Was Elgin platform leak an accident waiting to happen? Dwindling gas and oil reserves are forcing companies to tap unstable reservoirs
Oil rigs in the North Sea are 'falling to pieces', with oil companies taking larger risks in the pursuit of profit during the recession, a safety inspector claims
6 April, 2012
French oil major Total is battling to stem a 12-day gas leak at its North Sea Elgin platform after a series of technical failures.
Industry sources say the incident reflects wider lapses across Britain's offshore industry, where safety checks and maintenance are regularly behind schedule.
The auditor, who was joined in his criticisms by an an engineer and a union official, said a range of measures designed to prevent a leak must have failed on Elgin, allowing gas to escape to the surface.
'There is a worrying backlog of maintenance on safety-critical equipment, including release valves, pipelines and sub-sea fail-safe devices,' said the auditor, an oil industry professional with more than a decade's experience of safety systems and procedures, who has asked to remain anonymous.
He said some North Sea rigs designed in the 1960s and 1970s were 'falling to pieces' after exceeding their production lifespans, while more modern platforms were lagging well behind scheduled maintenance programmes.
He said: 'My experience in this region is that if you scratch beneath the surface, things get quite scary quite quickly.'
Another source at a major oil company said safety still ranked high, but low gas prices - at about half their levels before the 2008 financial crisis - forced operators to weigh 'loss of life risks against loss of production risks.'
Greenpeace released this image which shows the scale of the gas cloud from energy giant Total's Elgin platform
The latest incident follows the Deepwater oil-spill of 2010 near the Coast of Mexico, which a White House panel blamed in 2011 on economy measures on the platform.
With rising operating costs and lower revenues, companies have put pressure on facilities to produce more fuel in order to break even, which means reducing the number of safety checks that could interrupt production.
The UK's offshore regulator, the Health and Safety Executive, has previously identified maintenance backlogs in successive asset integrity reviews, noting that maintenance on safety-critical equipment was especially poor.
The Deepwater Horizon was drilling in water a mile deep the night of April 20, 2010, when an explosion and fire rocked the rig. It burned for two days before sinking.
An estimated 206million gallons of oil spilled out of the BP-owned Macondo well over several months, fouling sandy beaches and coastal marshes and shutting vast areas of the Gulf of Mexico to fishing.
BP has now agreed a £5 billion deal with more than 100,000 fishermen and others hit by the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.
The oil giant, which has already written off at least £23 billion to meet claims, said the settlement was not an admission of liability.
It still has to resolve massive claims by its partners, the U.S government and states along the Gulf of Mexico following the explosion, which killed 11 men.
'In some companies the decline in integrity performance that started following the low oil price has not been effectively addressed, and there appears to be an acceptance of this, knowing that the assets are likely to be sold,' it said in 2009.
High-pressure, high-temperature (HPHT) reservoirs, like the one feeding the Elgin platform, exacerbate matters because they combine higher costs to drill and maintain with 'the inherent risks associated with them,' the auditor said.
Maintenance on systems critical to safe-guarding life in some cases has been pushed back by up to a year, he said.
'I have seen things on some platforms that HSE would be extremely unhappy about,' he said.
An engineer who designs rig equipment said the entire industry was 'swamped by work' so maintenance backlogs could also be down to limited resources as companies providing piping and valves were working flat out to meet demand.
Industry body Oil & Gas UK's health and safety director, Robert Paterson, said: 'All safety-critical systems on every installation are subject to regular and rigorous inspections. Offshore safety isn't getting worse, it's continually getting better.
'Over the last 15 years ... we've seen a 70 per cent reduction in major and significant hydrocarbon releases (and) a 66 per cent reduction in all types of injury.'
A spokesman for Royal Dutch Shell, which also operates in the North Sea said: 'Asset integrity is a high priority for Shell. In 2011, we invested around $600million (£379million) in our North Sea assets, including maintenance.
