Deepwater Horizon

**Deepwater Horizon**
	The Deepwater Horizon during the 2010 fire
Ship data
flag	Marshall Islands
Ship type	Drilling platform
Callsign	V7HC9
home port	Majuro
Owner	Transocean
Shipyard	Hyundai Heavy Industries in Ulsan, South Korea
Commissioning	February 2001
Whereabouts	sunk on April 22, 2010
Ship dimensions and crew
length	121 m ( Lüa )
width	78 m
Draft	Max. 41 m
displacement	52,587 t
measurement	32588 GT
crew	approx. 146
Machine system
Machine ; performance	44,000 kW (59,823 hp)
Top ; speed	4 kn (7 km / h)
Energy ; supply	6x Wärtsilä 18V32, each 7,300 kW
Generator ; power	43,735 kW (59,463 hp)
propeller	6 × KaMeWa "Aquamaster", each 5.5 MW (approx. 7,480 PS), fixed propeller
Others
Registration ; numbers	IMO: 8764597

The Deepwater Horizon was a drilling platform for oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico . The company Transocean put it into service in 2001 and operated it on behalf of the lessee BP , in order to carry out oil wells in about 1,500 meters deep waters.

On April 20, 2010, as a result of various serious failures, a blowout occurred in which the platform caught fire and consequently sank two days later. Eleven workers were killed. Their bodies were never found. About 800 million liters of oil spilled into the ocean for 87 days, resulting in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill , the worst environmental disaster of its kind in history. Similar large quantities of crude oil had escaped during the blowout of the Ixtoc-I well in 1979/80 . Since July 16, 2010, the outflow of oil has been stopped with a temporary closure. On September 19, 2010, Thad Allen , special envoy of the US government, officially declared the source "dead". The $ 4.5 billion fine imposed by the US Department of Justice for the oil spill is the highest penalty ever imposed for an environmental offense. In addition, BP has set aside $ 38.1 billion in provisions (as of November 2012) to deal with the follow-up costs of the oil spill, and $ 14 billion has already been paid out.

History and description

Deepwater Horizon

Originally designed for R&B Falcon , construction of the Deepwater Horizon began in December 1998 at the Hyundai Heavy Industries shipyard in Ulsan , South Korea . The drilling platform went into service in February 2001 after the R&B Falcon had already been taken over by Transocean . The Deepwater Horizon was owned by Transocean. BP signed a leasing contract for the facility with a term until September 2013.

The exploration platform was a dynamically positioned semi-submersible construction , so it rested on pillars that were partially submerged in the sea and supported by floats located under water.

In 2002 the drilling unit was upgraded with a monitoring system called e-drill , which enabled technicians stationed in Houston to remotely maintain the platform.

On September 2, 2009, the Deepwater Horizon drilled the world's deepest borehole of its kind to a depth of 10,685 meters in the Tiber oil field at a depth of 1,250 meters .

Accident and oil spill

Play media file

Deepwater Horizon fire filmed from a US Coast Guard rescue helicopter (April 20, 2010)

Since February 2010, the oil rig drilled 84 kilometers southeast of Venice , Louisiana to explore the Macondo oil field . The cost of this well had originally been budgeted at $ 96.2 million, but it was several weeks behind schedule; each day of drilling cost BP $ 533,000 for the rig lease, plus an additional $ 500,000 for supplies and services.

On April 20, 2010, at around 10 p.m. US Central Standard Time, an explosion occurred on the Deepwater Horizon, which was followed by a fire . The fireboats used could not save the drilling platform, so that the platform sank on April 22, 2010. 115 workers were rescued, and eleven were believed to have been killed immediately by the explosion. The United States Senate held a hearing on May 11, 2010, during which the representatives of the companies involved BP America, Transocean and Halliburton held each other responsible for the disaster. An investigation commissioned by the US Congress found that a large number of human and technical errors had contributed to the sinking of the oil rig.

