The best technical description of what happened. Many small human errors combined to create the conditions for this tragic accident. We can help www.alertometer.com.
The video is careful to craft language that does not assign blame (they don't want to get sued lol), so does not indicate that there was a string of negligent behavior by the DWHorizon's owners/operators that chronically disregarded correct procedure, and emphasized cost-cutting and time-saving measures. So, it is shocking, but not surprising that a "perfect storm" of safety failures can happen. Errors become mistakes, become accidents, become catastrophe through negligence.
I worked this case and remember it well. The video leaves out a lot of crucial decisions by company men that proved catastrophic. Such as a change to a cheaper, faster setting slurry that wasn't approved for that depth, cutting back centralizers to cut costs (they used less than a third they should have iirc), doing maintenance onboard and skipping many items instead of on-shore refurb they were due for, changing rig vent lines, and converting the bottom ram to a test ram so they could inversely test the pipe pressure without interrupting drilling. It was multi system failure from the top to bottom--much of it caused by greed and negligence. Cement was seen in the mud return (meaning it had not set) and the order was to keep drilling.
I was trying to read up about the court case. I agree, where was the choice to use the less dense pipe fill?! This was posted 4 years after the case happened, was it made at that time? Or before the case was concluded?
@@Steve-fz4it Discovery. Like I said, I worked the case. BP was WAY behind on the project and any delay to properly do things, even required maintenance, meant several millions of dollars each day would be lost. So they cut corners wherever possible. They had Cameron engineers modify the BOP. They had Transocean cut maintenance. BP asked Halliburton for a cheaper slurry. They cut back centralizers. Hell, they knew THAT NIGHT how to shut the well off completely but they let it bleed for months so they could try less permanant solutions and come back later to produce the well.
right? there are so many details left out. it’s impossible for someone to know all the details, though. my ex girlfriends dad was on this rig and i’m sure his name is in the credits of the movie. his name is chad murray.
One oil barrel is 5.614 cu ft 5mil barrels is 28.07mil cubic feet. 28.07million cubic feet is 0.0002 cubic miles. Bottom line? That's a tiny amount of ocean. All these oil spills are treated in the media as world-ending spills. They're far from that. Just a few years later they're all gone, or have basically zero impact on life. It's amazing how the media can get away with talking about these in an overblown and out-of-proportion manner. Trying to guilt society for using oil, basically&truthfully. Why do we as a society allow the media to do any of this? As soon as a media outlet does anything similar to this in any way, including causing riots for justified police actions, we should all shun that outlet. But now? American media are just as extreme as religious extremists, but society still treats them as legit news sources? Get real. The media has become a new extremist religion, just as bad as bin laden and other extremists. It's time to stop looking at false-facts and innuendo. It's time to hold them all responsible for their bullshit. Nobody wants to be an extremist. But the whole entire world is just as bad as nazi Germany and the KKK. They don't mind following extremist ideology as long as it aligns with their own.
@@ivandaniel2596 Back in the day, the US Army had the toy maker Mattel make the plastic parts of M-16s. They figured if children couldn't break their toys then the Soldiers shouldn't be able to break their weapons.
How two solenoids could be mis-wired on such critical systems is beyond me. Was there no test of the equipment? No inspection of the wiring scheme? Redundancy is soo important because human error is inherently a part of anything we build.
What's truly amazing to me is the fact that all of these underwater drilling experts with 20/20 hindsight were available, right here on RU-vid, for free, and not one was consulted.
@@shipshrekt2156 Right..well...Seeing as they were already exercising time and money-saving measures by not testing.. I'm sure those measures would never have happened...Oh, wait...that's right, they didn't. :)
Imagine that. Gross incompetency and cost cutting measures combined with shortcuts taken at the production and safety levels contributed to a disaster that is, essentially, our Chernobyl.
I worked oilfield from 1978 through 1981 as a safety and training officer for Dowell Well Servicing. It amazed me how much money the company spent on safety and accident prevention and yet, still operated some of the most obsolete equipment I ever saw. New technology was coming out constantly. And still people were getting hurt in the most stupid ways. In the DWH disaster, those BOP and emergency rams cost the company tens of millions of dollar, not only to buy but to install. The engineering behind them is state of the art and yet, dumb asses wired them wrong rendering them as useful as a slab of pig iron. This kind of stuff goes on all the time in engineering and application of technology. I could not tell you how many times i caught people taking extremely dangerous shortcuts, short circuiting all safety procedures and mechanisms- in the name of saving time or money. Every accident investigation results in the same conclusion; invariably it comes down to people just being stupid.
Yes sir. We have a schedule to meet. I've worked on construction jobs where safety inspectors constantly patrolled the job site. Any little infraction could get you run off the job. However, whenever something had to be done, that could not be done according to the proper safety protocols in place, the contractors would have an off-the-record discussion with the job site managers. Wink, wink. Then, a crew would be scheduled to work after normal hours & the official safety man was not present. The task would be preformed, nobody injured, & the next day things would be back to normal.
