Deepwater Horizon oil spill
Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion

Deepwater Horizon was an ultra-deepwater, dynamically positioned, semi-submersible offshore drilling rig. Built in 2001 in South Korea, it was owned by Transocean, registered in Majuro, Marshall Islands, and leased to BP plc until 2013.

In September 2009, the rig drilled the deepest oil well in history at a vertical depth of 35,050 ft (10,680 m) and measured depth of 35,055 ft (10,685 m). On April 20, 2010, an explosion on the rig killed eleven crewmen. The resulting fire could not be extinguished and, on April 22, 2010, Deepwater Horizon sank, leaving its well gushing and causing the largest offshore oil spill in United States history.

BP's Rig Missed 16 Inspections Before Explosion
Lauren Frayer Contributor, AOL News
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(June 12) -- The BP rig that sparked America's biggest oil spill in history missed 16 required inspections in the years leading up to the deadly April explosion that killed 11 workers and sent crude gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.

That's according to newly released government inspection reports that show the Deepwater Horizon rig was only surveyed six times in 2008, even though the government requires drilling rigs to be inspected every month. In total, it missed 16 checks since January 2005.

It's unclear whether the lapse is the fault of federal authorities or BP itself. An Interior Department official told CBS News that a rig sometimes misses inspection if it's being dragged from one location to another, or if there are delays because of the weather.

The inspections that did occur found no problems on the rig, and the most recent safety violation was recorded as far back as 2007. One report dated three weeks before the April blast, excerpted by the Los Angeles Times, noted that the blowout preventer was functioning properly, without any mention of problems with surges of natural gas flowing up the drill column – the glitch that experts believe led to the disastrous April 20th explosion.

"It appears that the Deepwater Horizon experienced dangerous gas 'kicks' before the April 20 disaster," David Pettit, a senior attorney and drilling expert for the Natural Resources Defense Council, told the LA Times. "It is hard to understand why MMS did not learn about this potentially deadly problem" before the explosion.

MMS refers to the federal Minerals Management Service, which is tasked with inspecting offshore oil rigs. The head of the agency, Elizabeth Birnbaum, resigned last month over the oil spill.

President Barack Obama acknowledged on Friday that the government could have done more to regulate oil companies like BP, but said it's also a tough political issue on Capitol Hill.

"I think it's fair to say, if six months ago, before this spill had happened, I had gone up to Congress and I had said, 'We need to crack down a lot harder on oil companies and we need to spend more money on technology to respond in case of a catastrophic spill,' there are folks up there, who will not be named, who would have said, 'This is classic, big-government over-regulation and wasteful spending,'" Obama said in an interview with Politico.

Obama is planning to visit the Gulf for a fourth time this coming week. Today he plans to speak by telephone with British Prime Minister David Cameron, to discuss the environmental catastrophe that continues to unfold along America's coastline. There's growing animosity among Gulf coast residents for BP, a British company that's the world's third-largest oil firm and a pillar of the British economy.

In recent weeks, Obama has said he would fire BP's CEO if the decision were up to him, and also criticized the company for spending money on public relations, rather than devoting all its profits to the oil cleanup.

One thing BP has done is promise to donate some of its proceeds to help restore and protect wildlife along the Gulf Coast. The company announced earlier this week that it would donate its share of profits from any oil it siphons off the blown-out well and introduces back into the oil supply.

According to that method, the very oil that's been spewing out into the Gulf could soon end up at local gas stations, with profits funding the environmental cleanup. BP hasn't released details on how the plan would work or how much money it would generate.

Experts estimate that between 40 and 109 million gallons of oil have spewed into the Gulf since April 20th. Some four million gallons have been siphoned off the ruptured well using tubes and caps, and another 18 million gallons have been skimmed off the water's surface, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen told The Associated Press on Friday.

Deepwater Horizon
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Transocean Ltd. (NYSE: RIG) announced that its ultra-deepwater semisubmersible rig Deepwater Horizon recently drilled the deepest oil and gas well ever while working for BP and its co-owners on the Tiber well in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. Working with BP, the Transocean crews on the Deepwater Horizon drilled the well to 35,050 vertical depth and 35,055 feet measured depth (MD), or more than six miles, while operating in 4,130 feet of water.

