Oilfield expert warns errors in report undermine safety recommendations
SINGAPORE, Jan. 26, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In anticipation of today's Senate and House hearings over the final report by President Obama's National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, oilfield operations expert Phil Rae warns that fundamental mistakes made in the panel's findings threaten to undermine efforts to ensure such a tragedy never occurs again:
After $6 million dollars, 6 hearings, and seven months, the cause of the April 20th blowout laid out in the commission's report varies little from the one initially proposed by BP. It's a theory that still fails to explain all documented observations and known facts. More troubling though, the commission's 398-page report contains several claims that are factually incorrect.
For example, the commission reports the crew on the Deepwater Horizon saw the fluid level in the riser fall, realized they had a leak through the annular preventer, and topped up the riser with mud. Yet, that didn't happen.
When the crew started the negative test, they closed the annular preventer and bled off the drill pipe; but the pressure immediately rose. Consequently, they assumed the annular preventer was leaking. Upon inspection of the riser, crew members found it needed to be topped-up with ~60 bbls of mud. And for them, that appeared to confirm their suspicion of a leak.
Case closed, right? Wrong.
The annular preventer never suffered a leak. The pressure in the well rose, because the well was flowing. The commission fails to make this critical distinction. If the crew hadn't assumed there was a leak, they would have likely realized that the well was live and taken appropriate measures.
As explained in my report -- "Genesis of the Deepwater Horizon Blowout" -- the riser needed topped up because the casing shoe failed during displacement of mud with spacer and, consequently, the well lost mud. This is the actual reason the well went live, and it's important to understand this nuance if we hope to mitigate the risks of future blowouts.
The commission botched this and several other details. That means the members based all subsequent conclusions on a faulty initial analysis. Such foundational errors jeopardize the validity of the rest of its findings.
In addition to its erroneous assumption regarding the annular preventer, the commission report also makes it sound as if choosing a longstring over a liner when designing the well was perfectly acceptable. Such a stance misses the point altogether. There are specific reasons why BP should never have run a production long string on this well (or any other deepwater well). Yet, nobody has voiced these concerns so we can only assume the same mistake could be repeated anytime.
If the commission's true objective involved "examining relevant facts and circumstances concerning the root causes of the Deepwater Horizon explosion and developing options to guard against," it failed.
Phil Rae has been involved in the oil industry for thirty years, the majority of which have been with major international service companies. Rae has lived and worked in most regions of the world but has spent the last 14 years in Asia and is now based in Singapore. He has wide-ranging theoretical and practical knowledge of oilfield operations, and specialist knowledge in the disciplines of cementing, acidizing and hydraulic fracturing.
In addition to authoring some 40 SPE papers, Rae has also written numerous technical papers and articles for various oil and gas industry publications. He has been involved in the development of several key completion and stimulation technologies and holds several patents in these areas.
Rae has been a participant and served as a committee member or co-chair on several SPE Forums, Advanced Technology Workshops and Technical Conferences. In recognition of these efforts, he received the SPE Regional Service Award and the Technical Award for Drilling and Completions in 2005 and 2006, respectively. He is currently chairman of the SPE Technical Advisory Committee-Asia-Pacific, was a technical editor of the SPE Drilling and Completions Journal for many years and served as an SPE Distinguished Lecturer in 2004/2005. Rae is a graduate of Aberdeen University.
SOURCE Phil Rae
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