US Inspections on the Deepwater Horizon Rig that caused the oil spill

1. The rig that was drilling was not a US Flagged rig. That means US Inspectors were not allowed on board the rig to inspect it. As a matter of National Security under the GATT the USA has a right to demand US Only in various technology. The USA should never allow a foreign flag vessel to drill for oil in the US Economic Zone (200 mile limit).
2. Acoustic automated shut of devices should be required.
3. I think US Federal Inspectors should have to be resident on and inspecting rigs like this 24/7.
4. I think that the drilling should be required to do some smaller holes that deliberately miss the main deposit that test the structure before main drilling operations happen.
5. Careful procedures should be in place to set up wells before they hit the main deposit. The well casing should have to be inserted well before the drill hits the deposit and it should have to be cemented in at least 2 weeks prior to finishing the hole down to the oil or gas. This is to give the cement time to set. The casing should have ridging to make this cement have a tight wedged grip on the miles of rock around it. This is required because the lift pressure on a pipe in this case could easily reach 20 million pounds of lift. This is an insane amount of up pressure. Even at 70,000 psi it would lift about 140 million pounds. (almost 64,000 long tons!)
http://pesn.com/2010/05/02/9501643_Mother_of_all_gushers_could_kill_Earths_oceans/

Now I wonder if we have any petroleum engineers on DU to comment on this... the author is a software engineer but his advice on these points seems sound. I'm not sure that he was correct about no US Inspectors being on the rig. See below

Built by Hyundai Heavy Industries in South Korea and completed in 2001, the rig was owned by Transocean Ltd and leased to BP until September 2013.

Before last week's catastrophe, Deepwater Horizon's most recent hiccup occurred in Nov. 2005, when the rig — under contract with BP — spilled 212 barrels of an oil-based lubricant due to equipment failure and human error. That spill was probably caused by not screwing the pipe tightly enough and not adequately sealing the well with cement, as well as a possible poor alignment of the rig, according to records maintained by the federal Minerals Management Service.

Mineral Management Service inspectors recommended increasing the amount of cement used during this process and applying more torque when screwing in its pipes.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100430/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_the_rig

Reps. Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) and Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), called on Halliburton on Friday to provide all documents relating to "the possibility or risk of an explosion or blowout at the Deepwater Horizon rig and the status, adequacy, quality, monitoring, and inspection of the cementing work" by May 7.

Who the hell gave them a nod nod wink wink get out of jail free commercial permit to hustle hurry up drill two or three high-pressure, high-temperature horizontal wells across the reservoir?

Lemme guess, using subsea blow-out preventers again?

The fact that the BOP was on the wellhead 5,000 ft under water, not at the top of the marine riser or right below Deepwater Horizon's drill floor, contributed to the blow-out disaster in two ways. The doomed drilling crew undoubtedly perceived that they had a well control problem at some point and fired the BOP shear rams to close off the well. It didn't work because a mechanical test plug or drill string joint got jammed in the shear ram. Next they tried to trigger other sections of the BOP stack.

But the Cameron BOP couldn't do it. If a command to open or close a ram isn't fully completed (jammed), then its 'mux' communication logic wouldn't accept another command. And by that time, it didn't matter. A giant gas bubble was racing up the riser.

A second topside BOP could have saved the drilling crew and rig. But the procedures that the men were following invited disaster, and it happened so fast that a topside BOP with automatic blow-out sensors was not the solution they needed, although I suppose it will be required by new safety regulations in the future. The best and most urgently needed safety solution offshore is to take control away from the operator, in this case BP, and give drillers an absolute veto over company men. That's all the safety that deepwater rig hands actually need.

I'll mention that I'm now convinced M-I Swaco did not have a tool downhole at the time of the blow-out. They were offloading mud to a service vessel. Responsibility for the disaster belongs squarely and absolutely to BP who ordered hustle hurry up displace the mud with seawater and disconnect the riser
http://seekingalpha.com/article/202384-bp-macondo-disaster-week-twoto move the rig to its next location.




A widow is already filing suit against BP, Transocean and Halliburton.



Halliburton did the construction on this rig and this particular rig