I travelled to Houston just days after the Macondo blowout; not to join the media horde that was out to pillory BP and its chief executive of that time, Tony Hayward, but to attend OTC.
Needless to say, the 2010 show became dominated by the disaster as vitriol spilled forth via a host of news media bent on crucifying “Briddish Petroleum”.
The industry was in shock … absolutely caught on the back foot; so were government agencies in charge of the US Gulf, notably the MMS (Minerals Management Service), which was rapidly dismantled and replaced by a new regulatory and safety system that included the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
GoM operators came under massive pressure to get their act together and to develop adequate countermeasures.
In July 2010, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil committed to providing a deepwater containment response capability for the US Gulf.
These founding companies of the Marine Well Containment Company recognised the urgent need to be better prepared for a deepwater well control incident and as a result, MWCC introduced its Interim Containment System (ICS) in February 2011.
MWCC’s system builds on the company’s previous system capabilities by combining equipment earlier systems and has continued to enhance its capabilities including the construction of two new capping stacks.
Today, the organisation has 10 member companies and apparently represents unprecedented industry collaboration.
All very reassuring, one might say and to some extent reinforced by OGP’s Capping & Containment report of May 2011, which accepts that Macondo (and to a lesser extent, Montara) amounted to a wake-up call.
If one attempts to judge their respective impacts; perhaps the media’s and US political machine’s obsessive attention to the former and the almost dismissal of the latter … after all, it was out of sight and out of mind in the Timor Sea … tells its own story.
As I told Offshore Europe delegates attending Thursday’s keynote panel on subsea well response, Big Oil was in trouble; the lynching party was baying for BP’s hide. This was an ugly time for the industry.
However, like all disasters, the mainstream media rapidly lost interest, leaving the field clear for the trades to report.
By and large, they are the ones who have since followed the Macondo aftermath, and especially the super-speed development of deepwater containment technologies and construction of the systems that we have today.
In essence, the industry was for a while left alone to get on with the job of covering its backside in the event of anything resembling a Macondo-style of event.
And I suppose that, one by one, each of us began to lose interest; that is until Shell’s controversial Beaufort Sea programme broke its way into the headlines with the inevitable result that most trades like Energy, this newswire Energy Voice and our parent, the Press and Journal newspaper, have been sucked into the debate/reportage.
In Shell’s case, the requirement to have an on-site subsea capping and containment system was quickly clocked.
But what I didn’t initially realise is just how many containment systems are under development.
A rapid check suggests that there are six or seven competing subsea emergency well capping/containment systems either built or under development.
That list includes OSRL, Wild Well, Helix, MWCC, Shell, Exxon and BP.
While there is some co-operation between the parties, one hears that it could be better.
As I told session delegates, that’s a pity, given that this is about safety … first and last.
Indeed, there is competition emerging to service a market that is very small and shouldn’t even exist, but for the fallibility of the human species and its machines, especially when pushing the technology envelope.
The Oil & Gas Producer’s Association (OGP), records that 14,000 deepwater wells have been drilled worldwide with “few major incidents”.
According to Norway’s Sintef research institute, there have been 611 offshore blowouts/well releases world-wide since 1955.
That’s oil and gas.
Sintef also records that, from January 1, 1980 through December 31 there were 237 blowouts/well releases in the US Gulf Outer Continental Shelf and the North Sea.
The above includes a sizeable number of deepwater incidents.
I also told session delegates that there is an insufficient market opportunity to justify so many systems under development.
And I suggested that the huge investment being poured into subsea well capping and containment would be better spent on preventing well-related incidents in the first place.
Why pour $billions into “band aid” devices that could take weeks to deploy, especially in remote regions where there has been little or no exploration and development activity … like the High Arctic, East Africa, Falklands, and so-forth.
Furthermore, how much confidence is there that what is being designed and built will be adequately tested; after all, this is the industry that excels in being second.
Then there is the role of governments and regulators to consider, from the super-tough, very rapid response demanded in US waters to 21 days in the Canadian Arctic to the in-between approaches in Europe, and so-forth.
There is a rather interesting recent CBC headline regarding the Canadian position.
While Shell has been forced to carry with it the kit required to deal with a blow-out, should there be one, in the Beaufort Sea programme, the company would be granted a 21-day window of deployment for its forthcoming Shelburne campaign offshore Nova Scotia, assuming it gets formal clearance later this year.
Why the difference? It’s ice.
If an Arctic well blowout is not controlled before the ice moves in, that it could mean oil flowing uncontrollably for up to seven months with disastrous consequence.
If things go wrong off Nova Scotia, capping stack equipment would be brought in from Stavanger, with backup from either Peterhead, South Africa, Singapore or Brazil.
Give it another 10 years and I believe the network of containment equipment stables will be significantly more complex than now, thus vindicating the devices competition that seems to have emerged.
I also wonder whether some current and prospective oil producing nations might begin to demand the kind of precautions that the US authorities have forced Shell to take in the Beaufort Sea.
I warned delegates that there are huge reputational issues at stake here and that if there is a future North Sea blow-out then public opinion will hammer the oil industry.
The public and NGOs would be looking for very rapid intervention and remediation or the industry would be for the high jump.
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