Material Technology for Faulty Blowout Preventer - MyAssignmenthelp

Question: Discuss about theMaterial Technology for Faulty Blowout Preventer. Answer: Introduction There was an oil spill approximately 50 meters from the Louisiana coast that claimed the lives of 11 workers. The incidence is squarely blamed on bad management of the oil rig company, British Petroleum (BP). According to preliminary investigations, it is believed that the safety device on the underwater well had several failures and wasnt tested properly during its manufacturing. The blowout failed and forensic investigations reveal that the device had faulty wiring in two places, a dead battery and a bent pipe in the hulking device. As a result, the system fault led into the spillage of more than 172 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, an event today considered being the worst offshore oil disaster in the world (Liu et al., 2015). Massive blowouts are normally deployed at the top of underwater wells. During emergency, the devices apply several mechanisms such as shears and clamps to choke off oil from flowing upstream the pipe and to disconnect the oil rig from the well. The blowouts can operate automatically if there is no fluid pressure or during disconnection of electricity, and they can also operate manually. The device that failed was already 9-years, nearly 57 feet tall and weighed approximately 400 tons. Investigations have revealed several anomalies into the cause of the explosions including poor decision, management problems, botched tests, fluid pressure, drilling mud and screw ups with cement. The blowout preventer was designed to dissuade high pressure oil and gas flow and failed to seal the well because the pipe buckled, caused an explosion and oil spilled into the sea. It is believed that the anomaly occurred due to poor engineering design whereby precision in developing the blowout was not taken into much considerations. According to a report published by the Chemical Safety Board (CSB), the pipe buckling occurred during the first minute of the blowout incidence when crews desperately tried to regain control of the oil and gas fluids surging up from Macondo well. Despite the fact that investigations reveal that the Macondo drill pipe was in a buckled states, it is assumed that its conditions could had generated days before. After the components of the blowout preventer were tested, it was concluded that the blow out preventer activated itself during the night of the accident days earlier than other investigations revealed. Rather than cleanly cutting and sealing the wells drill pipe, the shear ram actually punctured the buckled, off-center pipe, dissipating huge volumes of oil and gas that surged towards the surface hence precipitating the 87-day long oil and gas release into the sea hence defying multiple efforts to bring the whole incidence under control. According to forensic investigations, the BSR blades were unable to shear a 5.5 inch drill string hence seal against the other since the drill string existed at the side and not at the center of the BOP annulus. Practical evidence suggests that the asymmetric dents existing at the drill pipe that are sheared by rams which are impressed into steel 0.350 thick matched with the geometry of the blocks hence leaving minimal room for maneuvering and the drill string was under significant compressive load that lead into the fracture (Papadimitriou, 2016). It is therefore evident that upper and middle VBRs sealed the well for a short span before the explosion, hence responsible the huge pressure spike in the drill. Further investigations revealed that the VBRs were found with their ST lock sets implying that the units were static irrespective of the pressure exerted until the BOP was retrieved. During this specific time, the only existing flow path for the hydrocarbons for the formation of t he rig was the drill string. Due to the timing of the BSR activation, attention shifts to the potential sources of compression in the drill string that generated the off-center position in the BSR. Several mathematical algorithms can be used to support this particular analogy that indicates that the pressure in the formation was sufficient to lift drill string and generate the necessary compression. The assumption can be depicted through the following formula: 5.5=in drill pipe = 23.75in2. X 7,000 pound per square inch (psi) = 166,250 1b. lift Other findings indicate that the crew had no information that the well was flowing until med exited and was expelled out of the riser by the flow. In a response to such a situation, early detection and control flow are important if impending blowout is to be averted by the oil rig whose application of a full-flowing well is untested. References Liu, Z., Liu, Y., Cai, B., Li, X. and Tian, X., 2015. Application of Petri nets to performance evaluation of subsea blowout preventer system. ISA transactions, 54, pp.240-249. Papadimitriou, S., Papadimitriou, W., Papadimitriou, J.A. and Papadimitriou, N.A., 2016. Autonomous blowout preventer. U.S. Patent Application 15/134,745.