Urbicide and then it turns out that wiring was done wrong and someone gets electrocuted, or a safety harness snaps, new guy inhales arsenic fumes, etc. Internally defeating safety regulations makes for sloppy jobs and dead men. If your employer is losing money by operating by legal standards than you're working for a contractor who cared more about getting a cheap bid than the lives of the guys who work for him. One of the reasons why US labor contractors, particularly construction, are regarded aa shady and looked down on compared to European companies. Everyone likes to joke about the road workers hired by the state, saying that they work 30 minutes a week, but at least they do a safe and clean job, as opposed to contractors that charge a homeowner 30k and knock down a few load bearing walls before they take the money and scram. just as an example.
I was there on a oil spill recovery vessel after the fact. I worked nonstop for 7 months. After we were released from recovery, we had berthed at Fort Jackson, and were awaiting our turn in the clean up of the vessel, I went outside to smoke a cig at midnight. I couldn't believe what I saw coming around the corner! Many blue flashing lights from six Coast Guard vessels escorting a tug and tow. Chained down to a barge, was that BOP. An incredible sight! Obviously important people wanted to get a first hand look at that thing.
They forgot to mention in the credits that 11 men lost their lives here. Jason C. Anderson, age 35 Aaron Dale Burkeen, 37 Donald Clark, 49 Stephen Ray Curtis, 39 Gordon L. Jones, 28 Roy Wyatt Kemp, 27 Karl D. Kleppinger, Jr., 38 Keith Blair Manuel, 56 Dewey A. Revette, 48 Shane M. Roshto, 22 Adam Weise, 24 Deceased April 20, 2010 Do not forget them.
'gave' their lives? to do what? preventing the distaster? or were pretty much responsible for it, by drilling at regions where they better shouldn't have drilled at all? That is not 'giving their lives' that is just 'died there' If there happened to be an elementary school taht needed to be evacuated before the oilrig actually sank, and these guys stayed on top of it to prevent it from sinking, by buying as much time as possibly, so that little robin and little francine can make it to the life boats, i take everyhing back.
Even though this is wasting my time because obviously you don't understand how drilling works, the 11 men who died, were doing a job, they are no more responsible for what happened there than your mail man for the second gulf war. So maybe show some godamn respect.
Foxi! The ones that lost their lives were not the decision makers that were responsible for this disaster! Blowout preventer was only a part of the reason this happened! Yes the BP ultimately failed but a long list of things led to the blowout!
What kind of idiot designs a dead man's switch that needs power to activate? The gates should be kept open by power and automatically close when power is lost, like truck air brakes.
One who isn't designing a true "dead man's" switch. They went for multiple redundant active controls instead, because the 'must maintain power' style is too likely to be activated in error/accident - and STILL needs a way to 'Safe' it, when it wouldn't work at all. Depending on a system that is not serviceable in use (water depth etc.) and both was NOT checked out thoroughly & didn't have adequate reporting for current condition (battery states) was a major planning failure IMHO. That part STILL seemed to work by luck, but the actual ram cut off design wasn't robust enough to chop & seal in any conceivable circumstance (off center pipe, high pressures).
And the US government has an agency, at the time called MMS, that is suppose to make sure all safety systems are operational BEFORE drilling begins. Odd how the media never mentioned this, as far as I'm aware.
Why would that matter? It doesn't make it the governments responsibility that everything is in order. No government in the world (including North Korea) has resources enough to police every project or check every detail. If such a state existed, I wouldn't want to live in it. Safety and compliance with regulation is always the responsibility of the entity that's engaged in the activity in question.
@@henrikjohansson6629 I'm going to guess you don't know about the regulations for drilling and oil/gas production in United States federal waters. When I was working in the GoM no Energy company could drill or produce oil/gas without MMS certifying everything is up to code. If MMS grants a company authorization to begin work it means ALL safety systems have been checked and found operational according to government regulations. If the MMS official did their job correctly. It actually is the governments job to police drilling and production in federal waters in the United States. That is what MMS, Mineral Management Services, did. One of their jobs was to make sure ALL drilling rigs and production platforms were up to Federal code. No Energy company operates in US federal waters without MMS's authorization. The 14 years I worked production in the Gulf of Mexico everyone who worked in production or drilling had to be certified. There was a certification school for Drilling and a separate certification school for Production. Certification was required by law to work in either drilling or production in federal waters in the United States. Getting T2 certification required going to a school and passing the class. IIRC, it was 40hr. class. You had to take the 40hr. class ever 4 years with a one day refresher every 2 years between the 40hr. course. MMS officials were going offshore M-F, weather permitting. They would schedule with the companies what platforms or drilling rigs they were going to inspect. MMS had the power to fine, shutdown drilling and production. They could even have people arrested. After the Deepwater Horizon incident MMS was desolved and 3 new departments were created. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement Office of Natural Resources Revenue en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minerals_Management_Service
