GULF OF MEXICO OIL SPILLYi Ding, Prahlad Krishna, Samuel Luketich,

Evan Richards, Yechuan Zhang

November 18, 2015

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/dec/15/wikileaks-bp-azerbaijan-gulf-spill http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/multimedia/photos/Deepwater-Horizon---Wellhead/

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jun/04/deepwater-horizon-spill-bird-impact

• Background• What caused the spill?• How could this accident have been prevented?• How did authorities handle the case?• How did the companies respond to the spill?• How did environmental agencies react to the spill?• Conclusion• References

• Background• What caused the spill?• How could this accident have been prevented?• How did authorities handle the case?• How did the companies respond to the spill?• How did environmental agencies react to the spill?• Conclusion• References

Background

• April 20, 2010• Explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil

rig1

• Gulf of Mexico, just 42 miles from shore• Drilled for oil in the Macondo prospect• Wellhead ~5000 ft below the surface

• Impact2

• 11 workers died• 17 workers injured• Damaged the ecosystem and environment

• 87 days to cap the wellhead2

• 4.9 million barrels of oil spread during this time

https://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/up-from-the-seafloor-came-a-bubbling-brew

• Background• What caused the spill?• How could this accident have been prevented?• How did authorities handle the case?• How did the companies respond to the spill?• How did environmental agencies react to the spill?• Conclusion• References

What caused the spill?

1.Blowout preventer-----Hydraulic leak, failed battery3

2.Misread pressure, wrong order3

3.‘Rush to completion’, poor management decision4

4.Poor sense of safety and poor safety culture5

5.Without running a cement bond log test. (defective cement job)6

6.Drill pipe buckling between the shearing blocks7

Central cause: Failure of a cement barrier allowing hydrocarbons to flow up the wellbore, through the riser and onto the rig, resulting in the blowout.8

What caused the spill?

Three kind of causes:• Human error

• Managers• Government officials• No careful artificial inspections

• Facility quality defects• Blind shear rams• Drilling pipes

• Poor safety sense and culture• Push to completion• Carelessness of abnormal data

What caused the spill?

• People involved in the accident had several chances to prevent this tragedy, unfortunately they didn’t catch any one of them.

• It was determined that these parties were responsible4:• BP - Ultimately responsible

• Transocean & Hyundai - Partly responsible

• Government - Share some blame for permitting several operations before explosion

• Background• What caused the spill?• How could this accident have been prevented?• How did authorities handle the case?• How did the companies respond to the spill?• How did environmental agencies react to the spill?• Conclusion• References

How could this accident have been prevented?

• BP, Transocean, and Halliburton share responsibility9

• BP owned rights to develop the Macondo prospect• Transocean owned and operated the Deepwater Horizon oil rig• Halliburton, under contract with BP, provided the cement

• To prevent the situation from occurring4

• More communication• Review of changes to drilling procedure• No time/cost cutting

• Immediate response to the situation4

• Interpreting test results• Emergency response

To Prevent the Situation from Occurring

• More communication4

• Halliburton/BP should have informed Transocean about concerns with the concrete

• Rig crew should have been informed about concerns with the concrete

• Transocean should have shared a similar near-miss with its crew

• Review of changes to drilling procedure4

• Documenting and having expert reviews of changes to the drilling procedure

• No time/cost cutting4

• BP should have required Halliburton to finish concrete tests before using it in the well

• If a cheaper/shorter approach was used, company should ensure there was not safety compromise

Immediate Response to the Situation

• Interpreting test results4

• Procedures for the crew when testing and interpreting results• Procedures for the crew to relay irregular test results to shore

• Emergency response4

• Recognize signs of danger from formal training• Diversion techniques learned during emergency simulations

• Background• What caused the spill?• How could this accident have been prevented?• How did authorities handle the case?• How did the companies respond to the spill?• How did environmental agencies react to the spill?• Conclusion• References

How did authorities handle the case?

• Authoritative Response to the oil spill was both quick and thorough by the federal government and local agencies

• Items needing immediate attention were addressed, promptly• Disaster Response• Property Damage• Animal Rescue

• Items needing thorough investigation, are still being investigate• The latest piece of news came as recently as

November 6th, 2015

How did authorities handle the case?

• Individuals and businesses that have incurred damages are able to make claims and to gain compensation for property that has been compromised by the incident.10

• President Barack Obama released a press statement, saying “To the people here in the Gulf, we are going to be standing by your side. And to the Americans all across the country, come on down and visit.”10

How did authorities handle the case?

• An Engineer named Kurt Mix was found guilty of deleting text messages from his cellphone that ultimately interfered with the federal investigation.11

• According to the article, the text messages were related to the total amount of oil that was spilled and on November 6, 2015, Mix pleaded guilty to a lesser charge in hopes of avoiding time in prison.11

• The sentence was going to be for 20 years, but now, all signs point to Mix being free from prison.

