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SUNDAY, JULY 18, 2010 Cap may erase sense of hopelessness in oil spill


Situation bristles with unknowns, but a win is powerful


by Joel Achenbach


So is it over? Not technically, not politically,


not environmentally. BP’s Macon- do well remains dangerous, a threat to gush anew, and very much alive until it is plugged with cement in a bottom-kill that’s still weeks away at best. Criminal and civil investigations are going full bore. Exploratory drill rigs remain locked out of the deep water as the oil industry tries to prove that it knows what it’s doing. Lawsuits are flying. And the ecological impact is still playing out as uncounted mil- lions of gallons of oil pollute the Gulf of Mexico. But something may have come to an end in the past few days: the sense that nothing would ever go right with this demon well. Macondo for the moment is shut in. It’s not dead, but neither has it spewed any oil into the gulf since Thursday. After a lengthy meeting between government scientists and BP engineers Sat- urday afternoon, retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen gave BP permission to keep the well sealed for another 24 hours, ex- tending an “integrity test” that strangled the well for the first time and kicked the crisis into its endgame. That could mean that the well will be reopened Sunday after- noon. Allen’s directive appeared to have been crafted to keep all options on the table, but the de- fault position remains that the shut-in procedure will come to an end at some point. “When this test is eventually stopped, we will immediately re- turn to containment” using the new, tight-fitting cap on the well and surface ships that can cap- ture or flare oil and gas, Allen said. The shutting-in of the well was


never the primary purpose of the “3 ram capping stack” lowered onto the top of the well Monday night. The 75-ton cap, which re- placed the loose-fitting “top hat,” was conceived as a mechanism to permit the capturing of more oil after it became clear that early flow rate estimates were far too low. Along the way, engineers raised the possibility that they could use the valves on the new cap to turn off the well as one might an ordinary faucet. Administration officials, in- cluding President Obama, have emphasized that a re-opening of the well would not mean a return to the same ugly scene of a billow- ing gusher. But the optics will be unpleasant in the short run. Re- opening the well would mean that the oily plume, omnipresent for months on cable TV and Internet feeds from the deep gulf, would return at least temporarily as engineers open the choke valve and let oil and gas vent into the gulf.


“If we make the decision to open up the well, there will be a period when oil will go back into the gulf,” BP senior vice president Kent Wells said Saturday morn- ing.


DAVE MARTIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS Beachgoers watch the surf in Gulf Shores, Ala., where tourism is picking up with news that the flow of oil from a blown BP well in the Gulf of Mexico has been stopped. The oil spill: The latest developments


 BP’s two-day test of the new cap on its blown-out well was extended Saturday for another 24 hours. Officials continue to monitor pressure to assess whether the well is breached somewhere beneath the sea floor. Retired Adm. Thad Allen, the national incident commander, said for the first time that once the test is completed, “we will immediately return to containment,” opening the cap and collecting the oil that gushes from the broken wellhead.


 A supertanker retrofitted to scoop up oil has been ineffective in two weeks of tests in the gulf. The U.S. Coast Guard said the Taiwanese vessel A Whale was too big to maneuver around the smaller patches and ribbons of oil on the water. Smaller, more agile vessels have been more useful in getting at the oil.


— From news services The Post’s iPhone App


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tectors. They’re taking the tem- perature of the casing; they’re sampling bubbles coming out of a valve. It’s a situation where every- one is hopeful but still checking all the closets and under the beds. Officials remain concerned


about “low probability, high con- sequence” hazards. But Wells said that engineers and scientists are increasingly confident that the well isn’t leaking into the geologi- cal formations. “There’s no evidence that we


MARIO TAMA/GETTY IMAGES


Cleanup workers tackle an oil-affected beach in Grand Isle, La. The state has reopened most gulf areas to recreational fishing.


