By Dr. Joseph S. Maresca
May, 2010: Gulf Oil Spill Cleanup
The BP oil spill continues to blacken waters in the Gulf of Mexico and beyond. Lloyd’s of London has issued its first estimate of net claims from the disaster. The world’s largest insurance marketer says total claims from the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig could be between $300 million and $600 million. That estimate is optimistic according to the continuing damage assessments in the Gulf area.
The U.S. Geological Survey now estimates that the flow ranges from 12,000 barrels (504,000 gallons/1.9 million liters) to 25,000 barrels (1.05 million gallons/3.97 million liters ) per day. The team’s best estimate is 12,000 to 19,000 barrels per day. In the Louisiana wetlands, scientists showed where oil washed into wild cane fields, discoloring the base of green cane and fouling the air with a horrendous smell. Many of these small islands of wetlands were surrounded by the white protective boom that has been laid out to prevent the oil from seeping in. There have been clear breaches as witnessed by local officials over the weekend.
The latest failed option was the “top kill,” a procedure by BP that was supposed to push heavy fluids known as drilling mud into the well to weigh down the gushing oil. BP planned on capping the well with cement. The injection of a “junk shot” of shredded rubber, golf balls and other materials was envisioned to add more weight.
BP planned on implementing other remedies, such as corralling the oil for transport by pipe to a drillship at the water’s surface. The company also discussed placing a new blowout preventer atop the failed one. Two relief wells are in process of deployment to stop the flow. Those relief wells may take several weeks to complete.
A typical oil production platform is self-sufficient in energy and water needs, housing electrical generation, water desalinators and all of the equipment necessary to process oil and gas such that it can be either delivered directly onshore by pipeline or to a floating platform and/or tanker loading facility. Elements in the oil/gas production process include wellhead, production manifold, production separator, glycol process to dry gas, gas compressors, water injection pumps, oil/gas export metering and main oil line pumps.
An offshore operations platform generally consists of a considerable team of experts in the art of oil well engineering operations and continuing maintenance. i.e.
The OIM (offshore installation manager) is the ultimate authority during his/her shift and makes the essential decisions regarding the operation of the platform. There may be a hierarchy of team leaders to facilitate continuous operations. The offshore operations engineer (OOE) is the senior technical authority on the platform. Operations coordinators manage crew changes. Dynamic positioning operators assist with navigation, ship or vessel maneuvering (MODU), station keeping, fire and gas systems escalation in the event of incidents. A hierarchy of “mates” meet staffing requirements of flag state, operate fast rescue craft, cargo operations and fire coordination. Crane operators run cranes for lifting cargo around the platform. Scaffolders manage scaffold building when workers are required to work at heights. Coxwains maintain the lifeboats. The catering crew handle cooking and laundry. Production techs run the production plant. Helicopter pilots navigate between the platform and the shore during crew relief or changes. Maintenance technicians manage instrumentation, electrical and mechanical systems and processes.
This offshore operations platform should require the deployment of a Disaster Recovery Plan in order to empower the staff the moment critical problems begin to escalate. At a minimum, the Disaster Recovery Plan should provide for de-commissioning the platform based upon a hierarchy of known emergency conditions in the oil industry, as well as pre-defined criteria of the Minerals Management Service, the Department of Energy and relevant Gulf State authorities.
The practice of rig mechanics consists of analysis of forces on the rig floor and the wellbore, mechanical advantage, management of a complex system of levers, gears and pulleys, fluid mechanics and management of hydrostatic pressure, buoyancy turbulence and friction. Daily rig operations consist of well control, casing/cementing, pipe tallies, hole cleaning, mixing drilling fluids, determining pump liner requirements, directional drilling and various sundry activities.
The Minerals Management Service is in existence to manage the ocean energy and mineral resources on the Outer Continental Shelf. Sometimes, uncontrolled pressure emanates from the well. This pressure can precipitate large accidents. The prevention of these accidents is a regulatory issue according to Frederic Hauge, a head of Bellona, one of the leading environmental groups in Norway.
There are engineering technologies which can centralize the experience of engineering experts onto a single knowledge base. A knowledge engineer collects the opinions of experts and develops an expert system to provide “Advice Giving” based upon the practical experience of a community of experts. The “Advice Giving” system is designed to anticipate the major problem areas in a particular technical art like engineering and rank solutions proposed by a community of experts. There are also engineering trouble management systems which rank or escalate troubles based upon their importance or criticality. These types of systems may be employed to advise the oil industry, the Minerals Management Service, the Department of Energy, Gulf State regulatory authorities and other interested parties.
