How it all happened: The Gulf of Mexico. Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster

The environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico continues. Numerous attempts to stop the oil leak were in vain. Oil continues to flow into the Gulf. Animals are dying. Ecologists from the Pelican mission, who conduct research in the region, discover giant accumulations of oil at great depths, the depth of which reaches 90 meters. “Deep-sea spots” are dangerous because they deplete the supply of oxygen necessary for living organisms. Now its level has already decreased by thirty percent. “If this continues, in a couple of months the flora and fauna of the bay may die,” say environmentalists.

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1) An American brown pelican (left) stands next to its pure-bred brethren on one of the islands in Barataria Bay. Numerous bird colonies nest on this island. It is home to thousands of brown pelicans, herons and roseate spoonbills, many of which are currently being affected. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

2) Brown pelicans fly over the oil boom that surrounds their island in Barataria Bay. The pelican is a symbol of the state of Louisiana, but in the 60s of the last century these birds practically disappeared from the region due to the widespread use of insecticides. However, later the population of these birds was able to be revived. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

3) Dead fish on the beach of Grand Isle, Louisiana. The British Petroleum company uses chemical reagents - the so-called. dispersants that break down oil. However, their use leads to water poisoning. Dispersants destroy the circulatory system of fish, and they die from excessive bleeding. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

4) An oil-covered northern gannet carcass on the beach of Grand Isle, . The state's coast was the first to encounter the oil slick and suffered the most from it. (REUTERS/Sean Gardner)

5) Biologist Mandy Tumlin with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries pulls the carcass of a dolphin from the water off the coast of Grand Isle, Louisiana. The body will be autopsied to determine the exact cause of death. (Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times/MCT)

6) A bird flies over an oil slick in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico off the island of East Grande Terre, which is located off the coast of Louisiana. The amount of oil that is located in the gulf at depths is several times greater than that that rises to the surface of the water. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

7) An Atlantic gull coated in a thick layer of oil bobs in the surf off East Grande Terre Island, Louisiana. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

8) British Petroleum prohibits workers from distributing photographs of dead animals to the press. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

9) An oil-covered dead fish floats off the coast of East Grande Terre Island on June 4, 2010 near East Grande Terre Island, Louisiana. Fish eat plankton contaminated due to the use of dispersants, and toxins spread throughout the food chain. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

10) A bird corpse covered in oil floats in the surf off East Grande Terre Island on June 3. Environmentalists believe that millions of different migratory birds that winter on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico will suffer, and the decline in the population of sea turtles, bluefin tuna and other species of marine animals will hit the ecosystem of the entire Atlantic Ocean. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

11) Hermit crabs in reddish-brown oil off the coast of Dauphin Island, Alabama. It is expected that the accident will be completely eliminated only by August, and may drag on for years. (AP Photo/Mobile Press-Register, John David Mercer)

12) Pelican eggs stained with oil in a nest on bird island in Barataria Bay, where thousands of brown pelicans, terns, gulls and roseate spoonbills nest. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

13) A dying heron chick sits in the mangroves on an island in Barataria Bay. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

14) The oil-covered body of a dead dolphin lies on the ground in Venice, Louisiana. This dolphin was spotted and picked up while flying over the southwest area of ​​the Mississippi River. "When we found this dolphin, it was literally full of oil. Oil was just pouring out of it." - say contract workers who help oil workers clean the shore. (AP Photo/Plaquemines Parish Government)

15) A brown pelican, covered in a thick layer of oil, swims in the surf off the coast of East Grande Terre Island, Louisiana. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

16) People are dying in droves in Louisiana. Environmentalists are trying to save the injured birds - the surviving individuals, mainly pelicans, are urgently taken to a veterinary rehabilitation center. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

17) Now oil is being collected on the beaches of Florida. According to the portal “Credits in Krasnodar”, US authorities prohibit fishing in new territories. A third of the US fishing area in the Gulf of Mexico has already been closed. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

18) A dead turtle lies on the shore in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

19) Dead croaker in the surf in Waveland, Mississippi. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Daneen Birtel, left, of the Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research Center, Patrick Hogan, right, of the International Bird Rescue Research Center, and Christina Schillesy wash an oiled pelican in Buras, Louisiana, June 3. The center for victims of oil pollution has washing vats, special drying rooms and a small pool in which birds that miraculously escaped death learn to swim again. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

The Deepwater Horizon ultra-deep drilling platform was built by the shipbuilding company Hundai Industries (South Korea) by order of R&B Falcon (Transocean Ltd.). This platform was launched in 2001, and some time later it was leased to the British oil and gas company British Petroleum (BP). The lease period was extended several times, most recently until the beginning of 2013.

