A near miss for the North Sea oil industry

I started work in this business in 1974. Part of my job was to pick up the pieces after such incidents. I have to say this is yet another bit of irresponsible 'headlining' by the BBC. Who writes your scripts?
There is no such thing as a 'near miss' in the oil business unless you are talking about a collision between structures. Total alarmist nonsense!
"But the parallels between this and the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico raise serious questions about the operating procedures and safety margins employed on rigs across the off-shore oil industry." 'Raise serious questions' by whom?
For your information - please get it right! The Sedco 711 is not an 'oil platform' or an 'oil rig', it is a Semi-submersible Mobile Drilling Platform. If your going to talk technical - do it properly.












Incidentally, the vessel you show i

Perhaps, Jim, you would like to tell us just how many times you have had to 'pick up the pieces' from such incidents. It sounds as if you are saying you have had to deal with quite a few. If that is the case, it doesn't bode well if things are allowed to carry on as before.
Is it fair to say that drilling engineers have, in the past, been prepared to take risks and interpret data in the way that will produce a "result". You tell us, as you must have the first hand knowledge.
Oh and by the way, let's not get bogged down in semantics. The BBC, like most media, have no idea of oil industry terminology, but it doesn't detract from the gist of the story. Simply put, thank God the BOP worked this time....

Semantics, technicalities... let's not get 'bogged down' by any of them. What about sloppy reporting?

From the first paragraph this piece shrieks ignorance. Wells are brought ‘on-stream’. If the science correspondent can’t get it right then I would respectfully suggest he asks someone who knows or tries harder until he can.

To summarise, there was ‘almost’ a release of hydrocarbons, but the equipment and procedures in place were employed as designed and... there wasn’t. Hardly the adventure of a lifetime is it?

I’m struggling to see why anyone might think it wasn’t “clear that this [was] something that had been properly prepared for...”, or that people had been “working without the necessary kit... proper training or procedures..." Only those without a proper understanding of the processes being discussed could see a story in this.

So Transocean (the company operating BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico) narrowly missed a similar accident in the North Sea.
Is that sipposed to surprise anyone?
The Commons Energy & Climate Change Committee is holding an inquiry into the safety implications of the Deepwater Horizon disaster for the UK off-shore oil industry. Thank-you.
I'd like to know the truth about
- how frequently this kind of thing is happening off-shore, &
- whether there was a risk of a more serious accident.
Transocean failed to make time for an interview. The parallels between the North Sea this and the Deepwater Horizon disaster raise very serious questions to which I would like answers, Can you not force Transocean to attend an interview?
Also I recently heard that BP will be drilling in Libya and archeologists are alarmed re ancient sites. Some of Libya's most important coastal ruins could be irreparably damaged.
According to archaeologists, 7th century-BC cities as well as historic shipwrecks will be at risk.
BP plans to sink an oil well off the country's coast before the end of the year. Already controversial due to the company's alleged role in influencing the release of the Lockerbie bomber in order to win the drilling rights, the well in Libya's Gulf of Sirte would be 200 meters deeper than the one in the Gulf of Mexico.
The French archaeological team to Libya: "If there is a problem with oil, like in the U.S., and it washes on to the shore it's going to be very difficult to clean the remains because the stones are porous."
BP says it has reviewed its plans for Libya in light of the Gulf of Mexico spill and will "move forward with great caution". Well, that certainly is comforting!
Even more troubling, Libya has no experience supervising the risks of deep-water drilling and is the only Mediterranean country (I think) not to have a contingency plan in place for handling an oil spill.
The Libya situation is deeplu troubling and if anything happens, it will be compounded by the BP's alleged role in influencing the release of the Lockerbie bomber in order to win the drilling rights.

I have worked in the offshore drilling industry for many many years, in many different areas of the world. And I have seen a few close calls but no blow-outs (a blow out is an uncontrolled discharge of fluids from a well - caused by the formation pressure being greater than the hydrostatic fluid column holding the formation pressure back).
The offshore drilling industry can be a high-risk business - financially, environmentally, and for people working in it. To combat such risks training, quality training, should be a priority for drilling companies - unfortunately it seldom seems to be that way. Irrespective of what the top men in the companies may say - training is very often ill-conceived, ill-prepared, poorly presented, and very often misguided and misses the point completely. On this issue the British government has a lot to answer for as they have not regulated training as thoroughly as they should have. Better quality training is well overdue for a lot of the people who work in our offshore drilling industry.
The media report stories regarding the offshore oil industry often without fully understanding the technical aspects & terms associated with offshore drilling; perhaps they should consult independent industry experts for an expert analysis for their media reports.
Prior to the Deepwater Horizon incident, the North Sea was possibly the most regulated offshore region in any part of the worldwide offshore industry.
I believe that the media has a duty to report such incidents as these. I witnessed some questionable behaviour during my early years working in the North Sea and if the industry had been as regulated then as it is now - due mainly to what happened with the Piper Alpha production platform - a lot of that behaviour would probably not have occurred.
Back to the incident on the Transocean Sedco 711 - the problem for the industry, Transocean particularly, is the practice of fast-tracking people into positions they are ill equipped to perform. This situation exists due to a very large number of very experienced people being laid off from the offshore industry in the 80's and the 90's. These people decided not to come back into the industry when the boom came back in the last few years, hence a serious shortage of experienced personnel - this is a global problem for the industry. The existing experienced people working in the industry are spread thin on the ground.

1. At 12:08pm on 07 Dec 2010, Jim Currie wrote:
“There is no such thing as a 'near miss' in the oil business unless you are talking about a collision between structures. Total alarmist nonsense!”

3. At 7:55pm on 07 Dec 2010, Dubsmannie wrote:
“To summarise, there was ‘almost’ a release of hydrocarbons, but the equipment and procedures in place were employed as designed and... there wasn’t. Hardly the adventure of a lifetime is it?”

That’s like saying ‘the airbag deployed so there was nothing to worry about’. Hogwash. Tom Fielden’s article is clear, and so are your interests. Stop hiding behind jargon.

5. At 8:59pm on 07 Dec 2010, Spartan wrote:
... with much more reason and balance. Thank you. You do your industry credit. I would just emphasize that safety is a dual responsibility, both of the regulator and the industry.

This is a case of taking a very alarmist view of the incident. It was not nothing. People made mistakes but the sytem that is in place as the failsafe, the BOP which itself has multiple levels of redundancy to ensure it will work, worked. The failure of the BOP in the Deep Water Horizon is the most remarkable and serious issue. BOPs are meant to be tested regularly and are also manually inspected frequently. Not working is about eqiuivalent to a tight rope walker noticing as he falls that the safety net has a giant hole in it.
Drilling for oil is a costly and challenging business. The pressures and temperatures involved are staggering and the engineering required is a true feat of human endeavour. Deep water does not really make that much of a difference for drilling although it makes intervention later harder. It is all difficult. Blow outs are pretty rare particularly in the more heavily regulated parts of the world. Generally the UK industry is a safe place to work (safer than building or agriculture)
You either accept that there is risk and then regulate the industry appropriately or you never get in a car/bus/train or plane and never turn on the lights. Choose

Where can we view a copy of this 9-page document?

All this user's posts have been removed.Why?