What has been called the worst


environmental crisis in U.S. his- tory has also been a technological crisis, carrying echoes of Three Mile Island, which rattled the nu- clear power industry, and Apollo


13, which challenged engineers to fix a problem — moon-bound as- tronauts in a broken spaceship — no one had ever faced. For 87 days, from April 20, when the Ma- condo well blew out and ignited a


fireball on the doomed rig Deep- water Horizon, killing 11 workers, until Thursday afternoon, the well defied all plans to throttle it. The new cap gave engineers


more leverage. The well could yet spring a surprise. Robotic vehi- cles are staring at the mud around the blowout preventer and in all directions, looking for new leaks. They’re using sonar, acoustic instruments, seismic de-


don’t have integrity,” Wells said. The pressure in the well was measured Saturday morning at 6,745 pounds per square inch, ris- ing only a couple of pounds per hour and nearing equilibrium. That pressure level is ambiguous. Scientists had hoped to see pres- sures above 7,500 psi, or even 8,000 or 9,000, officials have said, because such high pres- sures, holding steady, would be clear evidence that the well cas- ing is sound. If lower than about


Officials remain concerned about “low probability, high


consequence” hazards.


6,000 psi, there could be little doubt that the casing has failed. The middle range has created


two competing scenarios. One is that that there are leaks that have kept the well from pressurizing further. The other is that the res- ervoir is running out of gas — and oil — after gushing for so long. The protracted nature of the dis- aster could have partially deplet- ed Macondo, which is the best- case scenario for the pressure test if not the prettiest picture in the broader sense. Wells said BP favors this sec- ond scenario because of the way the pressures rose steadily, fitting a model that’s consistent with a well that isn’t damaged. No one has popped champagne


or expressed any triumphalism. BP engineers and their associates from other oil companies helping out in the BP war room are un- likely to boast of success given the previous setbacks and the ini- tial, fatal disaster itself, and the government will not be present- ing the oil company any bou- quets. The ultimate end will come, of-


ficials hope, when a relief well plugs Macondo with mud and then cement. The first of two re- lief wells is getting close and should intercept the well around the end of July, with the bottom- kill taking anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, Wells said. achenbachj@washpost.com


Federal agency’s probes into oil-rig accidents show history of inconsistency mms from A1


riod, with 21 considered worthy of more rigorous and extended scru- tiny by a panel. As federal inspectors work to


dissect the underlying causes of the BP accident — an issue to be probed this week in a new round of joint panel hearings in Kenner, La. — The Washington Post re- viewed several dozen serious MMS investigations in recent years to assess how they were conducted and found large varia- tions in aggressiveness and out- come. In some cases, investigators ran their own tests, tracked down wit- nesses and did complicated tech- nical calculations. In others, they relied heavily on information and witness interviews provided by companies. Once their findings were forwarded to agency offi- cials for review, many probes re- sulted in small fines or none at all. MMS levied financial penalties 154 times in the past five years, agency officials testified last month. Although the agency now may assess fines of up to $35,000 per day, in five years it collected only $8.5 million. Its largest fine between 2000 and 2009 was $697,500, according to an MMS Web site. It took 11 months for MMS to fi- nalize its report in the LLOG case, and along the way it sometimes accepted the accounts of com- pany officials without probing


more deeply, the report shows. Investigators asked to see a


safety valve provided by a sub- contractor, Halliburton Corp. When Halliburton told investiga- tors the device was under repair and couldn’t be examined, an in- spector accepted the company’s assertions and data. Kendra Bar- koff, an Interior Department spokeswoman, said Saturday that the valve played no role in the ac- cident. The inquiry concluded that no rules had been broken, no fines were warranted, and the agency’s response should be to alert the in- dustry to potential risks. Barkoff noted that “some accidents are just that: accidents that involve no wrongdoing or criminal or negligent behavior.” The team looking into that case was led by Frank Patton, a veteran investigator also responsible for monitoring the Deepwater Hori- zon rig. In recent weeks, Patton has testified that he approved a BP drilling plan that other oil companies and drilling experts have said was deeply flawed. The supervisor who approved


the LLOG report was J. David Dykes, co-chairman of the joint panel with the Coast Guard that on Monday begins its second round of hearings into the BP blowout. “Frank Patton and David Dykes


. . . are committed to ensuring the safety of offshore energy opera- tion,” Barkoff said.


