Transocean Deepwater Horizon Radio Interview

http://www.marklevinshow.com/A...d=1790422&spid=32364

Great interview, very informative, thanks for posting it.

Wow, when that column of sea water blew OVER the top of the rig 240 feet up, I'd have been looking for some toilet paper........sheeeeit!

Like an old oil well hand, driller, etc and finally very successful independent oil company owner told me years ago about working on the old land derricks, "Son, when you hear steel rattling, that's the time to leave."

My deepest sympathies to the families of the hands lost and I wish the damn politicians would keep their mouths shut about something which they obviously know nothing about.

Yeah, we can't have it both ways......drilling is dangerous business and accidents are going to happen. BP's track record is becoming suspect very quickly though. Exxon(Mobil) has been extremely conscientious after the Valdez spill.....BP not so much.

With BP, after a while it's hard to keep blaming bad luck. I worked for them last year in Indonesia. They were extremely safety and environmentally focused. I hated that they were related to this event. I liked them so much that I started buying their stock. I'm still up a few bucks, but current events haven't helped them. They do pay a nice dividend though.

This will eventually revert back to human error. Nothing is this industry just happens. Someone misses a key indicator, and the next thing you know, it's on you.

I do get frustrated listening to some of the talking-heads describe what may have happened. Talk about a bunch of ignorant dumb-asses pretending to be experts.

A little more insite into what happened.

Testimony Before The Committee On Energy & Natural Resources
United States Senate
May 11, 2010

Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Strategy and
Implications of the Deepwater Horizon Rig Explosion
Steven Newman, Chief Executive Officer, Transocean, Ltd.

Chairman Bingaman, Ranking Member Murkowski, and other members of
the Committee, I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today.

My name is Steven Newman, and I am the Chief Executive Officer of
Transocean, Ltd. Transocean is a leading offshore drilling contractor, with more
than 18,000 employees worldwide. I am a petroleum engineer by training, I have
spent considerable time working on drilling rigs and I have worked at Transocean
for more than 15 years. I am proud of the Company’s historical contributions to
the energy industry during that time. Today, however, I sit before you with a
heavy heart.

The last few weeks have been a time of great sadness and reflection for our
Company – and for me personally. Nothing is more important to me and to
Transocean than the safety of our employees and crew members, and our hearts
ache for the widows, parents and children of the 11 crew members – including nine
Transocean employees – who died in the Deepwater Horizon explosion. These
were exceptional men, and we are committed to doing everything we can to
support their families as they struggle to cope with this tragedy.

We have also seen great courage and kindness since April 20 that has
reaffirmed our faith in the human spirit. That spirit is embodied by the 115 crew
members who were rescued from the Deepwater Horizon and were as worried
about the fate of their colleagues as they were about themselves. It is embodied by
the emergency workers and friends and family who were waiting for the injured
crew members when they arrived ashore. And it is embodied by the friends and
colleagues who have rallied to help the families of those who were lost at sea.

While this has been a very emotional period for all of us at Transocean, it
has also been a period of intense activity and effort.

Immediately after the explosion, Transocean began working with BP (in
BP’s role as operator/leaseholder of this well) and the “Unified Command” (which
includes officials from the U.S. Coast Guard, the Department of the Interior’s
Minerals Management Service (MMS), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA)) in the effort to stop the flow of hydrocarbons. Our finest
operational personnel and engineers have been working with BP to identify and
pursue options for stopping the flow as soon as possible. Our drilling rig, the
Development Driller III, is involved in drilling the relief well at the site, and our
drillship, the Discoverer Enterprise, is involved in the unique oil recovery
operations in the Gulf. We will continue to support BP and the Unified Command
in all of these efforts.

We have also been working hard to get to the bottom of the question to
which the Members of this Committee – and the American people – want and
deserve an answer: What happened the night of April 20th, and how do we assure
the American public that it will not happen again?

Transocean has assembled an investigative team to determine what led to
these tragic events – a team that includes dedicated Transocean and industry
experts. They will be interviewing people who have potentially helpful
information and studying the operations and the equipment involved. Our team is
working side by side with others, including BP and governmental agencies, and
these investigative efforts will continue until we have satisfactory answers.

