BLOWOUT Official release, Scary the lack of Fundamentals Ignored

[James Regan + 1,776]

Just saw the official video released explaining the reason for this land rig blowout, its a shame five people lost their lives and there were so many indicators ignored, this IMO points to lack of experienced supervision.

This video is a good description to those whom may not be familiar with drilling operations.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/danrmorrell_blowout-in-oklahoma-activity-6596047872502882304--Dbz

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

Anybody familiar with drilling operations would tear this drill crew to shreds!

How did they fail to see a pit gain! How do you do a flow check and not notice this type of flow? Finally, when in doubt, SHUT THE WELL IN!!!

If your driller cannot make an accurate trip sheet using his trip tank....he shouldn’t be drilling!!!

With all the experience leaving the oilfield, if drilling ever actually picks up again, you can expect to see this type of thing often.

[James Regan + 1,776]

Shocking really the amount of communication the well was giving and no-one was listening or watching in harsh terms this is negligence and someone should be prosecuted, five people died of ignorance.

[El Nikko + 2,145]

I didn't hear any mention of the tool pusher or company man in all of this, it seems like they're implying that it's just the drillers fault but surely every man and his dog would have been paying close attention to the operations in such a situation. Also they didn't have a mudlogging unit by the sound of it, safety monitoring is one of the primary jobs for the data engineer and he shouldn't have missed the gains...mind you nor should the driller. Apparently the crew were not green from comments I've seen god knows what they were thinking and accidentally pumping an LCM?? When does that ever happen?

We had an accident in Algeria years ago which was similar, two guys were killed while trying to fix the BOPs while the well was out of control (and had been for days) but they kept on drilling. It was common place to have the mudlogging units quite close to the rig because of the hassle involved in running cables (not safe) and not uncommon to find lazy loggers hadn't even bothered to remove the padlock from the escape hatch. Luckily in this case our guys did, one burned his hands opening the main door at which point they realised and escaped through the hatch.

Personally I'd have walked off both of these jobs.

Here's the Algeria blow out, you can see the derrick fall down...it took months for them to put the fire out **volume warning**

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsYHR5-qJKQ

[El Nikko + 2,145]

7 minutes ago, James Regan said:

Shocking really the amount of communication the well was giving and no-one was listening or watching in harsh terms this is negligence and someone should be prosecuted, five people died of ignorance.

It is tragic, I've read comments that the drillers wern't green either which raises some questions. Companies spout safety all the time when it suits them but they also cut corners and put pressure on crews to do things as fast as possible which does lead to accidents.

[James Regan + 1,776]

15 minutes ago, El Nikko said:

I didn't hear any mention of the tool pusher or company man in all of this, it seems like they're implying that it's just the drillers fault but surely every man and his dog would have been paying close attention to the operations in such a situation. Also they didn't have a mudlogging unit by the sound of it, safety monitoring is one of the primary jobs for the data engineer and he shouldn't have missed the gains...mind you nor should the driller. Apparently the crew were not green from comments I've seen god knows what they were thinking and accidentally pumping an LCM?? When does that ever happen?

We had an accident in Algeria years ago which was similar, two guys were killed while trying to fix the BOPs while the well was out of control (and had been for days) but they kept on drilling. It was common place to have the mudlogging units quite close to the rig because of the hassle involved in running cables (not safe) and not uncommon to find lazy loggers hadn't even bothered to remove the padlock from the escape hatch. Luckily in this case our guys did, one burned his hands opening the main door at which point they realised and escaped through the hatch.

Personally I'd have walked off both of these jobs.

Here's the Algeria blow out, you can see the derrick fall down...it took months for them to put the fire out **volume warning**

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsYHR5-qJKQ

Brutal, people don't realise what that tiger will do when they tease it....

[Danlxyz + 63]

Is it SOP to leave the blind rams open when you've pulled the string completely out of the hole?

[James Regan + 1,776]

4 minutes ago, Danlxyz said:

Is it SOP to leave the blind rams open when you've pulled the string completely out of the hole?

Not when you are pulling the bit to surface while under balanced, normally you would be running to bottom again to try and displace the hole with kill mud or a heavier mud to control the well. Its common to close the BSR on a surface stack to stop junk going down the well. SOP or Good Oilfield Practices are good phrases if you have the experience to follow or use both. These guys didn't have much of a clue, they had all the signals including a mud logger who picked up a drilling break before the driller, I think the well just got pissed off with the ignorance and let them have a piece of mother nature. Just the fact the derrick man mixed LCM while the well was giving mud shows you how much he was paying attention or his knowledge, just saying it "Lost Circulation" would have alarmed anyone with half a brain, no circulation lost there, it was flowing without the pumps, so many FUs its almost unbelievable.

