Why Did BP Violate the 1st Rule of Off-Shore Fire Fighting: DON'T SINK THE SHIP

[ignatzmouse]

"Among them: Mike Miller, chief executive officer and senior well-control supervisor at Safety Boss. Headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, his half-century old Canadian company specializes in fighting oil-well fires, blowouts, pipeline ruptures and processing-facility fires. He’s curious why BP rushed to put out the rig’s fires.

'At least while the rig was burning, all of the effluent from the well was coming to the surface and burning at the surface,' Miller notes. Indeed, burning oil — even on the sea surface — is an accepted spill-mitigation technique. So he’s puzzled why water boats were deployed to dowse the burning platform.

'What they did was fill the rig up with water. At which point it sunk,' Miller says — a full 5,000 feet to the seabed. And that, he maintains, violated 'the first rule in offshore fire-fighting, which is not to sink the ship.' The reason: As soon as the rig submerged, it took down the riser pipe, which in this case was a 5,000-foot-long tethered straw through which the oil was gushing up from a reservoir 13,000 feet below the seafloor.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/58817/title/BP_oil_rig%E2%80%99s_sinking_and_gushing_crude_raise_questions">Full article from Science News

[nenagh]

1. Optics?? Sink the Rig for PR??

Thanks for this.. I've been following the tech info on The Oil Drum..

Never expected to read some would say to keep the rig burning as a method to burn off the oil.

Wonder how deep they were really drilling..

[Junkdrawer]

2. This expert expects the dome(s) will only get 10% of the oil...

....

According to the fact sheet, this system “could collect as much as 85 percent of oil rising from the seafloor.” However, it also notes, “This is the first time this system will be used at this water depth.”

Even in shallower areas, such devices have a habit of underwhelming people, Miller says. “I’d be very surprised if they get even a minor percentage — say 10 percent — of the oil”

But we’ll all hope for the best because a lot of people and acreage stand to suffer mightily in coming months if these oil-containment measures don't meet expectations.

[Ex Lurker]

3. this guy has the credentials to know what he's talking about....

however, it sure looked to me like that rig didn't so much sink, as melt. It looked like a Dali painting.

[Are_grits_groceries]

4. I kept wondering about this.

Sinking the rig was much worse than dousing the platform with water until it did go. IMHO.

[Scuba]

5. Hiding evidence? I love a good conspiracy theory.

[Festivito]

12. Then, because Halliburton had just bought an oil-spill firefighting company.

And, after starting the fire by laying the cement badly, they would then make money by fighting the fire as well, and with the limit of liability at $75-million, we the taxpayers would pick up the rest of the bill transferring even more money from the middle class to the extremely rich.

Next, they would have to get their media sources to suggest that Obama started the oil spill for whatever reason that their think-tanks think sound good since CONs generally accuse the Dems of doing whatever the CONs are doing as a way of confusing the half-listening public as to who is actually doing the bad stuff.

How's that for a conspiracy theory.

[Lochloosa]

6. I'm not sure anything would have saved this. Pic.

[Ex Lurker]

7. exactly, it looks like the heat melted the ballast tanks

and compromised buoyancy. BP has plenty to answer from without venturing into tinfoil hat territory.

[BeFree]

8. Ballast tanks were under water

Now, all of a sudden stuff underwater burns?

You can see the rig roll over... that means the tanks filled with water.

[Lochloosa]

10. Even without water the only thing that would have been left were the tanks. Pic

[BeFree]

11. If the tanks were full of air...

....the tanks would still be there.

There, floating, holding in place the pipe going to the bottom. Then all they would have to do is pipe the oil flow into a tanker. Problem over.

Instead it was sunk. Kinda like getting rid of the evidence, eh?

And who in hell thought they were going to put out an oil fire with water?
Stupid, or planned?

[KittyWampus]

13. Well, I'm happy to subscribe to tinfoil on this one. We are talking Petroleum. So much money,

so little regard for Humanity.

[ignatzmouse]

16. Note the water being poured on it...

and the NYT story from that date mentions that the rig was listing 10 degrees because of water being poured onto it -- but that BP didn't think it was in danger of toppling. To take the expert at his word, this is a known result. In fact, it is the 1st rule. BP knew this. What, then, were they doing? I'm not talking tinfoil stuff. I don't know the answer, but they need to answer for this. They need to be grilled on it. There's negligence before the explosion. There's exasperated negligence in the response to the explosion that caused the rig to sink. There is a lot very wrong about this, and there is a series of compounded failures at every step.

[SidDithers]

9. From the thread I posted on April 21, the day after the explosion...

the rig was listing, and was in danger of tipping over, within hours of the blowout.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=8187726

Would it have remained floating if it had tipped over?

Sid

[ignatzmouse]

15. It was listing because of the water being dumped on it

From the same NYT article that you're citing:

"The rig was taking on water from the firefighting efforts, causing it to list up to 10 degrees, but company officials said they did not expect it to collapse."

So it appears to be exactly as the expert in the Science News article described it.

[lumberjack_jeff]

14. They hosed the rig because there were people onboard?

I guess I'm just funny that way.

[BeFree]

17. Um... no

All the people had been moved off. The rig sunk a day later after all that water was sprayed on it.

Water, to fight an oil fire? That was dumb.