Offshore natural gas platform sinks off Venezuela

[Bacchus39]

Offshore natural gas platform sinks off Venezuela

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100513/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_venezuela_gas_platform

CARACAS, Venezuela – The Venezuelan governnment says an offshore natural gas platform has sunk into the sea, and 95 workers have been safely rescued.

President Hugo Chavez announced the accident on Twitter early Thursday.

Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said all of the workers on the Aban Pearl platform off eastern Sucre state were safely evacuated, and he said the accident poses no threat to the environment.

He said the navy rescued the workers, and the gas platform has disappeared into the sea.

[protocol rv]

1. Clarification

The Aban Pearl is an Aker H3 Semisubmersible Mobile Offshore Drilling Unit (MODU). It isn't really a "platform", nor can it be said to be an "offshore natural gas platform", because it is intended to drill offshore wells, and it doesn't really have the ability to produce hydrocarbons for a long period of time (it could do so for short periods using temporary equipment installed on the deck).

As the oil industry uses the term. The Aban Pearl is a 33 year old rig, fairly outdated design, but fit for purpose for PDVSA's needs. I suspect the incident was caused by what is known as a gas kick - similar to what happened to BP. In this case, the rig is in fairly shallow water and the gas is found fairly shallow, so the problem was probably related to sleepiness on the part of the crew (note the time of the accident). This is prevalent in the industry, where a disproportionate number of accidents take place between midnight and 5 AM.

Since the rig sank, it means they had a blow out, the crew evacuated, the gas cloud exploded, sank the rig, and now they could have a well sitting on the sea floor with the wellhead rams activated - if they are lucky. Since the pressure is relatively low in these offshore fields near Venezuela, they should be OK. They need to bring in another rig, connect to the blow out preventers, and pump mud into the well to kill it. it's a fairly easy operation.

Hope this clarifies what happened.

[Bacchus39]

2. picture of platform that sank. that's a hefty structure

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[protocol rv]

3. it's a fairly small one, old model

It's not that large, they are built much larger today for offshore Brazil or the Gulf of Mexico. Note this type of rig doesn't produce the gas, it's only intended to drill wells. This is a fairly meaningless incident, because PDVSA hasn't been installing the production facilities, nor the large pipelines and platforms. It doesn't have much impact, other than the well cost.