'We strive to operate all our assets, regardless of age or location, in a way that meets or exceeds both our global internal standards and relevant legal and regulatory requirements. We are confident that the maintenance plans for our North Sea assets are robust.'
Total did not return requests for comments to Reuters, and neither did BP, another major North Sea operator.
One offshore worker about to embark on three-week stint on a North Sea gas installation said maintenance backlogs were a common problem that could take years to clear.
'I make repairs in designated safety areas ... and the way things are, I'll have a job in the North Sea for the rest of my life,' he said.
'There is a wide issue with the age of the platforms,' said Oberon Houston, Petroleum Engineering Manager, with experience of working on a number of rigs in the North Sea.
'People tend to think, "The platform only has 4-5 years left in it, so we don't do anything to it", but oil prices rise, or you find more oil, and suddenly you're going for another 12, 15 years or more,' he added.
Dick West, Operations Director of North Sea operator Xcite Energy, said ageing facilities did, however, need to prove their safety to have their life extended, and the HSE had been demanding more detail in the last 18 months.
The British safety regulator said there were about 70 major or significant hydrocarbon releases a year in the British part of the North Sea - 'significant' meaning it could cause multiple fatalities and escalate further. Norway had just eight in 2010.
'It is lack of assessing risk, lack of control of the work, people cutting in the wrong pipework, people doing a shoddy job, making or breaking pipework, corrosion that should have been anticipated and monitored,' Steve Walker, head of the offshore safety division at UK Health and Safety, told Reuters in October.
Total's Elgin leak occurred above the water line on the rig itself, the auditor noted.
'There are all kinds of safety mechanisms that should kick in and prevent a leak at that height ... Quite clearly these fail-safes did not work,' he said.
Total repeatedly reassured workers that safety systems would prevent a leak up to and including a few hours before the blowout that triggered the arrival of Royal Air Force and Norwegian helicopter evacuation teams, according to Jake Molloy, head of the RMT trade union's offshore arm.
Workers had raised safety concerns beginning more than a month before the incident, he said.
The offshore industry's safety regime operates on what is known as the 'Swiss-cheese model', building in layers of individually incomplete safety precautions that together should stop an emergency developing.
'But all that depends on the number of layers of barriers and the rigour with which they are maintained,' the source from an oil major said.
The extreme environment in HPHT reservoirs - which are increasingly common as maturing fields become less productive - raises the risks.
Total itself has identified such risks based on problems encountered during production.
The leak on the Elgin is believed to be above the water-level, which one inspector notes should not have been allowed to happen
In research papers, it has described how, as a well goes through gas pockets under different levels of high pressure, gas could leak inside the well and rise to the surface.
'It was realised that conventionally cemented casings was unlikely to hold this gas back during the production lifecycle of the wells,' it said in a 2005 paper.
That year a barrier in a well drilled in the West Franklin field failed, leading to an increase in gas pressure and the risk of gas from the reservoir escaping to the platform.
In the incident, described in a 2007 paper whose authors included Total engineers, the problem was difficult to fix because it required a 'complex well-kill operation to resolve'.
This is what Total now plans for the faulty Elgin well.
'From a production point of view, life extension of ageing assets is the name of the game. Operators are squeezing the last drop from the North Sea ... so when production from normal wells dries up, they've got the HTHP to bring out of their back pocket,' the auditor said.
Asked if it was investigating the possibility of equipment failures at Total's Elgin rig, the HSE said: 'It will not be legally appropriate for HSE as the regulatory authority to respond, as the answers given may prejudice the investigation or subsequent enforcement.'
Total gas leak: Elgin platform 'mud kill' plan to proceed
Emergency engineers have said plans to pump heavy mud into the pipeline leaking gas on board a North Sea platform can go ahead.
6 April, 2012
A team from operators Total flew out to inspect the leak on Thursday.
They said there was no "showstopper" for the "dynamic kill" plan to plug the Elgin platform well with mud.
