Officials from the Oil Spill Commission Action (OSCA) project, a continuation of the presidential commission that investigated the 2010 Macondo deepwater oil well blowout and subsequent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, expressed their opposition to US President Donald Trump’s plans to open Atlantic and Arctic offshore areas to oil and gas leasing.
OSCA Co-Chairs Bob Graham and William K. Reilly said in a letter to US Sec. of the Interior Ryan Zinke that they support Arctic Ocean Exploratory Drilling final technical regulations that DOI adopted in July 2016, and the 2017-22 OCS Management Plan, which limits oil and gas leasing to the western and central gulf and parts of the eastern gulf, that DOI adopted in January.
But their greatest concern centered on the possibility that Zinke might repeal the offshore well control rule that the US Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement finalized in April 2016.
“In our view, the most broadly important measure to come out of what the commission learned was the new well control rule that [BSEE] finalized in April 2016,” the co-chairs’ letter said.
“In the commission’s investigation of the causes of the Macondo accident, a primary cause was determined to be the failure of the blowout preventer and the inadequacy of existing rules and standards for offshore well control,” they noted.
The rule’s adoption was the culmination of a 6-year effort to improve offshore safety for workers as well as the oil industry and the surrounding marine environment, Graham and Reilly said. It resulted from extensive consultation with the industry, analysis by DOI, and public input, they said.
They said the well control rule emanates directly from what the commission learned about problems at the root of the Apr. 20, 2010, blowout and explosion that took 11 lives and destroyed the Deepwater Horizon semisubmersible drilling rig. As the rig sank, it cut connection lines that released nearly 5 million bbl of crude into the gulf before it was capped and contained months later.
“In some cases, the rule mandates best practices already used by many, but not all, industry players. We found tremendous variation of safety standards among different companies working offshore,” Graham and Reilly said. They added that the rule expressly addresses such areas as:
• Operations for high-pressure wells in brittle rock, such as the Macondo well.
• The formulation and application of cement to seal the well shaft, both of which were suspect at Macondo.
• The equipment used to center the pipe extending to the well. Graham and Reilly said the Macondo well “went short on this equipment, possibly leading to a breach in the seal.”
• The requirement that a cement log be conducted to ascertain the integrity of the seal between the pipe and surrounding rock. “This step might have saved Macondo, but BP [the well’s operator] skipped it to save time and money,” Graham and Reilly said.
• Inspection, maintenance, and operability of the blowout preventer, which failed catastrophically on the Deepwater Horizon and was later determined by investigators to have been poorly maintained.
“The commission members hold the unanimous view that weakening or rescinding the well control rule would aggravate the inherent risks of offshore operations, put workers in harm’s way, and imperil marine waters in which drilling occurs,” Graham and Reilly said.
They said the Arctic Ocean Final Drilling Regulations “finally take some account the Arctic Outer Continental Shelf’s remote, icy, and stormy conditions as well as the species important to Alaska Inupiats’ subsistence and culture, are essential preconditions for any future Arctic Ocean drilling operations.”
DOI’s Arctic offshore oil and gas final rule requires operators to develop an integrated operations plan addressing all phases of a proposed exploration program and submit it to the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management before filing an exploration plan (OGJ Online, July 7, 2016).
The regulations require companies to have access to, and the ability to promptly deploy, source-control and containment equipment, such as capping stacks and containment domes, while drilling below or working below the surface casing.
The changes complemented the final offshore well control rule that was released months earlier (OGJ Online, Apr. 15, 2016). While that rule applied across the entire OCS, including the Arctic, many of the final Arctic regulations’ provisions went beyond the well control rule’s scope and addressed challenges posed by the Arctic operating environment.
Conditions have not changed significantly since the Macondo spill, they said. “Key oversight changes have been the adoption of better safety standards, a clear delineation in the [DOI] between the responsibilities of leasing and safety, and a more precautionary approach to vulnerable frontier areas,” they said.
“After extensive research and analysis of oil and gas drilling operations in offshore waters, [OSAC’s 7 members] hold the unanimous view that weakening safety rules, developing an overly aggressive leasing schedule, and putting vulnerable, ecologically rich and economically important frontier areas at risk is unwise,” Graham and Reilly said.
Contact Nick Snow at [email protected].