In February 2010, BP began developing the Macondo field in the Gulf of Mexico. A well was drilled at a depth of 1500 meters.

Oil platform explosion

On April 20, 2010, 80 km off the coast of the US state of Louisiana, a fire and explosion occurred on the Deepwater Horizon oil platform. The fire lasted more than 35 hours; firefighting vessels that arrived at the scene of the accident tried unsuccessfully to extinguish it. On April 22, the platform sank in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

As a result of the accident, 11 people went missing; searches for them were carried out until April 24, 2010 and did not yield any results. 115 people were evacuated from the platform, including 17 injured. Subsequently, world news agencies reported that two more people died during the liquidation of the consequences of the accident.

Oil spill

From April 20 to September 19, liquidation of the consequences of the accident continued. Meanwhile, according to some experts, about 5,000 barrels of oil entered the water every day. According to other sources, up to 100,000 barrels per day entered the water, as stated by the US Secretary of the Interior in May 2010.

By the end of April, the oil slick reached the mouth of the Mississippi River, and in July 2010, oil was discovered on the beaches of the US state of Texas. In addition, the underwater oil plume stretched 35 km in length at a depth of more than 1,000 meters.

Over 152 days, about 5 million barrels of oil spilled into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico through damaged well pipes. The area of ​​the oil spill was 75 thousand km².

Elimination of consequences

After the Deepwater Horizon sank, efforts were made to seal the well, and later oil spill cleanup efforts began to combat the spread of the oil slick.

To eliminate the consequences, tugs, barges, rescue boats, and BP submarines were raised. They were assisted by ships, aircraft and naval equipment from the US Navy and Air Force. More than 1,000 people took part in the liquidation of the consequences, and about 6,000 US National Guard troops were involved. To limit the area of ​​the oil slick, dispersants (active substances used to settle oil slicks) were sprayed. Booms were also installed to contain the spill area. Mechanical oil collection was used, both with the help of special vessels and manually by volunteers on the US coast. In addition, experts decided to resort to controlled burning of oil spills.

Incident investigation

According to an internal investigation conducted by BP safety officials, the accident was blamed on worker errors, technical faults and design flaws in the oil platform itself. The prepared report stated that rig personnel misinterpreted pressure measurements during a well leak test, causing a stream of hydrocarbons rising from the bottom of the well to fill the drilling platform through a vent. After the explosion, as a result of technical shortcomings of the platform, the anti-reset fuse, which was supposed to automatically plug the oil well, did not work.

In mid-September 2010, a report by the Bureau of Ocean Resources Management, Regulation and Conservation and the US Coast Guard was published. It contained 35 causes of the accident, with BP identified as the sole culprit in 21 of them. In particular, the main reason cited was the neglect of safety standards to reduce well development costs. In addition, the platform employees did not receive comprehensive information about the work at the well, and as a result, their ignorance was superimposed on other errors, which led to the well-known consequences. In addition, the reasons cited were poor well design that did not provide sufficient barriers to oil and gas, as well as insufficient cementing and changes made to the well development project at the very last moment.

Transocean Ltd, the owners of the oil platform, and Halliburton, which carried out the underwater cementing of the well, were named as partly to blame.

Litigation and compensation

The Mexican oil spill trial of the British company BP will begin on February 25, 2013 in New Orleans (USA). In addition to the claims from the federal authorities, the British company was brought claims from American states and municipalities. In accordance with US law, BP will have to pay a fine of 1.1 to 4.3 thousand dollars for each barrel of oil spilled as a result of the accident. In February 2013, it became known that the company managed to negotiate with the American authorities to reduce the amount of penalties by $3.4 billion. The reason for the change in the amount of compensation was the fact that 810 thousand barrels of oil were collected and did not end up in the environment. Thus, the maximum fine is $17.6 billion. The final amount of compensation will depend on the court ruling.

In addition, in the spring of 2012, an agreement was reached with the plaintiffs' committee on the amount of compensation: more than 100 thousand American entrepreneurs and individuals will receive compensation in the amount of more than $7.8 billion.

Also in November 2012, BP agreed with US authorities to pay fines amounting to $4.5 billion over five years.

Environmental implications

After the accident, one-third of the Gulf of Mexico was closed to fishing, and an almost complete fishing ban was introduced.

