Gulf Oil Spill: The Technology Oil Executives Don't Want to Talk About -- Shear Ram

[nashville_brook]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-medred/gulf-oil-spill-the-techno_b_594532.html

Gulf Oil Spill: The Technology Oil Executives Don't Want to Talk About

Craig Medred | Reporter, Alaska Dispatch
Posted: May 29, 2010 06:06 PM

(snip)


As oil drilling in the new millennium moved increasingly into deep waters off the North American and European coasts, oilfield workers recognized they were operating with less and less of a safety net. Shear ram technology needed to make blowout preventers into failsafe devices capable of preventing catastrophic blowouts was, they knew, lagging behind the rest of oilfield technology.

A U.S. Minerals Management Service study had demonstrated as much in 2002. A more thorough study in 2004 had only served to underline the weaknesses. By 2005, Oklahoma City-based Devon Energy Corp., then a force in offshore drilling, had begun working with Houston-based Cameron, the major producer of blowout preventers, to develop new and better shear and seal technology for wells.

Why the technology never made it into the oil patch is unclear. Nobody in the industry wants to talk about it at this juncture, though development reportedly is continuing. What would come to be called the alternative well kill system -- or AWKS -- is now being spearheaded by Chevron in partnership with Cameron. Devon began phasing out of offshore drilling earlier this year.

[GreenStormCloud]

1. They don't like shear rams, prefer annular rams.

An annular ram squeezes against the pipe like your hand squeezing something. A shear ram cuts across the drill pipe, letting it drop free and acts as a cap on the well. Then when you have the well under control, you have to go fishing for the dropped drill stem. That can be a very difficult job.

[Go2Peace]

2. well, looks like we should regulate and require shear rams for deep drilling?

[GreenStormCloud]

3. I am suprised they didn't have it.

In my offshore oil days, all the rigs I was on had multiple rams. I think it was three annular and two shear, alternating stages. Of course, I am do not know what the BP BOP had.