In an interview, Michael Brom- wich, director of the MMS suc- cessor agency, the Bureau of Ocean Energy, declined to look back on specific MMS investiga- tions but said he believes per- formance will improve with the addition of up to 200 new in- spectors in coming years. He said there are many dedicated and hardworking inspectors examin- ing the industry. “I’ve certainly heard and read


the agency wasn’t aggressive in the past,” he said. “And given the revenues coming into the compa- nies, the fines seem like a paltry amount. But going forward, when we find violations we will really impose sanctions that fit those vi- olations.”


Some observers, like Christo-


pher Jones of Baton Rouge, want assurances that the joint panel looking into the BP accident will hold industry accountable. Jones, whose 28-year-old brother, Gor- don, was among the 11 who died in the Deepwater Horizon explo- sion, said the oil companies should not be left to “brush aside their inspections and continue doing whatever they want to do.” Some panel investigations re-


flect rigorous scrutiny. They show accident inspectors analyzing complicated calculations, includ- ing gas pressure, fluid chemical compositions and equipment strength. Even when inspectors docu- mented long-standing problems,


sometimes the companies were not fined, the Post review found. Even the toughest fines appeared to have little impact. Dan Dono- van, a spokesman for Dominion Exploration & Production, said he could find no evidence of a $675,500 fine cited against the company on an MMS Web site and questioned its accuracy. “That’s the largest fine? That’s


unbelievable,” Donovan said. MMS focused on delinquent


paperwork in 2007 after chron- icling a leaking pipeline near a Stone Energy platform that had needed attention for six months. The company at first denied re- sponsibility when five small oil slicks showed up near its produc- tion platform. A few days later, a larger oil slick, 30 miles long and six miles wide, was reported near the Stone platform. When the larger spill surfaced and an MMS inspector visited the platform, “the Operator initially questioned the possibility” that it was responsible, the report said. Two tests that day requested by MMS verified that the Stone pipe was leaking. In reviewing Stone’s paperwork, MMS discovered that required corrosion tests had not been performed for some time. Divers who went down to inspect the pipes found four holes. At the end of its investigation, the MMS team wrote that the corroded pipes had been vulnerable for “at least six months.” It did not rec- ommend a fine, penalty or indus-


try warning. Instead, it suggested the agency “reanalyze its pro- cedures” to track delinquent re- ports. Stone spokesman Tim O’Leary said the company be- lieved the pipeline damage “was not caused by corrosion but by mechanical damage, such as an anchor dragging over the pipeline during Hurricane Katrina.” In March 2000, Dykes was called upon to help investigate one of his former employers, Bur- lington Resources. A crane opera- tor was seriously injured when his crane collapsed while carry- ing too much load at an unsafe angle. Working at night and in heavy winds, the Burlington rig workers tried to move a heavy tank from a boat onto the rig deck. The crane operator radioed the boat master to reposition, and the master ex- plained the weather conditions were making the task difficult. A supervisor ordered work to pro- ceed anyway. After lifting the tank six feet, the crane snapped in four places. Parts tumbled — with the operator — onto the boat. Co- workers pulled him from the wreckage before the rest of the crane toppled. Dykes’s team found that Bur-


lington “failed to ensure that dai- ly crane inspections were per- formed . . . failed to ensure that all onside supervisors adhere to [safety] guidelines” and learned little from a similar 1996 crane failure on one of its platforms.


The team cited no violations, and no fines were imposed. The investigators recommended a safety alert instead and urged MMS to audit outdated cranes. While the safety of oil-rig work has improved over the years, death and injury remain ever- present threats. In July 2006, for instance, a crew member of the vessel Lorelay stood in the “pinch point” between two giant pipe segments. As he worked, one of the pipes moved along a conveyor and pinned him from behind, crushing him. MMS investigators tried to as- sess what set the second pipe in motion. They visited the scene the next day, interviewed some of the crew, gathered documents and re- viewed the findings of an in- vestigation by the ship owner. Two workers were nearby at the time of the incident but said they saw nothing. Closed-circuit cameras also monitored the area, but the investigators reported that the cameras did not work on the day of the accident. The panel’s findings were in- conclusive. “The fatality was caused by the inside conveyor sys- tem becoming inadvertently en- ergized,” it noted, “causing un- controlled pipe movement.” kaufmanm@washpost.com leonnigc@washpost.com hilzenrath@washpost.com


Staff writer Steven Mufson contributed to this story.


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