Drilling advances

We pause this month to note the tenth anniversary of an episode that we’d all much rather not have to acknowledge: Macondo.

A single word. No further narrative is needed to describe that horrific night of April 20, 2010, when an industry exploded.

Eleven hardworking souls lost their lives that night. Some of us knew one or more of them, or worked directly or indirectly with the companies involved. Many of you know someone who was close to, or acquainted with, one or more of them. Regardless, we’ve all become inseparable to what should have been a routine tour, but instead forever altered the industry epoch, giving us new reference points: pre-Macondo and post-Macondo.

The permutable decade since has seen a six-month deepwater drilling moratorium; a complete overhaul of the regulatory landscape; the levying of fines that would bankrupt any number of municipalities; and the imposition of deepwater well control rules once decried as unjustifiably oppressive, but later rolled back to what regulators now insist are less burdensome, but equally safe. The latest statistics available from the now-U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSSE) would seem to bear that out, with one fatality recorded in the Gulf of Mexico for calendar year 2018, though a single death is obviously one too many.

Victim of its time. Though certainly of little consolation, the death toll from the April 2010 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon in approximately 5,000 ft of water was far less than that of other tragedies that the industry has endured in the pursuit of offshore hydrocarbons. The July 6, 1988, explosion and resulting fires on the Piper Alpha platform in the UK North Sea claimed 167 lives and remain the industry’s worst disaster. Unlike Piper Alpha, violent weather was indicted as the cause of a number of drilling rig catastrophes over the years. Typhoons in the South China Sea, for instance, were blamed for the capsizing of the Glomar Java Sea and Seacrest drillships on Oct. 25, 1983, and Nov. 3, 1989, respectively, together claiming 172 crew members. Elsewhere, 84 workers perished when the Ocean Ranger semisubmersible sank on Feb. 15, 1982, off the harsh-environment coast of Newfoundland, Canada, in the North Atlantic. Yet, despite these and other multi-casualty jolts to the industry’s core, one word remains enshrined in our collective psyche: Macondo.

It’s not hard to fathom the general public’s fixation with what even extended to a feature film. Macondo was a victim of its time. Unlike the ones that preceded it, this tragedy unfolded in the era of the 24-hr news cycle, as a sea of flames and nearly 5 MMbbl of crude flowing uncontrollably into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days, played out in living rooms worldwide, in real time. For the industry, it was a shocking wake-up call.

Up until then, advanced technologies, smaller rig-based populations, companies’ uncompromising diligence to safety practices and training and, yes, regulations had combined for some three decades without an offshore incident with multiple fatalities. Compared to its counterparts elsewhere, the typically placid Gulf of Mexico was seen as an especially safe workplace, by offshore or deepwater standards. The only blemish was the Nov. 16, 2012, explosion on a shallow-water platform operated by Black Elk Energy that took three lives.

“Deepwater Horizon was a tragic accident, which shook BP to its core,” BP Group Chief Executive Bob Dudley told analysts on Feb. 4, 2020. “It was clear then, that we needed to not only deal with the incident, but also focus clearly on the future of the organization. To do this, we identified three key priorities for the group: safety and operational risk management, rebuilding trust, and delivering value growth for our shareholders.” Dudley was chosen to pick up the pieces on Oct. 1, 2010, and retired on March 31, 2020.

Moving on. Today, the deepwater Gulf of Mexico is slowly, but not so surely, trying to regain its drilling mojo. As of March 27, 18 rigs were at work in the federally controlled waters of the Gulf of Mexico, down one from the week prior, according to Baker Hughes. Since 2011, BSSE has approved an average of 48 new well drilling permits/year for waters deeper than 4,000 ft. The average is notably skewed by the decade high of 73 permits issued in 2012, which proceeded the 10-year low of 26 new drills approved in 2011. Five deepwater drilling permits had been authorized this year, up to March 15.

“As our customers continue to realize the favorable economics offshore, we are witnessing a shift in focus towards the deepwater,” Jeremy Thigpen, CEO of Transocean Ltd., told investors on Feb. 18.

Less than two weeks after Transocean’s Deepwater Horizon became a fixture in industry annals, the international oil and gas community gathered solemnly in Houston for the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC). In what some may try to put in a mystical context, the 2020 version, scheduled for exactly two weeks after the 10th anniversary, was called off on April 2 as the industry, and the world, copes with the COVID-19 outbreak. The selected papers will now be presented online, where authors will lay out the latest technologies and industry trends, including how automation is making for safer operations. Other papers will analyze the workings of the Center for Offshore Safety, which was formed in 2011 to “promote the highest levels of safety” in the US offshore sector. If the OTC had gone on as planned, however, it’s a near certainty that whether from the podium or the exhibit floor, one word would have made its way into the conversation: Macondo.

About the Authors

Jim Redden

Contributing Editor

Jim Redden is a Houston-based consultant and a journalism graduate of Marshall University, has more than 40 years of experience as a writer, editor and corporate communicator, primarily on the upstream oil and gas industry.