This Gulf Disaster was not a “spill,” It is increasingly evident that there will be no “cleanup.” In the view of a growing number of experts, the catastrophe is of such a magnitude that to speak of a “cleanup” is meaningless. The Washington Post reported in a front-page story “Ian MacDonald, the Florida State University professor who has gained attention with his estimate, based on aerial images, that the leak is five times the official estimate of 5,000 barrels a day, said nature will ultimately have to fix the gulf mess. ‘BP is not going to clean up this spill,’ he said. ‘The Coast Guard is not going to clean up this spill. What’s going to clean up this spill is the physical, chemical, biological process of the good ol’, poor, downtrodden Gulf of Mexico.’”
The scale of the spill expanded hugely with new government figures on Thursday that put the flow rate from the ruptured well at as much as four or five times BP’s estimate of 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons/795,000 liters) a day. Patent art exists for detecting an influx of gas into a marine riser of an oil rig. US Patent 5163029 was designed for this purpose. In accordance with the present invention, several methods are presented for the detection of gas into an offshore marine riser (e.g., riser gas). In a first embodiment of this invention, an acoustic transmitter is positioned on or nearby the subsea blowout prevent or stack and imparts continuous low frequency waves into the annular fluid in the marine riser. These imparted waves define pressure perturbations which are received by a pressure transducer positioned on the riser at a location above the acoustic transmitter. Gas detection in the riser is then indicated by determining the rate of change of certain characteristics of the output. The output characteristics are preferably the moduli and phase angles of the acoustic fundamentals and their harmonics.
In a second embodiment of this invention, continuous or pulsed pressure waves are imparted into the marine riser using a transducer ring surrounding the riser comprised of piezoelectric or magnetostrictive elements which change shape when electrically stimulated. When such electrical stimulation occurs, preferably by a pulse containing multiple harmonics, the transducer rings impacts the riser pipe causing compressional waves to be set up in the annular fluid. The compressional waves are then sensed at or near the surface and changes in amplitude or phase shift are detected for determining the presence of influx gas. Related Patents 6371204 - Underground well kick detector – Owned by Union Oil Company of California (El Segundo, CA)
There is a “SAFETY ENCLOSURE FOR OFF-SHORE OIL RIGS.” United States Patent 3730278
The floatable safety enclosure is formed by a plurality of upwardly extending, floatable wall sections which are adapted to be floated into position around an off-shore oil or gas well platform and secured together to form a continuous, dome-like wall around the platform.
The floatable safety enclosure of this invention obviates many of the difficulties and disadvantages previously encountered in extinguishing gas and oil well off-shore fires and provides an enclosure or dome for enclosing an off-shore platform or rig with a continuous wall which extends above the top of the rig a substantial distance so that a fire within the enclosure is quickly smothered.
It is an object of this invention to provide a floatable safety device or enclosure for off-shore gas or oil well platforms which will prevent combustion supporting air outside of the enclosure from reaching a fire within the enclosure. Another object of the invention is to provide a safety enclosure which may be floated into position around an off-shore platform.
Everlast Synthetic Products offers a line of new materials well-suited for demanding weather environments. Significantly, we tend to see composites used regularly in demanding environments and the thermal protection tiles employed in the space shuttle program also provide an excellent indication of the durability of composite materials. The newest Boeing 787 is almost entirely composite-based with over 80% of the flagship aircraft being composed of durable composite materials.
Composite sheet piling has many benefits, particularly during coastal protection and restoration projects. It is essential that any materials forming part of a seawall or other divertive protection structure are extremely resistant to the corrosive effects of sea water. Salinity acts as an accelerant in the corrosion process so the constituent materials in composite sheet piling must be highly resistant to this particular risk.
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Joseph S. Maresca Ph.D., CPA, CISA, MBA: His significant writings include over 10 copyrights in the name of the author (Joseph S. Maresca) and a patent in the earthquake sciences. He holds membership in the prestigious Delta Mu Delta National Honor Society and Sigma Beta Delta International Honor Society. In addition, he blogs and reviews many books for Basil & Spice. Visit the Joseph S. Maresca Writer’s Page.
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Oil Spill 2010: Disaster Recovery Plan Needed