Oil spill investigators find critical problems in blowout preventer/Size of Oil Spill Underestimated, Scientists Say

Oil spill investigators find critical problems in blowout preventer
By Steven Mufson and David A. Fahrenthold
Copyright byTthe Washington Post
Thursday, May 13, 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/12/AR2010051202190.html?hpid=topnews


A House energy panel investigation has found that the blowout preventer that failed to stop a huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico had a dead battery in its control pod, leaks in its hydraulic system, a "useless" test version of a key component and a cutting tool that wasn't strong enough to shear through steel joints in the well pipe and stop the flow of oil.

In a devastating review of the blowout preventer, which BP said was supposed to be "fail-safe," Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's subcommittee on oversight, said Wednesday that documents and interviews show that the device was anything but.

The comments came in a hearing in which lawmakers grilled senior executives from BP and oilfield service firms Transocean, Halliburton and Cameron, maker of the blowout preventer. In one exchange, Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) pressed BP on why it seemed to be "flailing" to deal with a spill only 2 percent as large as what it had said it could handle in its license application.

"The American people expect you to have a response comparable to the Apollo project, not 'Project Runway,' " Markey said.

Steven Newman, chief executive of Transocean, said the blowout preventer underwent regular tests. He said links to the drilling rig would have indicated if the device's batteries were dead, though he said data records were lost when the rig sank.

It was the second day of congressional hearings in response to the April 20 blowout that set fire to Transocean's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which later sank, killing 11 people and triggering the oil spill that now threatens wildlife and livelihoods along the Gulf Coast. So far, 25 birds have been found "oiled" in Louisiana, including seven that survived, said Sharon Taylor of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In addition, she said 87 sea turtles and six dolphins have been found dead, though lab tests will be needed to determine whether they died from oil or other causes.

First photos of leak

Oil is still pouring into the gulf as federal agencies and others investigate the cause of the accident. On Wednesday, BP released the first video of the primary leak on the muddy sea floor, 5,000 feet deep. The photos show a dark, frothy plume of oil mixed with a lighter-colored substance that officials did not describe but experts said is natural gas.

The video has been sought by experts who say it might help them measure the size of the leak. BP's initial estimate was 1,000 barrels a day, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration later put it at roughly 5,000 barrels a day. "That flow rate looks pretty much the same as its always looked," BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said after showing reporters the clip.

Ian R. MacDonald, a professor of oceanography at Florida State University who has been arguing that the NOAA estimate is too low, said after viewing the video, "I don't know how they get only 5,000 barrels a day out of that. That's really quite a gusher." But Greg McCormack, director of Petroleum Extension Service at the University of Texas, said, "There are so many unknowns there, you can't calculate it."

In an effort to contain the leak, BP said Wednesday that it had lowered a new steel structure into the water near the damaged well to prepare for a second attempt at funneling some of the oil into a pipeline and onto a ship. An earlier attempt was foiled by slush-like gas hydrates -- combinations of seawater and natural gas from the well -- that quickly clogged an opening in a larger steel box.

260 'failure modes'

In Washington, Stupak said the committee investigators had uncovered a document prepared in 2001 by Transocean, the drilling rig operator, that said there were 260 "failure modes" that could require removal of the blowout preventer.

"How can a device that has 260 failure modes be considered fail-safe?" Stupak asked.

The blowout preventer was supposed to be the last line of defense against the type of spill spreading across the Gulf of Mexico. Stupak said that the device's manufacturer, Cameron, told committee staffers that the leak in the hydraulic system, which was supposed to provide emergency power to the rams that should have severed the drill pipe and closed the well, probably predated the accident because other parts were intact.

Stupak said the problem suggested inadequate maintenance by BP and Transocean. He also said that the shear ram, the strongest of the shutoff devices on the blowout preventer, was not strong enough to cut through joints that connected the 90-foot sections of drill pipe and covered 10 percent of the pipe's length.

Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), who said the committee has collected more than 100,000 pages of documents, focused on the cementing job by Halliburton. He said statements and documents indicated that a test performed on the work about five or six hours before the explosion showed other dangerous flaws.

Waxman said James Dupree, BP's senior vice president for the Gulf of Mexico, told committee staffers Monday that the test result was "not satisfactory" and "inconclusive." Waxman said the test showed wide discrepancies in pressure between the drill pipe and the kill and choke lines in the blowout preventer. Dupree told committee staffers that the pressure readings should have been the same.

At the hearing, Halliburton's chief health, safety and environmental officer, Tim Probert, conceded in questioning that the pressure readings "would be a significant red flag."

New Orleans hearing

While Congress probes the accident, a board of federal officials is also investigating. In a hearing in a hotel ballroom near New Orleans, Michael Saucier, a regional supervisor for the Minerals Management Service, said the beleaguered federal agency that oversees offshore drilling learned in a 2004 study that fail-safe systems designed to shear through steel pipes could fail in some circumstances. But he said MMS did not check whether rigs were avoiding those circumstances.

The hearing provided the spectacle of one federal agency drawing embarrassing admissions out of another. Some of the toughest questions came from Coast Guard Capt. Hung Nguyen, co-chair of the investigating board. He raised the 2004 study that found that blowout preventers did not have the power to cut ultra-strong pipe joints.

Nguyem also asked Saucier how the MMS ensures that blowout preventers function. Saucier said for that, the government relies heavily on industry designs and oil company tests.

"Manufactured by industry, installed by industry, with no government witnessing oversight of the installation or the construction, is that correct?" Nguyen asked.

"That would be correct," Saucier said.

Ned Kohnke, an attorney for Transocean, replied that a rig's operators have strong incentives to make sure their blowout preventers work. "These people are depending on these tests and their equipment," Kohnke said. "If there's some cutting of corners, they're at the corner that is being cut. It's in their interest that these tests be performed correctly and completely."

