Crews cleaning oil residue from Louisiana wetlands

Crews using special vacuum devices are sucking pools of spilled Macondo crude oil residue out of Louisiana marshes, said US Coast Guard Rear Adm. Paul D. Zukunft, federal onscene coordinator for the Deepwater Horizon response.

“At some point, we will let Mother Nature do the work,” Zukunft said, adding the USCG and other federal officials are working with state officials to mutually determine when “there is no net environmental benefit” to continuing to clean marsh areas.

During a Sept. 29 teleconference, Zukunft said 588 miles of shoreline remained oiled and are being cleaned. This includes both marshes and beaches.

In Louisiana, one particular marsh cleanup crew involves 600 people, he said. Nine marsh areas continue to be cleaned, and they are all in Louisiana. Zukunft described a heavy, black “sticky residue in marsh grass.”

An Apr. 20 blowout of the deepwater Macondo well resulted in a fire and explosion on Transocean Ltd.’s Deepwater Horizon semisubmersible, killing 11 workers and resulting in a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. No oil has spilled since the installation of a capping stack on July 15. BP operated the well.

Blowout preventers and their cutting power being reviewed

The failed Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer is being examined at a NASA laboratory in New Orleans, National Incident Commander and retired US Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said. Basically, the BOP is a large valve at the top of the well designed to close in an emergency.

A number of government agencies are investigating why the Deepwater Horizon BOP failed, contributing to a fatal accident and a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. BP PLC, which operates Macondo, issued recommendations on BOP design and assurance measures in BP's own investigation report.

The Macondo well was drilled by Transocean Ltd.’s Deepwater Horizon semisubmersible on which 11 crew members died.

Separately, National Oilwell Varco has developed a new blade design for shear rams within the BOP stack. National Oilwell Varco says its new shear ram system is intended to cut through the thickest joints of drill pipe.

BP’s BOP recommendations primarily involve BP establishing minimum levels of redundancy and reliability for its BOP systems. BP also would require drilling contractors to implement an auditable risk management process to ensure BOP systems are operated above minimum levels. The oil company likely will strengthen its minimum requirements for contractors’ BOP testing and emergency systems.

Safety regulators worldwide are reviewing deepwater drilling policies, including BOP regulations.

Scientists find new microbe in Macondo oil spill

US Department of Energy Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientists found microbes degraded oil in deepwater much faster than anticipated, and this degradation appears to take place without a significant level of oxygen depletion.

That is among the most positive findings following the massive oil spill from BP PLC’s Macondo well off Louisiana in 5,000 ft of water. Berkeley Lab scientists found the presence of various hydrocarbon degraders, adding that the dominant microbe in the dispersed Macondo oil was a new, unclassified species.

The existence of oil at extreme water depths posed numerous questions. BP deployed chemical dispersants at the wellhead, creating tiny petroleum particles in efforts to prevent oil from reaching the gulf’s surface.

The environmental effects of dispersants have been studied in surface water applications for years, but their potential effect on the deepwater gulf marine ecosystem was unknown.

Terry Hazen, a Berkeley Lab microbial ecologist, said findings “suggest that a great potential for intrinsic bioremediation of oil plumes exists in the deep sea.” The research done by Hazen and his colleagues was reported in Science (Aug. 26 online) in a paper entitled “Deep-sea oil plume enriches indigenous oil-degrading bacteria.”

The influx of oil “profoundly altered the microbial community” by stimulating psychrophilic (cold temperature) gamma-proteobacteria closely related to known petroleum-degrading microbes.

Psychrophilic petroleum degraders contributed to the rapid decline of the Macondo oil, he said. Analysis of changes in the crude oil composition indicated faster-than-expected biodegradation rates with the half-life of the oil’s alkanes ranging from 1.2 to 6.1 days.

Macondo to undergo standard abandonment process

Nothing has been typical with BP PLC’s deepwater Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico since an Apr. 20 blowout caused an explosion and fire on Transocean Ltd.’s Deepwater Horizon semisubmersible, killing 11 people. The rig sank on Apr. 22, and the well was responsible for a massive oil spill.

