Halliburton
Its hard to have a worse public image than Halliburton, the multinational engineering firm whose image took a beating during the first part of the Iraq War. But the company may well get slugged again over the Gulf accident, too. The latest accusation: The cement slurry Halliburton was pumping into the drill hole prior to the Horizons explosion may have in fact been at fault.
The Los Angeles Times describes what Halliburton was doing at the site:
After an exploration well is drilled, cement slurry is pumped through a steel pipe or casing and out through a check valve at the bottom of the casing. It then travels up the outside of the pipe, sheathing the part of the pipe surrounded by the oil and gas zone. When the cement hardens, it is supposed to prevent oil or gas from leaking into adjacent zones along the pipe.
As the cement sets, the check valve at the end of the casing prevents any material from flowing back up the pipe. The zone is thus isolated until the company is ready to start production.
The process is tricky. A 2007 study by the U.S. Minerals Management Service found that cementing was the single most-important factor in 18 of 39 well blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico over a 14-year period.
The bad news for Halliburton is that a number of experts think the accident probably originated in the pipe that the cement was being pumped into. The good news for the company is that investigators may find it difficult to tell whether the cement did its job or not, especially if BP is successful in dropping massive concrete domes on top of the leaks to stop them.
The feds
Federal oversight of oil drilling rigs and platforms in the Gulf is intense; the Interior Departments Mineral Management Service inspectors often travel between drilling sites, proactively checking up on documentation and procedures. However, the Wall Street Journal has dug into a story that suggests that Fed oversight failed at a much earlier point.
Undersea drilling is immensely complicated, so the MMS is also involved in permitting the various equipment used. From the WSJ:
Federal regulators learned in a 2004 study that a vital piece of oil-drilling safety equipment may not function in deep-water seas but did nothing to bolster industry requirements
The equipment, called shear rams, is supposed to seal off out-of-control oil and gas wells by pinching the pipe closed and cutting it.
In 2004, a study commissioned by the MMS raised significant questions about the ability of rams to cut through the stronger pipes used in deep-water drilling. Those thicker pipesas well as the shear ramsmust withstand the enormous pressures found at 5,000 feet below sea level
Only three of 14 newly build rigs had blowout preventers that were able to squeeze off and cut the pipe at the water pressure likely to be experienced at the equipments maximum water depth, the study noted.
Whether the shear rams could crimp the pipe may turn out to be a moot point, if they system that was supposed to relay the command to the rams failed. On the other hand, if the rams functioned but didnt fulfill their job, the Fed may suddenly find itself the target of public anger, along with Transocean, which bought the rams, and Cameron International, the manufacturer.
The WSJ story, in fact, says that the Fed study singled out Cameron for doing a bad job calculating the amount of force their shear rams needed to apply. But for now, all of these allegations are still at the stage of finger-pointing, and more potential culprits may emerge over the coming weeks.
Gulf Oil Spill: Who's to Blame? BP, Halliburton and the Feds Are All Implicated | BNET Energy Blog | BNET