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Business and NGOs

Reaching for a longer spoonThe disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is straining ties between companies and activists

Jun 3rd 2010 | NEW YORK | From The Economist print edition

IT IS not just Barack Obama and Tony Hayward, BP’s boss, who are under fire because of the environmental catastrophe unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico. In the decade or so since BP acknowledged the need to slow climate change and signalled its commitment to investing in cleaner sources of energy with the slogan “Beyond Petroleum”, many environmental activists and NGOs have laid down their placards and helped the firm execute its green strategies. They are now facing intense criticism of that collaboration from their own supporters, who say the oil spill has left BP’s (always contentious) green claims “Beyond Parody” and the company “Beyond the Pale”.

The website of one such NGO, the Nature Conservancy, has been bombarded with complaints from donors horrified by the discovery (although it had never hidden the fact) that over the years it had received around $10m in gifts of cash and land from BP, and had even given the oil giant a seat on its “International Leadership Council”. Another, Conservation International, has accepted over $2m from BP, advised the firm on its oil extraction methods, and from 2000 to 2006 included on its board John Browne, BP’s boss at the time and the moving force behind the firm’s conversion to greenery. The Environmental Defense Fund, another big NGO, had helped BP develop its internal carbon-trading system, and more recently campaigned alongside it for a law to cap America’s emissions of greenhouse gases through the US Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), an alliance of NGOs and big businesses. Other prominent NGO members of USCAP include the Nature Conservancy, the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the World Resources Institute.

The scrutiny of these ties to BP is intensifying the perennial debate about how long a spoon NGOs should use when supping with corporate devils. The failure of governments to make progress on a new climate deal in Copenhagen last December had already prompted some debate among activists about whether a more confrontational style of campaigning was needed to stir the world from its torpor.

The renewed debate comes when relations between business and NGOs (environmental and otherwise) are closer than ever before. In 1990, when Environmental Defense announced an agreement to help McDonald’s reduce the environmental impact of its packaging, there was shock and dismay from activists and business alike. Environmental Defense was accused of selling out, while the fast-food retailer, which had previously had a reputation for hostility to green causes, was chided by some of its peers for allowing tree-huggers into the boardroom. “At the time, it was heresy to say that companies and NGOs could work together; now it is dogma, at least for the Fortune 500,” says Gwen Ruta, who oversees Environmental Defense’s corporate partnerships. Its current collaborators include such frequent targets of activists’ ire as Wal-Mart, a giant retailer with no time for unions, and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR), a private-equity firm often depicted as a financial predator.

The spill seems certain to prompt NGOs to review their ties to business. Lenny Mendonca of McKinsey, one of the authors of a new report, “Shaping the Future: Solving Social Problems through Business Strategy”, sees a “risk of heading into a vicious circle of antagonism.” But he believes that would be a mistake.

The report, published by a group called the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy, whose members include dozens of corporate bigwigs, argues that various factors will encourage firms to embrace worthy causes more warmly in future: the likelihood of government action on climate change, the growing importance of a firm’s reputation when it comes to recruiting and the emphasis that the governments of booming emerging markets place on good corporate citizenship. All this, the report optimistically argues, could drive a “self-reinforcing state of trustworthy, pro-social corporate behaviour that simultaneously delivers bottom-line results and community benefits.”

Collaboration between business and NGOs, if well designed, can certainly yield significant mutual benefit. This week Environmental Defense and KKR reported that the first two years of their partnership, which aims to cut costs in KKR’s portfolio of companies through energy efficiency and other green measures, had already generated savings of $160m. The same approach has now been adopted by at least one of KKR’s rivals, the Carlyle Group.

The efforts of McDonald’s to address NGOs’ concerns, starting with its partnership with Environmental Defense, have been “as important to the company’s success as the Happy Meal”, says Walter Massey, a director who chairs the firm’s committee on corporate social responsibility. He was particularly delighted by a partnership with Greenpeace to exclude soyabeans grown on deforested land in the Amazon from the company’s supply chain, which “led to the Greenpeace campaign director issuing a statement congratulating McDonald’s for pushing ‘a multimillion-dollar industry towards a more sustainable future’.”