In the course of the investigation into the accident, it became known that the national regulatory authority Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (still under the name Minerals Management Service ) had decided not to draw up a previously prescribed emergency plan for accidents at many platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. The reason given was that a major oil spill was unlikely to impossible and that the drilling platform was in any case far enough in the sea so that even in the event of an oil spill, coastal regions would not be affected.

During the drilling, there had been an unusually high number of natural gas ingresses ("kicks") into the drilling. A few weeks before the accident, so much natural gas penetrated the borehole that an emergency stop had to be imposed on all potentially flammable activities on the deck of the drilling platform. In the following weeks there were repeated violent gas bursts. The risk of natural gas spill in connection with this drilling project had been described by BP as "negligible" a year earlier, although the government had clearly warned against such.

Transocean emergency organization plan dated February 15, 2008

the accident

At the time of the accident, the drilling rig was at position 29 ° N , 88 ° W in 1500 m deep water and had almost completed a 5500 m deep well. A few hours before the accident, the Halliburton company secured and secured the pipe tour by pouring special cement into the annulus . Since the Deepwater Horizon was an exploration drilling platform, but not a production platform, the completed well should be sealed with it. The oil should later be produced from another platform. 28.73667 -88.38716

However, as a result of a sharp rise in pressure in the borehole of Mississippi Canyon Block 252, a blowout occurred : a fountain of drilling mud, gas and oil emerged. The natural gas escaping in large quantities and under high pressure ignited and caused the drilling platform to fire. The protective device provided for this case directly on the seabed, the multiple redundant central valve system ( blowout preventer , BOP for short), was actuated but did not work. The manual emergency release of the BOP, called BOP-EDS Emergency Disconnect Function , which was supposed to close the BOP and separate the drilling platform from the borehole, was only activated 7 minutes after the blowout, but it did not work either.

What made the impact of the accident worse was that the diesel generators of the platform sucked in the escaping gas. As a result, their power and speed increased independently of the fuel supply - the associated increase in voltage led to the destruction of parts of the drilling platform's electrical system. Immediately afterwards the generators exploded in rows; Personnel were injured as the security doors of the generator rooms flew out. The CO ₂ extinguishing devices were triggered, but as a result of the ventilation failure, the air in parts of the platform became suffocating. An attempt was made to start the standby generator to get power for fire pumps and compressed air to start the main engines. After ten to fifteen minutes, the attempt was terminated without success.

Failure of the blowout preventer

The 15 meter high and 450 ton heavy blowout preventer (BOP) used, which was supposed to stop the escape of oil and gas in an emergency, had several shortcomings:

The sealing rubber of the Annular BOP , a special type of BOP, was damaged about four weeks before the accident when a worker accidentally touched a control lever while the seal was closed and thereby moved the pipe rod by about five meters. Then there were “several handfuls of rubber pieces” in the drilling fluid. To the astonishment of the chief electronics engineer, this incident was classified as harmless by a responsible employee.
The batteries of at least one control unit of the BOP were empty. Empty batteries in both control units - together with a design flaw - could have been the reason why the dead man's device of the BOP failed.
A pressure stamp was only installed in a non-working test version.
There was a significant leak in the hydraulics due to a screw connection loosened several turns.
Contrary to global standards, there was no additional remote or automatic release.

When BP requested technical drawings of the BOP used from Transocean after the accident, it was found that these did not match the BOP installed, as it had apparently been heavily modified. It also became clear that the BOP can cut the pipe body, but is too weak to cut through connecting pieces, which make up about 10% of the entire piping .

In 2001, Transocean analyzed the Cameron BOP used on the Deepwater Horizon. The summary of this analysis lists 260 error cases that can lead to failure of the BOP. The chairman of the investigative commission of the Committee on Energy and Commerce , Bart Stupak, therefore asked in the investigation of May 12, 2010: "How can a device be seen as a fail-safe that offers 260 possibilities to fail?"

Allegations against BP

BP is alleged to have knowingly made a number of serious mistakes. MPs of the House of Representatives accused BP of five "questionable decisions"

Despite an internal study that recommended double-walled casing for the borehole (a so-called "liner" construction), BP managers opted for a simple design.