@@DChrls Thank you for that informed answer. You're correct that I don't know much about US regulations concerning oil drilling. While I appreciate that it is a field which is very strictly regulated and subject to a lot of governmental supervision, I'm fairly sure that this doesn't relieve the production company of any of its own responsibility, which was my point. While you clearly know more about oil drilling regulations than me, I do know quite a lot about work in governmental agencies and the modus surrounding that, not in the US but in EU. I work for our equivalent to your SEC. We supervise companies and institutions that are critical to the financial stability of the whole society like big banks, publishers of reference rates, stock markets, etc. Needless to say, we are very thorough and I'd guess that this field is at the very least AS strictly regulated as oil drilling. I'm fairly sure that no government agency in the world could check each nut and bolt in a construction, or know everything that goes on in a company, nor would they ever take responsibility for everything that companies under their supervision does. No matter how strictly regulated a field is, ultimate responsibility for the safety and regulatory compliance of an operation will always remain with the operator. I'm fairly sure it's this way for oil drilling in the US as well, without even knowing anything about it 😉
@@henrikjohansson6629 You are correct the drilling and energy company are culpable. The point I was trying to make is that MMS is culpable as well because they are responsible for making sure all safety systems are operational per regulations. I never heard that mentioned in the media the whole time this was happening or during the trial. Which was my point. The BOP, blowout preventer, is one of the safety systems MMS is responsible for making sure it is functioning properly. It didn't surprise me that they didn't talk about the role MMS played in the incident being we had a Democrat president at the time and our media always goes easy on Democrat politicians. I'm not saying the president or his administration was to blame for what happened. The fault from MMS was an internal problem. It wouldn't have mattered who the president was. The blowout would have still happened. I just hate how the media rarely gives us the complete story. IMO, they don't investigate complicated stories to be able to give us all the information to make an informed conclusion and that is sad. IMO, they don't pursue in depth stories like these for several reasons. One of them is the time/expense to perform a thorough investigation would cut into their bottom line financially.
"Bro it's my first day on the job, which way do these wires go?", "Dude, it's a wire just put em which ever way, we gotta go to lunch..." 3 months later: "Yo man, remember that job we did on that regulator piece, well my bad, it turns out the the way the wires go does matter", "Oh dam did something happen?", "You could say that".
You don’t hire people who are uneducated or unprofessional tradesmen to undertake jobs like these. These people would have been vetted out with the best qualifications. safety precautions failed
@@joffebisk1446 seeing as I'm the guy who wired the blue pod I can guarantee you it wasn't miswired. A bad engineering schematic, shitty blueprints yes. I built that thing as the instructions said. It's lovely how they protect the big engineers and throw us lowly floor workers under the bus. It's kind of like how they call this the BP oil spill even though it was Halliburton who is in charge of the safety rigging and underwater work. It was Halliburton submarine that failed to cement and ultimately spilled more oil but because BP owned the oil coming out of the well it was called the BP oil spill even though British Petroleum had nothing to do with deepwater horizon or Haliburton. British Petroleum we're just some fucking assholes miles upon miles away and had nothing to do with anything that went on with the rig but for somehow it's the BP oil spill.
@@rivermcratt3683 what do you mean by bad engineering schematic, what was wrong with it? are you saying that the blueprint itself has wrong instructions on how to assemble the BOP?
Over $100M rig and a security system that was misswired and out of battery. Was this... a) never tested? b) doesn't warn you when is misswired? c) doesn't warn you when battery is low? ... sounds like a stone age, not a 21st century
It's a mile underwater, there is serious difficulty in powering an electric signal for that kind of distance along what is essentially a rotating heavy drilling pipe to the rig and as we know there is no signal currently except sonar that transmits any kind of distance under water. You would literally need some kind of engineered power generator not only at the seabed but at certain intervals along the pipe to boost signal for an independent data cable. The miss wiring should have been tested beforehand and it probably came down to a manager rushing workers to meet a deadline for the construction. The fact that it doesn't warn you when it was miss-wired has to do with both points above. That being said i don't believe it's impossible if they already have a way to send power down to these two pods a mile under water. It just cost too much time and money than these companies were willing to spend/wait for.
My guess is that BP, wanting to avoid blame claimed it was "miswired" when it's likely the battery probably failed(as they often do, after long periods of sitting) on the sea floor. They bought their sweet old time, and never replaced it because it was too expensive. Equipment like that isn't just "miswired".
Again its the inherent problems first though. No deep sea rig is going to bring up literally every inch of their piping to service the deadmans at the sea floor near the end of the drill pipe. You would have to stop all operations for literally months if not longer. It's an integral part of the structure it's not an add on, and even if it was no robotic deep sea sub in the world would have enough lifting capability currently to manipulate it.
Yes, good questions. I only watched this once, but I believe it would be possible to have low battery warning (and other information as well). Maybe they do but it was not covered here? Maybe, as a redundant system, it is just left invisible and not connected? I don't know about oil rigs, but what was said: 1) The crew can close valves remotely and 2) the deadmans work when there is no electricity and connection to the rig. So there clearly are wirings between the bottom and the rig.
I was an offshore platform operator. I'm sure there was a lot more that got skipped or corners cut, but that was a pretty good and to the point explanation. I can think of a bunch of questions use of centralizers, the weight of the mud, BOP testing documentation, and many others, but this seems to cover much it it. Catastrophic accidents are usually a series of oversights and mistakes that manifests as one massive event. Before I left the oilfield I saw a lot of cost cutting chasing pennies that ended up costing tens of thousands.