"This impressive well depth record reflects the intensive planning and focus on effective operations by BP and the drilling crews of the Deepwater Horizon," said Robert L. Long, Transocean Ltd.'s Chief Executive Officer. "Congratulations to everyone involved."

These achievements are the latest in Transocean's history of world and other records dating back to the 1950s. In 2005, the ultra-deepwater drillship Discoverer Spirit set the record for the longest Gulf of Mexico oil and gas well at 34,189 feet, MD. Most recently, the Transocean jackup GSF Rig 127 drilled the industry’s longest extended-reach well in 2008 while working for Maersk Oil Qatar AS at 40,320 feet MD with a 35,770-foot horizontal section. The well was drilled offshore Qatar in 36 days and was incident-free.

Transocean also holds the current world water-depth record of operating in 10,011 feet of water set while working for Chevron in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.

The Deepwater Horizon, placed into service in 2001, is a dynamically positioned ultra-deepwater semisubmersible rig capable of working in water depths of up to 10,000 feet.

Transocean Ltd. is the world’s largest offshore drilling contractor and the leading provider of drilling management services worldwide. With a fleet of 135 mobile offshore drilling units plus eight announced ultra-deepwater newbuild units, the company’s fleet is considered one of the most modern and versatile in the world due to its emphasis on technically demanding segments of the offshore drilling business. The company owns or operates a contract drilling fleet of 41 High-Specification Floaters (Ultra-Deepwater, Deepwater and Harsh-Environment semisubmersibles and drillships), 26 Midwater Floaters, 10 High-Specification Jackups, 55 Standard Jackups and other assets utilized in the support of offshore drilling activities worldwide.

Spill probe puts Halliburton in spotlight
Los Angeles Times, May 1, 2010, 10:44PM
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LOS ANGELES — Investigators delving into the causes of the massive Gulf oil spill are examining the role of Houston-based Halliburton Co., the giant energy services company that was responsible for cementing the deepwater drill hole, as well as the possible failure of equipment leased to British Petroleum.

Two members of Congress, Reps. Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif., and Bart Stupak, D-Mich., called on Halliburton on Friday to provide all documents relating to “the possibility or risk of an explosion or blowout at the Deepwater Horizon rig and the status, adequacy, quality, monitoring, and inspection of the cementing work” by May 7.

Halliburton Chief Executive David Lesar is scheduled to testify before Waxman's energy and commerce committee on May 12, along with top executives Lamar McKay of BP America Inc. and Steve Newman of Transocean Ltd., which leased the drilling rig to BP.

In a statement Friday, Halliburton said: “It is premature and irresponsible to speculate on any specific causal issues.... The cement slurry design was consistent with that utilized in other similar applications... (and) tests demonstrating the integrity of the production casing string were completed.”

After an exploration well is drilled, cement slurry is pumped through a steel pipe or casing and out through a check valve at the bottom of the casing. It then travels up the outside of the pipe, sheathing the part of the pipe surrounded by the oil and gas zone. When the cement hardens, it is supposed to prevent oil or gas from leaking into adjacent zones along the pipe.

As the cement sets, the check valve at the end of the casing prevents any material from flowing back up the pipe. The zone is thus isolated until the company is ready to start production.

The process is tricky. A 2007 study by the U.S. Minerals Management Service found that cementing was the single most-important factor in 18 of 39 well blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico over a 14-year period.

Halliburton has been accused of performing a poor cement job in the case of a major blowout in the Timor Sea off Australia last August. An investigation is under way.

In its statement, the company said: “Halliburton originated oilfield cementing and leads the world in effective, efficient delivery of zonal isolation and engineering for the life of the well, conducting thousands of successful well-cementing jobs each year.”

The company had four employees stationed on the rig at the time of the Gulf accident, all of whom were rescued by the Coast Guard. It had completed the final cementing of the well and pipe 20 hours before the blowout April 20.

But at the time of the accident, “well operations had not yet reached the point requiring the placement of the final cement plug, which would enable the planned temporary abandonment of the well,” the Halliburton statement said.

Experts were cautious about attributing blame, pending what are expected to be lengthy investigations by Congress and the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Coast Guard.

“What we do know is that highly pressurized oil is coming out of the wellhead with no control possible at this time,” said Richard Charter, a drilling expert with the Defenders of Wildlife. “For that to happen, at least three redundant fail-safe mechanisms on and below the rig had to either fail to operate or not have been properly installed.”

