Chevron's K.S.
Endeavor Catches Fire During Oil Exploration in Lagos Area. two workers died in the explosion and fire. NIGERIA WANTS BILLIONS IN PENALTIES FOR THE
DAMAGE.
The offshore oil rig K.S. Endeavor, run on behalf of Chevron
Nigeria Ltd. by drilling contractor FODE Drilling Co., caught fire on early in
the morning on Monday, January 16th 2012 while operating in the Funiwa field
off the coast of Nigeria. The jack-up
rig was being used to seek out potential deepwater oil and gas fields in the
Lagos area. It was not connected to any
oil production at the time of the fire, according to a Chevron spokesperson.
Chevron was forced to shut down operations at its North Apoi
platform due to its proximity to the fire on the K.S. Endeavor. At this time, it appears that the fire did not
cause any oil spill, but Chevron is taking precautions to avoid further issues.
Search and rescue operations were initiated as soon as the fire
was reported, and 152 workers were found and evacuated. Two workers remain unaccounted for, with no
news of their whereabouts at this time. The cause of the fire is still under investigation,
though a spokesperson for the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation stated
that a buildup of gas pressure from drilling may have been the cause of the
fire. Currently, neither Chevron nor
FODE have presented information as to the potential cause of the fire.
Producing approximately 2.4 million barrels of crude oil every
day, Nigeria is the fifth-largest crude oil exporter to the United States. Chevron has exploration rights to
approximately 2.2 million acres across Nigeria's delta and offshore. In 2010,
the company produced an average of just over .5 million barrels of crude oil a
day, making it the third-largest producer in Nigeria.
When a fire or explosion
occurs on an offshore oil rig, the risk of injury is considerable. All workers
on the rig may be affected, particularly due to the risk of sinking or the fire
spreading to consume the entire platform. This incident off the Nigerian coast
is an example; though we can only guess as to the workers' conditions, things
are not looking good at this point in time.
In the 2012 fire involving the jack-up rig KS Endeavor
offshore Nigeria, the fire burned for about two months, and there was
literally nothing left of the rig by the time the well stopped flowing.
In the meantime however, another jack-up rig was contracted to drill a
well to intercept the one that was flowing in order to stem the flow of the
well from its source.
This was a very expensive task for both Chevron Nigeria, and
indirectly ExxonMobil, who had to disengage their rig from a current project to
help quell this incident.
___________________________________________________
UPDATE: As of Tuesday evening, Chevron Corp. said a fire
on an offshore rig near Nigeria’s coast was still burning as a search continued
for two missing workers. Chevron said earlier it had accounted for 152 workers
on the natural gas rig and a nearby barge. Two workers remained hospitalized
Tuesday with minor burns.
Chevron said the investigation into the fire was ongoing,
though they believe a possible equipment failure caused the inferno. Officials
with Nigeria’s state-run oil company already have blamed the fire on a “gas
kick” — a major build up of gas pressure from drilling. Chevron said it does
not know how long the fire will last on the rig, which has partially collapsed.
***
LAGOS, Nigeria —Two contractors are still missing after a
Chevron drilling rig caught fire Monday off Nigeria’s coast, the oil company
said today.
Two of the 154 workers on the KS Endeavor, a jack-up rig, are
missing today after the offshore rig caught fire as it explored possible oil
and gas fields off Nigeria’s coast. Chevron said it was still investigating the
cause of the fire, which has not been contained, but it did not appear to be
sabotage.
The fire occurred near its North Apoi oil platform, and the
blaze forced it to shut down.
“We do not know what caused the incident. We are working
diligently to contain the fire, which is restricted to the rig,” Andrew
Fawthrop, managing director of Chevron’s Nigeria/Middle East strategic business
unit, told Upstreamonline.com. “Substantial resources have been
deployed including well control specialists and drilling experts. We continue
to work in full cooperation with Nigerian authorities and are committed to
providing additional information as it becomes known.”
The rig is run on Chevron’s behalf by contractor Fode Drilling
Co., Walker said. Officials with Fode, which has offices in London and
Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, could not be immediately reached for comment Monday.
Nnimmo Bassey, who runs an environmental watchdog group in
Nigeria, said he had received reports from locals nearby that the fire was an
industrial incident.