Can you answer this for me: wouldn't the use of the first two mechanisms to prevent kick always cause enormous pressure buildup in the pipe, even when used 100% properly and quickly? Or are they meant to be shut off quickly after using them, before the pressure builds?
@@thatfunkyduckThere are usually procedure involved to prevent a hydro-hammer type situations, in most cases drillers on these jobs are very experienced and skilled in well control ans would vent a kick through an accumulator and what they call a bag to moderate the kick form a gas pocket or other unexpected situations. Calculating mud weight is very critical too in preventing such situations. Slamming the the BOP closed under high pressure is rare. I never worked for drilling but I was a platform operator, which requiters knowledge of how it all works and intimate knowledge of well bore behavior
So, the most important pieces of safety equipment on a billion dollar rig... were wired by individuals who can't read a simple 12 wire DC schematic? Do they not test these assemblies before deploying them 5000ft beneath the sea? 87 days of oil leakage. The company responsible for this installation should be banned from ever touching a rig again. Companies that install residential swimming pool pumps have better quality control than this.
And what have oil companies done to guarantee that other solenoids aren't similarly mis-wired? My guess is that the same person who mis-wired Deepwater Horizon likely mis-wired every solenoid he or she worked on.
Love the sound effects especially the magnetic coils with orbiting electrons. No explanation or mention of cement failure that was supposed to seal off the pipe. It was mentioned in other documentaries.
It reminds me of the Video Disc recordings briefing you on the UAC in Doom3 (voice, cadence and content) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-OsPDhcmq_HU.html
The entire thrust of the video seems directed towards equipment failures. I am surprised there is not a single reference regarding why the kick occurred and the failure to detect it. Monitoring the well is the primary method of control and early detection is hugely important. It seems likely to me that there is an untold story here.
You're probably right. I will agree with you there. But when you think about it critically, the untold part of the story most likely amounts to one or more human beings being incompetent and not following some procedure. Entirely possible they are dead now, I don't think beating that dead horse is helpful. If there were other technical early warning systems at fault they should have been covered. Are you aware of any?
@@AlexKidd4Fun I worked for many years as a deep water drill ship OIM... on occasion, there were inappropriate instructions from shore-based supervisors, often driven by cost factors (?), putting risk-based supervisors under severe pressure... such scenarios can result in poor decisions and hasty actions contrary to best practice... Of course, I have no idea if this is the case here, although it doesn't seem to have been discussed...
@@bobsimpson4298 Although it is not covered in this video, poor decisions about the amount of cement to use led to the kick. If everything else had been properly handled, the blow out preventer would not have been needed at all.
A billion dollar oil rig and the only protection against the loss of life and a catastrophic environmental disaster is what I put in my smoke detector. A 9V battery.
Power plants commonly use 2 volt batteries for the emergency systems that allow a safe shut down in the event outside power is lost. They just use 60 or so of them together. Each one weighs more than a person. Voltage has nothing to do with the size of the battery
I am from Lafayette Louisiana, which is 40ish miles away from the coast. as crazy as it sounds you could smell the difference after this event occurred when the wind was blowing from the gulf.
I just lost my shit watching the movie. If the movie was enough to get me nervous, hell i dont wanna know how they felt during the explosion. It was a mess. And heartbreaking.
Movie was good I remember watching the news and hearing about this well killing so many sea animals and the environmental aspect but I never knew 11 people died that is devastating
@@ryans413 That's because the mainstream media cares much more (yes much much much more) about the sea animals than they do about eleven of your brothers and sisters. The driller, the assistant driller, the derrick hand, and all of the other floor hands that perished in that blowout made no difference to the media. They care about the size of the story.
They didn't feel anything - the ones you need to worry about are the burn injuries - unbelievable levels of pain, I know from personal experience. Although the cold salt water would actually help the pain and possibly reduce (if the water wasn't too dirty) infection.
I saw a Kick and Blowout in a geothermal rig 20 yrs ago. All the mud was pushed up and out of the hole like a wet sand blaster. My Cousin was on the Crows nest during this and as the mud began to turn to Steam. I was on a hill above the rig looking down on it. The Rig Boss was able to shut the well off manually but only just in time before my cousin was cooked. The whole rig was gray with mud and Flash said the mud was come up so fast that he could not have put his hand outside the crows nest.
Keep in mind, this well was 5 weeks behind BP's production schedule, it was costing one million dollars a day. That was after they had lost a drill pipe that costed $25 million, previously trying to drill into that reservoir. That's "why".
Driller was under pressure to get the hole finished.......He did not shut the well in and he paid the price! My Subsea buddy was on a rig about a mile away in his bunk when the explosion blew him out of his rack!
@@hubriswonk If you look on Wikipedia, there is a whole list of problems with the Deepwater Horizon that took place over many years. "A confidential survey commissioned by Transocean weeks before the explosion stated that workers were concerned about safety practices and feared reprisals if they reported mistakes or other problems.[28] The survey raised concerns "about poor equipment reliability, which they believed was a result of drilling priorities taking precedence over maintenance." The survey found that "many workers entered fake data to try to circumvent the system. As a result, the company's perception of safety on the rig was distorted" Just about everyone on, in, or involved with that rig is to blame. It's that way in just about every industry. No one cares about maintenance or safety, that costs too much money. (at least in the short term).