As is often the case after a tragedy of this kind, there has been a lot of
speculation about the root cause. I believe it is premature to reach definitive
conclusions about what caused the April 20th explosion, but on behalf of our
Transocean employees, I feel compelled to respond to some of this speculation. In
particular, as we seek to uncover what happened, it is important to understand the
well construction process – and the roles of the various parties involved in an
operation like the one that was taking place in the Gulf of Mexico.

All offshore oil and gas production projects begin and end with the
Operator. When the Operator (in this case, BP) leases a parcel of land on the outer
continental shelf (OCS) from the U.S. government, it must prepare and submit
detailed plans specifying where and how a well is to be drilled, cased, cemented
and completed based on its interpretation of propriety data, including geologic data
from seismic surveys. Once those plans are approved and permits are issued and
work begins, the Operator – or leaseholder – serves as the general contractor that
manages all of the work that is performed on its lease. In this capacity, the Operator hires various contractors to perform specific functions in the construction
of the well.

In addition, the Operator brings in various sub-contractors to perform
specific roles. For example:

 The Operator selects a driller (in this case, Transocean), which provides a
vessel (called a “rig”) from which drilling operations are performed. As the
name suggests, the driller is also responsible for rotating the long string of
drill pipe with a drill bit on the end that drills a hole deeper and deeper into
the ocean floor. The Operator’s well plan dictates the manner in which the
drilling is to occur, including the location, the path, the depth, the process
and the testing. The drill bits, which are selected by the Operator, are
supplied by another sub-contractor.

 A key element of the drilling process is drilling mud, a heavy fluid
manufactured to the Operator’s specifications. That mud is pumped into the
well hole and circulated in order to hold back the pressure of the reservoir
and prevent oil, gas or water in that reservoir from moving to the surface
through the well. The mud is monitored by another sub-contractor (the mud
engineer) (in this instance, M-I Swaco) to detect any problems.

 As the drilling progresses, huge pipes are inserted into the well to maintain
the integrity of the hole that has been drilled and to serve as the primary
barrier against fluids entering the well. This job is coordinated by the
casing sub-contractor selected by the Operator (in this case, Weatherford).
In its well plan, the Operator specifies the diameter and strength of each
casing segment, purchases the casing, and dictates how it will be cemented
in place. Well casing is inserted in a telescope-like manner, with each
successive section inside the previous one. Each casing segment also
includes a seal assembly to ensure pressure containment.

 After drilling is concluded, yet another area of expertise comes into play.
The cementing sub-contractor is responsible for encasing the well in cement,
for putting a temporary cement plug in the top of the well, and for ensuring
the integrity of the cement. The purpose of this work is to seal the well to
make sure that the contents of the reservoir (i.e., oil and natural gas) are not
driven by the reservoir pressure into the well. (Once drilling is complete
and the well is cased and cemented, it is no longer necessary to circulate
drilling mud through the well; at that point, the casing and cement serve to control the formation pressure.) The cementing process is dictated by the
Operator’s well plan, and the testing of the cement on the Deepwater
Horizon was performed by the cement contractor (Haliburton in this
instance) as specified and directed by BP.

Against that background, let me turn to the April 20 Deepwater Horizon
explosion and its possible causes. What is most unusual about the explosion in this
case is that it occurred after the well construction process was essentially finished.
Drilling had been completed on April 17, and the well had been sealed with cement
(to be reopened by the Operator at a later date if the Operator chose to put the well
into production). At this point, drilling mud was no longer being used as a means
of reservoir pressure containment; the cement and the casing were the barriers
controlling pressure from the reservoir. Indeed, at the time of the explosion, the rig
crew, at the direction of the Operator, was in the process of displacing drilling mud
and replacing it with sea water.

For that reason, the one thing we know with certainty is that on the evening
of April 20, there was a sudden, catastrophic failure of the cement, the casing, or
both. Therein lies the root cause of this occurrence; without a disastrous failure of
one of those elements, the explosion could not have occurred. It is also clear that
the drill crew had very little (if any) time to react. The explosions were almost
instantaneous.

