In Case of Storm, Spill Containment and Relief Drilling Could Be Suspended
By HENRY FOUNTAIN and CLIFFORD KRAUSS
Published: June 13, 2010
BP may finally be achieving success in capturing oil from its runaway well in the Gulf of Mexico, and relief wells are on pace to permanently stem the flow this summer, but a formidable obstacle still looms: the weather.
Associated Press
An oil rig platform was left listing in the Gulf of Mexico after Hurricane Dennis in 2005.
Gulf Spill: Readers' ReportsAs the oil spill reaches land, we would like your updates and photographs of what you’re seeing. Photos are optional but recommended.
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Aside from the potential of storm surges to push oil slicks inland, causing greater environmental damage, industry experts say a hurricane or tropical storm in the gulf could force BP to suspend drilling of the relief wells, the ultimate solution to the leak, for a week or longer. Worse, as a storm approached the company would have to temporarily abandon its containment efforts and allow the oil to once again spew unabated into the gulf.
“An early hurricane season or a series of hurricanes could be a double whammy, disrupting both the relief-well process as well as the recovery of the leaking oil,” said Donald Van Nieuwenhuise, director of geoscience programs at the University of Houston.
Government forecasters say this hurricane season — which began June 1 and extends through the end of November — could be a destructive one, with as many as seven major hurricanes and perhaps two dozen storms in all. Not all storms enter the gulf, however, and BP may be fortunate in another way: It hopes to have at least one relief well finished by early August, and on average, most hurricanes occur in August and September.
But company officials acknowledge that, as with all oil operations in the region, if a severe storm threatened to move into the gulf they would have to evacuate workers and vessels from the well site, about 50 miles southeast of Venice, La. They say a more long-term containment operation, which they expect to have in place by early July, should help minimize the disruption. And they are discussing other ideas as well.
“We’re still looking at different options that would allow us to stay longer,” said Kent Wells, a senior vice president in charge of the subsea containment efforts, which are being coordinated from a Houston office normally used for hurricane crisis operations. “Not disconnecting prematurely, but at the same time not putting anyone in harm’s way.”
While the thousands of producing wells in the gulf can be temporarily sealed when a storm approaches to reduce the possibility of environmental damage, BP’s well would lose whatever containment it had for the duration of the storm.
“The concern is the recovery ships would have to move off the wellhead, and that means the leak is then going to totally discharge into the gulf,” said Greg McCormack, director of the petroleum extension service at the University of Texas. Current estimates are that the well is leaking at a rate of 25,000 to 30,000 barrels a day.
Forced abandonment of drilling rigs typically happens a couple of times a hurricane season, although the 2009 season was relatively benign, with little disruption. But as in 2005, with Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and in 2008, with Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, clusters of hurricanes have caused disruptions of two weeks or more.
Industry officials say they have a “weather window” of about 10 days in which they monitor storms. Using computer models, they project the track of storms as they develop off the coast of Africa and then begin planning to move workers off rigs and platforms within days of a storm hitting. Nonessential workers like food-service personnel leave first, followed by the remaining crew as late as safety allows.
Steven Sutton, offshore compliance officer with the Coast Guard’s Eighth District in New Orleans, said oil companies were required to file detailed emergency evacuation plans that must be approved by the Coast Guard. “But we don’t tell them when they have to leave,” Mr. Sutton said. As for when companies can start returning workers to rigs after a storm passes, “we don’t prescribe that either,” he said.
Holly Hopkins, an expert on production operations with the American Petroleum Institute, said that of all its workers in the gulf, BP would probably want those at the well site — which in addition to the roughly 250 people aboard the relief-well rigs includes scores of engineers and technicians aboard large oil-processing vessels and smaller service ships — to be “the last ones out” as a storm approaches. “Obviously, safety’s first,” she said. “But they’re going to want to stay on location as long as possible.”
As for the two relief wells, which are being drilled not far from the scene of the blowout and explosion that destroyed the Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20, with a major storm in the forecast each well would have to be secured by a blowout preventer at the seabed, the large riser pipes to the surface would have to be disconnected and then the rigs would have to be moved out of the storm’s track.
As the oil spill reaches land, we would like your updates and photographs of what you’re seeing. Photos are optional but recommended.
Multimedia
Related
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Obama Plans First Oval Office Speech to Put Pressure on BP (June 14, 2010)
-
Under a Withering Sun, Spill Cleanup Workers Must Break Frequently (June 14, 2010)
-
Green Column: Environmentalists Use Oil Spill as a Rallying Cry (June 14, 2010)
-
Day 54: The Latest on the Oil Spill (June 14, 2010)
Times Topic: Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill (2010)
“It’s a disruption,” said Lyndol L. Dew, senior vice president for worldwide operations at Diamond Offshore Drilling, which is not involved in the containment effort. “Any day you are not making progress is a day delayed for the completion of the relief wells. Two hurricanes could cause delays of two weeks and then the relief wells aren’t completed in August.”
Once a storm passes, Ms. Hopkins said, rigs and other vessels can head back to the site; if any of the equipment encountered storm conditions it would have to be inspected before work could resume, adding to the delays.
BP has announced plans to install a tighter cap at the wellhead to replace the existing one that is currently capturing about 15,000 barrels of oil a day. The new cap, which the company hopes to have in place by early next month, would funnel oil — all or nearly all of the leak, the company says — into two riser pipes that would end at large buoys about 300 feet under the surface. That is deep enough that the risers would not be affected as hurricane winds stirred up the gulf waters.
The company plans to bring two large processing ships, with a capacity of about 20,000 barrels a day or more, that would hook up to the risers. Disconnecting in the event of a storm would take only a few hours, compared with the day or so that it would take the drill ship that is now collecting oil to disconnect from the existing cap. That would reduce the time that the leak is uncontained during a storm.
A technician working on the operations to cap the well said that all the vessels now at the site, as well as the two processing ships that are on their way, would have to be moved in the event of a severe storm.
The technician, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the subject, said everyone working on the project was concerned about hurricanes. “It’s a worry,” he said. “You would have to allow the flow to return to the gulf.”
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