Yet eventually, the well will be abandoned according to typical industry practice. BP and its partners will plug and abandon Macondo on Mississippi Canyon Block 252 with nothing left to see, marking a drastic change from months of live video feeds provided publicly via remotely operated vehicles.

The well has been shut in since July 15, and BP engineers plan to swap the Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer with another BOP before completing a relief well, now expected scheduled for after Labor Day. Industry routinely puts on and takes off BOPs.

Kent Wells, BP senior vice-president of exploration and drilling, said industry has very clearly defined regulations and procedures on how to abandon a well.

“There’s a very sophisticated procedure we’ll go through before the well is ultimately abandoned,” Wells said. “But, of course, it will have been killed and cemented…well in advance of that. But, those will be the final steps we’ll take. That will be very much routine, like we do any well when we plug and abandon it.”

The exception being that the Deepwater Horizon BOP, once removed, will be the subject of investigation.

Is GOM drilling moratorium hurting or helping rig safety?

The International Association of Drilling Contractors (IADC) is urging its members to contact federal lawmakers to convey IADC’s dismay regarding the blanket suspension of deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

IADC Chairman Louis A. Raspino said uncertainty from Washington, DC, regarding deepwater drilling threatens the future of the US offshore drilling industry. Raspino, chief executive officer and president of Pride International Inc., spoke during an IADC town hall meeting in Houston on July 7.

The Interior Department imposed a 6-month moratorium on new deepwater drilling in the gulf following an Apr. 20 explosion and fire on the Deepwater Horizon semisubmersible drilling rig, which was working for BP PLC and partners on the Macondo well in 5,000 ft of water on Mississippi Canyon Block 252.

“Just about every rig sitting in the gulf right now is trying to find a way out of the gulf,” Raspino said. A federal judge in New Orleans issued a temporary injunction that effectively blocks the drilling moratorium, but the federal government is appealing that ruling to the appeals court.

Raspino and others speaking at the meeting all emphasized the importance of rig safety, but they also suggested that the motivation behind the moratorium was more about anti-drilling politics than it was about rig safety.

The moratorium is more likely to reduce safety than to improve safety, said Tom E. Williams, a member of a team of scientists advising Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar. Williams is managing director of Nautilus International LLC.

Several others at the town hall meeting emphasized that the US has higher environmental standards and drilling safety regulations than do many other countries.

“The national security issue is not even being discussed,” in Washington, Raspino said regarding the likelihood that a decrease in US drilling will contribute to higher US dependence upon imported oil.

ROVs shine in work on runaway Macondo well

Crews working on the runaway deepwater Macondo well use remotely operated vehicles to perform a wide-ranging multitude of tasks. About 12 ROVs are at the wellhead in 5,000 ft of water where no human diver can venture.

Although the overall oil spill response effort has been marred by disappointments, the ROVs and their operators score fairly high on successful operating performance and on safety since the Apr. 20 Deepwater Horizon drill rig accident.

Each ROV is controlled via a tether going up to a vessel on the Gulf of Mexico. Macondo is operated by BP PLC, whose executives say choreography ensures ROV tethers do not tangle with other equipment in the congested area.

In their most-publicized chore, ROVs provide the lights and cameras that enable the public to watch a live video feed of oil and gas spilling from the failed blowout preventer on Mississippi Canyon Block 252. Some ROVs ran the saws to cut off a portion of the riser while other ROVs kept up the live video feed for a public audience.

Most of the time, the ROVs work smoothly without attracting attention, although the undersea robots are believed responsible for one, possibly two, mishaps. During May, an ROV temporarily dislodged a riser insertion tube that collected leaking oil and gas. In June, an ROV might have bumped a containment cap, forcing BP to temporarily suspend some collection operations.

"There are an unbelievable amount of ROVs operating down there," National Incident Commander and retired US Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen told reporters during a June 23 conference call. "I think the fact that we've had two bumps that have had some kind of a consequence associated with them in the 60-plus-days response is a pretty good record."