For several years Mr Massey has also been on the board of BP, which he believes benefited from its work with NGOs after a deadly accident at a refinery in Texas in 2002. “The company’s reservoir of goodwill, built up over years of committed corporate stewardship, was of critical aid in helping us to weather the storm,” he said in March. The latest crisis suggests that the reservoir is not bottomless, however.

BP’s travails (see article) illustrate the limits of enthusiastic corporate citizenship. However much BP works with NGOs, it will find it impossible to move beyond petroleum, with all its attendant environmental problems. Likewise, PepsiCo will struggle to live up to the spirit of its pledge to promote healthier living while the bulk of its profits comes from fattening drinks and snacks.

Partnerships that address NGOs’ misgivings about a firm’s supply chain are likely to prove much more successful. That has certainly been the case at Wal-Mart, which has demanded higher environmental standards from its suppliers, to widespread acclaim. Efforts by firms such as Coca-Cola to work with NGOs to conserve water and increase access to it in the developing world have promise since they should make it easier for the firm to secure a reliable supply of the main ingredient of its drinks.

The spill also highlights the question of whether NGOs should accept money for the advice they give to companies. For organisations such as the Nature Conservancy, which protects ecologically sensitive spots by buying them or persuading others to set them aside, businesses are a big source of income. But partnerships with grubby firms risk turning off its million-odd individual donors.

Campaigning NGOs, which rely on a reputation for righteousness, are particularly at risk. The website of Greenpeace, whose activists like to chain themselves to things, is full of reminders that it never accepts money from companies. Similarly, there has been relatively little criticism of Environmental Defense because, from its first dealings with McDonald’s, it has never accepted any corporate dollars. Ironically, this policy had prompted grumbles from some big individual donors, who asked why firms as rich as Wal-Mart and KKR should be the ultimate recipients of their charity.

The spill has presumably squelched such talk. Firms on the lookout for ways to improve their image and NGOs hoping to bring about meaningful change seem like natural partners. Most of the time the benefits of co-operation outweigh the risks. But whenever money changes hands, suspicions are bound to arise. The NGOs which accepted BP’s largesse presumably now wish that they had brought a longer spoon to the feast.

MIND, PSYCHE, SPIRITChris JordanBearing Witness:
Art, Grief & Transformation

An Interview by Brooke Jarvis, Yes! Magazine

Photographer Chris Jordan's latest project left him feeling grief and hopelessness. Now he wants more people to discover how productive those emotions can be.

Chris Jordan is used to working on the large scale. His most famous works try to capture the sheer scope of American consumer culture: discarded circuit boards spread out like a city, teetering stacks of crushed cars, two million plastic bottles (the number Americans use every five minutes) compiled in a single photograph.

But with his most recent project, Jordan is narrowing his focus. Last fall, he led a team of artists to Midway Atoll, a tiny, remote island in the middle of the Pacific where throw-away culture is having a major impact: albatross chicks are dying by the thousands, choking or starving after trying to eat small chunks of plastic carried to the island by the North Pacific Gyre (also called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch). The result is a relentless series of photographs of decomposing birds with bright, colorful plastic where their stomachs used to be.

For Jordan, opening himself up to the horror of what’s happening on Midway—all the while recognizing that it’s “just one of the tragedies that’s happening in our world”—was painful and intensely demoralizing. But, together with the writer Terry Tempest Williams, he’s now planning to return several more times to further immerse himself in the island’s hard truths—and to discover whether transformation can be found on the other side of grief.

Brooke Jarvis: Some might expect that, having seen one photo of an albatross killed by unknowingly eating plastic, you’ve seen them all. But it really does get sadder the more you see. What was it like to actually be there?

Chris Jordan: The experience of being out on Midway, for me, was mostly an experience of pure shock. Despite my efforts to allow myself to feel the tragedy that I was witnessing out there, I was working so much that it was difficult to be really present. It took a couple of months for the experience to really hit me on an emotional level. The way it happened for me, it was a kind of descent into something that looked a lot like hopelessness.