Contrary to a guideline from the American Petroleum Institute , the drilling mud was not completely circulated at least once before the casing was cemented. This is necessary to detect gas and rocks.

Contrary to unambiguous calculations by Halliburton , BP installed only 6 centering sleeves instead of the recommended 21 to prepare for cementation.

A test of the cement layer by employees of the Halliburton company was canceled by BP; the experts who were already on the platform were sent away by BP.

At the top of the borehole there are no fasteners for the liner pipe.

According to Dr. Smith, who was commissioned by the investigative committee to analyze the recorded pressure recorder data as an expert, had failed four stress tests of the well on the evening of the accident. Nevertheless, BP declared the fortification work completed. Likewise, increases in pressure, which announced an imminent blowout, were misinterpreted or ignored.

The alarm system (three-part: fire, poisonous gases, explosive gases detecting, with optical and acoustic alarm) was set to an "inhibit mode". Although the sensors continuously gave alarms, they were set to "suppress" in the control computer. As a result, neither a visual nor an acoustic alarm was triggered. After multiple interventions by the chief electrician, this state was maintained on the orders of a superior, however, on the grounds that the crew did not want to startle the crew with a false alarm at 3 a.m.

Both BOP control panels at the operator's position had been inactive or bypassed (“bypass mode”) for years due to a defective pressure control valve, but could be brought back into automatic mode using a trick by the chief electronics engineer. His offer of being able to fix another failure on the day of the accident in a few minutes was turned down with the comment that the entire fleet operates these control panels in "bypass mode" - that doesn't matter.

In addition - contrary to the express request of several Transocean employees and common practice - a BP manager insisted on exchanging the heavy protective drilling mud for seawater before creating a second seal using a cement plug. A safety expert who was asked on the TV show 60 Minutes whether the accident would have happened if the drilling mud had been left in the hole said: "It doesn't look like it."

These decisions were apparently motivated by financial savings. In addition, the investigation committee accuses the company of having pursued a wrong security strategy. The safety management does not start with safe processes , but with occupational safety for individuals. This led, for example, to the stress tests being misinterpreted, as there were no work instructions for carrying out and interpreting the results .

The drilling permit was granted subject to the availability of devices with which an oil leak can be closed in the event of an accident. As the then BP boss Tony Hayward had to admit, BP did not have the appropriate equipment.

Allegations against Halliburton

Halliburton admitted, according to a press release from the US Department of Justice on July 25, 2013, to have destroyed evidence after the disaster on the oil platform "Deepwater Horizon" 2010.

Halliburton, who was involved in drilling the platform, has promised to plead guilty to a proposed trial. The company will accept a fine of $ 200,000 and a three-year probationary period and continue to work with investigators. Halliburton also voluntarily paid $ 55 million to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

Oil spill

After the sinking, the oil flowed out of the kinked riser pipe in several places. Various countermeasures (use of chemicals, burning off the oil on the water surface) could not prevent the spread of an oil slick, so that on April 29, 2010, the oil hit the US coast for the first time. As a result, in addition to marine fauna and flora in the Gulf of Mexico, etc. a. the Mississippi River Delta was also hit by an oil spill . Likewise, judging by images from the Envisat satellite released on May 19, 2010 , the oil may have reached the Loop Current . At the end of June, at a depth of 1,100 meters, a 35 km long pollutant cloud of monoaromatic petroleum hydrocarbons (cross-section about 400,000 square meters) was detected, which showed no signs of bacterial decomposition.

Remarkable

Transocean, the rig owner, paid a number of its executives several million dollars in bonuses in early 2011. This honored the fact that 2010 had the lowest number of accidents since the company was founded. This was measured in terms of the number and the possible severity of the accidents (original text: “ potential severity rate ”). Transocean CEO Steven L. Newman received over $ 4 million in stock options and shares alone.

Media reception

In April 2015, filming of the film Deepwater Horizon began under director Peter Berg , which was released in German cinemas on November 24, 2016 and largely depicts the true events of April 20, 2010.

