Abstract
It was 9:15 p.m. on April 20, 2010, and the captain of the Deepwater Horizon was entertaining heavyweights from British Petroleum (BP) and Transocean, by showing off the computers and software at his disposal. After the Captain welcomed his visitors on the bridge, Yancy Keplinger, one of two dynamic-positioning officers, began a tour while the second officer, Andrea Fleytas, was at the desk station. The officers explained how the rig’s thrusters kept the Deepwater Horizon in place above the well, showed off the radars and current meters, and offered to let the visitors try their hands at the rig’s dynamic-positioning video simulator. One of the visitors, a man named Winslow, watched as the crew programmed-in 70-knot winds and 30-foot seas, and hypothetically put two of the rig’s six thrusters out of commission. Then they set the simulator to manual mode and let another visitor work the hand controls to maintain the rig’s location. While Keplinger was advising about how much thrust to use, Winslow decided to grab a quick cup of coffee and a smoke. He walked down to the rig’s smoking area, poured some coffee, and lit his cigarette.
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Notes
- 1.
All of these events are documented in the President’s Commission Report, Chap. 1, p. 7.
- 2.
Jean Laherrère, Distribution of field sizes in a petroleum system: Parabolic-fractal, lognormal, or stretched exponential?, Marine and Petroleum Geology, 17 (2000), 539–546.
- 3.
Defined as “(A) residential or commercial mortgages and any securities, obligations, or other instruments that are based on or related to such mortgages, that in each case was originated or issued on or before March 14, 2008, the purchase of which the Secretary determines promotes financial market stability; and (B) any other financial instrument that the Secretary, after consultation with the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, determines the purchase of which is necessary to promote financial market stability, but only upon transmittal of such determination, in writing, to the appropriate committees of Congress.” Source: CBO Report, The Troubled Asset Relief Program: Report on Transactions Through December 31, 2008.
- 4.
Thunder Horse production and drilling quarters is the world’s largest production semisubmersible platform ever built. The platform’s topside area is the size of three football fields. It is packed with equipment and systems capable of processing and exporting a quarter of a million barrels of oil per day. Thunder Horse never hit that level of production. This semisubmersible produces oil and gas in one of the largest hydrocarbon fields in the Gulf of Mexico. The floating platform operates under extreme conditions. It pumps out oil and gas from the field which is three miles beneath mud, rock, and salt, topped by a mile of ocean. The hydrocarbon pressure is over 1,200 atmospheres (17,600 psi) and its temperature is 135°C (275°F). More information can be found at www.offshore-technology.com/projects/crazy_horse/ and www.petroleumnews.com/pntruncate/10942334.shtml.
- 5.
“U.S. Exempted BP’s Gulf of Mexico Drilling from Environmental Impact Study,” Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post staff writer, Wednesday, May 5, 2010.
- 6.
- 7.
Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement, Installations, Removals, and Cumulative Totals of Offshore Production Facilities in Federal Waters; 1959–2010, 2/2010, www.boemre.gov/stats/PDFs/OCSPlatformActivity.pdf.; Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, OCS Incidents/Spills by Category: 1996–2005, 10/19/2007, www.boemre.gov/incidents/Incidents1996–2005.htm; Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement, OCS Incidents/Spills by Category: 2006–2010, 7/10/2010, www.boemre.gov/incidents/IncidentStatisticsSummaries.htm.
- 8.
If the GOM workforce had fought in Afghanistan over the same period of time, one would expect at least 520 deaths, and 3,000–4,000 injuries.
Further Reading
Mandlebrot, B.B.: Fractals and Scaling in Finance – Discontinuity, Concentration, Risk. Springer, New York (2010)
Taleb, N.N.: The Black Swan – The Impact of the Highly Improbable. Random House, New York (2010)
Zipf, G.K.: Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort – An Introduction to Human Ecology. Hafner, New York (1965)
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Tainter, J.A., Patzek, T.W. (2012). The Significance of Oil in the Gulf of Mexico. In: Drilling Down. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-7677-2_2
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