I’ve realized that the metaphor that I carried with me when I went to Midway was that Dante's Inferno scenario—you walk through the fire, and you come out the other side with renewed energy or perspective. What actually happened, though, is that I felt like I walked through the fire and then just burned up in it.

For example, I thought that after returning from Midway, I would much more rigorously eliminate my consumption of plastic. What actually happened was a feeling like, “No matter what I do, this problem is not going to be affected.” So I kind of let go—for a while there, I didn't even care if I used single-use disposable plastics. The problem was just so huge and overwhelming that I didn't feel like I could make any difference one way or another. It's taken me a lot of work to begin to have more of a perspective on that issue for myself personally.

Brooke: What has that work consisted of?

Chris: Right now I’m trying to focus on being more present, on trying to experience what's happening right now, on letting go of the future and circling the wagons in the present moment. For me, that means focusing on who I am and what my values are; working out how to connect with others and how to live with integrity; and keeping right on doing my work.

Brooke: When you went to Midway, you assembled a team of artists. Not, say, an artist and a biologist and an anthropologist. Why?

Chris: One of the fundamental problems of our world, underlying a lot of the disasters that are happening, is that we’re disconnected from what we feel. I think it would be fair to say that American culture is the culture that is most detached from its feelings of any culture in the world. We've become separated from nature and urbanized in this weird, new, overwhelming way—and the only way many of us have found to cope is to disconnect from the anxiety and the fear.

The nature of the information that we have to deal with compounds that disconnection even further. We converse daily in numbers of millions and billions as if we understand them. When I say we use 210 billion plastic bottles in the United States every year, I assume that I understand what that number means, and whoever is listening assumes they do, too. In fact it's totally incomprehensible. There are all these sociological studies that demonstrate vividly that the human mind cannot comprehend numbers higher than a few thousand. There are all these phenomena around the world, whether it's the 1.2 billion people in the world who lack access to safe drinking water or the 10 million tons of plastic that are swirling around in the Pacific Ocean. We can't see those phenomena, and the only information we have available to try to relate to them is in the form of numbers we absolutely cannot comprehend. It’s no wonder that we can’t relate to our global culture on any kind of feeling level.

That's where I think art comes in, and why I think it's so important right now, because feeling is the kingdom of art. I've gotten to meet lots of scientists who are uniformly wringing their hands in frustration at their inability to convey to the public any sense of the extreme urgency they feel about the issues that they're studying. The underlying phenomena are profoundly important, and yet the information we're receiving is fundamentally dry and incomprehensible. Art can act as a mediator between science and the public, translating what science can tell us into a visual language that we can understand, that allows for personal connection and feeling. My hope for all my work, and especially my Midway work, is to make the global personal.

Brooke: Your series "Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait" dealt with the same problem: trying to literally, visually represent those vast numbers we can’t conceptualize. Now, it seems you’re saying that the best way to relate isn’t to try to show the whole problem at once, but to ask how we can understand a huge problem by looking at one very small, but more emotional, part of it.

Chris: I was looking at these huge global issues and trying to figure out a way to make them personal. To some extent, with the "Running the Numbers" series, I had to let go of the personal a little bit. If I were to critique it myself, there's a kind of conceptual coldness to that work. It felt like a sacrifice I had to make to be able to address those giant issues, but I wanted to figure out a way to get out of the conceptual and into something that's more about direct feeling.

You know, just an infinitesimally tiny percentage of all the plastic that's in the Pacific Ocean ends up inside the stomachs of dead baby birds on Midway Island. But where else is there? That’s what’s so hard about these mass cultural issues—there’s nowhere you can see the full impact of the problem. We try to relate to these issues through the neocortex, the intellectual part of our mind that analyzes numbers, but that’s not the part of our mind that feels things. I wanted to really feel the Pacific Garbage Patch. There's no way that I know of other than going to Midway.

Brooke: Earlier, you used the word “witness” to describe your role on Midway. Is bearing witness a useful way to think about your work?