[El Nikko + 2,145]

5 minutes ago, James Regan said:

Not when you are pulling the bit to surface while under balanced, normally you would be running to bottom again to try and displace the hole with kill mud or a heavier mud to control the well. Its common to close the BSR on a surface stack to stop junk going down the well. SOP or Good Oilfield Practices are good phrases if you have the experience to follow or use both. These guys didn't have much of a clue, they had all the signals including a mud logger who picked up a drilling break before the driller, I think the well just got pissed off with the ignorance and let them have a piece of mother nature. Just the fact the derrick man mixed LCM while the well was giving mud shows you how much he was paying attention or his knowledge, just saying it "Lost Circulation" would have alarmed anyone with half a brain, no circulation lost there, it was flowing without the pumps, so many FUs its almost unbelievable.

Oh so they did have a mudlogger, I have noticed in the last couple of years companies opting not to have them but you would have thought they should be mandatory just for the well monitoring side of things alone.

[James Regan + 1,776]

1 minute ago, El Nikko said:

Oh so they did have a mudlogger, I have noticed in the last couple of years companies opting not to have them but you would have thought they should be mandatory just for the well monitoring side of things alone.

Yes the mentioned a logger or geologist picked up a change in the formation at the shaker area, the video is not too technical so some of it may be ambiguous but I think they had to make it so to try and help as many people understand as possible. The said the choke manifold was reading zero before they opened the BSR, I doubt the choke manifold was lined up correctly, this had so many FUs it should be considered a crime against the oil Industry.

[El Nikko + 2,145]

12 minutes ago, James Regan said:

Yes the mentioned a logger or geologist picked up a change in the formation at the shaker area, the video is not too technical so some of it may be ambiguous but I think they had to make it so to try and help as many people understand as possible. The said the choke manifold was reading zero before they opened the BSR, I doubt the choke manifold was lined up correctly, this had so many FUs it should be considered a crime against the oil Industry.

I agree it's absolutely disgusting, I just find it almost impossible to believe that no one knew what was happening, it's pretty obvious stuff.

 

[PE Scott + 563]

That made me cringe. I worked as a software engineer on geothermal rigs before going back to school for a Petro degree. During that time, I wrote code and engineered equipment to monitor all sorts of things, including the pit depth. At the time, I didnt understand the significance of that and it had to be explained to me. That was the very first week on the job though and I had never been in the oilfield before. I just don't see how, in current times, something like m that could have been ignored.

[El Nikko + 2,145]

7 minutes ago, PE Scott said:

That made me cringe. I worked as a software engineer on geothermal rigs before going back to school for a Petro degree. During that time, I wrote code and engineered equipment to monitor all sorts of things, including the pit depth. At the time, I didnt understand the significance of that and it had to be explained to me. That was the very first week on the job though and I had never been in the oilfield before. I just don't see how, in current times, something like m that could have been ignored.

It's probably the culture, when I was in the North Sea years and years ago they were absolutely brutal for safety and it set me off in the right direction for when I when overseas and then saw the horror stories that can happen.

One rig I was on when I was a data engineer (mudlogging) the company man had a few barrels of mud moved into the cement unit on the previous shift then on mine during a connection where the pumps are off and mud flows back he released the extra volume into the trip tank...I thought that was extremely harsh and sneaky but I caught it and never forgot the lesson. Having the alarms set just right is so important.

[James Regan + 1,776]

57 minutes ago, El Nikko said:

It's probably the culture, when I was in the North Sea years and years ago they were absolutely brutal for safety and it set me off in the right direction for when I when overseas and then saw the horror stories that can happen.

One rig I was on when I was a data engineer (mudlogging) the company man had a few barrels of mud moved into the cement unit on the previous shift then on mine during a connection where the pumps are off and mud flows back he released the extra volume into the trip tank...I thought that was extremely harsh and sneaky but I caught it and never forgot the lesson. Having the alarms set just right is so important.

I also started in the North Sea, I was on the Henry Goodrich at the time, we had just ran and cemented a liner lap, pulled out of the hole and we shut down to work on the PVT (Pit Volume Totaliser) it was a Mudsketeer. During the time the Et was working on the PVT we started to get calls from Anadrill the mud loggers telling us we were taking a gain in the active pit. This was a HP/HT well with a one barrel discrepancy to stop and flow check, we were all trained by Randy Smith on HP/HT. We changed at midnight and soon after a second call from Anadrill regarding a gain, they were told the same answer that we were working on the PVT and the well was dead. To cut a long story short after 19 minutes of the well giving us fluid 400+Bbls a roustabout entered the shaker hose door and got bowled over with mud, we had filled the whole process pits as well as the active, we shut the well in and had 7500psi in the casing. The rig was immediately evacuated and six of us (I was a roughneck at the time) stayed on board to bullhead the influx back into the formation, 13 days later we killed the well and ended up testing the well, its now the Captain field off of Peterhead. We are very lucky, the influx came in through he back side of the liner lap. We had some of the most experienced guys in the Industry bit it was a chain of events that broke down, ie Us and the mud loggers not communicating.

