federal government is defending its response to the spill, which began with an April 20 blast on one of British Petroleum's offshore rigs that burned for two days before sinking. Rescuers saved 115 workers but 11 are presumed dead. BP is responsible for the cleanup, and it wasn't until Thursday -- nine days after the explosion -- that the White House declared it "a leak of national significance."

White House senior adviser David Axelrod told ABC's "Good Morning America" today that President Barack Obama has decided that there will be no new domestic offshore drilling until an investigation of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill incident is complete.

"All he has said is that he is not going to continue the moratorium on drilling but ... no additional drilling has been authorized and none will until we find out what happened here and whether there was something unique and preventable here," Axelrod said, defending the administration's policy.

The first greasy strands of a 600-mile wide oil slick began lapping wetlands along the Gulf Coast late Thursday, The Associated Press reported, as crews tried to plug an underwater well that could eventually become America's worst oil spill in history.

The leak started after the April 20 explosion on the massive Deepwater Horizon drilling platform, which burned for two days before sinking. Rescue crews saved 115 workers from the rig, but 11 were presumed to have died.

Up to 210,000 gallons of oil a day are thought to be oozing into the Gulf, at a rate that means it could exceed the volume of Alaska's 1989 Exxon Valdez spill by the third week of June, making it the worst U.S. spill ever.

"I want to assure you that the federal response has been sustained. It was immediate, and we know that we have a situation that has got to have every resource put towards it," Coast Guard Rear Adm. Sally Brice-O'Hara told NBC's "Today" show this morning.

Strong southeast winds blew oil strands across the water's surface and onto coastal wetlands near the mouth of the Mississippi River overnight, Billy Nungesser, president of Plaquemines Parish were the oil washed ashore, told Agence France-Presse.

The first oil came ashore in thin slimy strings, but thicker oil is about five miles offshore. Forecasters say it could reach Mississippi within a day, Alabama in two and Florida by early next week.

The Coast Guard has crews out in small boats this morning to patrol coastal areas and see where the oil has spread.

"We have skimming operations, dispersants that are being deployed, booming operations," Brice-O'Hara said, referring to synthetic barriers that are floated on top of the water to try to contain oil from spreading. "We are taking every step necessary to ensure that we bring every resource in that's appropriate to the extent of this spill and to the type of oil that we're dealing with."

On Thursday, Obama pledged "every single available resource" to plug the leak, dispatching "SWAT" inspection teams to the rigs in the area and three top administration officials to oversee the response. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency, and the state moved up the start of the shrimping season to help fishermen collect their catch before the oil reaches them.

Brent Roy, who charters fishing boats off Louisiana's coast, said rough seas forecast through Saturday could make it difficult for authorities to contain the spill offshore. "As it gets into the wildlife management area it is going to kill us," he told AFP.

"It's the worst-case scenario for shrimpers, oyster harvesters, crabbers -- all the commercial fishermen." Roy said, referring to Louisiana's $2.6-billion-a-year fisheries industry in one of the world's richest seafood grounds.

The slick also imperils the habitats of hundreds of species of migrating birds, nesting pelicans, river otters and mink along the coast's barrier marshes and islands. Brice-O'Hara said 180,000 feet of protective barriers have been floated out to try to protect "wetlands and fragile ecosystems."

"This has a danger of becoming an utter ecological disaster," said Ken Medlock, a fellow in energy and resource economics at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy in Houston. "This is going to result in remediation costs, and is going to be burdensome, to say the least," he told Bloomberg News.

At least two lawsuits have already been filed against BP by shrimpers and fishermen who fear the spill could bankrupt their businesses, and by families of some of the 11 workers killed in the blast.

Unable to stanch the leak for 10 days, BP has proposed injecting detergent 5,000 feet below the water's surface, in an effort to disperse the oil before it can form a slick. The Coast Guard said it's considering the idea.

"This is a very serious situation. British Petroleum is working aggressively to find alternatives. We hope within the next week that they'll be able to put a cap at the leak site so that we can take that oil up to the surface through a hose and have it put onto a barge so that we don't have the release into the water," Brice-O'Hara said. "Meanwhile, they're working today on drilling an alternative well so that they can close down this source."

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson are heading to the spill site today on Obama's request.

"While BP is ultimately responsible for assuming the cost of the cleanup operations, my administration will continue to use every single available resource at our disposal, including potentially the Department of Defense to address the incident," Obama said Thursday at the White House.

^
There are safety procedures in place for all Clients and contractors before and during drilling operations, these are reviewed on a regular basis and updated accordingly, ie if there are any changes to the drilling and exploration operation.

I think it is to early to apportion any blame here.
However it seems that the contractor Transocean could not get the head count right on who and the number of personnel missing.
I am a great believer in the T-Card system on all FPSO.s and Platforms we also used a system where you had a specific seat in the lifeboat, if it wasn,t filled during the drill then you were regarded as missing personnel.

Something has seriously gone wrong here with the rig explosion and evacuation procedure.The investigation should be able to get to the bottom of this. There has been a serious of life in this incident.The investigation needs to get all the information from BP ((The Client) Transocean (The Contractor) and further information from many of the sub contractors on board.
This is not the first time BP has had problems in the USA Texas City comes to mind however, this will require a full in depth investigation as to where it all went wrong.

At present my thoughts are with the families who have lost loved ones.