Chris: Yes—in fact, I spent time recently with the writer Terry Tempest Williams, who talked to me quite a bit about the value of bearing witness. It means more than just going there and seeing something. There's a kind of holding that happens, and a making of meaning. I stand in awe of how fearless she is to go all the way into grief and pain. I told her about my hope of going all the way into the horror and grief of what’s happening on Midway as a way of trying to come out the other side. And she said, "There is no coming out the other side. You just learn to live with the grief."

What I realize now, after talking to Terry, is that I need to go back there. The project is just not finished—there’s more to uncover, more to witness.

Brooke: In what way?

Chris: Well, when we were there we never saw a live albatross on the island. The birds are born in the spring and die through the summer, but decompose so quickly due to the heat, rain, and insects that by November or December there’s nothing left but piles of plastic. So we went in September, which happens to be the time of the year when all the albatross are out at sea.

Terry's going to go with me when I return there in June, and again in the fall, and possibly also for the winter solstice. By June the albatross will all be close to adults—almost a million of them. There will already by thousands of dead birds on the ground, and we’ll see more dying.

I’ve been told that we’ll actually see toothbrushes going down throats and chicks whose body cavities are filled all the way up to their necks with plastic—their parents try to feed them one more piece of plastic, one more cigarette lighter or magic marker, and the baby chokes to death. It's a long process of the babies just kind of flapping around, making an awful gagging sound, and then crashing into the ground and expiring. There’s a huge abundance of life and an overwhelming noise, day and night—and at the same time there’s death all around.

Brooke: And that emotional experience is very different from an intellectual one.

Chris: It’s the only way we really believe what’s happening, or how wrong it is. Even in the green movement, there's a tremendous amount of denial about how bad things are. I constantly hear the message, "We're just about to save the world. There’s going to be a giant transformation. It's just around the corner."

But there's a dark side that we aren't facing. Until we do, I don't think we're going to make any progress. You know what it's kind of like? The alcoholic who says, "I can stop whenever I want. It's going to be tomorrow. Please pass the vodka bottle." Until we start acknowledging the scope of our problem and face what we actually feel, the conversation can’t change.

Brooke: How can giving up on denial change the conversation?

Chris: I don't know. I don’t think we can know. It seems to me that that's a portal we have to step through. We have to let go of what's on the other side, and go through.

That’s the intention for my Midway work. I'm allowing myself to fully experience the horror of just one of the tragedies that's happening in our world. I'm letting go of how that's going to affect me.

When I do my public talks, I talk a lot about despair and shame and hopelessness. People come up to me and say they feel such a relief to talk about those emotions. We’re all feeling lost and disempowered and like some things are fundamentally wrong. And yet people are pretending things are fine: The economic bailout's going to get us right back where we were a few years ago and we're going to keep right on with the party. But I think we all know that isn't going to happen.

I believe that we need to allow ourselves to feel grief deeply. Anger and rage and shame—those are surface feelings. Grief is deep. Grief and love might be the two deepest human emotions. When we allow ourselves to really grieve, it's a transformational experience.

People I've known who have gone through the long slow death of a loved one from cancer, who have fully grieved and fully said goodbye and fully experienced the process, have come out of that experience transformed. They know more deeply who they are and what their priorities are. The Dalai Lama is not the only person in the world who has access to that kind of wisdom. We all do, but it gets clouded and fogged over by our daily rush and the messages we keep getting from our consumer culture, that material things will bring us happiness. We're all so involved in this headlong rush to a more materially luxurious lifestyle that we forget who we are and what really matters. We so badly need to reconnect with that right now.

If the conversation is going to turn in the direction of collective cultural wisdom, I believe we need to grieve first.

Brooke Jarvis interviewed Chris Jordan for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. She is YES! Magazine's web editor. Chris Jordan discusses his Running the Numbers series here. The Story of Stuff  addresses the real costs of our consumer-driven culture with innovative graphics.

