Oil, Oil, Everywhere

My turn, my turn!

Every other blogger or journalist has had their say on the oil spill so let me have mine. I think I’ve earned it. I worked in the oil field all over the world for 14 years. I’ve seen two blowouts with my own two eyes and had a rig close to mine blow up. Hell, two of the rigs I used to work on have been involved in catastrophic accidents after I left them. One had an uncontrolled blowout, caught fire and then sank, the other got mauled by Katrina.

Everyone’s blaming bp on this one. They’re not working fast enough, they’re not moving with enough resources and people. Just read that Transocean owned, operated, and maintained the rig and why aren’t they being held accountable.

Everyone needs to keep their shirts on. There is an investigation ongoing and it will continue to be more in depth once they can get the riser and Bop from the sea floor up for inspection to find problems. Subsea BOPs are a little different than the ones located just under the rig floor. There are a lot of remote controls compared to the ones under the floor. Hoses, wires, tubing, whatever’s used is a lot longer ,exposed to a lot different environments and pressures than that of an above water BOP.

Here’s another one; the rig WAS owned and operated and maintained by Transocean. bp comes along and “rents” the rig to drill the well. They make the final call on what’s done. An OIM, Toolpusher, Driller, or Rig Manager can make any call they want to stop drilling if something’s unsafe or they disagree on something. Yes, bp is paying for things but there’s a lot of people to stand up and say, “something’s not right” for this to have happened. Could that many people not see something happening?

Ultimately what direction the rigs take is up to the Company Man or rep from the production company (bp in this case). They, along with engineers and other people, design the well based on anticipated pressures, reservoirs, depths, and formations they think will be down there based on seismic readings, core samples, or historical data they get from geologists and engineers. This may have been an HPHT well and they didn’t know it. The BOP they had on may not have been rated for the pressures they encountered or the pressure the bubble came up with. The rams might have stuck on a collar or joint and not been able to crush or shear it. Who knows? We won’t for a while yet.

I saw a little part of AC’s interview with 5 survivors. Heart-breaking stuff. I can’t imagine being one of them, one of the survivors. I remember just how tight a lot of us were offshore, anywhere in the world I went. In the GoM we all went out drinking together when we got off the rig. Hell, a couple of them lived with me for a couple years. In the Caribbean I was the only expat on the rig yet I stayed at a couple houses of the locals after I got off the rig. I still keep in touch with some of them today. Elsewhere it was the same. We all got along. We were family. We worked together, ate together, at times prayed together. We spent more holidays together than we did with our own families. We got along and worried about each other. We had to or we didn’t last too long on the rig.

The 11 that died perished doing a job they probably enjoyed. I loved working offshore. For a Midwesterner it was a truly different lifestyle that I miss. I loved the schedule, I loved seeing new parts of the world, meeting new people, experiencing different cultures. It was fun. I had a great job that paid very well plus I got a lot of time off from work.
The spill is tragic, yes, there’s no doubting that. The fouling of the beaches and marshes is catastrophic for economic reasons. The moratorium of drilling is going to create more hardships in a fragile economy than we’ll be able to handle. We’ll lose even more US jobs as the drilling companies move their rigs elsewhere to work.

bp has to move cautiously to take care of this. They have stressed over and over that these methods are untested at depths and pressures like these. ROVs are doing all the work, not divers or sat divers. It’s a lot different. There are a lot of variables and unknowns. It will end. It will stop or be stopped. The cleanup will ensue, bp will pay hefty fines and damage claims and probably change it’s name. I wouldn’t be surprised if bp is given some sort of ultimatum to get out of the US because of this; similar to Occidental in the North Sea after Piper Alpha blew up and killed over 160 men in the worst drilling accident.

Me? I worry about the survivors. I worry about their jobs and if they’ll be able to go back to them having witnessing such a disaster first hand, seeing their co-workers die, hearing one man describe a crane operator being tossed around like “a toy” after an explosion. Could I do it? Possibly but I’d think long and hard. We all have to survive. We all have to take care of our families and for me my family comes first. Jobs always have risks; some are calculated and acceptable, others are not. In the end even though we have lots and lots or rules and regulations, we as people, decide to follow them or not. If this was a human error then shame on that poor soul. If it was a mechanical failure, than shame on the poor soul who didn’t catch it, if it could be caught.

Accidents don’t just happen; they are caused. Pray for the survivors and pray for the families of those who are no longer a part of the oil patch.