Hi Rockman,
Thanks for having had a look at this stuff and getting back to me again. I appreciate it. It's been kinda lonely given that not one swinging dick on Elgin or the Viking has come out in the open and made any attempt to ensure that the rest of us find out what really happened. I just don't understand that. Every one of them could have died. People undoubtedly will if the lessons are not learnt. So despite what I understand from the report (and it's not everything by any means), it's kinda difficult to trust my judgement when I’ve been so isolated. Especially when that "judgment" tells me that the UK regulator is broken and useless.
I was in Norway for nigh on 20 years till I retired 3 years ago. I was mud engineer and a safety rep on the Viking’s near-identical sister rig Rowan Norway. We were on Ekofisk doing abandonments and sidetracks. Couldn’t get even the basics about Elgin. Just kept at it after I retired. It’s getting interesting now with a tribunal about to make a decision on HSE’s plausibility when they dealt with my requests for information. Also, my MP (Member of Parliament - UK) and I are going to a meeting with the HSE it seems. May well be the new year also.
This is a big deal. I can’t see how the safety failure here was any less than it was on Piper Alpha. On Elgin it just didn’t ignite. Pure chance!
Total left a hole in their G4 production casing since 2004 and was increasingly bleeding off pressure (and gas/fluids?) from the 'A' annulus, and pulling more and more gas and condensate into the well. The HSE seems to not have been able to intervene at any level in those eight years. And the behaviour of Total in the last month, after they lost the production and intermediate casings, is just incredible. Did HSE know what was going on? Surely not! But then why not? Were they even informed by Total of what was going on and of their "plan" to kill G4? And if HSE were informed did they agree with how Total was handling the situation? It's bonkers.
I had heard that there was a rumour going about in certain circles, that the HSE had given Total permission to produce the well through the casing. I thought that that was just so outrageous that it was obviously bullshit. But was that not in fact pretty much what was going on here? Could it possibly be that what they were regularly bleeding off at surface from the ‘A’ annulus was gas and formation fluids and routing it through the production process? What would have been in that annulus 8 years down the line from the breach in the completion casing and repeated bleeding of the annulus? And could HSE have known about this and given the go-ahead to keep doing it?
Mind you at one point Total seem to have tried to bullhead brine into the ‘A’ annulus.
I can see why you might be wondering if you read correctly the bit about the 20” casing being un-cemented, I was certainly confused. The report says;
"Three of the well kill specific risk assessments concluded that an over-pressurisation of the 'C' annulus would result in a failure of the un-cemented surface casing below the 20-inch shoe."
Who writes this shit? There is no un-cemented surface casing below the 20-inch shoe. The only casing below the 20” shoe is the 13 3/8”. I’m guessing they’re trying to say that in the event of a failure of the 20” casing, formation fluids/gas would vent to the formation below the 20” shoe.
But if this is what they mean I’ve never heard anything like it in my life. Why would gas breaching the 20” casing (specially if that breach was at the mud line hanger), head south and enter a rock formation when it could head north following the un-cemented 20” casing, and blown out from the ports in the 30” casing anyway? And why would someone design a well that ensured an underground blowout rather than a surface blowout. How would they have killed this well had it blown out underground and the gas had made it’s way up to the seabed and created a crater
Total didn’t take over the BOP from the G8 to the G4 well. HSE say,
“Total decided to leave the blowout preventer suspended on G8 to allow them to skid the Viking away from the EWHP as quickly as possible (my emphasis) and give access to G4 well kill.”
But it seems that there were
“known uncertainties”
about
“the strength and condition of the mud line suspension system”
. There was
“known pressure communication between the 'B' and 'C' annulus”
from at least as far back as January 2012. I’m guessing this mud line suspension system was a riser tieback system for a well that had been drilled on the Elgin template before the platform was put in place and was subsequently tied back to the production deck on the EWHP. But I’ve been told that the real reason they didn’t take the BOP onto G4 was because they already knew there was communication all the way through to the ‘D’ annulus and that the BOP would have been useless.
And what is this about allowing them
“to skid the Viking away from the EWHP”
? How would you “skid” a jackup away from a platform? And why if you could, would you in this case? Surely they just skidded the cantilever to position the rig over the G4 well. The G8 and G4 wellheads would have just been meters apart. And it does make you wonder what they were up to that it took so long to start the intervention on G4.
On February 25, Total’s Wells Department management, monitoring event on the rig from shore
“ . . . were concerned that the rate of pressure increase in the 'C' annulus was such that it gave them only 100 minutes before a blowout could occur”
. It didn’t happen and a G4 well kill task force was convened on Monday 27 - wouldn’t want to ruin peoples week-ends would we? At this point the fuck-ups begin to come thick and fast. In the end it took them 19 days to “suspend” work on G8 and skid the rig over to G4. Mind you they though before February 25 that G8 was the more dangerous of the two wells. They must have had a good deal of work before they could leave G8 and go over to G4. Maybe they couldn’t risk taking the BOP off G8.
Not an easy story you tell about your daughter and her fears for your life. I’ll be honest, I got into a few situations which were potentially life, or at least limb, threatening, but the last 20 years or so I spent in Norway I didn’t come anywhere near to a situation comparable to Elgin. Maybe in the early seventies when I really didn’t know much at all about what was going on around me, or what the implications were. But now the HSE openly admit that since Elgin there has been roughly one hydrocarbon release every six months which have come
“perilously close to disaster”
in the UK sector. A world class regulatory regime indeed! A fucking shambles more like.