Lessons Left Unlearnt From 2003 Gulf of Mexico Near-Spill

Posted by JoulesBurn on June 4, 2010 - 7:30am
Topic: Environment/Sustainability
Tags: bp, gulf of mexico, gulf of mexico oil spill, original, thunder horse, transocean [list all tags]

In May 2003, the Transocean drillship Discoverer Enterprise, under contract from BP, was getting ready to pull out of a nearly-completed development well for the Thunderhorse project in the Gulf of Mexico, about 40 miles south of the current (2010) spill at the Macondo prospect. For some reason, the ship was dragged off its position such that the riser reaching down 6000 feet to the well at the seafloor was snapped off in two places. In this case, a blind-shear ram blow out preventer (BOP) did its job, sealing off the well below and preventing what could have been the largest U.S. oil spill. As it was, the only thing spilled was the drilling mud remaining in the various riser pieces dangling from the ship, buried in mud, or stuck vertically into the seafloor. After rehabilitating the well and then taking stock of the fact that the unthinkable could have happened, BP and Transocean apparently decided not to think about it too much more.

But after reading through some MMS reports, it seems that near-misses happen a lot. Oops.

Don't Push That Button!

Drilling a well in thousands of feet of water from surface vessel is tricky business, and accidents do happen. For a good survey of the various ways in which blowouts can occur, see this rather extensive report. Also, the US Minerals Management Service (MMS), which oversees oil and gas extraction in the northern Gulf of Mexico, makes available on its web site reports of assorted accidents. A number of cases involve the riser becoming disconnected from the wellhead and spilling drilling mud into the water. It can be necessary to do this intentionally, or as part of an automated sequence, if the drillship cannot maintain its position directly above the well within some tolerance due to weather or strong currents. For example, here is one incident from 2005:

On July 5, 2005, an unplanned riser disconnect was initiated on the Ensco 7500 semi-submersible rig, which had been engaged in exploratory drilling activities, because of unfavorable sea and wind conditions associated with an approaching tropical depression. While the riser volume was being displaced with seawater in preparation for the disconnect operation, the rig was no longer able to maintain station adequately enough to complete the operation. As a result, the riser was disconnected from the Lower Marine Riser Package (LMRP), at which time 710 barrels of synthetic-based mud was released from the riser into the GOM. At the time of the disconnect, there were no open hole hydrocarbons exposed below the casing depth.

Here is a case where the disconnect became necessary due to bad data:

On December 2, 2007 at approximately 1300 hours with well completion operations in process, the Dynamic Positioning Operator (DPO) was performing a routine preventive maintenance procedure for the Dynamic Positioning (DP) system when the riser Emergency Disconnect Sequence (EDS) was activated. The disconnect was below the Lower Marine Riser Package (LMRP) where it connects to the BOP stack on top of the wellhead and resulted in the discharge of approximately 550 barrels of Sodium Bromide brine into GOM waters.

For this procedure, DP functional control was transferred from the primary console to the secondary console and the primary console was subsequently shut down. DP functional control using the secondary console was observed to be normal. The primary console was restarted approximately three minutes later and the data backup function was initiated by the DPO. This function transfers control data from the online master console, at this time the secondary console, to other DP consoles to ensure correct synchronization between all consoles. The data transfer from secondary console to primary console was completed but some of the data transferred was corrupted and the DPO did not observe this. Functional control was then transferred from the secondary console to the primary console. The DPO recognized there was a discrepancy for the rig position shown on the both the primary and secondary consoles.

In an attempt to correct the error, the DPO performed a second Initialize Backup function from the now master console, the primary console. This caused corrupt data to be transferred back to secondary consolewhich now gave both the primary console and secondary console corrupt control data. The DPO, along with the Captain, observed the difference between the primary and secondary consoles and began trying to identify the fault. This was done by changing position references, transferring control capability between the control consoles, and enabling/disabling different position reference sensors. This resulted in another position reference sensor inadvertently becoming the master reference sensor and reset the apparent rig position such that the rig began to move further away from location when the DP system was trying to correct the rig position by moving the rig back on location.