Seconds count in a blowout. The driller was blocked by a stupid company policy that required him to get his supervisors agreement - he was in the shower. Sadly, lives were lost worrying about a job. The BOP's would probably have worked as designed but for the waiting - time weighted velocity of solids carried by gas & mud cut the bore, and the rest is history. Since most the public will never know what this means... loss of a choke on a completed gas well may allow enough solids lifted to carve metal like a blowtorch sculpts ice. You have to stay on your toes drilling underbalanced, and nobody is paid enough to go home in a body bag. RIP gents.
Flinch Driller is THE man on that rig. Having worked drilling only for a few months (see not trying to be all knowing) had a moment when I was in the middle of unclamping the "claw"(sorry forgot the real word for it) from the pipe when he yelled "get out of there!" Too late I had a hold of the wobbling pipe, didn't hear him and from only six inches the pipe hit my mid section. To give you an idea of a drilling pipe power the wobble that hit me made my FLY ten feet back into the "doghouse" that's on the rig. I woke up with four faces looking over me. Lol. Yes, I had a nasty bruise but was alive. That driller later told me he saw the top wobbling but due to the noise and I was "tunneled vision" I didn't hear him. So partly my fault and said as much. The sups were grateful for my honesty and now physically tap the worker to get out.
Driller had both the authority and responsibility to close BOP immediately, then notify supervisor. And he did, but he was too late in realizing what was happening. Military and airlines call the problem 'situational awareness', which can have a variety of causes.
Years ago I worked for TOI, and know of a damn good driller that got ran off for shutting the well in. Basically the company man wanted him to wait, all the while taking a steady gain in the pits. Well, he said screw it and shut it in, as he should have. Company man pitched a fit to the OIM and got the driller removed. TOI was famous for screwing their people over for the contractor, and BP is famous for trying to tell the well what to do, when it's the well that will tell you what to do. I wasn't there and don't know exactly what happened, but have a fair idea. I was down in Brazil when it happened and three contradictory reports came out in quick succession, non of which made sense, a few more reports and them getting there story together we pretty much knew what happened.
I studied in sailing school. My engine room professor worked at a company that inspects certain oilrig safety systems. He was scheduled to inspect Deepwater Horizon together with his team, but became ill before he had to go. His coworker went instead. His team was onboard when the accident occurred. They lost their lives.
I remember multiple “experts” on TV during the fire saying how these rigs are so well designed that it was impossible to sink. However anyone watching the fire knew for a fact it was only a matter of time before it went down.
They said the same about the twin towers. After the planes crashed, news had several engineers guarantee the public those buildings would never fall, that it was built that way. And they were arguing against people running out the buildings, saying emergency personnel should send people back to their work places so they could reach the floors that needed immediate help.
@@Robin...222That's demonstrably false. The towers survived the impact of the planes but ultimately fell after the massive jet fuel fire weakened the steel structure beyond the weight above. The method of the destruction is irrelevant. If you believe 9/11 was a conspiracy in 2023, please recognize that it makes _more_ sense that the terrorists were paid off by a nebulous "them" than some physics-defying nonsense debunked by engineers over twenty years ago.
& this 56 day leak has been dwarfed by a leak that has garnered almost 0 attention b/c there was not an accompanying catastrophic event. Oh well!Don't tell the huggers!
Also oil is not Biotic, it is Abiotic "Not Organic" and comes from deep within the earth created by processes in the magma boundaries that are push upward are constantly being replenished!
I’m glad I seen this and in my career I know not to take on a job with so much risk of hurting Mother Earth ecspecially if I know I don’t have a clue what I’m doing but if that is the case I would have never took the job
I was one of the first inspector to inspect this rig when it entered the GOM. I had retired when this accident happened. Everyone had their opinion on why this accident happened. First, the inspectors should have ordered the BOP be pulled out and repaired, but, the politics involved with BP and the MMS regional supervisors in New Orleans...their was to much leniency ....granted BP. The rig crews could only shut in the BOPs when BP would be contacted and gave the orders. That is way to much time waiting. I have spent 40 years in the oilfield, my last 12 years as a drilling inspector for MMS.
I'm a HVAC mechanic and work on commercial/industrial equipment. I see a lot of equipment wired incorrectly, safeties not installed and other issues that make equipment unsafe. It's scary how much equipment gets overlooked because when it works it's works fine. But when it fails all the things that mechanics overlooked is a real problem. Here's a small example. On every commercial boiler there is a safety called a "low water cut off" switch. This safety shuts off a boiler if it gets low on water for some reason. The way this switch is supposed be tested is the boilers main gas valve is shutoff. Then the boiler is isolated from the hydronic lines and drained. If the safety is working correctly the boilers main power shuts off automatically. But this takes time usually 10 minutes, so what most mechanics do is hit a test button on the control and call it a day. This completely ignores the proper test procedure but it only takes 10 seconds. My guess is that all industries including the oil drilling industry are the same as mine. You are not as safe as you think.