How did authorities handle the case?• The USA Today found that in addition to Kurt Mix,

two more employees were federally indicted on charges of manslaughter, which claimed they “acted negligently in their supervision of key safety tests performed on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig before the deadly explosion in April, 2010.12

A story was posted in The Los Angeles Times on January 29, 2013 describing the charges against the company. A federal judge in New Orleans accepted an agreement for BP Oil to plead guilty to manslaughter and other charges and was fined $4 billion with a 5 year probation.13 In addition, BP Michael Muskal says the company has agreed to pay $7.8 billion to lawyers representing Gulf Coast residents and businesses which could end up totaling around $17 billion.

• Background• What caused the spill?• How could this accident have been prevented?• How did authorities handle the case?• How did the companies respond to the spill?• How did environmental agencies react to the spill?• Conclusion• References

After the explosion on 20 April, BP first attempted to close the blowout preventer valves on the wellhead with remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROV), but they failed14

BP has to try other solutions which all didn’t work

On 16 June a second containment system connected directly to the blowout preventer began carrying oil and gas to service vessels, where it was consumed in a clean-burning system.

During this period of time there are 12,000 to 100,000 barrels of crude oil spilled into the sea to result in heavy environment disaster.

How did the companies respond to spill?

It’s not difficult to conclude that the subsequent disaster caused by significant oil leakage could be avoided if BP could turn off blowout preventer immediately at the very beginning.

Disadvantages of remotely operated vehicle (ROV):

1. Its positioning system is not accurate enough, and it is vulnerable to external disturbance like the extremely complex hydrodynamic forces acting on it.15

2. The images transferred remotely from the ROV to observer’s visual are not stable and it weakens judgment of observer.16

Advantage of remotely operated vehicle (ROV):

There’s no more need to risk human diver’s life with enormously dangerous underwater environment.17

How did the companies respond to spill?

Ethical Balance:

Responsibility towards employees

Responsibility towards publicConflict

How should the corporation decide?

Here's an comparing case about Chinese Daqing Oil Field, the first oil field in China, for almost 60 years ago. One day, a sudden blowout happened during the drilling process. It’s emergent to plug it with cement but the undeveloped early Chinese heavy industry results in shortage of heavy equipment to stir the cement. Therefore, the workers jumped into the pool filled with raw cement and walk around to stir it using their own bodies even though the cement is alkaline and corrosive. At last, the blowout was plugged in time.18

Although it was considered as an honorable model to show the encouragement of the workers of devoting themselves for our homeland in 60 years ago, nowadays it’s strictly forbidden by oil field’s safety rule to do such thing again.19

60 years later

Moral relativism believes moral values can legitimately vary from culture to culture or what is right in one culture may be wrong in another culture. The comparison for Daqing Oil Field and Mexico Gulf Oil Leakage is a perfect evidence to show such theory.

In case of Daqing Oil Field, it was a time that the war has ended no more than 10 years, and people was full of enthusiasm to build the country. Scarcity of oil seriously limited the development of Chinese modern industry and it’s emergent to fulfill people’s need, so it seems reasonable for ethical balance to deviate towards the side of public responsibility to risk the workers’ safety to accelerate oil field construction.

60 years later

Today people is enjoying the abundance of material and there’s no more needs to sacrifice even a single person to protect the benefit of most people. The “ethical balance” is shifting to the side of responsibility for employee to find a balance with public responsibility. It’s acceptable to compromise public responsibility in a moderate degree (e.g. to let the oil leaking out into the sea for failure of turning off the valve) to fulfill responsibility for employee (e.g. sending incompetent ROV instead of competent personnel).

• Background• What caused the spill?• How could this accident have been prevented?• How did authorities handle the case?• How did the companies respond to the spill?• How did environmental agencies react to the spill?• Conclusion• References

How did environmental agencies react to the spill?

• The 2010 spill resulted in a heated debate between the oil giant and environmentalists who say BP is to blame for the decline in the population of wildlife that call the Gulf home.20

• The National Wildlife Federation released a report this spring citing the decrease of bottlenose dolphins, brown pelicans, laughing gulls, sea turtles and some fish populations.20

How did environmental agencies react to the spill?

• About $30 million in BP money has already been spent on coastal projects.

• This includes including the engineering and design of the East Timbalier Island project off Terrebonne Parish

• increasing the flow of the Atchafalaya River into Terrebonne's vanishing wetlands

• creating 489 acres of beach and dune at the Caminada Headlands in Lafourche.20

How did environmental agencies react to the spill?

• EPA’s enforcement response to the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill involved settlements with several of the defendants.

• These included the record-setting settlement with BP Exploration & Production for an unprecedented $5.5 billion Clean Water Act penalty and up to $8.8 billion in natural resource damages.21

How did environmental agencies react to the spill?