This led the DP system to chase after an erroneous position causing the rig to move outside its watch circle and exceed the riser angle limit, thus leading to the initiation of the EDS by the DP system which took approximately 58 seconds to complete. The process was initiated at the Driller Control Panel after confirmation was given by the DPO. The ROV was launched to inspect the wellhead, subsea tree, and BOP stack. The rig was moved to a safe location for the DP system to be analyzed and corrected.

This sequence of events is rather comical. But better still are the cases due directly to human error (although other humans contributed with poor design). Here is one:

Investigation of Riser Disconnect and Blowout, Mississippi Canyon Block 538, OCS-G 16614 Well #2, February 28, 2000

The Ocean Concord was in the process of running a liner on drill pipe when the lower marine riser package (LMRP) was inadvertently disconnected from the blowout preventer (BOP) stack. The disconnect resulted in the discharge to the sea of approximately 806 barrels of synthetic mud from the riser and 150 barrels of synthetic mud and 150-200 barrels of crude oil from the wellbore.

Some findings:

• The SSE [Subsea Engineer] was installing the panel guards on the Riser Connector function button on the remote panel at 1410 hours on February 28, 2000.
• The remote panel cover was open and the face of the panel was pulled out at the time of the incident.
• The SSE inadvertently contacted the LMRP disconnect button while he was drilling mounting holes in the BOP panel.
• The SSE was unaware of the LMRP disconnection until he heard the alarms sounding, indicating low accumulator pressure.
• The SSE stated during the Diamond SIR meeting that he did not follow any lockout/tagout procedures to de-energize the BOP control panel prior to working on the panel.
• The light bulbs for the LMRP latch/unlatch functions were burned out at the time of the panel modifications.

The following information was provided to the panel by Diamond from their post-accident SIR meeting:

• The SSE stated that he did not realize it was possible to lock out the remote panel until after the incident.
• The SSE had never been to well-control training. He had worked for another contractor as a roughneck and had recently trained with both subsea engineers on the Concord. The SSE stated that additional training may have helped him prevent this incident. The OIM stated that this was the SSE’s second hitch on his own on the Concord.
• The SSE stated that he knew that if the riser unlatched that there would be a loss of mud from the riser, but he did not know that the well would flow. The SSE also stated that he did not consider "any such risk prior to the job" of installing the panel guards.

Here is yet another problem involving a Sea Surface Engineer pushing buttons by mistake. It can be found in the MMS reports here. The incident date was January 19, 2000.

The rig's subsea engineer was function testing the blind shear rams. The weekly function test was performed from the remote blowout preventer (BOP) panel in the offshore installation manager's office.  Instead of testing the blind shear rams, the engineer inadvertently pushed the LMRP button on the panel which unintentionally activated and disconnected the lower marine riser package (LMRP).  The control panel buttons for the lower marine riser package (LMRP) did not have enough security to prevent activating the wrong function.  It was determined that 2,400 barrels of 60% synthetic-based drilling mud (SBM) leaked into the Gulf of Mexico.  It is estimated that the lost SBM contained approximately 1,440 barrels of synthetic base oil.

Based on the block (822), this would be an early well in the Thunderhorse field. However, the first well in that block wasn't completed until 10 months later, based on the development history of the field.

Thunder Horse 2 was drilled in Block 822. It reached its total depth of 29,060ft in November 2000. The well was drilled by the Discoverer Enterprise in 6,300ft of water, 1.5 miles south-east of the discovery well. It encountered 675ft net of pay in three primary intervals.

The discovery well Thunderhorse 1 was completed in 1999 in a different block, leading to the strong probability that this well is indeed Thunderhorse 2 -- and that it took another ten months to finish. This document seems to confirm this identification (see Appendix Table H-2), indicating the drilling started in December 1999. In any case, it brings us back to the broken riser incident we started with as the drillship involved above was also the Transocean Discoverer Enterprise. BP's currently underperforming Thunderhorse endeavor seems to have had a storied beginning as well.