Broadcast reports

Monika Seynsche : Five years after the Deepwater Horizon explosion - The long shadows of oil , Deutschlandfunk - “ Science in focus ” from April 19, 2015

Web links

Commons : Explosion and Fire of the Deepwater Horizon - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Gulf of Mexico - Deepwater Horizon Incident - Official Website
Oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Spiegel Online ; backgrounds
Deepwater Horizon Blowout Animation - Chemical Safety Board (CSB)
Explosion and leak of the oil well in the Gulf of Mexico , satellite images from the Earth Observing System ( NASA , English)
Record at the American Bureau of Shipping
GOES-13 satellite images. CIMSS Satellite Blog
Methods That Have Been Tried to Stop the Leaking Oil . New York Times , with graphics
Greenpeace Documentation: One Year After Deepwater Horizon . April 2011 (PDF)
Tim Kalvelage: Nature has not yet recovered. In: Tages-Anzeiger , July 29, 2020.

Individual evidence

↑ Jasmin Lörchner: Explosion of the "Deepwater Horizon": The hell hole. In: Spiegel Online . April 20, 2020, accessed May 15, 2020 .

↑ ard.de: Hopes are driving BP shares} ( Memento of the original from July 22, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. dated July 16, 2010 @1@ 2

↑ Oil well in the Gulf of Mexico officially sealed ( Memento from September 21, 2010 in the Internet Archive )

↑ BP employees charged with homicides . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , November 15, 2012; Retrieved November 16, 2012.

↑ Monitoring system reduces rig downtime , Offshore Magazine ( Memento of the original from May 20, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. dated November 1, 2002, accessed April 22, 2010. @1@ 2

^ BP drills oil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico . ( Memento of the original from May 20, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. September 2, 2009; Retrieved April 23, 2010. @1@ 2

↑ In the fight against an oil spill . In: Die Welt , April 26, 2010. Macondo subseaiq.com; Retrieved May 10, 2010

^ ^A ^b Gulf of Mexico: The great "blow-out" . geo-union.de Interview with the exploration geologist Wilhelm Dominik

^ The Deepwater Horizon incident ( Memento of May 4, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) “ The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico follows an explosion and fire aboard Transocean's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig on Tuesday 20 April at approximately 10:00 pm US central time. ”Bp.com; Retrieved May 8, 2010

↑ ^a ^b ^c Disaster Plans Lacking at Deep Rigs. Timeline of the Disaster . The Wall Street Journal , May 18, 2010

^ N24: Oil platform sunk off the US coast on April 23, 2010, accessed on April 23, 2010.

↑ Hearing in the US Senate. Spiegel Online , May 11, 2010. He did it- The three men pointing fingers at each other as BP tries to shift blame for oil spill . dailymail.co.uk May 12, 2010; Retrieved May 20, 2010

↑ abcnews.go.com May 7, 2010

↑ ^a ^b ^c What caused the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon? . WSWS. May 14, 2010. Retrieved June 5, 2010.

↑ Peter Fairley: Danger From Below. Heise.de, May 7, 2010, accessed June 5, 2010 .

↑ ^a ^b Unrestrained flow of oil under water. Spiegel.de, April 26, 2010, accessed on May 10, 2010 .

↑ Blowout: The Deepwater Horizon Disaster - 60 Minutes. Short report on the experiences of the electrical engineer Mike Williams on the day of the accident on the Deep Water Horizon, with an approx. 9-minute excerpt from an episode of the documentary series 60 Minutes , broadcast on CBS on May 16, 2010, accessed on January 30, 2017

↑ ^a ^b ^c Hearing of witnesses before the US Coast Guard Committee of Inquiry . full video from July 23, 2010, witness Mike Williams

↑ Chronicle: The Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico. tagesschau.de

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d energycommerce.house.gov (PDF) Archived from the original on May 18, 2010. Retrieved on June 5, 2010.

^ Reasons for the decision that led to the "Blowout Prevention Act of 2010" ( Memento of December 5, 2010 in the Internet Archive )