Tropical coral reefs located in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico also suffered enormous damage.

Oil has even seeped into the waters of coastal reserves and marshes, which play an important role in supporting wildlife and migratory birds.

According to recent studies, today the Gulf of Mexico has almost completely recovered from the damage it suffered. American oceanologists monitored the growth of reef-forming corals, which cannot live in polluted water, and found that the corals reproduce and grow in their usual rhythm. Biologists note a slight increase in average water temperature in the Gulf of Mexico.

Some researchers have expressed concerns about the impact of the oil accident on the climate-forming Gulf Stream. It was suggested that the current cooled by 10 degrees and began to break up into separate undercurrents. Indeed, some weather anomalies (such as severe winter frosts in Europe) have occurred since the oil spill occurred. However, scientists still do not agree on whether the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is the primary cause of climate change and whether it affected the Gulf Stream.

An explosion occurs on a drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico, and the surviving employees leave the platform, unable to stop the eruption.
Two hours earlier, tests showed the rig was safe. Now it remains to be investigated how a $560 million drilling platform could explode, leading to the largest oil spill at sea.
Why did this happen? A modern drilling platform, a competent company, extremely experienced personnel... This should not have happened.

Gulf of Mexico, 6 km off the coast of Louisiana, Deepwater Horizon drilling platform. April 20, 2010, 17:00.
Senior drilling foreman Mile Randy Isle, head of Transocean's drilling operations department, and other specialists conducted a general walk-through of the platform, the last place of the walk-through was the work site where the well pressure test procedure was already underway.

17:53, Rig slope
43 days behind schedule, a specialized drilling crew is preparing to disconnect from the well, work is almost completed. The management of the drilling team, led by drilling foreman Wyman Wheeler, needs to make sure that the drilling rig does not leak; if there is a leak, then gas and oil will be released towards the platform with enormous force. He carries out unplanned pressure changes, the monitors show unusual pressure readings in the well, and it continues to rise. As 6 o'clock approaches, the rig's slope room fills with night shift workers. Subsea Superintendent Chris Pleasant is responsible for the drilling platform's subsea system and needs to be aware of any problems with the well.
Wyman Wheeler believes there is a leak at the well, but his shift is ending. Night shift supervisor Jason Anderson takes measurements again and tells Randy Isle not to worry.

Deepwater Horizon platform

18:58
In the conference room, Randy Isle once again joined the dignitaries as they congratulated the rig's management on its impeccable safety record. Over the past 7 years, this drilling platform has never been idle, and there has not been a single personnel injury.
Meanwhile, Anderson is measuring blood pressure. They released the pressure in the well again and are now waiting for the results. After measuring the pressure, Anderson was sure that the well was not leaking. It's his last shift on the rig, he's being promoted and plans to leave the next morning.

21:10
Before starting the night shift, Randy Isle calls Anderson, who reports that everything is in order with the well. After the pressure was released, monitoring the situation continued for another half an hour. Isle offered to help, but the night shift supervisor refused, he claimed that everything was under control.

21:31
Just as they were preparing to disconnect, the drilling team saw an unexpected increase in pressure.

21:41
Below deck, Chris Pleasant's assistant appears on the rig's surveillance screen, and they also see water that shouldn't be there. A minute later, dirt appeared on the video. Chris Pleasant immediately began calling the well site, but no one answered the phone.
Mud burst out of the well and fell onto the platform from a height of 74 meters. The rig's employees know that to prevent a disaster, the well must be taken under control. They shut off the valves in an attempt to stop the dirt and flammable gas escaping from the well. The team has lost control, the well is gushing.
They called Randy Isle and reported that the well had broken and asked for his help. He was horrified.
It was a quiet, almost windless night; highly flammable methane condensed on the surface of the drilling rig. Just one spark is enough for it to light up.
As soon as the gas reaches the engine room, the engines become overloaded and fail. Everything is plunged into darkness.

21:49
A fountain of burning oil soars hundreds of meters into the sky. There are 126 people on the platform, they rush to the lifeboats. Before leaving the drilling platform, Chris Pleasant must try to stop the fire, he runs to the bridge to activate the emergency disconnect system, the so-called EDS. It will shut off the well on the ocean floor and prevent the release of oil and gas, disconnecting the platform from the well. This is the only way to stop the fire, the only way to save the rig.