This is really scary. Today, on 20th of April 2017 I was searching for a movie to watch and remembered about a trailer regarding the deepwater horizon accident. Only after watching the movie and reading about the accident on wikipedia I realised that the accident happened on 20th of April seven years ago. What a coincidence... May god rest the souls of the men who died there.
Yes, but to be fair I often seek out CSB stuff as I work in a chemical plant. I just “love” this stuff but of course full well knowing lives have been lost and countless millions of dollars lost.
I'm glad that at the very least we've got means to know what went wrong in this terrible catastrophe, I hope we all learned the lesson and take into consideration how easily things can go wrong, my heart goes to the families that lost loved ones out there. Stay safe out there, lads. Have a good shift and return home in one piece.
@@specialtymachining They received it before the accident. They had been working for 7 years without any incident that required stopping and loosing money (which would cost at least 42000$/hr ). I just watched a documentary on the accident.
It basically means that it is very difficult to deal with very high pressures at long distances. Especially when you can not access the device and must rely on instrumentation. There is always something not considered because it has never been seen before. Unfortunately people can not think of everything. The engineers are not lazy. They really do care and the want their stuff to work.
Ted Chaffman .. Watch the movie then come back to this youtube clip... it will ALL make sense once you understand and visually see what happens in the movie. It's a devastatingly brilliant account of what happened and of course extremely sad for the men who lost their lives.
One of my new favorite channels (The original one).Great video. The no-nonsense matter of fact style is great. It is interesting to see what happened during these awful events and even better when we are told what should have been done to prevent these events. These should be shown to high schoolers, especially the ones about Delta P and suction/water.
IMNOTMELVIN.....You want FAKE GOD to BLESS THEM ???? Didn't FAKE GOD KILL THEM ????? Like He KILLED the LITTLE KIDS At SANDYHOOK and all the other MASS KILLINGS. With you people it's Always GOD has a Plan for everyone. Can you Explain to me FAKE GODS PLAN for KILLING THESE LITTLE KIDS....🤔🤔🤔🤔
A sawmill I worked at recently was doing an upgrade to its primary water intake. This upgrade is to supply water to two new blow off stations. The water line was dug exposing a 12" enameled iron pipe with one tee junction and two 90° elbows about forty feet apart supported on the outside corners by one ton concrete blocks. The crew doing the dig exposed this pipe while unable to shut off the primary water as the mill was in full operation and were meerly prepping for a weekend shutdown. When they returned the following day the section of pipe between the two 90° elbows was buckled upward about six to seven feet. Luckily this was the first day of the shut down (though they would have forced a shutdown regardless) and they immediately shut off the main, replaced the pipe and buried the line along with their new section to the first blow off station. No injuries or equipment were damaged aside from the 40 feet of pipe that buckled. Goes to show this has the potential to happen even in relatively low pressure environments. Be careful, don't take chances and follow procedure. Go home safe.
I remember this clearly. It was also reported that the drill mud had been replaced with mud pulled up from the bottom of the ocean floor, to reduce operating costs. This is was done for the last few days prior to the explosion. The drill mud had been initially replaced with a much cheaper slurry prior to deciding to use mud from the ocean floor. The sodium content in the ocean water also destroyed seals and electric contacts that normally wouldn't be exposed to corrosion or salt water, had the proper drill mud been continued to be supplied and used.
I don't think you remember it clearly because BP never used "mud from the ocean floor", the drilling mud was displaced with seawater, this is a normal practice to 'underweight' the well- you can't do a neg press test without displacement the mud. And sodium definitely DOES NOT 'destroy seals or electric contacts' that would be exposed to drilling mud because THERE AREN'T ANY electrical contacts exposed to drilling mud. All the electronics are located in the BOP pods- which is always underwater and not exposed to drilling fluid. So displacing the drill mud with water would have zero impact on this. Were mistakes made? Obviously, but you have no clue what you're talking about with 'mud pulled up from the bottom of the ocean floor'. appel.nasa.gov/2011/05/11/aa_4-4_acs_deepwater_horizon_lessons-html/
Hahaha hilarious post. Sand and God knows what else is some how hoovered off the ocean floor, somehow held in whats more more or less a semi submersible boat, then somehow ends up down hole? Or....and engineer can calculate his mud weight and tell hands to dump in x amount of 50lb clay bags into the mud machine. Which one sounds cheaper, more efficient, and PRECISE?
Came here after watching the movie. Now I know its called deep water horizon. Many of us outside of USA know this as the 'BP oil spill disaster at Gulf of Mexico'.
Wow, that's really interesting. When the investigation finished, we all became aware of the issues with the concrete sealant and it's failure -- later, we learned that it could have been prevented if responsible decisions were made. Obviously, people working on the rig need to have multiple methods of preventing this type of disaster. Until I watched this, I had no idea just how many safety features & procedures failed that day.
The prime issues here is that instead of taking the necessary steps to ensure the safety of the rig and the integrity of the Well, they cut corners by using cheap and unsuitable parts, and skipped almost all of the most essential tests to make sure the Well was stable, then went straight to the drilling. Cheap bastards cared more about the money than anyone on that Rig, plain and simple.
