Avoiding the Blowout

What steps can drillers take to keep oil and gas secure in a deep-sea well?
By John K. Borchardt

The sinking of the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling platform that took eleven lives and
spread a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has focused attention on safety in offshore
oil and gas well drilling. Just what can cause such a massive blowout? What steps do drillers
take to prevent blowouts? How must they be adjusted to be effective for deep ocean drilling?
An increasing number of wells are being drilled under ocean depths of 3,000 feet or more.
Water temperature at these depths in the Gulf of Mexico is about 40 °F. Underwater
equipment must withstand pressure of more than 2,300 pounds per square inch.

Blowouts are created by natural gas and crude oil under very high pressure in rock
formations. Once a reservoir has been penetrated by a drill bit, oil companies have to
counteract this high pressure to prevent a blowout—a surge of oil and gas up the wellbore
and into the environment. They take several steps to keep the hydrocarbons under control. 

FLUID AFTER FLUID

The first step is to use drilling fluid to create hydrostatic pressure in the wellbore to prevent
oil and gas from surging up the well. Later, when the well is completed, the wellbore is
usually filled with a completion fluid also designed to have a density sufficient to prevent
escape of oil and gas from the rock formation.

Drilling and completion fluids are expensive and are retrieved from the wellbore and taken
onshore for processing and reuse. They must be designed so they do not create excessive
hydrostatic pressure. Too much pressure will incur waste because large volumes of the fluids
will leak into the rock formations penetrated by the wellbore, where they cannot be retrieved.

Drilling fluid, known as mud, commonly contains additives such as barite (barium sulfate)
designed to control the high hydrocarbon pressures of the rock formation and prevent
excessive aqueous fluid loss from the wellbore.

The actual drilling of the Macondo well by Deepwater Horizon oil rig drillers appeared to
have occurred without major problems.

When a well has been drilled to the desired depth, the drill pipe and drill bit are then
removed. Tests are performed to determine if the various layers of rock penetrated by the
drill bit contain sufficient quantities of oil and gas for profitable production.
CEMENTING THE DEAL

Should the well be deemed unprofitable, the wellbore is sealed with cement.

Assuming the well will be a profitable producer, which was the case for the Macondo well,
casing, which is wider in diameter than drill pipe, is lowered into the well. The next step of
preparation is to pump a cement slurry containing various additives through the casing. The
additives include retarders to delay cement hardening until the cement slurry has been
pumped to the desired location in the wellbore and chemical agents to provide the required
cement slurry density, rheological properties, and fluid loss characteristics.

The cement is pumped down the casing and at the bottom it is forced into the annulus, the
space between the casing and the rock. The cement slurry is displaced by high-density
completion fluids. In the Gulf of Mexico, it is common to use fluids containing dissolved
calcium chloride salts with densities up to 11.6 pounds per gallon or bromide salts with
densities of 11.5 to 19.2 pounds per gallon (compared to about 9.3 pounds per gallon for
seawater) as completion fluids. These high density brines contain no suspended solids and
must be handled carefully because of their corrosive nature and acidity.

The cement, meanwhile, displaces the drilling fluid already in the well bore, which exits the
well and is pumped through tubing up to the drilling rig where it is stored in tanks. When the
annulus is filled with cement, fluid circulation is then terminated to allow the cement to
harden. Completion fluids remain in the casing while the cement sets. Although there are
other techniques for cementing a well, this is the most common practice in the Gulf of
Mexico.

Deepwater Horizon (top) caught fire before the newly completed

Macondo well was capped. Its blowout preventer (shown above
underwater) failed to function.

At the Macondo site, however, seawater, which doesn’t have to be recovered from the well,
was used to force the cement slurry into the well annulus.

Once hardened, the cement seals off the oil- and gas-bearing rock from the wellbore until the
oil company is ready to produce the well. The cement sheath also serves to isolate the oil-
and gas-bearing formation from penetration by water.

When the cement has hardened, pressure tests are performed to determine if hydrocarbons
are entering the wellbore. Usually an additional couple of hours or more are allowed to pass
and the well is tested again.
A third test is often performed.

If there are leaks, a procedure known as squeeze cementing is designed to fill any gaps in the
cement sheath. Such gaps are not uncommon. Squeeze cementing involves injecting
relatively small amounts of cement slurry down the wellbore at high pressure and squeezing
it into gaps in the cement sheath and sealing them closed.

After cementing, a cement plug is placed in the well as a final seal. When the well is ready
for production, operating personnel will drill through the plug and perforate the cement
sheath adjacent to the oil- and gas-bearing rock to let hydrocarbons flow into the wellbore.

Two tests were performed on the Macondo well that appeared to indicate a good cement seal
had been formed. A third test was performed and appeared to provide anomalous results.

In offshore drilling, the oil company, BP at the Macondo site, makes the final decisions on
operations. Drilling operations of the Macondo well were conducted by Transocean Ltd., the
world’s largest offshore drilling contractor. Cementing operations were conducted by
Halliburton Services, the largest cementing services company.