Oil and gas continue to escape from the well, fueling the flames and causing explosions.
Emergency disconnect did not work.
Most of the workers left the platform in lifeboats. Fleeing from the unbearable heat, the last few people remaining on the platform rush into the sea from a 17-meter height. All 115 people who managed to leave the drilling platform survived. They gather on a supply ship nearby. Jason Anderson and the drilling crew are missing. Presumably they died in an explosion on the drilling deck. The Deepwater Horizon oil rig burned for 36 hours and then sank. Crude oil poured into the Gulf of Mexico.

The world needs to know how a drilling platform with an exceptional safety record could suffer a disaster of this magnitude during a routine operation.
When the oil reaches the coast, President Barack Obama convenes an investigation committee, advised by geophysicist Richard Sears. He worked in the oil industry all his life and was a vice president of Shell.
Deepwater Horizon is an exceptional drilling platform; it holds the record for well depth - more than 10.5 km. It was serviced by Transocean, whose employees had just finished drilling the Macondo well for British Petroleum (BP).

A huge steel pipe connects the well and the platform - 1500 meters, the well goes 4000 meters deep into the earth's crust, where there is an oil and gas field estimated at 110 million barrels. But at the moment, oil should not enter the system; Deepwater Horizon’s task is simply to drill a well; another platform will produce oil. The well will be shut off and temporarily mothballed.
Investigators are beginning to look into the conservation process that took place at the rig on the day of the disaster. This is a standard operation that the team has carried out more than once.
Temporary conservation is when the well is blocked, concrete plugs are installed, the possibility of leakage is checked, and the well is made sure that it is stable and closed. And then a few days or weeks or sometimes months later, the completion rig arrives and connects it to the associated derivative.

Personnel error
A rig survivor claims that Transocean employees placed a concrete plug on the rig and performed a pressure test on the wellhead to test for leaks to ensure no oil or gas entered the system. The pressure in the well is reduced so that the pressure inside is less than outside. If there is a leak, hydrocarbons (oil and gas) will enter the system and an increase in pressure in the well will be seen.
The point is to make sure that the concrete plug at the wellhead keeps the hydrocarbons within the deposit and does not leak them into the wellbore. We need to make sure that oil and gas don't rise to the surface until it's necessary.
Wyman Wheeler and the drilling crew monitor changes in pressure inside the well, which are also shown on monitors at British Petroleum's Houston office.

Richard Sears now sees exactly the same thing that the rig workers saw just hours before the disaster. From these data it is clearly seen that the pressure rose several times to almost 10 MPa. If the well were sealed, the pressure would remain constant. Sears sees only one explanation: “This means there is a path through which oil and gas can get into the well. This means that the plug at the wellhead is not ideal.”
Surviving workers told investigators that Jason Anderson interpreted the 9,600 kPa reading differently. He considered the increase in pressure in the well to be an instrument error caused by the bubble effect. He decided that the weight of the liquid in the pipeline caused a "full bubble" effect, transferring pressure through the closed valve. This is what led to the increase in pressure in the well. The BP rig manager accepted this explanation and agreed that 9600 kPa was an instrument error.
“During the investigation, we did not meet anyone who would agree that 9600 kPa could be due to something like a “bubble effect,” says Richard Sears. “There are cases of such an effect on a drilling rig, but they are usually smaller, and we did not think this was a plausible explanation.
This mistake cost Jason Anderson and ten of his colleagues their lives.
The drilling team missed the first chance to realize that the well might fail. At this stage the disaster could have been prevented; it was a serious mistake, but not fatal.
Investigators know that the drillers decided to re-test the well, giving themselves a second chance to solve the problem. This time they assessed the problem through the well kill line, a small pipe that connects the platform to the well. They opened the line and watched for 30 minutes. There was no flow, which suggested that the pressure in the well was not increasing. Jason Anderson was confident that there was no oil or gas leak. The head of the BP drilling site agreed, and 3 hours after the start of the first test, he gave the go-ahead. But the data shows that the pressure in the drill string at this time remained at around 9600 kPa.
Similar to two straws in a glass, the pressure on the drill string and the kill line had to be the same. In one part of the pipe we see 9600 kPa, and in the other - zero. But it doesn't have to be that way. The only explanation could be that for some reason the kill line was clogged, perhaps by foreign matter from the well or platform.