+Jeremiah John Oh how rich coming from you. They half assed making the rig stable. Nothing was cheap but the fuckers didn't seem to pay much attention to detail and basically skipped all the necessary steps in order to get some "fast money". If you are so "inclined" and "knowledgeable" on engineering, how about you give your feedback and info on this issue rather than comment like a whiny 12 year old.
sure thing bud, I heard they made shitloads of money off this. no I'll continue to call you people idiots because you are, fking use your brain for once you think anyone wanted to risk this happening? damn idiots according to the general public who can barely tie their shoes in the morning there should be no accident ever, such things are only possible due to evil and greed, absolutely pathetic minds.
"cared more about the money than anyone on the rig.." it sounds like you're quoting 'Duhhh!' magazine. Is anyone under the impression that huge global corporations give a shit about anything or anyone more than profits? If you say otherwise, you're kidding yourself.
my ex girlfriends dad was on this rig. his name was chad. he was an electrician on the rig, he went back and saved people. this was pretty fucking scary to watch. What a chad tho
The only thing wrong with this story is two small things 1 you have to test the b.o.p every 21days and record the test and send them to the main office back on land. If the test falls, you stop drilling and pull the b.o.p back to the surface and fix it. 2 the blind shear ram is designed to shear the drill pipe, no matter what. I only worked off shore for 8 years, what do I know
So you're Mr Know It All who knows more than the USCSB because you worked on an oil rig, and yet you don't bother to address the fact the blind shear ram DIDN'T shear the drill pipe in this instance, causing the entire disaster?
Perhaps you missed the part about how the pipe bent OUT OF THE PROPER PATH of the blind shear ram. It "should have" sheared it no matter what, as you say, had it been more in the right path of the shearing. It damned near did, it "partially" sheared it, so it almost worked like it should have. Go back and watch it again.
But some guy who went to college and read some books made a video about something he may have never done first hand. He is an "expert". Where is the respect. Lol
i legit remember seeing this on the news because i had such an explosive uncontrolled leaky shit that I thought maybe the pipes from my house met up with other pipes and caused this.
This incident was really beyond our expectations, it became a memory. I and my team mates were very shocked at that time. I am grateful that I and my team are still safe
Sometimes it takes MANY years to figure it out and determined people. It took over 20 years to figure out "all" the factors and true cause of the Challenger space shuttle disaster and there were so many things that contributed to it. It was hard to nail down all of them. They still are not 100% sure of every detail and some things about it, are still a mystery and only speculation, but overall they knew the main causes and that kind of thing should never happen again. It's amazing they figured out as much as they did. There is a cool documentary about it here on RU-vid. Like this disaster, it was literally "the perfect storm" of multiple things which ultimately lead to catastrophe. Something even the best Engineers could have never expected. A total freak accident. Only a couple of parts of it, could be attributed to human error really and even that is questionable. The rest was in the hands of nature and forces.
@@MrBilld75 In Prudhoe Bay Alaska in the 1980's BP conducted "What if" studies. They limited it to only one failure at a time, or you would never be able to address many of the possibilities.
I have to say that I thought I had this all figured out until I spent a week with my nephew, who is a Director for Weltec, a company that stops the oil under pressure from coming up from the ground around the outside of the casing, which is bad. He said that cost-cutting, time cutting procedures were implemented that resulted in such a terrible fire.
It's my job to inspect and certify those Blowout preventers. It's amazing how many cracks you see in those things that could fail I they were ever triggered.
mynameisray... MONEY talks Ray .. they were a $169 billion company (BP) .. they were smashed with fines, being sued, compensation etc... cost BP $163 BILLION ...
This who catastrophe sounds like BP self sabotaged themselves through a half measured approach to cost effectiveness. Cutting corners by sacrificing safety only causes pain!
One tidbit that I didn't hear much about: When they cut the big pipe off just above the BOP with that huge shear, as it was moving away, I could clearly see that there were two drill pipes side-by-side in there. My guess was that was why the BOP didn't work. I was watching the live video feeds from those underwater drone submarines, whatever they call them.
This is a good example of why you should never trust any safety mechanism at 100% You never know with certainty if it has been assembled correctly and whatnot For example: if you work on your circular saw without unplugging it, there is still a chance that it could start randomly.. Maybe the on / off switch went bad and in the next 1 minute it will power the device on for some reason. Or a variation of this..
Soo. If they know that the blow out preventer is a faulty design. Then re-design it using the knowledge from the Deepwater Horizon disaster making this a less likely outcome in future. That's what they do in aviation.
Indeed and in space Aviation too. They learned what happened with the Challenger disaster (after 2 decades of investigating) and corrected it long before that, as they knew the main cause, just not the fine details of the ultimate explosion. So, it "should" never happen again.
Murphy’s Law: “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” Never underestimate nor overestimated even the safeties features of technology. As my dad say, “Expect the unexpected.”
It's amazing to me that the overwhelming majority of the comments here appear to have misunderstood the actual cause of the failure. Although it's true that one of the crucial safety features was miswired, the mechanical ram did ultimately fire. It was the buckling of the drill pipe that prevented the ram from being effective.
