Deepwater Horizon - the movie

Coming out in Sept. It appears it is going to really good movie. Lots of big name actors and directors (Mark Walhberg is one of the main actors and it was done by the same guy that did Lone Survivor). Apparently a good budget spent on it based on the trailer (I put a link to the trailer in the YouTube thread).

I am not sure if i will actually watch it yet. It looks real, like very real. It was filmed on a real rig, with real scenarios, real equipment, etc. Just watching the trailer gave me chills. It hits a little too close to home (literally "home"). I knew exactly what was going on in each scene of the trailer and have been in all of those scenarios myself a few times (with the exception of the rig actually blowing up into flames, luckily the blowouts i have been involved in were controlled and contained before anything like that happened).

But it appears to be a good movie nonetheless.

For anyone interested or who didnt follow what happened, here is that thread i started back when the incident first happened.
http://forums.13x.com/index.php?threads/when-drilling-goes-wrong.251249/

Those 11 people mentioned in the first post of that thread died in the incident. RIP.

 

I have read a bunch of the documentation that have come out after the investigations.

What an unreal cascade of failures. I mean, the gennies overspeed and fail due to the gas coming up from the well and then the rig drifts and breaks the riser?

Also, listen to your goddamn engineers. They are smarter than you, Mr. Manager.

 

Will watch.

 

No doubt. I was in one of the groups that had to go to Houston to be a part of the study afterwards. So many failures. As is the case in every major catastrophe, it wasn't just one thing that went wrong, it was a chain of events and had any link in the chain been broken at some point, it wouldn't have happened.

There were multiple signs and opportunities to prevent the blowout and subsequent explosion in the hours leading up to it.

 

I have a feeling this will be a thrilling movie, and well made.

 

It is kinda eerie reading that post. Just a few hours after it happened, I was talking about how if there was a BOP failure, the Well could flow for weeks and weeks unless it was stopped. And the only way to stop it was to bring in an ROV to try to isolate the Well, then bring in another rig to drill a relief well to contain it.

And that is exactly what happened. It ended up flowing for months, the ROV didn't work and they had to bring in another rig to drill a relief Well.

I don't know how much detail they will go in the movie, or if the movie will cover the full story (including the investigation afterwards), but for the record the BOPs didn't fail. The BOPs did exactly what they are supposed to do. The Shear Rams closed as they were supposed to, the problem is that by that time the influx was pouring into the formation uncontrolled and was flowing through the BOPs at over 3000psi...and it was full of sand (we intentionally drill into the sand pockets in the formation to get into the pay zone).

Imagine a pressure washer gun with an 18-3/4" ID outlet...flowing at 3000psi...but instead of water, it is a mixture of oil and sand. That is what was going on inside the BOPs.

The BOPs have BSR's - they are Blind Shear Rams, meant to cut (hence the "Shear") anything that is inside the BOPs AND seal off the bore of the BOPs completely (hence the "Blind", there are Blind Rams and there are Shear Rams that do each job, but the Subsea BOPs we use run Blind/Shear Rams that do both). The BSR's closed as they were supposed to, but the high pressure sand influx flowing through the BOPs actually eroded ("washed") the Ram Blocks as they were closing.

There is not a BOP in the world, or a set of Ram Blocks in the world, that could have contained that amount of flow of high pressure sand...but we are working on it. My company has been partnered with BP and Hydril to develop a 20,000psi BOP system (the current ones are 15k).

 

When I started that thread, I had no idea how that incident would change the course of drilling forever. There is not a single day that I don't deal with the repercussions of that event. Whether it is having to deal with new regulations that came from it, or having to consider what happened there in my daily decisions. There is at least one time a week when I have to say something like "I am sure the guys on the Horizon thought it would be ok too...." or "You realize if that goes wrong what can happen...and I am not going to find myself sitting in court one day having to explain what happened, while reading an email with my name on it saying it was ok to do it" or "You remember the Macondo incident don't you...we aren't doing that shit"(the Horizon was working in the Macondo field).

 

I hope this movie is good, and sounds interesting. Hopefully the Peter Berg that directed Lonely Survivor, and not Battleship, directed this movie. He can be hit or miss. Usually though, when it comes to movies like this, he's good.

 

I'm pretty sure that the only way to get something like that out of Hollyweird is to make the entire industry look incompetent & greedy & dastardly so as to make the greenie-weenies angry all over again & boycott BP again. Nevermind that the rig was owned & operated by Transocean and there was a 10% stake in that well owned by Mutsui.

I'd bet there's probably exactly one other guy in this thread that's ever heard of either of those companies in relation to Deepwater Horizon.

I'll probably watch it when it hits Netflix but it will probably piss me off.

 

Unfortunately, you are probably right. Or they will "Armageddon" it so that it is so fake and full of nonsense just for the sake of making it more entertaining.

And it is sad how many people still to this day blame BP for it. Too many people don't know the difference between "fault" and "responsibility". Yes, BP took the responsibility for it because they owned the lease on the block of ocean floor that was being drilled into, but when the blowout happened there MIGHT have been 5 or so BP people on the rig. 2-3 of them were likely in bed, with the others likely in the office. One of them might have went up to the drill floor when shit started hitting the fan.

The rig was owned by TO and operated by TO employees. They were the ones watching (or choosing to ignore) gauges, operating equipment, etc.

Anyway, no sense in rehashing all of that again.

 

Spolier Alert: Markie Mark died fishing...he will die drilling

 

Chris here's an honest question. It flowed for months if I recall? What the heck happened to all that oil? I always wondered. I know they got a good bit of it up but months worth? I know mother earth is quite resilliant so maybe just dissapated? Not trying to get all dungeon just curious your thoughts.

 

I am not sure to be honest. The environmental type stuff isn't my specialty. I know there is stuff you can put on it to absorb it, I know a lot of it will dissipate naturally, I know a lot of made to shore which required a big cleanup, I know there are floating things you can put down on the surface of the water to contain it, then you can come vacuum it up, stuff like that.

It was probably a combination of those things, but I don't know for sure.

 

Man I could read about this fascinating stuff for days. I was captivated by your daily explanations and insight back when it was happening Chris.

Crazy that the high pressure sand/oil mix could erode the shear rams that quickly.

 

IIRC, that exposure to UV, once it reaches the surface, causes a fairly rapid breakdown and dissipation of the oil structure.

Mother Earth has an amazing ability to heal herself.

 

Welcome to my world...having worked Nuclear for 42 years I've given up trying to explain what we do....people with a diminished IQ from watching too much Oprah will never be able to understand, let alone perform the risk assessments, that are a normal course of business. Problems are inevitable because people are in the loop and occasionally you may get too close to the edge. We're pretty good at what we do, no one killed in Nuclear power due to a nuclear accident in over 65 years of power operations.....Doesn't count for sh*t, though. The Micheal Moore's of this world have won, get over it.

 

Sadly, that is true. Everybody knows about the Horizon incident and that is what the oilfield is judged by. The over 30,000 offshore wells that were successfully drilled prior to the Horizon incident are irrelevant.

 

Sadly, that is very true also. Which is another reason I haven't decided if I will actually watch it or not. It might end up just pissing me off.