The staff made a conclusion based on incorrect readings from the device and neglecting the correct ones. They did not find out what caused the discrepancy, and missed a second chance to understand that the well was not sealed, a second chance to prevent a breakthrough. The well burst because it simply was not plugged. If Transocean personnel had interpreted the pressure test results correctly, this would have been understandable. At this stage, it would still be possible to shut off the well at the bottom level and prevent a breakthrough. But this was not done and people paid for it with their lives.
Now investigators have to understand why the well was not plugged. It was found that the last well equipment was installed the day before the disaster.

Number of centralizers
When drilling, wells are lined with steel pipes. As soon as the last piece of pipe is placed in the well, concrete solution is pumped into it. It passes through the holes and fills the space between the casing and the walls of the wellbore. When concrete hardens, it seals the well and prevents oil and gas from escaping. The key to this process is that the concrete must fill the annular space between the 5.5 km long pipe from the platform to the bottom of the well evenly. In addition, you need to pump the solution through the pipe so that it comes out. This in itself is a very unpredictable process.
At one of the most critical and difficult stages of drilling a well, people have to work blindly. It is important to make sure that the casing pipe is located strictly in the center; if it moves, the solution around it will not be distributed evenly, and there will be channels through which oil and gas will enter the wellbore.

The tip is installed using centralizers; they ensure uniform distribution of the solution. The number of centralizers and their exact location are selected individually for each well. There is no clear instruction as to how many are required, there should be enough. Enough to ensure that the casing is well centered.
For Richard Sears, the main question is “Have enough centralizers been installed?”
Critical decisions about the well were sometimes made 700 km from the platform in Houston, where BP's engineering team is based. Among them are concrete solution specialists from Halliburton. One of the engineers of this company worked in the BP office.
Three days before installing the tip, he selected the required number of centralizers. There were 6 on the drilling platform, but the specialist comes to the conclusion that this number is not enough. He recommends using 21. In the absence of his boss, the BP worker takes it upon himself to order delivery of 15 more. But the next day, his boss, BP team leader John Guite, reverses this decision. The new centralizers are designed differently, and he worries they might get stuck on the way to the bottom of the well, which could cause him to fall behind schedule.

In an email exchange between a member of the BP engineering team, in which the engineers are deciding how to position the existing 6 centralizers, one worker writes: “A straight piece of pipe, even under tension, will not achieve a perfectly central position without additional tools, but what a difference it makes. Everything will most likely work out and we will have a good concrete plug.” No one notes the increased danger of a well breakthrough.
Too few centralizers may have set the stage for disaster. But investigators cannot confirm this. If the casing is skewed, then the evidence is forever buried 5.5 km below the surface of the sea. But there are a number of other circumstances that can be investigated. Investigators need to determine whether the concrete used in the well met the standards.

Concrete mortar
For each well, a solution of a unique composition is created - it is a complex mixture of cement, chemical additives, and water. The key criteria for choosing a solution are the reliability of the concrete itself - that it hardens properly and has sufficient strength and the necessary characteristics to withstand the pressure applied to it.
Investigators are studying the concrete formulation developed by Halliburton for the well. The wellbore was fragile and the concrete had to be lightweight. Halliburton and BP agreed on nitriding - the introduction of dispersed nitrogen bubbles to form foam concrete. A controversial decision that the owner of Transocean did not agree with. They believed that nitrided concrete would not be stable at that depth. BP ignored this objection.
This is a more complex concreting, if the foam is not maintained stable, the bubbles will collapse, which can lead to the formation of large cavities or even channels outside the casing. Any of these phenomena will lead to disaster; oil and gas will make their way to the well and will be released uncontrollably to the surface.

Halliburton has a concrete testing laboratory in Louisiana. In February 2010, pilot testing of nitrided foam concrete was carried out. One experiment shows that it is not stable and nitrogen is released. Investigators found that Halliburton did not promptly report this result to BP. Two months later, Halliburton refines the solution and conducts more tests, this time with concrete admixtures obtained from the platform. Experiments show that gas is still released and the solution is very unstable. Nobody reports this to BP. The day before the solution is used in the well, Halliburton conducts a new test. This time the stirring of the solution is longer. They make a claim that it works, the solution is stable.
Investigators need evidence, they test the solution themselves and come to the opposite conclusion. It was found that the density differs at different altitudes. The fact is that the concrete solution itself is not stable; it settles. A solid phase precipitates, this indicates that not everything is in order with the solution and it cannot be used in the well. But this is exactly the formulation that Halliburton used on the well.
36 hours after the well began to break through, the drilling platform sank, the pipes connecting it to the well were dented and broke. For 86 days, crude oil flowed directly into the Gulf of Mexico. The oil spill, estimated at 5 million barrels, has caused economic and environmental disasters along the US Gulf Coast.