The ram fired because 1/3 the batteries was faulty, which negated the production fault which should have been detected before parts shipping of the solenoid _and_ should have been detected at parts acceptance _and_ should have been detected at factory acceptance of that ram-half prior to shipping.
Regardless of the wiring problems, the ram did deply at jull force. But the ram was not designed to cut through and out of center pipe. The amount of force needed to cut through and out of center pipe was well in excess of what the ram could produce. Furthermore with an out of center pipe the ram could not seal the pipe to stop the flow of oil.
That was really interesting. Can't believe it spewed out Oil for 87 days, there must have been a reason why it took so long to cap it? Great narration, if I had the money I'd pay for him to voice over on my channel. May all the men who lost their lives that day rest in peace. Very sad.
@@specialtymachining Don't forget the whole thing was deeper than most wells, a mile down into the Gulf. Not the easiest sort of situation to deal with.
Actually that will piss a guy off too. They could've sealed the well permanently much quicker. Instead to save themselves money they did it so they could use the well again later saving themselves money. Fucking bullshit that they are even in business still
For all those really curious what happened on the horizon, I can tell you exactly why the horizon failed. I won’t give details on how I know this information or names but I will give you all the truth of why the rig exploded. Deepwater horizon was built in South Korea and it took 3 years. Some incredibly intelligent men built that rig. BP got approval from Obama to drill there because they went to 5000ft and no one had ever gone that deep before. Everything was put into place in perfect working order and BP turned the rig over to transocean. They were the ones responsible for operating and are the 2nd largest drilling company in the world at this moment still. BP works very closely with transocean and remember this. One month after BP turned the rig over to transocean the project manager who built horizon went back and inspected. His findings were astonishing, all the operation and safety manuals were gone, the safety alarms were literally cut (not wired wrong). When asked about this to the transocean driller, he said because the alarms were constantly going off and waking up people they physically cut them out. This report was obviously buried and 1 month after that report was filed it blew up because no one was physically watching the gauges and the safety measures were disabled by transocean. BP took the fall because their close relationship with transocean. Of course this isn’t the narrative the movie portrays, because how are you going to feel bad for those people who worked with transocean and destroyed horizon and polluted the gulf? Instead they portrayed a tragedy and blaming BP for everything, when in reality you’d actually be yelling for them to burn with the rig for not doing their jobs and you say that those backwoods Cajun hillbillies got what they deserved. Believe me or not I don’t care, but that’s the truth of it.
I do remember a positive outcome was that plenty of university's and colleges, schoolchildren and their teachers were working on projects on how to soak up or neutralise the oil in both the water and on land. As well as how to effectively clean and save the wildlife. There were a few news reports of school groups submitting various designs to the clean up crews and many being used or studied for further research. Not a wanted positive outcome, but it may help in the next clean up to be safer and cheaper. EDIT : We used peat moss as well as dry potting mix to effectively soak up oil spills when worked as a boiler tech. It was damn effective.
Nicely done. I appreciated the detailed animation. I recall when I heard the BOP had failed back in the days of the event and I just shook my head in disbelief having some appreciation of the event as a industrial pipe/instrumentation fitter 40 years ago. It's fair to say that the BOP did not entirely fail in it's design. The biggest issue was that someone rebuilt this BOP stack and did not do any testing . This is a stack of devices that all binary in operation...either OPEN or CLOSE. Thus it's obvious that not a single bit of testing was done to guarantee the correct rebuild of the stack had been done property because ...again...it's a binary operation..it either works or it doesn't and the only way it by QA aka Testing is because there was no testing of the BOP unit after rebuild. Those are the people who should first and foremost be held accountable because I can guarantee you that someone signed off on the 'testing'of the rebuild BOP stack. All the other stuff I make no comment on as it's that simple.
Agree with your comment about the BOP not completely failing. Yes, the incorrect wiring was a major contributor, but having the pipe bend was also critical. The BOPs of this era did not have a high success rate - one small oversight by money-hungry petroleum companies.
Never mind the narrative. Video made by a PR firm for a government agency. I'm pretty sure... we have enough bureaucrats to issue their own reports, so why was a PR firm needed?
this is not the worst environmental disaster in world history, that would be the nuclear melt down of chernobyl. it has nothing to do with the creators "only caring about the usa"
Cole Devine no way Chernobyl only effected a city this bp shit effected thousands of miles and it still killing and piloting today . this is a place man still lives in Chernobyl isn't that bad people actually live their . but animals in the ocean don't have a choice. and we relay on sea life more then you think .
No one ever mentions drilling way beyond permitted depths and the fact that they hit a pocket containing 500 degree oil at 30,000 PSI. That's ten times a pressure washer for those that didn't know.. You'd need pipe with a 2 inch wall thickness to survive that.
@@Taranabas52 The fuel lines (i.e., hoses) are not subjected to 36,000 psi even though the injectors run at this pressure. If they were, a fuel line rupture would knock the locomotive over, kill everyone standing near the rupture, and possibly blow out the entire ballast of the track underneath. Let's take your common semi truck tire: A measly 110psi on a 12,000 pound front axle. There's videos posted of people slashing these tires and nearly being killed from the explosion.