Total has also released the first picture which shows the gas leaking from four points on a wellhead at the installation.
It comes as a Scottish government marine research vessel has set sail to carry out a four-day environmental assessment at the site.
Marine Scotland, Sepa, the Health and Safety Executive and Scottish Natural Heritage are among the bodies involved.
The eight people from the Total team who boarded the Elgin on Thursday, 150 miles east of Aberdeen, included three workers who were familiar with the installation and five others from a company called Wild Well Control which specialises in capping wells.
The four hour inspection confirmed gas was leaking from the well head but not from underwater. Total said observations also suggested the gas leak rate may have decreased during the last few days.
After returning the team said well intervention plans could proceed as planned.
A spokesman for Wild Well Control said: "We achieved our goals. Everything went as we would have hoped and the planned well intervention is achievable.
"There is certainly no showstopper to launch the well control operation."
Thursday's visit, was the first time anybody had been back to the platform since it was evacuated almost a fortnight ago.
'Potential impact'
Marine Scotland is overseeing the environmental group on board the marine research vessel, set-up to examine the impact of the leak.
Scientists will spend the Easter weekend collecting and analysing sea samples from the survey ship Alba na Mara.
An environmental team will spend four days at sea on survey ship Alba na Mara Scottish Environment Secretary Richard Lochhead said the evidence, so far, suggested the impact of the gas leak had been minimal.
He told BBC Scotland: "This is an ongoing gas leak and that is why we have employed our own vessel to go to sea to take samples, of the water, the sediment, fish stocks etc.
"I don't anticipate any evidence of any potential impact on the marine environment, but as long as this gas leak is taking place we have to monitor, on a daily basis, what is happening, and understand what is happening.
"The results from those samples should be available early next week."
Mr Lochhead also said that after talks with Total he believed a well plugging operation could get under way in a week to 10 days.
Total has said three more helicopter trips to the stricken platform will be needed, for further assessments.
The company hopes to be able to carry out the "dynamic killing" of the leak, which involves plugging it with mud.
Alternative plans to drill two relief wells to bring the situation under control are also still being prepared.
Total Finds No Underwater Leak at North Sea Rig
French oil producer Total on Friday said inspections at a troubled drilling rig in the North Sea found no evidence of an underwater gas leak and determined that the flow of gas from an on-deck leak is decreasing.
6 April, 2012
Total said a reconnaissance team visited the rig Thursday, while a remote-controlled submarine was launched from a ship sailing near the platform to do underwater inspections.
The company evacuated and powered off its Elgin rig on March 25 after a rush of pressure in the well below sent gas and mud spewing out from the drilling deck. Since then, operations at the rig, as well as at others operated by Total in that area in the North Sea, have been halted.
The inspection team included Total engineers and specialists from Wild Well Control Inc., SPN -0.97% which helped to tackle the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill and Kuwait's oil fires following the 1990 Iraqi invasion. The safety inspection Thursday was a prelude to launching an operation to kill the well.
"We achieved our goals. Everything went as we would have hoped and the planned well intervention is achievable. There is certainly no show stopper to launch the well-control operation," Wild Well said, according to Total's statement.
The specialists said they didn't find gas present on Elgin's process, utilities, quarters, or PUQ, platform, which is connected by a 295-foot bridge to the Elgin wellhead platform. They also identified infrastructure on the wellhead rig that would allow an operation to kill the well through heavy-mud pumping.
"In the next few days, other teams will return to Elgin to record other parameters, take further measurements and perform additional operations so that the platform is safe for people who will be plugging the well," Total spokesman Jacques-Emmanuel Saulnier said in a video posted on the company's website.
The company is also working on another solution to stop the gas leak through a relief well drilled less than a mile from the problematic well, which is about 150 miles off the coast of Scotland. Such a well is a definite solution to stop a leak but takes several months—more than six according to Total—and requires heavy investments. The company is also planning a second well as a backup for the first.
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