It was only when relief wells were drilled that the Macondo well was finally plugged and the flow was stopped. Investigators were able to begin solving the latest mystery. Why didn't the emergency disconnect work?

Emergency disconnect
Safety equipment for the most critical situations is located under the platform. A blowout preventer, or BOP, is like a giant crane, over 16 meters tall. Under normal conditions, while a well is under construction, personnel use valves to control the flow of fluid into and out of the well. But the BOP can also perform an emergency function; it is designed to prevent blowouts. It should be noted that there was an uncontrolled flow of oil and gas to the surface, and it is obvious that the BOP did not block the well.
When the platform's emergency release system is activated, special steel clamps slam shut inside the blowout preventer, cutting off the drill string and killing the well. The PVP then opens the clamps, allowing the platform to move away.

Investigators believe that personnel attempts to activate the emergency release system failed because the cables connecting the platform to the BOP were already damaged by the explosion. But PVP are designed in such a way that this could not disable them. In case of an accident, the platform has a fail-safe mechanism - a dead man. If the connection between the platform and the PVP is lost, the battery-powered ghoul should automatically close the clamps. But as investigators discovered, one of the batteries was dead. The voltage on it should have been 27V, but in fact it was 7.6V, this is not enough to power the dead thing. Transocean says the battery was charged at the time of the explosion and only died later. There is no way to find out how things really happened.
Attempts were also made to activate the clamps from the outside using remotely operated vehicles, but oil continued to leak. Although operational under normal conditions, the BOP was unable to cope with the pressure of the leaking oil after the well broke out.
Damning evidence in the Industry Regulator's 2002 investigation was largely ignored by companies operating in the Gulf of Mexico. There have been extensive tests of these BOPs, including the 2001 model (used on the Deepwater Horizon), and half of them failed to cut off the pipes. Other countries have said this is not acceptable, but US companies continue to hope that the clamps will work, which is not a good survival strategy.

After a six-month thorough investigation, a national commission identified errors that led to the catastrophic event on the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform. The main reason was that the concrete plug did not seal the well, but there were also many other shortcomings going back to the management of the companies involved, as well as many opportunities to prevent disaster.

Two days before the disaster: The casing was lowered into the well with only six centralizers, which is 15 less than what Halliburton specialists recommended. This decision by BP in Houston increased the risk of channeling in the concrete.
The day before the disaster: Halliburton's nitrided, unstable concrete slurry is pumped into the well to secure the casing. Neither BP nor the rig personnel know how many test failures the solution has had.
3 hours 49 minutes before the disaster: tests show that the pressure in the well is increasing. One of the drilling rig employees believes that the concreting was unsuccessful and that the well is leaking, another convinces people that this is an incorrect reading from the instruments. If Transocean employees had closed the valve at this stage, before the blowout began, they would have still had time to plug the well and avoid disaster.
1 hour 54 minutes before the disaster: Having carried out repeated pressure testing procedures, the drilling rig employees believe that concreting was successful and the well is sealed. They do not realize that the kill line is clogged and cannot serve as a source of pressure information. They do not try to find the reasons for the discrepancy in the readings and do not shut off the well, missing another opportunity to prevent a breakthrough.
9 minutes before disaster: the well breaks through, gas and oil make their way through the insufficiently strong concrete. Now the team is trying to plug the well, but oil under enormous pressure breaks through the blowout preventer. Highly flammable methane escapes from the well and envelops the platform. When he reaches the engine room, sparks get in his way.

Investigators conclude that BP, Halliburton, and Transocean made decisions unilaterally, which increased the chances of a breakthrough at the Macondo well. Investigators pointed to ineffective information transfer between the three large companies as a contributing factor.
They wonder if speed and cost-effectiveness were the factors that would distract people's attention from the extreme dangers they were dealing with?
In deciding to use only 6 centralizers, the BP wells team leader noted that installing an additional 15 would require an extra 10 hours. It's not cheap, as it costs about a million dollars a day to operate a drilling platform. The Deepwater Horizon team was spurred on by the fact that it was 43 days behind schedule. The budget for this well was $96 million, but the drilling ended up costing about $150 million.
Transocean believes the blame lies largely with BP. Halliburton believes BP did not provide them with enough information regarding the well. BP acknowledged some mistakes, but said Transocean and Halliburton were also partly to blame.