Failure to Disconnect

Here is a brief MMS report on the riser break incident:

The spill occurred at Mississippi Canyon (MC) 778, latitude 28.19 degrees N. and longitude 88.49 degrees W. It occurred as the Discoverer Enterprise was pulling out of the wellhole with bottom location at MC 822. At the time of the incident, conditions were 2-3 ft seas with a 1.9 knot current. The drilling vessel was in the process of pulling of of the hole when it experienced wave action heaving and jarring. The riser parted in two places at approximately 3,200 ft an 5,087 ft. water depths. There was a release of 2,450 barrels of 58% Accolade synthetic-based drilling mud (SBM). It is estimated that the lost SBM contained approximately 1,421 barrels of Accolade synthetic base oil .

I found more details, also apparently from MMS, here.

While drilling in approximately 6,000 feet of water, a drillship recently experienced a catastrophic failure of the marine riser. The drillship was equipped with a dual derrick, and dual activity was being conducted at the time of the incident. On the forward rotary, where the marine riser was installed, the rig crew was in the process of pulling out of the hole from total depth. On the aft rotary, the rig crew was in the process of running 20-inch casing for an adjacent well. The failure of the flanged marine riser occurred when drillpipe had been pulled a couple hundred feet off-bottom. At that time, the rig experienced a heave motion followed by a strong jarring action. The ROV, which had been launched to observe the running of the 20-inch casing, was dispatched to examine the marine riser.

When the ROV reached approximately 3,200 feet of water, it was determined that the riser had separated between riser joint 39 and 40 and was unloading the synthetic-based mud that was in use at the time. The drillpipe was observed to be intact at this depth. As the ROV traced the drillpipe deeper, it was found penetrating the lower section of buoyant riser that was free-standing from the seafloor to approximately 1,000 feet from the mudline. The remainder of the riser was found scattered on the seafloor surrounding the wellhead and BOP stack.

As the ROV scanned the BOP stack, it was determined that the riser was cleanly parted about one foot above the lower marine riser package. There was no flow observed from the well. When the riser parted, the "dead man" system activated, and all fail safe valves, casing shear rams, and lower blind shear rams were closed. The drillpipe was successfully sheared by this activation. At a later point, the ROV used a hot stab to activate a second set of upper blind shear rams to provide another barrier on the wellbore. Although the well control equipment functioned as designed, the parting of the marine riser resulted in a release of an undetermined amount of synthetic based mud.

The subject accident is currently under investigation by MMS. Upon its completion, the investigation report, as well as a possible follow-up Safety Alert, will be made available to the public. Your attention is directed to our conditions of approval for Applications for Permit to Drill involving the use of subsea BOP stacks. The approval outlines our requirements for the shut-in capability of the well in the event of an unplanned disconnect of the lower marine riser package or the parting of the marine riser. It should be noted again that, in this incident, the "deadman" system functioned properly and prevented the release of well bore fluids into the water column.

Shown below is a comparison of the Lower Marine Riser Package (LMRP) for the 2003 Thunderhorse well (with the riser "parted") with that for the 2010 BP Macondo well after the bent riser was cut off with a saw. In the case of the former, the LMRP was disconnected from the BOP using the hot stab panel. For the Macondo well, this must not have been possible, since the "Containment Cap" to collect the oil was apparently designed to be sealed around the existing LMRP.

Left: LMRP for BP Thunderhorse, 2003. Right: LMRP for BP Macondo, 2010 The Afterspill, and What Could Have Been

The final MMS report on this incident was rather inconclusive as to why the riser was ripped apart.

Fate and Effects of a Spill of Synthetic-Based Drilling Fluid at Mississippi Canyon Block 778

In particular, the Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico was exonerated:

The Loop Current did not directly affect the MC 778 drill site on May 21, 2003. Currents were weak in the upper 1,100 m (3,609 ft). Current speeds below 1,100 m (3,609 ft) are not known because measurements taken by the operator and made available to MMS did not extend from 1,100 m (3,609 ft) to the seafloor at 1,841 m (6,040 ft).

