White House plans new offshore-well rules
1920s blowout preventers need redesign after ’10 spill
WASHINGTON — Obama administration officials last week outlined plans for new rules designed to boost the reliability and power of emergency equipment safeguarding offshore wells, two years after the Deepwater Horizon disaster revealed shortcomings in the devices.
The coming mandates, set to be proposed by September, focus on the hulking blowout preventers that sit atop the wellhead and are a last line of defense against surging oil and gas. During an emergency, shearing and sealing rams in the devices can be activated to cut drill pipe and block off the well hole.
But a forensic examination of the blowout preventer unearthed from BP’S failed Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico revealed that the device was unable to slash through a piece of drill pipe that had buckled and been pushed off center.
The investigations of the blowout preventer at the illfated Macondo well off the coast of Louisiana revealed “some serious issues” that are not unique to BP’S operation, Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes said at a government forum meant to help regulators craft the new mandates.
Hayes signaled the rule would require stricter maintenance of blowout preventers, stronger training for the people operating them and “better sensors to tell us what is happening at the bottom of the sea.”
Fundamentally, Hayes said, blowout preventers “need to be able to cut whatever is in their way and completely seal off the well.”
That could mean a big redesign for the devices that have been used to safeguard onshore and subsea wells since they were first created in the 1920s. For instance, blowout preventers today are not generally capable of shearing tool joints, the thick connections between pieces of drill pipe, although GE Oil and Gas and other manufacturers are rolling out new designs that promise that capability.
“The industry responds to forensic information that is given to us,” said Chuck Chauviere, GE Oil and Gas’ general manager of drilling. “We are improving what the capabilities of the equipment are.”
Roger Mccarthy, a member of the National Academy of Engineering panel that probed the Deepwater Horizon disaster, said “the industry had plenty of warnings” before the 2010 oil spill that blowout preventers had problems shearing even under “benign conditions.”
A new blowout-preventer rule should ensure that the devices would at least have been able to halt the gushing oil and gas at Macondo, he said.
“We don’t want to fight the last war,” Mccarthy said. “But let’s remember, we lost the last war. So, at a minimum, we should be able to anticipate with our current design recommendations and incorporate in them all the history we have paid so dearly for by not being prepared for the last disasters.”
A blowout preventer has got to be powerful enough “to cut anything that’s in front of it when all hell is breaking loose,” Mccarthy added.
Industry representatives pleaded with federal regulators to include specific performance standards in any new rule while leaving enough room for innovation to meet those requirements.
“Tell us what you want and let us figure out how we do it,” said Moe Plaisance, vice president of governmental and industry affairs for drilling contractor Diamond Offshore. “We want to be part of the solution.”
A push for more data from the devices was borne out of the initial response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, when engineers struggled to remotely trigger the blowout preventer at the Macondo well and ascertain whether its rams had fully closed.