• EPA Settlement Information21

• December 15, 2010: Civil complaint of the United States• February 17, 2012: $90 million civil settlement • November 15, 2012: $4 billion criminal plea agreement with BP

Exploration & Production  • January 3, 2013: $1 billion civil settlement • January 3, 2013: $400 million criminal plea agreement with

Transocean• October 5, 2015:  $14.9 billion civil settlement with BP Exploration

& Production

How did environmental agencies react to the spill?

• In a statement released, Fred Krup president of the Environmental Defense Fund, said that “No monetary award can ever undo the destruction of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. But, while we look forward to additional details, today’s agreement, the largest environmental settlement in American history, represents a significant step toward justice for the Gulf Coast ecosystems, economies and communities that were damaged by the disaster.”22

How did environmental agencies react to the spill?

• Environmentalists believe that there is more work to be done to make sure the money finds its way to the places it needs to go.

• There is a veritable wish list of environmental and economic projects compiled by committee following the passage of the Restore Act.23

• They believe that with record reports of dolphin deaths, low fish and shrimp counts, dying deep-sea coral reefs and other marine species under extreme stress, the announcement for a comprehensive settlement is welcome and that there should also be a re-opener clause, just in case there is more damage discovered that is determined to be a direct result of the spill.

• Background• What caused the spill?• How could this accident have been prevented?• How did authorities handle the case?• How did the companies respond to the spill?• How did environmental agencies react to the spill?• Conclusion• References

Conclusion

• Background• What caused the spill?• How could this accident have been prevented?• How did authorities handle the case?• How did the companies respond to the spill?• How did environmental agencies react to the spill?• Conclusion• References

References

[1] http://ocean.si.edu/gulf-oil-spill, 11/07/15.

[2] http://www.britannica.com/event/Deepwater-Horizon-oil-spill-of-2010, 11/07/15.

[3] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8679090.stm, 11/09/15.

[4] National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, “Deep Water: The Gulf Oil Disaster and the Future of Offshore Drilling”, January 2011.

[5] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1307439/BP-accepts-blame-Gulf-Mexico-spill-leaked-memo-reveals-engineer-misread-pressure-reading.html, 11/09/15.

[6] http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0908/Transocean-Halliburton-blast-BP-report-on-cause-of-blowout-oil-spill, 11/09/15.

[7] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-11720907, 11/09/15.

[8] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/8242557/Obama-oil-spill-commissions-final-report-blames-disaster-on-cost-cutting-by-BP-and-partners.html, 11/09/15.

[9] http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/51cbf0267896bb431f6a0797/, 11/08/15.

[10] www.whitehouse.gov/deepwater-bp-oil-spill, 11/07/2015.

[11] http://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2015/11/06/ex-bp-engineer-pleads-guilty-in-gulf-oil-spill-probe, 11/08/2015.

[12] http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2012/11/15/bp-near-settlement-with-us-over-gulf-spill/1706209/, 11/08/2015.

[13] http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jan/29/nation/la-na-nn-bp-pleads-guilty-to-manslaughter-in-2010-gulf-oil-spill-20130129, 11/08/2015.

References

[14] http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/robot-subs-trying-to-stop-gulf-oil-leak-1.865745, 11/08/15.

[15] Bessa WM, Dutra MS, Kreuzer E, “An adaptive fuzzy sliding mode controller for remotely operated underwater vehicles”, Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 58 (2010) 16-26.

[16] Iastrebov V, Seet G, Asokan T, Chui YP, Lau MWS, “Vision Enhancement Using Stereoscopic Telepresence For Remotely Operated Underwater Robotic Vehicles”, J Intell Robot Syst, 52 (2008) 139-154.

[17] Kreuzer E, Pinto FC, “Controlling the position of a remotely operated underwater vehicle”, App Math and Comp, 78 (1996) 175-185.

[18] http://www.people.com.cn/GB/shizheng/252/5252/5253/20010618/491235.html, 11/06/15.

[19] http://wenku.baidu.com/link?url=R65hE49xe_ecY0SKESr5JLQheDYiQstto3QpK-JfKljWserhltiBqfEV56uS5nXmcg1KVg7T3Lff4eEEvuvAIO0O4s2VjbuUca-ePyG2kYC, 11/06/15.

[20] http://www.dailycomet.com/article/20150706/ARTICLES/150709821?p=4&tc=pg, 11/10/15.

[21] http://www2.epa.gov/enforcement/deepwater-horizon-bp-gulf-mexico-oil-spill, 11/10/15.

[22] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/02/bp-will-pay-largest-environmental-fine-in-us-history-for-gulf-oil-spill, 11/10/15.

[23] http://wkrg.com/2015/07/02/environmentalist-mayor-react-to-bp-settlement/, 11/10/15.