Macondo well

Oil floats on water. Note how the oil (from the 2010 blowout of the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico) floats on top of the water, where it can be burned off. Oil recovery booms, containing nonpolar fibers, are used to soak up and contain the floating oil. Note how most of the burning oil ends at the oil recovery boom. 

BOEMRE (Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement), 2011. Report Regarding the Causes of the April 20, 2010 Macondo Well Blowout. 

Final Report on the Investigation of the Macondo Well Blowout, Deepwater Horizon Study Croup, University of California (March r, 2orr), http //ccrm.berkeley.edu/deepwaterhorizonstudygroup/dhsg reportsandtestimony.shtml... 

Macondo Well Deepwater Horizon Blowout Lessons for Improving Offshore Drilling Safety, Marine Board, National Academy of Engineering (2012), 115. 

See discussion and tabulation of decisions made during the Macondo well-drilling and completion that increased risks in the report at Note 14 supra at 85 and similar discussion in the report at Note 13 supra. 

Figure 6. BP canopy used to resume oil spill in Macondo well. Flow simulated in 2D with TransAT showing flowlines bloekage by the hydrates.

Then came the Deepwater Horizon explosion and fire followed by the spill of oil from the Macondo well. 

In Febmary 2005, the oil company Exxon started drilling the Blackbeard West well, 28 miles off the coast of Louisiana, and about 70 miles from the site of the future Macondo well. 

The explosive loss of the Macondo well could have been prevented. 

The immediate causes of the Macondo well blowout can be traced to a series of identifiable mistakes made by BP, Halliburton, and Transocean that reveal such systematic failures in risk management that they place in doubt the safety culture of the entire industry. 

In addition to these tensions between managers, there had been, in the 6 months leading up to the blowout, many organizational changes related to management and engineering. As a result, ... nine BP employees with responsibilities for drilling operations at the Macondo well had been in their current positions for less than six... 

On the day of the accident, April 20, 2010, the intention was to seal temporarily the Macondo well so that Deepwater Horizon could move away - temporary abandonment . The plan was that, at some later point, another completion rig would be put into place to install hydrocarbon production equipment. This rig would in turn be replaced by a production facility that would connect to the subsea wellhead, left by the completion rig, so that production could be started. 

The Macondo well, the blowout preventer and the well casing assembly. 

In those few minutes 2140-2149, there was perhaps a window of opportunity for the Well Site Leader to activate the BOP and shut down the well. This would have been an admission of failure - the Macondo well had blown, and the BOP would have been isolated on the seabed, the months of work required to reach that point would have been wasted. Perhaps there was a reluctance to activate the BOP until it was too late. There was a conflict of interest the Well Site Leader, responsible for bringing the well to operational readiness, also had an opportunity to take a decision which might, in effect, have killed the project at a stroke. 

The actions, policies, and procedures of the corporations involved did not provide an effective systems safety approach commensurate with the risks of the Macondo well. The multiple flawed decisions that led to the blowout indicated a lack of a strong safety culture and a deficient overall systems approach to safety. Industrial management involved with the MacoaAo-Deepwater Horizon disaster failed to appreciate or plan for the safety challenges presented by the Macondo well. 

Another issue for both Texas City and Macondo was operator fatigue. At Texas City, the control room operator was on his thirtieth consecutive 12 hour shift. The Macondo well had been a long, difficult project and staff will have been keen to finish the job and get home for a break. 

Final report on the Investigation of the Macondo Well Blowout, Deepwater Horizon Study Group, March 1, 2011. 

Macondo well-Deepwater Horizon blowout lessons for improving offshore drilling safety, National Academy of Engineering, December 2011. 

Investigation Report (Vol. 1 and 2 and Appendices 2A and 2B), Explosion and Fire at the Macondo Well, US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, June 2014, downloadable at http //www.csb.gov/macondo-blowout-and-explosion/ which also contains an excellent 11 minute video explaining the failure of the blow-out preventer, accessible at https //www.youtube.com/watch v=FCVCOWejlag. 

On 20 April 2010 a massive explosion destroyed the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the northern Gulf of Mexico, followed by the leakage of millions of barrels of oil. The drilling rig (see Fig. 1), which was owned and operated by Transocean, had resumed the drilling of the Macondo well in the... 

DHSG, 2011. Final report on the investigation of the Macondo well blowout. Deepwater Horizon study group. 

Report Regarding the Causes of the April 20, 2010 Macondo Well Blowout. 

DWH was a Mobile Offshore Drilling Unit (MODU) working the Macondo well off the coast of Louisiana. The water depth was approximately one mile. From a technical point of view the background to the incident was quite similar to the Black-beard situation that has already been described, although the depth of the well was less. 

The Helix Energy Solutions Group, headquartered in Houston, Texas, USA, is an international offshore energy company that was instrumental in developing the containment systems used for the Macondo well blowout. Based on that experience, the company developed the Helix Fast Response System (HFRS). Participants in the project pay a retainer fee and a day rate to HFRS, who wiU provide the equipment needed to control a leak. 

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