NOAA vessel joins the hunt for possible underwater oil plumes

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is sending its own research ship, the Gordon Gunter, to study reports of oil plumes suspended in the Gulf of Mexico.

NOAA’s Gunter was in the gulf already sampling plankton to establish baseline conditions for the deepwater oil spill off Louisiana. On May 28, NOAA expanded the Gunter’s mission to use its sonar equipment to define any underwater plumes.

Researchers from various universities have reported underwater oil plumes, and their findings need to be put into context. Some oceanographers suggest increased microbes are growing in response to the spill, which could tip the marine system out of balance. They warn that too many microbes robs oxygen from the seawater, creating an uninhabitable hypoxic area, or "dead zone" threatening marine life.

Still, documentation of these reported plumes has yet to be provided by the broad scientific community. BP PLC Group Executive Tony Hayward says there is “no evidence” of masses of oil suspended in seawater.

Meanwhile, NOAA scientist Charlie Henry told reporters weeks ago that a sample of water from these so-called plumes would look just like normal seawater. Hydrocarbons are present, but the oil is in tiny droplets.

“Layers of oil are totally untrue,” Henry said of some media reports regarding initial reports from university research vessels about underwater plumes of oil (OGJ Online, May 17, 2010).

If potential plumes are identified, the Gunter will deploy an underwater vehicle, Gulper, provided by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute “to take discrete water samples at various depths to allow precise characterization of any oil, dispersants, or other substances,” NOAA said.

Record volumes of chemical dispersants have been used on the spill, and any potential long-term dispersant effect on marine life remains unknown.

Threats to fisheries or marine life must be taken seriously, but first these reported underwater oil plumes have yet to be substantiated.

Process management proving key in oil spill response

BP PLC executives painstakingly examined each part of each step in the “top kill” operation they started May 26 in efforts to halt the flow of oil and gas from a deepwater runaway well. Meanwhile, the public grows increasingly impatient for an end to the oil spill.

The longer it takes to stem the leaking Macondo well in 5,000 ft of water off Louisiana, the more detailed information BP is releasing about the process management behind each option being considered.

On its web site, BP posted illustrations showing a fleet of specialized vessels on the surface standing ready to do the top kill work. Progress at the seabed was monitored via video from numerous remotely operated vehicles. An illustration of subsea activity for the top kill emphasizes the complexity and the safety issues involved in deepwater efforts.

Doug Suttles, chief operating officer for BP Exploration & Production, told reporters that nothing is simple in 5,000 ft of water, and that any individual step can take longer than expected.

“I wish this thing would come to an end and come to an end very quickly,” Suttles said during a May 24 news conference from Robert, La. “I think everyone is very, very frustrated.”

What the public is learning is that nothing in the deepwater oil spill response effort happens instantly. Every decision is being made with much deliberation between BP, scientists, industry experts, and government officials.

So far, testimony from regulatory investigations primarily has involved talk about equipment. But I suspect process management issues also will come into play as regulators and companies figure out exactly what happened so that such an accident can be avoided in the future.

Fate of oil spilled from Macondo well unclear; reminiscent of Ixtoc

Scientists expect to monitor and measure the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and its possible consequences on the environment and marine life for some time regardless of how soon BP PLC seals the deepwater Macondo well.

Predictably, the American Petroleum Institute and others have studied oil spills for decades. “Fate of spilled oil in marine waters: Where does it go? What does it do? How do dispersants affect it?” is the title of a March 1999 report from API.

The booklet, the first of three in a series, was developed for oil spill response decision-makers. The booklet’s introduction sets out a scenario involving an oil spill from a tanker accident.

Time will tell what kind of information API develops after the Macondo well spill. The closest that the US has come to experiencing a spill from an offshore well was in 1979 when Pemex had a blowout at its 1 Ixtoc discovery well in Campeche Sound (OGJ, June 11, 1979, p. 33).

The Ixtoc well was in 164 ft of water while the deepwater Macondo well is in 5,000 ft of water. Time will tell what consequences, both operational and regulatory, might stem from the deepwater spill for both the oil industry and the environment.