Asked about the tests during congressional testimony, Lamar McKay, president of BP
America, told the House Committee on Energy and Commerce that the pressure readings
were “worrisome.”

During his testimony, Steven Newman, president of Transocean, which owned the drilling
rig, said the tests indicated “that there was something happening in the well bore that
shouldn’t be happening.”

McKay said that the well test issue “is critical in the investigation” into the cause of the
accident.

Tim Probert, president of global business lines and chief health, safety, and environmental
control officer for Halliburton, testified to the committee that after reviewing the test results
BP decided to proceed with the original well program.

BLOWOUT PREVENTERS

The blowout at Macondo occurred before the final concrete plug was put in place. At this
point oil and gas under high pressure began surging into and up the wellbore.

Massive pieces of equipment called blowout preventers are designed to close valves and use
shear rams to seal the drill pipe and well casing to block oil and gas from escaping the
wellbore. They are the third and final line of defense against a blowout.

Invented in the 1920s, the blowout preventer has significantly improved safety of oilfields.
The Cameron blowout preventer was named an ASME Mechanical Engineering Landmark in
2003.

In normal drilling operations, the drill pipe passes through a cylindrical channel running
through the blowout preventer and into the wellbore. In the event of a blowout, shear rams
cut through and crush the pipe and then form a seal. Each shear ram has two shear blades, an
upper and a lower one. Powerful springs push them through the drill pipe crushing it. The
ram blades also seal against each other forming a barrier blocking fluid flow.
In the Macondo blowout, the 450-ton, ten-year-old Cameron blowout preventer valves failed
to function properly. The blowout preventer’s shear rams designed to cut through the drill
pipe and seal it also failed to function. As a result, large volumes of oil and gas reached the
rig floor and resulted in an explosion, loss of life, and sinking of the drilling rig. The
continued escape of large volumes of hydrocarbons has created the massive oil spill that
began hit the Louisiana coast in mid-May.

Clues about why the blowout preventer failed are beginning to emerge. Maintenance records
appear to indicate the blowout preventer was in good operating condition, but modifications
were made over the years. It is being investigated whether the modifications could have
contributed to the failure of the blowout preventer. Valves that should have closed did not.
Deep-water remotely operated vehicles were used to try to shut off these valves but failed. It
appeared that hydraulic fluid had leaked from the valves in sufficient quantities to possibly
cause failure.

The blowout preventer’s shear rams constitute the final line of defense. Drill pipe used in
deep water is manufactured much thicker than standard drill pipe to allow for the high water
pressures of great ocean depths. The blowout preventer shear rams may have been
insufficiently powerful to cut through the thick drill pipe.

There probably wasn’t a single cause resulting in the blowout but multiple failures occurring
in critical systems. It is premature at this time to parcel out blame for the blowout itself.

John K. Borchardt worked in the oil and gas industry for more than two decades.

The BP Gulf oil spill should be a wake-up call for onshore operations. Oil spills, in-land or
off shore, always negatively impact the environment and not just for the short term. While an
oil rig may function in close proximity to humans and sensitive eco-systems, their threat is
not much of a concern until something malfunctions and the toxic products they are
extracting from the ground becomes out of control. It is only then that a community and its
government become painfully aware of the need to insure that such a co-existence must
establish standards to prevent harmful disasters.

The failure of the deepwater rig to control the flow of oil into the waters it was drilling after
the fatal accident on April 20, 2010, drives home the need for all oil drilling rigs, including
land-based operations, to assure the public that steps are being taken to prevent blowouts and
smaller type leaks that can get into local water supplies. There is very little room for error
when oil does escape its pipes and well holds. Contamination spills spoil not only water and
air supplies, but denigrate local habitats and often costs taxpayers for any final clean-up
expenses. 

One of the areas of concern with the BP blowout accident in the Gulf was the apparent
failure of the fail-safe device known as a blowout preventer (BOP) from performing as
designed. This high dollar mechanism is supposed to serve as the ultimate fail-safe device on
oil rigs to prevent such disasters. Sadly though, these BOPs still have a checkered safety
record. 

The device is capable of some 260 failure modes according to Transocean, the company that
supplies off-shore oil rigs for petroleum companies like BP.  During a congressional hearing
yesterday on possible causes for the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil well, Rep. Bart
Stupak of Michigan asked how such a device could be considered a fail-safe piece of
equipment with so many potential points of failure. A report from the U.S. Mineral
Management Services (MMS) has revealed that BOP devices “have failed or otherwise
played a role in at least 14 accidents, mostly since 2005.” (“Rig had history of spills, fires
before big one”, by Frank Jordans and Garance Burke, AP, 5/5/10)

Of equal concern is the training and qualifications of crew members and industry people who
build and operate these rigs and are responsible for routine tests and inspections of safety
equipment. In the aforementioned Stupak hearing it was