Recent disaster shows dangers of oil drilling in Gulf of Mexico [View All]

[seafan]

(Credit: Palm Beach Post)

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The cause of the Deepwater Horizon explosion and fire could turn out to have similarities with what unleashed an Australian blowout last year that spewed oil into the sea for 10 weeks. In that incident, downplayed by Florida drilling advocates as the result of a foreign country's inferior capabilities, workers apparently failed to correctly pump cement into a well as part of the plumbing that controls crude oil and natural gas.

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Magne Ognedal, director general of Norway's Petroleum Safety Authority, said industry and regulators coordinate more closely with workers than their U.S. counterparts do to prevent deaths, fires, explosion and spills.

"It's one complexity," Ognedal said. "When I use the term ‘safety,' I mean protection of people, protection of the external environment, and protection of the economic values." Link

This satellite image shows an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana following an oil rig explosion on April 21, 2010 (NASA)



An image taken from a NASA satellite on Sunday shows the Mississippi Delta on the tip of Louisiana at the center. The oil slick is a silvery swirl to the right. (NASA)



Debris and oil from the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform float in the Gulf of Mexico after the rig sank, off Louisiana.
Photo: Reuters



More from Kevin Spear at the Orlando Sentinel:


April 26, 2010

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"This is the nightmare scenario that we supporters of offshore oil and gas development dreaded and worked so hard to prevent," Elmer "Bud" Danenberger, recently retired chief of offshore regulatory programs for the Minerals Management Service, said in comments posted on his blog, Bud's Offshore Energy.

"Is the challenge of drilling deep beneath the Earth from a floating facility in thousands of feet of water too great to achieve the level of perfection that is necessary and expected? I don't think so, but we clearly have a lot of soul searching to do," said Danenberger of Reston, Va.

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Among the worst U.S. disasters, a rig 80 miles off the Louisiana coast suffered a blowout in 1964 that resulted in 21 deaths. In 1989, seven workers died when a natural-gas platform exploded. Last year, a helicopter carrying workers to a Shell Oil Co. rig crashed, killing eight.

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Norwegian offshore drillers keep as many as 9,000 workers on duty in waters that include the treacherous North Sea. There were six deaths from 1999 through 2008 and no deaths during five years of that period.

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An offshore rig is part factory, part ocean-going vessel and part warrior doing battle with the tremendous forces of oilfield geology. Rigs bore miles deep into the Earth's crust to pierce what can turn out to be a poisonous, corrosive, high-pressure pocket of petroleum.

The work takes place on structures towering hundreds of feet above the water, with tons of iron pipe and steel cable swinging overhead. Powerful engines and rigging can hoist a million pounds of well pipe at a time. Fatal accidents, according to MMS records, are often sudden and violent but also occur amid an extraordinary variety of circumstances, including fires or explosions that occur at a rate of twice a week.

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In the 1970s and 1980s, operators of drilling rigs put up posters of "Rufus the Roughneck," a cartoon worker explaining how to avoid danger. Since then, ensuring safety has become much more sophisticated.

Transocean, owner of the Deepwater Horizon, has required workers to put colored dots on their hardhats that, based on psychological tests, indicate personality types, as way to get workers to better communicate during emergencies.

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"Some of the new drilling rigs, they are basically operating and doing the drilling by controlling a joy stick and not having to physically be right there with the metal," Saucier (of MMS) said.

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Donald Rumsfeld liked his joy sticks as well.





LINK to diagrams of the direction of current flow in the Gulf of Mexico. The Florida Keys and the Atlantic coast are now at growing risk.


For YEARS, we have screamed and fought pitched battles against Republicans and their Big Oil buddies, who relentlessly push for drilling off our coastlines.

To witness what is happening now in the Gulf is nothing short of numbing, of both body and spirit.


Mr. President, you, also, need a different course of action.




(bold and color emphases added)