Tag: Macondo well

Coast Guard approves plan to secure containment dome used to capture oil from the Macondo well

BP, Transocean faulted over preventive efforts in gulf spill

Gulf of Mexico oil spill case The U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether BP executives lied to Congress about how much oil leaked in the company's 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the investigation.According to the Journal, prosecutors are looking into statements the company made to members of Congress at a closed-door briefing of members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee by officials from BP, Halliburton Co. and Transocean Ltd.Dave Nagel, the executive vice president of BP America, and David Rainey, the company's former head of Gulf of Mexico exploration, were involved in the briefing, the Journal said.The Journal also said the Justice Department had investigated whether BP engineers tried to keep information about the actual size of the leak from the government.The April 20, 2010 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig killed 11 workers and triggered the largest U.S. offshore oil spill from the ruptured Macondo well, in which BP held a 65 percent stake.Transocean owned the rig, and Halliburton provided cementing services. About 4.1 million barrels of oil were spilled and not cleaned up, the U.S. government has estimated.The Justice Department and BP could not ...

More than $150 million into promotions for the region recover The Gulf Coast is a hot destination again two years after the massive BP Plc oil spill made the region a tourist dead zone, with the petroleum giant pumping more than $150 million into promotions to help the region recover.In New Orleans, about 150 miles northeast of where BP's well blew up on April 20, 2010, the period since more than 4 million barrels of oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico has seen a frenzy of tourism efforts."Tourism doesn't happen on its own, it takes marketing dollars, particularly if you're battling an image crisis like the oil spill," New Orleans convention and visitor bureau spokeswoman Kelly Schultz said.A chunk of the $15 million BP initially sent to Louisiana in June 2010 funded emergency advertising to quell misperceptions that New Orleans was laden with oil, and Schultz says it worked. Hotel tax collections in the third quarter of 2010 jumped 33 percent from year-earlier figuresSince then, BP has sent more than $150 million to Florida, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi to aid tourism, and will shell out close to $30 million more by the end of 2013. Another $82 million was ...

A Fisherman's Farewell? Mark Stewart is a third generation fisherman from the Mississippi Gulf fishing community of Pass Christian. He's a proud and tough working man of the sea,used to hauling in nets until his armsnearly fall off andfishing all night until his eyelids are crusted shut like a saltine sandwich.That's the life he knows, the life he wouldn't have any other way.And it's the life he fears he may never lead again.Ever sinceBP's mammoth Deepwater Horizon rig blew 15 months ago, Mark's life -- and the lives of thousands of fishermen across the Gulf -- has never been the same. Many say they were poisoned by oil and chemical dispersants after being thrust into cleanup jobs they were woefully unprepared for.But it's the aftermath that really worries them now. Stewart and his fishing colleagues say the 4.9 million barrels of BP oil spewed into the sea is wrecking havoc with their fishing grounds and threatening their livelihoods. Fishermen like Stewart are seeing what they describe as their worst nightmare, the collapse of teeming fisheries that were once themost productive in the world. But not now, they say. Shrimp, oysters, crab, nearly all of the bounty of the sea appear ...

5 million barrels of oil released between April 20 and July 15, 2010 In a detailed assessment of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, researchers led by a team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have determined that the blown-out Macondo well spewed oil at a rate of about 57,000 barrels a day, totaling nearly 5 million barrels of oil released from the well between April 20 and July 15, 2010, when the leak was capped. In addition, the well released some 100 million standard cubic feet per day of natural gas.The results-published in the Sept. 5, 2011 online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)-are in line with the federal government's official estimates, but just as importantly validate the innovative measuring techniques the team employed. The accuracy of the measurements was crucial because, "Ultimately, the impact of the oil on the environment depends primarily on the total volume of oil released," according to a report by the Flow Rate Technical Group (FRTG), a collection of research teams charged with using different means to generate an accurate estimate of the amount of oil released into the Gulf.The new study represents a comprehensive look at the data ...

Over the last several weeks, concern has been growing that the well is leaking oil Over the last several weeks, many have become concerned based on reports of oil on the surface of the water near BP's now P&A'd (plugged and abandoned) Macondo Well, and concern has been growing that the well is now leaking oil. I have been skeptical of such an occurrence, since properly plugged wells don't do that, but reports have become so frantic that BP actually responded in a press release that this is simply not the case.The press release asserted that a subsea inspection with ROVs was conducted, witnessed by the Gulf Coast Incident Management Team, which is the successor organization to the old Unified Command that was organized last year to respond to the growing disaster. BP did not, to my knowledge, provide the public with a video of the inspections, which would have dispelled the rumors (or at least decreased them).The story started in August with reports of oil on the surface from the Mobile Press Register along with video of oil sheen close to the Macondo location. Aerial photos of the area were then posted by the Gulf Restoration Network and On ...

Concluding that it was the result of a succession of interrelated design and abandonment decisions Transocean Ltd. today announced the release of an internal investigation report on the causes of the April 20, 2010, Macondo well incident in the Gulf of Mexico.Following the incident, Transocean commissioned an internal investigation team comprised of experts from relevant technical fields and specialists in accident investigation to gather, review, and analyze the facts and information surrounding the incident to determine its causes.The report concludes that the Macondo incident was the result of a succession of interrelated well design, construction, and temporary abandonment decisions that compromised the integrity of the well and compounded the likelihood of its failure.The decisions, many made by the operator, BP, in the two weeks leading up to the incident, were driven by BP's knowledge that the geological window for safe drilling was becoming increasingly narrow. Specifically, BP was concerned that downhole pressure -- whether exerted by heavy drilling mud used to maintain well control or by pumping cement to seal the well -- would exceed the fracture gradient and result in fluid losses to the formation, thus costing money and jeopardizing future production of oil.The Transocean investigation team traced the ...