Piper Alpha Failure

On the afternoon of January 28, 1969, a terrible environmental disaster occurred when a well blowout on the Union Oil Company platform A, causing one of the largest oil spill in the United States. The platform was located in Summerland Oil Field pier which 6 miles east of city of Santa Barbara. Riggers desperately tried to repair the well before oil started spreading to the shoreline. Needless to say, the effects of the oil spill sparked outrage from the local community and the media that inevitably caused ecological effects, safety and ethical concerns. It took oil workers a total of 11 days to cap the ruptured pipe, while an estimated 3 million gallons of poisonous black crude oil showered the Pacific Ocean. Sadly, oceans

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico occurred because “oil from the well shot up and out of the drill column under high pressure, extended on the drilling rig and exploded (wikipedia)”. The rig set on fire and later sank. BP, Transocean, along with government agency employer, all worked hard to avoid further spread of the oil.

On April 20, 2010 the British Petroleum Deep Water Horizon (DWH) drilling rig exploded and subsequently sank in the waters of Gulf of Mexico. The result was the largest leakage of crude in the United States to date (Middlebrook et al.,

On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded. It was positioned over the Macondo oil well when a burst of natural gas broke through the concrete core that had been used to seal off the oil well for later use. Once released by the fractured core the gas made its way up the riser and onto the platform, where it ignited killing eleven workers and injuring seventeen others. The highest-ranking BP supervisors on board the oil rig known as “Well site leaders” observed indications that the well was not secure, but did not take appropriate actions in order to remedy the problem. If the supervisors had done something, they may have been able to save the eleven lives lost that day. A similar accident happened to the Caspian Sea at another BP oil well in September 2008. Both cores were too weak to withstand the pressure because the concrete mixture contained Nitrogen gas used to accelerate the curing process (Brennan, 2013). Two days later the rig capsized and in the process knocked over the riser they had filled with drilling mud in order to stop the flow of gas and oil. Now with nothing holding it back the oil, it began pouring out of the hole. The oil that was being released everyday peaked at around 60,000 barrels of oil in one day. The well discharged oil for eighty-seven days before their attempts to repair the hole were successful. In the end, nearly five million barrels of oil were released into the Gulf of Mexico.

Four years ago from today, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and sunk, killing eleven people. Underwater cameras showed that the pipe was leaking oil and gas about 40 miles from the coast of Louisiana. This leak would eventually release about 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf before it would be capped 87 days later.

The Deepwater Horizon also known as the Gulf of Mexico Crude oil spill occurred on the 20th of April 2010. This disaster occurred in the Gulf of Mexico where they had an oil well underwater. On the 20th of April an underwater camera caught the BP pipe leaking oil and gas on the ocean floor, natural gases leaked into the well (which was full of oil) and caused an explosion under water, this caused oil to come gushing out of the Deepwater Horizon oil ring. This occurred because the gases blasted through a concrete core that was installed to seal the well, once the natural gas were released from the crack it leaked up the Deepwater rig’s riser and ignited, as the core was too weak to handle any pressure. This leaking caused about 3.19 million barrels of oil to leak (over 130 million gallons). This explosion triggered a fire and lead to the death of 11 workers and injured 17 workers.

BP, a leader in deep water oil drilling efforts, triggered the worst environmental disaster in America’s history, when on April 20, 2010 a gas release and subsequent explosion occurred on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. The oilrig, which BP was leasing from Transocean, a Swiss company, was operating on the Macondo exploration well, which is located roughly 50 miles southeast of the Louisiana coast in the Gulf of Mexico. The explosion killed 11 workers, and injured 17 others, and dumped an estimated 205 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

On April 20, 2010, a cement seal of an oil well malfunctioned, leading to the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oilrig. Acknowledged as one the worst accidental oil spills, killing 11 people. The BP pipe discharged oil for 87 days following the failure. It is estimated 3.19 million barrels of oil had leaked into the Gulf of Mexico. Even though this incident happened 7 years ago, it is still relevant because there has been more insight from years of analyzing what went wrong, as well as more effective ways to handle the aftermath of a situation like that. This is an interesting situation because it is a two-part failure; of course, the initial equipment glitch, as well as the insufficiency measures they took to