Petrobras pipeline disaster in 2000. Explosion at the French chemical plant AZF in 2001. An explosion on a Pemex oil platform off the coast of Mexico in April of this year. The history of oil production is rich in disasters. But the largest accident with the most severe environmental consequences to date occurred in 2010. The Deepwater Horizon oil platform, operated by the British company BP in the Gulf of Mexico, exploded off the coast of the US state of Louisiana.

She drowned

On April 20, 2010, a powerful explosion occurred at the Deepwater Horizon, causing a large fire. In total, at the time of the incident, 126 people were on the drilling platform the size of two football fields and about 2.6 million liters of petroleum products were stored. This figure alone gives an idea of ​​the scale of the disaster.

You can imagine the consequences, knowing that the fire lasted 36 hours, after which the platform sank, and oil flowed out of a well at a depth of 1500 meters in a continuous stream. According to some sources, this leak amounted to 5 thousand barrels per day (i.e. 700 tons of oil), according to others - up to 100 thousand (about 14 thousand tons).

They tried to fight the escaping oil in different ways: they fenced it off, burned it, collected it with the help of sorbents, covered the well with a huge protective dome. BP even organized a campaign to collect human and animal hair, which was stuffed into nylon bags and used as blotters to collect oil. The campaign unfolded on a large scale: according to the charitable organization Matter of Trust, 370 thousand salons around the world participated in the campaign, and 200 tons of hair and wool were received at collection points every day.

In the hair collection campaign, BP was quite successful. But the campaign to collect oil failed. As experts explain, the “spill and immediately collect” technology is not suitable a day after the accident - it sinks to the bottom and it is useless to install fences. Neither microorganisms that break down oil, nor sorbents simply could cope with such volumes of oil. And they failed. According to environmentalists, about 37 thousand tons of oil are hidden in the soil around the Macondo well, which is from 5 to 14% of the total volume of oil released. As the researchers note, this oil is still at the bottom, but it will gradually seep back into the water. This will lead to serious environmental consequences, since oil in the bottom layers of the sea disintegrates very slowly due to lack of oxygen.

What is the reason?

The accident on the Deepwater Horizon oil platform is recognized as one of the largest disasters in human history. It is compared to the collapse of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and is even called “oil Chernobyl.” Both disasters have one thing in common - they could not cope with the consequences of the crashes for a long time, because such a scenario was not foreseen in the project.

According to the head of the environmental company Greenpeace Russia, Vladimir Chuprov, today in the oil industry there are no technologies at all that 100% exclude the possibility of such disasters. And when they do occur, it turns out that there is no technology to eliminate the consequences of accidents of this scale.

And yet, BP had a chance to “prepare”, because experts, even before the collapse of the platform, argued that the death of the Deepwater Horizon was only a matter of time.

The oil platform was launched in February 2001. In the same year, it was leased to BP, which brought Deepwater Horizon to the Gulf of Mexico and 9 years later, in February 2010, began drilling a well in the Macondo field. Then the problems began: the drilling work was carried out in a hurry. And it’s understandable, because the platform cost BP half a million dollars every day, which means the company needed to quickly start mining and making money. One thing they did not take into account is that in the event of a disaster, BP faces huge financial costs and responsibility for eliminating the consequences of the crash. But, as already mentioned, such a scenario was not included in the project.

Several organizations were involved in the investigation into the causes of the accident: the US Department of Homeland Security and the US Department of the Interior, the US Congress and the US Department of Justice. BP considered it its duty to conduct its own investigation into the causes of the accident. 50 specialists, led by Mark Bligh, BP's head of operational safety, were working to determine the cause of the disaster. As a result, the BP company published a report according to which the main reason for the collapse of the platform was... the human factor. And just six reasons for “concern” were named. A more thorough report was made by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Resources Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) and the US Coast Guard. Of the 35 causes of the disaster, BP was the only culprit in 21, and in 8 the company was found to be partially at fault.

Perhaps BP was right, and the human factor really became one of the reasons for the death of Deepwater Horizon - in the pursuit of profit and in an attempt to reduce the costs of developing a well, the company neglected basic safety standards. Other causes include poor well design with insufficient barriers to oil and gas, unsuccessful cementing, and last-minute changes to the well development project.

Partial blame is admitted to the owners of the oil platform, Transocean Ltd., and Halliburton, which was involved in underwater cementing of the well.

Why is the Gulf of Mexico suffering?