What caused that catastrophic, sudden and violent failure? Was the well
properly designed? Was the well properly cemented? Were there problems with
the well casing? Were all appropriate tests run on the cement and casings? These
are some of the critical questions that need to be answered in the coming weeks
and months.

Over the past several days, some have suggested that the blowout preventers
(or BOPs) used on this project were the cause of the accident. That simply makes
no sense. A BOP is a large piece of equipment positioned on top of a wellhead to
provide pressure control. As explained in more detail in the attachment to my
testimony, BOPs are designed to quickly shut off the flow of oil or natural gas by
squeezing, crushing or shearing the pipe in the event of a “kick” or “blowout” – a
sudden, unexpected release of pressure from within the well that can occur during
drilling.

The attention now being given to the BOPs in this case is somewhat ironic
because at the time of the explosion, the drilling process was complete. The well had been sealed with casing and cement, and within a few days, the BOPs would
have been removed. At this point, the well barriers – the cementing and the casing
– were responsible for controlling any pressure from the reservoir.

To be sure, BOPs are an important aspect of well control. During drilling,
BOPs provide a secondary means of controlling pressure if the primary
mechanisms (e.g., drilling mud) prove inadequate. BOPs are robust, sophisticated
pieces of equipment that can be activated by various direct and remote methods.
Since the BOPs were still in place in this circumstance, they may have been
activated during this event and may have restricted the flow to some extent. At
this point, we cannot be certain. But we have no reason to believe that they were
not operational – they were jointly tested by BP and Transocean personnel as
specified on April 10 and 17 and found to be functional. We also do not know
whether the BOPs were damaged by the surge that emanated from the well beneath
or whether the surge may have blown debris (e.g., cement, casing) into the BOPs,
thereby preventing them from squeezing, crushing or shearing the pipe.

For these reasons, I believe it is inappropriate to focus any causation
discussions exclusively on the BOPs. Certainly, we need to understand what
happened to the BOPs and whether changes should be made to improve the
effectiveness of these devices in the unusual circumstances of an accident like the
one on April 20. But the BOPs were clearly not the root cause of the explosion.
Our most important task is to understand why a cased and cemented wellbore
suddenly and catastrophically failed. As a starting point, our investigative team
has looked at numerous possible causes, contributing factors, or trigger events, in
an effort to ensure that nothing is overlooked in this investigation.

As I explained earlier, the well construction process is a collaborative effort.
For the same reason, the process of understanding what led to the April 20
explosion and how to prevent such an accident in the future must also be
collaborative. Ours is an industry that must put safety first. And I can assure you
that Transocean has never – and will never – compromise on safety. In 2009,
Transocean recorded its best ever Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR). And the
federal agency charged with enforcing safety on deepwater oil rigs, MMS, which –
as you know – is a unit of the U.S. Department of the Interior, awarded one of its
top prizes for safety to Transocean in 2009. The MMS SAFE Award recognizes
“exemplary performance by Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) oil and gas operators
and contractors.” In the words of MMS, this award “highlights to the public that
companies can conduct offshore oil and gas activities safely and in a pollution-free
manner, even though such activities are complex and carry a significant element of risk.” In awarding this prize to Transocean, MMS credited the Company’s
“outstanding drilling operations” and a “perfect performance period.”

Despite a strong safety record, Transocean has never been complacent about
safety. We believe that any incident is one too many. Last year, our Company
experienced an employee accident record that I found unacceptable. As a result, I
recommended to our Board of Directors that they withhold bonuses for all
executives in order to make clear that achieving stronger safety performance was a
basic expectation – and fundamental to our success. That recommendation was
accepted, and our Company paid no executive bonuses last year, in order to send a
loud message that we evaluate our success in large part based on the safety of our
operations.

Until we fully understand what happened on April 20, we cannot determine
with certainty how best to prevent such tragedies in the future. But I am
committed – for the sake of the men who lost their lives on April 20, for the sake
of their loved ones, for the sake of all the hard-working people who work on
Transocean rigs around the world, and for the sake of people in each of the
affected states and worldwide who rely on our oceans and waterways for their
livelihood – to work with others in the industry, with Congress and with all
involved federal agencies to make sure that such an incident never happens again.