BSEE Announces Investigation Panel for Oil Release in the Gulf of Mexico
05/16/2016
NEW ORLEANS - The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement is continuing its investigation of the oil release from Shell Offshore Inc.’s Glider Field on May 12. The Glider Field, located approximately 97 miles south of Port Fourchon, LA, includes subsea wells and the field’s production flows to the Brutus Platform.
BSEE Gulf of Mexico Regional Director Lars Herbst formally established an Investigative Panel May 16. The seven-member panel is comprised of BSEE engineers, inspectors, and investigators. The panel will conduct a thorough investigation of the incident in order to identify the causes and any contributing issues that led to the release. The panel will make recommendations in its final report on how to strengthen existing safety and environmental management systems, and identify any reforms to existing regulations that may be needed. The focus of these recommendations is to prevent a similar incident from occurring.
BSEE approved Shell’s plan for recovery of the damaged flowline segment. A BSEE inspector is on board the recovery vessel to observe the recovery operations. All repair plans for the subsea flow lines and production systems will be submitted to BSEE for review.
Production remains shut-in from the two subsea fields that flow to the Brutus platform. BSEE will not approve production restart of these subsea fields until all safety concerns and applicable regulations have been met.
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More than 2,000 barrels of oil spilled in Gulf of Mexico.
Release comes nearly a month after federal regulators introduced new rules for offshore work.
By Daniel J. Graeber
| May 13, 2016 at 10:02 AM 
Shell reports more than 2,000 barrels of oil spilled from beneath a platform operating about 100 miles off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico. Map courtesy of the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement
NEW ORLEANS, May 13 (UPI) -- More than 2,000 barrels of oil were released into the U.S. waters of the Gulf of Mexico about 97 miles from the southern tip of Louisiana, Shell said.
Shell said it observed oil sheen near its production facilities in the Green Canyon oil reserve area in the Gulf of Mexico. Shell is working there on operations at its Glider oil field. The company said it isolated the incident and closed down production after observing the sheen.
"At this time, Shell estimates that 2,100 barrels of oil were released," the company said in a statement.
Federal regulators with the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement are on scene examining the incident tied to the Brutus oil platform, leased by Shell for the activities in waters that are 2,900 feet deep. The BSEE said it was able to confirm Shell's release estimate, adding no injuries were reported and no personnel have been evacuated from the rig.
The U.S. Coast Guard said the oil was released from a subsea pipeline. In a statement, the Coast Guard said Shell contracted two independent parties to start clean up and containment operations.
Shell said there were no drilling activities underway at the Brutus platform at the time of the release, stressing it was not associated with a well control incident.
The release comes nearly a month after the BSEE released new rules aimed at preventing loss of life and environmental harm resulting from a potential failure at an offshore well. Those new rules came almost six years to the day after the disaster at the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico.
Last year, the Interior Department proposed dozens of new rules for offshore drilling equipment in order to ensure the series of failures that led to the 2010 rig disaster and subsequent oil spill won't happen again.
The final rules are sweeping in scope, focusing on everything from well control operations to cementing operations of offshore wells.
BP released 3.2 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 following the string of failures that led to the collapse of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. The incident left 11 rig workers dead and resulted in one of the worst environmental disasters for the industry.
Several failures at the Macondo well beneath the Deepwater Horizon triggered what the industry calls a blowout.