Drilling advances

	Vol. 231 No. 9
JIM REDDEN, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

US could find some answers at Ekofisk

Raise your hand if you ever rolled your eyes when Grandpa Mort began a conversation with “back in my day.” Thought so. You’re certainly not alone, as most of us tend to dismiss offhand any historical footnote.

Yet, given all the rationalization and head scratching in the Gulf of Mexico these days, now may be as good a time as any to reassess the lessons available from bygone incidents. As regulators, scientists and red-faced journalists try to explain what happened to all the oil and the wholesale environmental apocalypse they had prophesied most of the summer, they might begin looking for answers in a quasi-precedent that was set more than 33 years ago and thousands of miles from the ill-fated Macondo wellsite.

By April 22, 1977, Ekofisk Field in the Norwegian North Sea had been producing for a mere six years. On that spring day, the crew aboard the Ekofisk Bravo platform was finishing what should have been a routine workover on the B-14 production well. Media accounts at the time reported that the crew had removed the Christmas tree prior to pulling nearly 10,000 ft of production tubing out of the hole when the well suddenly kicked and began flowing uncontrollably. Here’s where the predicament got a bit dicey. The crew somehow had managed to install the surface BOP upside down—an exercise that would seem to require more than a little effort in itself.

Richard Hatteburg remembers precisely what he and colleague Asger “Boots” Hansen of the then-legendary Red Adair Co. found when they arrived at the stricken Bravo platform the next day. “Oil was spewing all over the place,” remembers the senior well control specialist with what is now Boots & Coots, which Hansen and the late E. O. “Coots” Matthews formed the following year. “They had put the BOP upside down and tightened it up with a couple of bolts. It was studded, so we couldn’t pick it up. We couldn’t pump into it. We couldn’t do anything with it at all.”

With a conventional well kill out of the question and oil, gas and mud reportedly shooting more than 180 ft through the derrick and into the North Sea, the two proceeded to improvise. Fireboats working nearby immediately rushed to the location and began spraying water on the platform, which amazingly never ignited, and all 112 rig workers were evacuated safely. Following a couple of failed attempts and a bit of on-the-fly engineering, seven days later they managed to rework the BOP sufficiently to enable kill-weight fluid to be bullheaded into the wellbore and contain the flow, but not before an estimated 202,380 bbl of crude had discharged.

Despite still being regarded as the largest oil spill ever in the North Sea, the Ekofisk Bravo episode resulted in minimal environmental impact. Post-incident investigations by the Norwegian State Pollution Board, the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, the then-fledgling US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and others determined that 30–40% of the escaping oil literally disappeared into thin air. The immediate evaporation, up to 6-ft seas, higher than average ambient air temperature and the formation of small oil droplets fashioned the perfect natural spill response. Following an inspection the day after the well was capped, invited US Coast Guard officials even recommended against dispatching oil spill equipment, saying it simply was unnecessary. “Not one drop of oil ever hit the beach,” Hatteburg recalls.

The incident, rightfully, was formally attributed to human error, and drilling, production and fishing carried on without interruption. Of course, it’s important to point out some striking distinctions between the Ekofisk Bravo and the Macondo affairs, other than the fact that the former was a production platform. Most importantly, in stark contrast, the Deepwater Horizon blowout was a disaster of the highest magnitude in that 11 rig workers lost their lives. Furthermore, the uncontrollable flow from the Macondo well persisted for more than three months and liberated upward of 4.9 million bbl of crude into the Gulf, whereas Ekofisk Bravo was capped successfully in a week. In addition, unlike the deepwater Macondo well, the Ekofisk Bravo spill occurred in just over 200 ft of water. By comparison, any oil remaining beneath the surface in 5,000-ft water depths would take considerably longer to degrade in the colder subsea temperatures.

While the NOAA Office of Response and Restoration insists that as much as 79% of the spilled crude has evaporated or been burned, skimmed, recovered or otherwise dispersed, others contend it’s what you don’t see that can hurt you. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute of Massachusetts was the latest to weight in, releasing a study contending that a considerable plume of oil is still circulating in the water column far below the surface, but for now appears to be degrading in the 40°F subsea temperature. Richard Camilli, the study’s chief author, said the plume is crystal clear and odorless: “The water samples when we were right in the plume look like spring water. You certainly didn’t see any oil droplets and you certainly didn’t smell it.”

Consequently, it is unknown what long-term impact the spill could have on the benthic ecosystem or other marine life. Then again, science is clear that the Gulf of Mexico is one of the most resilient marine ecosystems on Earth, having effectively coped with enough natural seepage over the years to fill a tanker or two.

For now, at least, save for the regulatory clamp on offshore drilling, life on the Gulf Coast appears to be returning, ever so gradually, to where it was pre-Macondo. The biggest obstacle aerial spotters face today is locating any oil to skim, and the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries has reopened areas to fishing after preliminary tests showing that folks aren’t going to end up in intensive care by eating a plate of shrimp scampi.

In the meantime, the US Congress is debating myriad regulatory changes, including proposals that address the design of both subsea and surface BOPs. However, at the risk of sounding flippant, if we take away anything from history, perhaps a good place to start would require only a bit of paint on every BOP stack carrying the directive “This End Up.”