Staff writer Joel Achenbach contributed to this report. Fahrenthold reported from Kenner, La.






Size of Oil Spill Underestimated, Scientists Say
By JUSTIN GILLIS
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: May 13, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/14/us/14oil.html?th&emc=th


Two weeks ago, the government put out a round estimate of the size of the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico: 5,000 barrels a day. Repeated endlessly in news reports, it has become conventional wisdom.

But scientists and environmental groups are raising sharp questions about that estimate, declaring that the leak must be far larger. They also criticize BP for refusing to use well-known scientific techniques that would give a more precise figure.

The criticism escalated on Thursday, a day after the release of a video that showed a huge black plume of oil gushing from the broken well at a seemingly high rate. BP has repeatedly claimed that measuring the plume would be impossible.

The figure of 5,000 barrels a day was hastily produced by government scientists in Seattle. It appears to have been calculated using a method that is specifically not recommended for major oil spills.

Ian R. MacDonald, an oceanographer at Florida State University who is an expert in the analysis of oil slicks, said he had made his own rough calculations using satellite imagery. They suggested that the leak could “easily be four or five times” the government estimate, he said.

“The government has a responsibility to get good numbers,” Dr. MacDonald said. “If it’s beyond their technical capability, the whole world is ready to help them.”

Scientists said that the size of the spill was directly related to the amount of damage it would do in the ocean and onshore, and that calculating it accurately was important for that reason.

BP has repeatedly said that its highest priority is stopping the leak, not measuring it. “There’s just no way to measure it,” Kent Wells, a BP senior vice president, said in a recent briefing.

Yet for decades, specialists have used a technique that is almost tailor-made for the problem. With undersea gear that resembles the ultrasound machines in medical offices, they measure the flow rate from hot-water vents on the ocean floor. Scientists said that such equipment could be tuned to allow for accurate measurement of oil and gas flowing from the well.

Richard Camilli and Andy Bowen, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, who have routinely made such measurements, spoke extensively to BP last week, Mr. Bowen said. They were poised to fly to the gulf to conduct volume measurements.

But they were contacted late in the week and told not to come, at around the time BP decided to lower a large metal container to try to capture the leak. That maneuver failed. They have not been invited again.

“The government and BP are calling the shots, so I will have to respect their judgment,” Dr. Camilli said.

BP did not respond Thursday to a question about why Dr. Camilli and Mr. Bowen were told to stand down. Speaking more broadly about the company’s policy on measuring the leak, a spokesman, David H. Nicholas, said in an e-mail message that “the estimated rate of flow would not affect either the direction or scale of our response, which is the largest in history.”

Dr. MacDonald and other scientists said the government agency that monitors the oceans, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, had been slow to mount the research effort needed to analyze the leak and assess its effects. Sylvia Earle, a former chief scientist at NOAA and perhaps the country’s best-known oceanographer, said that she, too, was concerned by the pace of the scientific response.

But Jane Lubchenco, the NOAA administrator, said in an interview on Thursday: “Our response has been instantaneous and sustained. We would like to have more assets. We would like to be doing more. We are throwing everything at it that we physically can.”

The issue of how fast the well is leaking has been murky from the beginning. For several days after the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig, the government and BP claimed that the well on the ocean floor was leaking about 1,000 barrels a day.

A small organization called SkyTruth, which uses satellite images to monitor environmental problems, published an estimate on April 27 suggesting that the flow rate had to be at least 5,000 barrels a day, and probably several times that.

The following day, the government — over public objections from BP — raised its estimate to 5,000 barrels a day. A barrel is 42 gallons, so the estimate works out to 210,000 gallons per day.

BP later acknowledged to Congress that the worst case, if the leak accelerated, would be 60,000 barrels a day, a flow rate that would dump a plume the size of the Exxon Valdez spill into the gulf every four days. BP’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, has estimated that the reservoir tapped by the out-of-control well holds at least 50 million barrels of oil.

The 5,000-barrel-a-day estimate was produced in Seattle by a NOAA unit that responds to oil spills. It was calculated with a protocol known as the Bonn convention that calls for measuring the extent of an oil spill, using its color to judge the thickness of oil atop the water, and then multiplying.

However, Alun Lewis, a British oil-spill consultant who is an authority on the Bonn convention, said the method was specifically not recommended for analyzing large spills like the one in the Gulf of Mexico, since the thickness was too difficult to judge in such a case.

Even when used for smaller spills, he said, correct application of the technique would never produce a single point estimate, like the government’s figure of 5,000 barrels a day, but rather a range that would likely be quite wide.

NOAA declined to supply detailed information on the mathematics behind the estimate, nor would it address the points raised by Mr. Lewis.

Mr. Lewis cited a video of the gushing oil pipe that was released on Wednesday. He noted that the government’s estimate would equate to a flow rate of about 146 gallons a minute. (A garden hose flows at about 10 gallons per minute.)

“Just anybody looking at that video would probably come to the conclusion that there’s more,” Mr. Lewis said.

The government has made no attempt to update its estimate since releasing it on April 28.

“I think the estimate at the time was, and remains, a reasonable estimate,” said Dr. Lubchenco, the NOAA administrator. “Having greater precision about the flow rate would not really help in any way. We would be doing the same things.”

Environmental groups contend, however, that the flow rate is a vital question. Since this accident has shattered the illusion that deep-sea oil drilling is immune to spills, they said, this one is likely to become the touchstone in planning a future response.

“If we are systematically underestimating the rate that’s being spilled, and we design a response capability based on that underestimate, then the next time we have an event of this magnitude, we are doomed to fail again,” said John Amos, the president of SkyTruth. “So it’s really important to get this number right.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 13, 2010

An earlier version of this article misstated the date of the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig.