Oil Companies Are Still Using The Faulty Equipment That Caused The BP Oil Spill b4in.org/b4Ke The historic BP oil well explosion in April 2010 was not supposed to be so bad. If things had gone as planned, the offshore drilling rig’s last defense — a deep-sea mechanism called a “blowout preventer” — would have kicked in, sealing the drill pipe and short-circuiting the explosion, potentially preventing 11 deaths and 5 million barrels of crude oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico. But for reasons unknown, the blowout preventer malfunctioned, part of an array of errors that left behind the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry, according to a U.S. Chemical Safety Board report released Thursday. That report also said the same equipment is still widely-used in offshore drilling, and more needs to be done to make it safer. “Although both regulators and the industry itself have made significant progress since the 2010 calamity, more must be done to ensure the correct functioning of blowout preventers and other safety-critical elements that protect workers and the environment from major offshore accidents,” CSB Chairman Rafael Moure-Eraso said in a statement. Like other reports that have been released on the disaster, the CSB’s two-volume draft report pointed to multiple causes, but placed a deeper focus on the blowout preventer — a “last line of defense” against runaway wells used on both offshore and onshore operations. According to the report, an emergency device within the blowout preventer called a “blind shear ram” activated as planned, but didn’t seal the pipe like it was supposed to. As Clifford Krauss explains in the New York Times: The shear ram did not seal the well drill pipe; instead, it punctured the pipe and sent oil and gas gushing to the surface. The study found that the drill pipe had buckled under the tremendous pressure of the oil and gas rising from the well from the initial blowout, while previous studies concluded that the pipe buckled days after the initial explosion. More b4in.org/b4Ke
Posted on: Wed, 11 Jun 2014 18:22:13 +0000
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