The Deepwater Horizon rig, owned and operated by an offshore oil drilling company named Transocean, and leased by oil company BP, was situated in the Macondo oil prospect in the Mississippi Canyon, a valley in the continental shelf. On the night of April 20 a surge of natural gas blasted through a concrete core recently installed in order to seal the well for later use. It later emerged through documents that a similar incident had occurred on a BP owned rig in the Caspian Sea in September 2008. Both cores were likely too weak to withstand the pressure because they were composed of a concrete mixture that used nitrogen gas to accelerate curing. The natural gas traveled up the Deepwater rig’s riser to the platform once released. Where it ignited, it killed 11 workers and injuring 17 others. The rig capsized and sank on the morning of April 22. The oil began to discharge into the gulf. It is estimated by BP to be about 1,000 barrels per day. It was thought by U.S. government officials to have peaked at more than 60,000 barrels per day.

The Deepwater horizon explosion occurred on the 20th of April, 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico. The oil rig was owned and managed by Transocean, while British Petroleum (BP) leased the rig and hired supervisors. On that fateful day, a natural gas surge erupted from within the drilling line of the oil rig resulting in a massive explosion (Heller 29). The explosion damaged the drilling platform and killed eleven workers, triggering investigations by the Department of Homeland Security.

In the Deepwater Horizon Disaster, I believe one of the root causes of the disaster was due to the crew not following the safety precautions and process set in place to prevent them. Besides, BP and Transocean did not have a self-monitoring system in place to identify not following standard processes and best practices. Also, because they had not been following protocol, the deviations to the norm became the rule giving the crew a false sense of security that they could push the limits and nothing would happen. Evidently, with the crew, they had experienced some of these same symptoms before and maybe many times before the inevitable happened. For example, “At noon on April 20, some ten hours before the blowout occurred, more fluid left the pipe than expected during a routine test. And around 4 PM, pressure on the drill pipe was higher than expected” (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2013, p. 362). Arguably, if the crew had more recurrency training on what to do when they notice deviations to the norm and how to handle safety concerns when they

On April 20, 2010 British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig located forty miles off the coast of Louisiana exploded due to high pressure of methane gas seeping into the drilling riser and expanding. The explosion killed 11 men working on the rig, injured 17 other, and causing millions of gallons of crude oil to begin spilling into the ocean. This tragic accident has left many question like why did this happen? What could have been done to prevent it? and can we assure a disaster like this never happens again? In this essay we will look to answer these questions in painstaking detail.

The Piper Alpha platform was initially built to produce crude oil, 11 years before the tragic event gas conversion equipment was installed, so platform could recover gas as well as oil. The pipeline system connected the platform with two others: the Claymore platform and The Tartan platform. The gas equipment had problems before and in 1984platfrom had accident, when due to explosion 4 workers were injured; the cause wasn’t investigated properly, and still was remaining undetermined in 1988.

Deepwater Horizon oil Spill: BP’s drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico had an explosion in April 2010, causing the “largest oil spill catastrophe in the petroleum industry history”. It caused the death of 11 men and injury to several others. “More than 150,000 barrels of crude oil gushed into the sea, every day, for almost 5 months and up to 68,000 square miles of the Gulf 's surface were covered” (1).

The accident, which occurred on board of the seaward platform Piper Alpha in July 1988, took lives of 167 people and cost billions of dollars damage of property. The Piper Alpha is placed in the North Sea, around 193 km northeast of Aberdeen. The field was discovered in January 1973 and the same year construction of platform took place. The depth of it was up to 140 m, and at the time the development and installation of the Piper Alpha platform give tongue to a major step in both the development of the UK offshore resources and technology. The basic design of the topsides was establish on those used in the Gulf of Mexico. The platform production of oil started in December 1976 when the first two wells