Gulf of Mexico oil spillSecond pipe may have crippled BP well's defenses
The discovery of a second drill pipe joins a list of clues that is helping scientists understand the complexities of the Deepwater Horizon accident, and learn lessons which will inform changes in how deep-water drilling is conducted; evidence emerges that BP cut safety corners because the drilling fell behind schedule; one expert says: the accident “absolutely was preventable—[the rig lacked] “a regulatory presence onboard that said, “I don’t care how late it is, you do it right or you go home.”
The gushing BP oil well is a mystery still unfolding, and late last month, a team of scientists from the Energy Department discovered a new twist: Their sophisticated imaging equipment detected not one but two drill pipes, side by side, inside the wreckage of the well’s blowout preventer on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.
BP officials said it was impossible. The Deepwater Horizon rig, which drilled the well, used a single pipe, connected in segments, to bore 13,000 feet below the ocean floor. Jim Tankersley writes in the Los Angeles Times that when workers cut into the wreckage to install a containment cap this month, sure enough, they found two pipes.
The discovery suggested that the force of the erupting petroleum from BP’s well on 20 April was so violent that it sent pipe segments hurtling into the blowout preventer, like derailing freight cars.
It also offered a tantalizing theory for the failure of the well’s last line of defense, the powerful pinchers called shear rams inside the blowout preventer that should have cut the pipe and stopped the rising oil and gas from reaching the Deepwater Horizon 5,000 feet above. Drilling experts say those rams, believed to be partially deployed, could have been thwarted by the presence of a second pipe.
Tankersley writes that the doubled-up drill pipe joins a list of clues that is helping scientists understand the complexities of the Deepwater Horizon accident, and from that, craft changes in how deep-water drilling is conducted.
“We still don’t really know what’s in” the well wreckage, said Energy Secretary Steven Chu, whose team discovered the second pipe using gamma-ray imaging. He added: “If there were two drill pipes down there when the shear rams closed, or two drill pipes below, is it possible that in the initial accident … there was an explosive release of force?…Did it buckle and snap?…The more we know about this, the better we can know what to do next.”
The challenge will be making enough changes to calm policymakers’ and the public’s fears of a repeat accident, while keeping deep-water drilling economically feasible in an area that provides a third of the nation’s domestic oil.
Officials are trying to plug the leak while looking for at least interim answers to fundamental questions about the oil spill. Chief among them: What part of the confluence of events that caused the disaster is unique to BP’s methods and practices, and what