Not as many clues as this case but never the less we were complacent as the well was dead for some hours, we had tripped out after the cement job, all parameters met, but it caught us some hours later.

[El Nikko + 2,145]

47 minutes ago, James Regan said:

I also started in the North Sea, I was on the Henry Goodrich at the time, we had just ran and cemented a liner lap, pulled out of the hole and we shut down to work on the PVT (Pit Volume Totaliser) it was a Mudsketeer. During the time the Et was working on the PVT we started to get calls from Anadrill the mud loggers telling us we were taking a gain in the active pit. This was a HP/HT well with a one barrel discrepancy to stop and flow check, we were all trained by Randy Smith on HP/HT. We changed at midnight and soon after a second call from Anadrill regarding a gain, they were told the same answer that we were working on the PVT and the well was dead. To cut a long story short after 19 minutes of the well giving us fluid 400+Bbls a roustabout entered the shaker hose door and got bowled over with mud, we had filled the whole process pits as well as the active, we shut the well in and had 7500psi in the casing. The rig was immediately evacuated and six of us (I was a roughneck at the time) stayed on board to bullhead the influx back into the formation, 13 days later we killed the well and ended up testing the well, its now the Captain field off of Peterhead. We are very lucky, the influx came in through he back side of the liner lap. We had some of the most experienced guys in the Industry bit it was a chain of events that broke down, ie Us and the mud loggers not communicating.

Not as many clues as this case but never the less we were complacent as the well was dead for some hours, we had tripped out after the cement job, all parameters met, but it caught us some hours later.

Bloody hell that is toe curling to read 😮

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

51 minutes ago, James Regan said:

The rig was immediately evacuated and six of us (I was a roughneck at the time) stayed on board to bullhead the influx back into the formation, 13 days later we killed the well

Did it really take 13 days to kill the well? Were you using brine? These are truly fascinating stories, thanks for sharing. 

[James Regan + 1,776]

20 minutes ago, Ward Smith said:

Did it really take 13 days to kill the well? Were you using brine? These are truly fascinating stories, thanks for sharing. 

Ward, your welcome.

We were using sacks of Hemotite almost iron filings, and the cement unit, it took 13 days from the kick before we could open the well back up, sure we had to wait on boats for freight to kill the well and specialist well killers.

We were using 19+PPG to drill with OBM, if we had to move a crane we had to call the driller and let him know, the parameters were so tight, so many rules and SOPs, but we were complacent during a change of tour. The 10-3/4 Heavy Weight Casing string we had previously ran before was so heavy we had to restring the blocks, over a Million Llbs hook load, this well was a monster, when we finally tested it, the whole rig shook as we opened her up well choked back. The liner was the final piece before we would be running well test production gear.

It was surreal at 0200hrs Blue light to evacuate the rig in the middle of the north sea, with Helicopters circling the rig, everyone leaving and your staying, It wasn't until I did my well control that I realised exactly how dangerous a situation it was.

Edited November 7, 2019 by James Regan

[ronwagn + 6,290]

4 hours ago, El Nikko said:

It's probably the culture, when I was in the North Sea years and years ago they were absolutely brutal for safety and it set me off in the right direction for when I when overseas and then saw the horror stories that can happen.

One rig I was on when I was a data engineer (mudlogging) the company man had a few barrels of mud moved into the cement unit on the previous shift then on mine during a connection where the pumps are off and mud flows back he released the extra volume into the trip tank...I thought that was extremely harsh and sneaky but I caught it and never forgot the lesson. Having the alarms set just right is so important.

Shift changes can be a critical time in dangerous jobs. Often the prior shift should be forced to stay until the next shift is satisfied with the safety situation. 

[El Nikko + 2,145]

2 minutes ago, ronwagn said:

Shift changes can be a critical time in dangerous jobs. Often the prior shift should be forced to stay until the next shift is satisfied with the safety situation. 

Yes it was what caused the Piper Alpha disaster if you've read anything about that. To be fair people tend to pay attention during more dangerous operations and accidents tend to happen in routine day to day stuff like walking down a flight of stairs. Mudloggers can be a huge contribution to safety monitoring but cost saving and a preference to lower skilled/cheaper/less experienced people made mudlogging a crappy service and that has been a trend in the oil industry for my entire career of almost 20 years and I know they don't get taken seriously sometimes which might be the case with Jame's horror story, they can been seen as green and annoying people who call over silly things and it's an entry level position for geologists who are not really engineers.

