Letters to the Editor - July 2010 Oil spill debacle in the Gulf - Oil spill debacle in the Gulf

The opportunity for finger pointing will abound for years regarding the British Petroleum (BP) oil well blow-out on April 20. Oil company BP used a cheaper, quicker and potentially less dependable method to complete the drilling of the Deepwater Horizon well. The 13,293 foot-long length of permanent pipe that constitutes the well line was locked in place by a single injection of cement. The safer approach for drilling wells in the hazardous geology of the gulf is to install a "liner,"  then, locking both the liner and the length of the casing in place with one or often two cement jobs. Industry experts consider the liner method safer by a factor of 10. BP estimated itself to be 25 days behind schedule at that point. It would have taken a week longer to use the safer method. Personnel and equipment costs to BP for this operation were estimated to be $1 million dollars per day.

    The BP wellhead had been fitted with a blowout preventer. Remote-control or acoustically-activated triggers for use in case of an emergency requiring a platform to be evacuated were not included. Also missing was a dead-man's switch designed to automatically cut the pipe and seal the well if communication from the platform was lost. Norway and Brazil generally require acoustically-activated triggers on all offshore platforms.

    Internal BP documents describe BP engineer's concerns (as early as 2009) that the metal casting BP wanted to use might collapse under high pressure. In March the rig had problems that included drilling mud (falling into the undersea oil formation), sudden gas releases, a pipe falling into the well and at least three occasions of the blowout preventer leaking. A report by the rig's mechanic stated that the well had been problematic for months. The drill repeatedly kicked due to the high pressure providing resistance. The levels of gas coming up from the well were twice as high as he'd previously observed in his career. An oil explosion occurred aboard the Deepwater Horizon on April 20, leading to its sinking two days later and starting the oil spill.

    The leak has been on going for many weeks. The only solution that has been mentioned with confidence to stop the oil flow is to drill a second well to relieve the pressure and hopefully plug the first well. Twelve days passed before the second drilling began because the government did not require BP to have a relief well plan in place ahead of time. Oil containment so far has been woefully inadequate. Proper containment requires a minimum of three boom barriers and a method to collect the trapped oil. The method used in the gulf is one boom with modest collection. Proper booming must be layered to catch and remove oil. Floating ping pong balls make a good indicator to demonstrate were the oil is going or to evaluate the boom's success. Materials for proper booming are not expensive. The lack of safety planning has put us in this untenable position of killing wild life and devastating the environment.

Dan Lynch

Victory