Charter said a piece of equipment known as the blowout preventer is required to shut automatically, according to regulations by the Minerals Management Service. “And it obviously did not,” he said.

Moreover, he added, a manual acoustic shutoff switch could have stanched the flow but may not have been available.

Joe Leimkuhler, past president of the American Association of Drilling Engineers, said it was difficult to speculate about the role of cementing in the accident. “The process to place the cement in the well is very similar from job to job, but the details that make up the risk and challenges are specific to each well. You really need the details of the well design and the formation characteristics.” He added that only the companies involved have that information.

Some speculation has centered on methane pockets frozen into crystallized formations beneath the seabed that could be warmed by the cementing process and become unstable. A 2009 Halliburton presentation to the drilling engineers association described the challenges of methane hydrates, asking: “When do hydrates become unstable?” and “Will cement hydration cause this outcome?” The presentation noted that “gas release is a challenge for safety and economics.”

A company spokesman declined to comment on whether methane hydrates, warmed by cement curing, may have been a factor in the Gulf explosion.

More than two dozen class-action lawsuits have been filed against BP, Transocean and Halliburton. BP spokeswoman Sheila Williams said the company was “taking full responsibility” for the spill and would pay for legitimate claims by affected parties.

Devastating BP oil spill was inevitable as government failed to learn from past tragedies
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A catastrophic oil spill was waiting to happen.

That's what one expert who has studied government data on the huge and growing number of Gulf of Mexico spills is saying.

"There have been thousands of spills from 1990 to 2009," said Walter Hang, head of Toxics Targeting, an Ithaca, N.Y., company that tracks and analyzes federal hazardous spill reports.

While many were small, the sheer number of incidents is mind-boggling, Hang said.

They include scores of oil platforms and rigs that were destroyed by hurricanes, wells that "lost control," deep-sea risers that became detached or severed, boats that collided into oil platforms and sank.

Spills have increased dramatically under the Bush and Obama administrations. The federal Minerals and Management Service has recorded some 330 significant spills - those over 2,100 gallons - since 1964. Nearly half happened in just the past 10 years.

And you can guess which company suffered the most spills since 2000?

That's right, BP.

Federal records show BP reported 23 significant oil spills in that time - including two within weeks of each other in 2003, on the same Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that was destroyed in the April 21 catastrophe.

Here a few samples of those BP reports. As you read them, keep in mind that the oil companies - and they alone - have historically provided the official estimates of their spills. By now, the whole world knows by now how much we can trust BP on that front.

- Jan. 19, 2000: "The weekly function test was performed from the remote blowout preventer (BOP) panel in the off-shore installation manager's office. Instead of testing the blind shear rams, the engineer inadvertently pushed the LMRP (lower marine riser package).

"The control panel buttons for the LMRP did not have enough security to prevent activating the wrong function. It was determined that 2,400 barrels of 60% synthetic-based drilling mud (with approximately 60,000 gallons of oil)" leaked into the Gulf of Mexico.

- May 21, 2003: "The spill occurred at Mississippi Canyon 778 ... The drilling vessel was in the process of pulling up the wellhole when it experienced wave action heaving and jarring.

"The riser parted in two places ... There was a release of 2,450 barrels of 58% Accolade synthetic-based drilling mud (SBM). It is estimated that (it) contained approximately 1,421 barrels (59,000 gallons) of Accolade synthetic base oil."

- June 30, 2003: "An emergency riser disconnect occurred when drilling vessel failed to maintain station against 44 knot winds ... and 12-to-14-foot sea conditions." Approximately "944 barrels of Nova Plus synthetic base oil" were "released into the sea."

- Aug. 3, 2003, on the Deepwater Horizon rig: "While drilling and using mud boost line to enhance cutting transportation in the riser, the driller noticed he was losing mud ...

"The mud pumps were shut down and it was confirmed that the losses came from a leak in the boost line. At one point, the boost hose had ruptured and there were several other locations along the hose that were badly worn. The total losses were calculated to be 143 barrels ..."

In addition to human errors, frequent hurricanes in the gulf are a big problem the industry prefers not to talk about.

"Given the egregious record of off-shore oil problems, the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe was obviously forseeable and should have been prevented," Hang notes.

As the number of spills mounted, no one paid attention. Now the big one is here, and nothing can hide that gushing hole at the bottom of the sea.

jgonzalez@nydailynews.com