So, the “human factor” of BP’s activities on the Deepwater Horizon oil platform turned, first of all, into a global environmental disaster. So global that in its scale this disaster eclipsed the crash of the Exxon Valdez tanker in Alaska, the Prestige ship in Spain, and most other accidents previously recognized as the largest oil spills in terms of scale.

In a few words, the consequences of the platform crash are as follows.

During the 152 days that oil continuously leaked from the damaged well, more than 5 million barrels entered the Gulf waters.

The waters of the Gulf of Mexico are known to be rich in commercial fish, oysters and shrimp, rare species of birds nest along the shores of the gulf, and numerous tourists come to relax on the beaches of the gulf. But the spilled oil even reached coastal reserves and marshes, and the coasts of several states from Florida to Louisiana were contaminated. The latter introduced an almost complete ban on fishing. And the beaches of other states have been closed to vacationers for several months. In addition, nearly 600 sea turtles, 100 dolphins, more than 6,000 birds were found dead, and increased mortality among whales and dolphins continued over the next few years

But the greatest concern among scientists was the impact of the consequences of the accident on the climate-forming Gulf Stream. According to some estimates, the temperature of the current decreased by 10 degrees. The current began to break up into separate underwater flows. Some weather anomalies were noticed. And all this just during the oil spill after the death of the Deepwater Horizon. Of course, this can only be a coincidence, and experts have not come to a common conclusion on this issue. However, this fact still worries some scientists.

Who is to blame and what was done?

After the accident, thousands of lawsuits were filed in the courts, with BP and Transocean as the main defendants. The first to appeal to the courts were local fishermen, coastal property owners, real estate agencies and restaurateurs. In early 2012, they were joined by lawsuits from business owners and government organizations whose businesses suffered losses due to the oil spill. The lawsuits against BP were brought by shareholders of the companies, where the main plaintiffs were the pension funds of the states of New York and Ohio. The reason for the lawsuits is “providing false information about the safety of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.”

BP and Transocean violated the Clean Water Act, which allowed the US Department of Justice to file a lawsuit in federal court in the US city of New Orleans (Louisiana). The American government demanded a fine from companies ranging from 1.1 to 4.3 thousand dollars for each barrel of leaked oil. And if Transocean pleaded guilty and paid almost $1.5 billion in fines, then BP representatives decided to “put the hurt on their head” and filed a lawsuit against Transocean in the federal court of New Orleans, accusing the contractor of poorly performed work and technical violations safety, which was the main cause of the accident. And if so, then, according to BP, Transocean is obliged to bear financial responsibility for eliminating the consequences of the disaster.

By the way, Transocean is not the only organization that fell under the “hot hand” of BP. The company accused Cameron International of liability for failures of a blowout preventer installed at the well. And Halliburton was hit with a lawsuit alleging “fraud, negligence and concealment of facts about the materials used.” However, as federal judge Carl Barbier ruled, 67% of the blame for the accident lies with BP itself, and only 30% and 3% with Transocean and Halliburton, respectively. In 2012, a federal court in New Orleans issued a decision imposing a fine of $7.8 billion on BP. This is the amount of compensation that the court ordered BP to pay to 100,000 plaintiffs affected by the oil spill. However, according to company representatives, payment of this amount does not constitute an admission of guilt in the accident.

In February 2013, a new trial began in a New Orleans court regarding the accident in the Gulf of Mexico. The actors are still the same - British BP, its partners and representatives of the American government, demanding payment of the maximum fine, i.e. 4.3 thousand dollars for each barrel of oil that fell into the water. The British company tried to challenge this claim and reduce the fine to 3 thousand per barrel. But the course of the investigation did not play into BP’s hands: it turned out that one of the company’s engineers, Kurt Meeks, tried to destroy correspondence that discussed important internal BP information. In particular, about the attempts of specialists to preserve the well after the accident. It also turned out that the oil producing company provided information that downplayed the amount of oil that leaked.

In 2014, the British government decided to intervene in the matter. In its statement, it called on the court to reconsider some of its decisions regarding the BP company, namely, to reduce the fine imposed on BP. And yet, the New Orleans court turned out to be inexorable and ruled that “the negligent or intentional actions of the British company led to the spill of 5 million barrels of oil in the Gulf,” which means that liability for such actions should be maximum.

$13.7 billion is the price that the court ordered BP to pay for the lives of 11 people killed in the accident, for the largest environmental disaster in human history and for the enormous material damage suffered by businessmen and individuals.

Kristina Kuznetsova