However, one report on this incident, excerpted in the TAMU spreadsheet, reads as follows:

At the time of the incident, conditions were 2-3 ft seas with a 1.9 knot current.  The drilling vessel was in the process of pulling of of the hole when it experienced wave action heaving and jarring. The riser parted in two places at approximately 3,200 ft an 5,087 ft. water depths. 

What differentiates this incident (along with many other cases of riser separation) from the 2010 Macondo spill is that the BOPs did what they are supposed to in 2003. Most importantly, the blind-shear BOP engaged, cutting through the drillstring and closing off the well.

 

Shear blades to cut through the DP and seal the well (Varco )

 

What if this hadn't happened? BP definitely thought about this, and worked with the NOAA Office of Response and Restoration to consider the potential impact.

The top connector of the BOP was damaged, with one joint leaning against the BOP, dangerously close to the control lines ....

Loss of well containment would result in more oil spilled in a week than occurred during the whole of the T/V Exxon's Valdez oil spill.

From: COMBINING MODELING WITH RESPONSE IN POTENTIAL DEEP WELL BLOWOUT: LESSONS LEARNED FROM THUNDER HORSE

NOAA performed modeling to gauge the consequences of such a large spill in deepwater, but many unknown parameters prevented definitive conclusions. Indeed, the realization of the scenario with the Macondo spill has provided many surprises with regards to the fate of the oil and gas.

Heck of a Job, BP

Other paperwork which emanated from the near-spill seems less contemplative, but rather more inwardly focused on what went right in a corporate sense. First, we have an article in the Society of Professional Engineers (SPE) journal, which is available in this preview:

Thunder Horse Drilling-Riser Break—The Road to Recovery

Here are the "Major Learnings":

• Show Leadership Commitment.
• Implement Project-Management Practices Quickly.
• Secure the Right External Technical Expertise.
• Get the Right Support Staff.
• Get People in the Right Places.
• Plan How To Communicate Internally and Externally.

Also, BP funded a study by the School of Psychology at the University of Aberdeen, King’s College, Aberdeen, Scotland.

Following the initial message from the rig to the Operations Manager, an Incident Management Team (IMT) was assembled in the Houston office. The IMT immediately began to assess the situation, take steps to give instructions to the rig to assess and control damage, and to plan a longer-term response. The IMT was faced with a challenging situation, one which had never been experienced before especially in such depths of water. Fortunately neither injuries, nor environmental leakage had occurred. A number of separate sub-teams were established and tasked with dealing with issues such as Operations, Riser recovery, Blow Out Preventer (BOP) operability, Well integrity, Well re-entry, and Relief well planning. The task for the IMT was to assess and respond to any potential threat to people, wildlife or the environment, to secure the remaining riser section, to recover scattered riser pieces (on the sea bed), and eventually to re-attach the pipes connecting the rig to the well-head. After a period of 68 days, with a financial cost of $100,000 per day, the rig was re-attached to the well head and the well was stabilised without any leakages to the environment

From: INCIDENT COMMAND SKILLS IN THE MANAGEMENT OF AN OIL INDUSTRY DRILLING INCIDENT

The Missing Memo

While such self-reflection is useful, recent events suggest that something is missing. The difference between a cost of $6.8 million plus 68 days delay, and a cost of untold $billions plus environmental disaster, was the last line of defense, the blowout preventer. In the 2003 spill, and in many similar cases, the fact that the blind-shear BOP functioned as intended is not a sign that the system worked, for a truly fail-safe system would be where the last line of defense from disaster is never reached. MMS did note the alarming trend in this 2005 memo:

Human Engineering Factors Result in Increasing Number of Riser Disconnects

A significant number of accidental riser disconnects have been experienced in deepwater operations during the last five years. Each event had the potential for causing serious well-control issues.

So here we are five years later, and we finally hit paydirt with a failed BOP and a spill for real. We can ponder about what would have transpired if the oversized wire cutters would have worked on the Deepwater Horizon, stopping the Macondo spill before it started. A few internal studies by those involved. Another MMS report of a drilling mud leaking from a severed riser. Louisiana fishermen still working.

Snip.