Posted on 05/13/2010 2:23:41 AM PDT by valkyry1
BP engineers tried to activate a huge piece of underwater safety equipment but failed because the device had been so altered that diagrams BP got from the equipment's owner didn't match the supposedly failsafe device's configuration
The oil well also failed at least one critical pressure test on the day that gas surged up the drill pipe and set the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig aflame, killing 11 and setting off a spill that has spewed 210,000 gallons of crude into the gulf every day for three weeks, according to BP documents provided to congressional investigators.
Who ordered the alterations in the blowout preventer, the 500,000 pound mass of gears and hydraulic valves that sits atop an underwater well and is intended to snap the pipe if disaster threatens
Transocean, the owner of the blowout preventer and of the sunken Deepwater Horizon rig, said any alterations would have come at BP's instigation; BP, which owns the well and hired Transocean to drill it, said it had never sought the changes.
the changes prevented BP's from activating a "variable bore ram" intended to close tight around the pipe and seal it.
"When they investigated why their attempts failed to activate the bore ram," Stupak said of BP engineers, "they learned that the device had been modified. A useless test ram - not the variable bore ram - had been connected to the socket that was supposed to activate the variable bore ram."
Stupak said BP officials told subcommittee investigators that "after the accident, they asked Transocean for drawings of the blowout preventer."
"Because of the modifications, the drawings they received didn't match the structure on the ocean floor," Stupak said. "BP said they wasted many hours figuring this out."
(Excerpt) Read more at miamiherald.com ...
Good point. This is the kind of issue that regularly comes up in hand-offs.
Carefully compare the article as posted above and the text that appears at the actual site it came from. The two are widely different. Notice in the text above sentences end and begin randomly and do not even exist in the original.
The original may have been updated since the posting, but that does not explain the broken sentences above.
Factoid: If you assume that there is over 5,000 psi of downhole pressure at the BOP—and everything I have heard indicates it is probably substantially higher than that—then a 1/4 inch diameter hole is large enough to “leak” 5,000 barrels a day. That “leak” would probably cut off your arm if you passed it in front of it.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6444 This has been posted some where..great article...Looks like the BOP may have closed except for a small leak..
To get around this problem, Exxon preferred to use people that had no experience in actual inspection procedures to monitor the inspections.
Exxon preferred people that would simply follow the specs and not question what was being done or even have enough knowledge to know it the equipment used to preform the inspection was working properly.
Add telecommunications to that, too. After I spent more than 20 years in the biz I remain stunned that the phone system works at all in this country because of the lack of technical expertise I found with every encounter with major carriers like AT&T, Bell and others......
I’ve spent my life as an electronic/electrical troubleshooter and have made it a policy that in troubleshooting a complex electronic, or electrical, industrial apparatus, if a single mistake between the schematic and physical wiring, or connections, is found, I refuse to go farther until I receive the correct schematic.
Differences prove the fact that the machine was altered or that the correct schematics were not supplied with the machine to begin with.
I’ve known idiots who try to troubleshoot industrial equipment with erroneous schematics simply because they contained some truthful information. What idiots!
In the oilfield and in industrial applications, many changes are physically made but no correction or updating of the schematics are done. Over a period of time, the equipment becomes impossible to troubleshoot.
Anyone, any company, and everyone involved in any modification of the equipment without updating the electrical schematics should be held responsible and prosecuted for the deed.
This is my “hot button” issue when it comes to unprofessional “engineers” and “jacklegs.”
For their stupidity and incompetence 11 people died and an untold amount of misery is heaped upon those affected.
That was my fault guess. I pasted to much in then had to cut it down some in order to get below the excerpt limits and post the article.
No problem. It happens.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.