I feel there's been a race to the bottom in many sectors of the oil industry, I did 4 years Mudlogging/unit Manager/Wellsite Geologist, then MWD and then got a job in Geosteering which was like being the pop star of the industry at the time but yet again the McDonalds-ification of the oil industry has ruined even that now lol.

I've always been early for shift change and late leaving, these days I work from home so it's easy to do an extra (free!) 2 hours a day.

I fancy a job in a supermarket

[El Nikko + 2,145]

2 hours ago, James Regan said:

Ward, your welcome.

We were using sacks of Hemotite almost iron filings, and the cement unit, it took 13 days from the kick before we could open the well back up, sure we had to wait on boats for freight to kill the well and specialist well killers.

We were using 19+PPG to drill with OBM, if we had to move a crane we had to call the driller and let him know, the parameters were so tight, so many rules and SOPs, but we were complacent during a change of tour. The 10-3/4 Heavy Weight Casing string we had previously ran before was so heavy we had to restring the blocks, over a Million Llbs hook load, this well was a monster, when we finally tested it, the whole rig shook as we opened her up well choked back. The liner was the final piece before we would be running well test production gear.

It was surreal at 0200hrs Blue light to evacuate the rig in the middle of the north sea, with Helicopters circling the rig, everyone leaving and your staying, It wasn't until I did my well control that I realised exactly how dangerous a situation it was.

Thanks for sharing that James that is some story, it sounds like professionalism won the day at least. The Deep Water Horizon disaster sounds slightly similar except they screwed up big time and it shows what could have happened.

[Old-Ruffneck + 1,223]

23 hours ago, James Regan said:

Shocking really the amount of communication the well was giving and no-one was listening or watching in harsh terms this is negligence and someone should be prosecuted, five people died of ignorance.

Nothing happens in this world by mistake. My core beliefs. Santa Fe drilling rig 1 in early 12/1979 hit gas pocket in a known gas field and 40 sticks of drill stem snaked all over the location. BOP's back then were very similar as today's. Pipe came out so fast, all they could do is run. Good Lord was looking after that crew that evening. Location was up by Red Lake - Orla, TX. I was on a rig across the lake and as crow flies maybe 5 miles. One would assume by that accident they would learn to put right parameters in place but wasn't the case and 2/5/80 the doghouse heater caught the next gas kick and burned 2 days before Boots "N" Coots could get it out. The gas pressures in that field were 16.000psi so inexperience crew on a Santa Fe rig made some bad decisions but no loss of life. Back then there was no drillers shack. Just a doghouse. Not sure that rigs depth but we were drilling vert. to approx. 19k feet. Past 14k feet switch from 10# brine to diesel based inverted mud. Clays and polymers, diesel to get the visc up and keep gas in check. So even 40 yrs ago we knew how to control wells. No alarms back in them days, 'cept in know H2s areas. If someone has the resource to check summer and fall of 83 there was 40-or bit more circle around Odessa, at least 40 workers were killed by senseless ignorance of common practice safety practices. I lost a good friend on a Cactus rig because bumping with rotary table trip out of the hole. Lead tong snub line was rotten and snapped and hit the motorman (my buddy) and got the driller with tail of snub. Broke his leg. Company took 2 days to make visit to mother. Sad....

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

The sad fact is that this drill crew had no business being on a rig, that is from the toolpusher down to the derrickman. The companyman was probably useless as well, but the rig is not his.

Whether there was a mudlogging unit on location or not is immaterial (although I can’t imagine, in this day and age, not having one).

The man responsible for catching a kick is the driller - full stop. I am assuming that this rig had pit level sensors and that they were working. If they weren’t then the drilling contractor was either cheap, and not maintaining the rig, or stupid. The shakerhand should have also been watching the pit level using the tried & true, nut on a string method. Assuming the pit level sensors were working AND that the driller had set his hi/lo limits and the alarm was enabled (all standard drilling practice) he should have caught the pit gain, pulled up to his hang-off point and shut the well in - then called the toolpusher.

Somebody mentioned that they had a drilling break. What do you always do when you hit a drilling break? You flow check! What do you do if you are not sure the well is flowing? You shut in the well! AT ANY TIME YOU ARE UNCERTAIN ABOUT THE CONDITION OF THE WELL, YOU SHUT IT IN!!!

This is just standard good practice.

It is debatable whether the combined IQ on this rig could have killed the well even if they had shut it in, but maybe someone would have realized that they were out of their league and called someone who actually had some idea regarding well control.

Edited November 10, 2019 by Douglas Buckland
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