“Workers were trying to contain the gas pressure and they
didn’t succeed,” Bassey said.
Nigeria is the fifth-largest crude oil exporter to the U.S. It
produces about 2.4 million barrels of crude oil a day. However, more than 50
years of oil production has seen environmental damage through delta’s maze of
muddy creeks and mangroves.
Chevron, based in San Ramon, California, produced an average of
524,000 barrels of crude oil a day from Nigeria in 2010. The company has
exploration rights to about 2.2 million acres across Nigeria’s delta and
offshore.
_____________________________________________________________
UPDATE 1/17/12
We have some basic but unconfirmed information arriving in
email.
The reports are that 2 people are missing. 1 a French
Toolpusher and 1 Indian driller.
The background on this disaster is that the KS Endeavor took a
kick around 3 days earlier with 13.5 mud but for whatever reason they did not
weight up & kill the well. (possibly for fear of breaking down the
formation)
After 3 days gas migrated up outside the casing and
ignited. Apparently they spent quite a bit of time monitoring well pressures
over this period.
UPDATE 1/20/12
Chevron has discontinued the search for the 2 missing workers
and they are now presumed dead. Work has begun to drill a relief well to kill
this well and will take some time. Below are satellite images taken today over
the rig fire location. Oil on the surface is now clearly leaking from the well.
Chevron to
permanently seal KS Endeavor rig — Odumabo
February 5, 2012 by Stanley Opara
Oil major, Chevron, has said its ultimate goal on the KS Endeavor
rig is to put out the fire and permanently seal the oil well.
In an email response to queries from Sunday PUNCH, signed by
the General Manager, Policy, Government and Public Affairs, Mr. Femi Odumabo, the
firm said, “Our priority is protecting people and the environment and moving
forward with our plan to put out the fire and permanently seal the well.”
The KS Endeavor shallow water jack-up rig was contracted from
Field Offshore Design Engineering (Nigeria), Fode Drilling Company Limited.
When asked how much would be needed to reinstate the rig and
the possible duration, Odumabo declined commenting, while referring our
correspondent to the owners of the rig for the information.
The KS Endeavor drilling rig was gutted by fire on January 16,
2012 in shallow water approximately 10 kilometres off the coast of Nigeria. The
incident has left two contract workers missing.
Odumabo said, “We are deeply saddened by the loss of our
industry colleagues. Thankfully, 152 people were safely evacuated. The fire is
still burning at the well, but continues to diminish in size and intensity.”
He said the company would continue to monitor the well and the
surrounding area for impacts to the environment, adding that tests of the air
and the water and constant monitoring of the beaches were ongoing.
He stressed that there was no apparent evidence of significant
impact of the incident to the environment and shoreline communities.
Inspections of the area by a wide variety of government
officials, he noted, had confirmed that there was no crude oil spill associated
with the incident on the exploratory gas well.
“No oil was spilled or is flowing from the well. The natural
gas is burning offshore, about 10 kilometres from the nearest coastline.
Workers on offshore platforms and rigs in the area have experienced no health
issues since the incident,” he said.
He said Chevron had actively engaged residents of the shoreline
communities by listening to their concerns and to explain what had happened,
adding that the firm was responding to the incident with continued engagement
of all the stakeholders.
The company’s multifunctional team, he said, had included the
health, safety and environmental officers, adding that medical workers too had
participated in the visits to the communities.
Odumabo said, “We cannot predict how long it will take to put
the fire out and permanently seal the well; but we will do so as quickly as
possible while continuing to maintain safe operations.
“We are investigating to determine
the root cause of this incident so that we can take appropriate action to try
to prevent something like this from happening again.”
Chevron Ignored Rig Workers Evacuation Requests Prior to
Deadly KS Endeavor Blast [REPORT]
By gCaptain On July 11, 2012
KS Endeavor on fire offshore Nigeria. Photo: Chevron
Chevron failed to address concerns of unsafe drilling
conditions and requests for evacuation from rig workers on board the KS
Endeavor in the days leading up to the jack-up’s explosion offshore Nigeria
that resulted two deaths, according to report from Reuters.
The KS Endeavor, a jack-rig operated by Chevron Nigeria,
exploded on January 16 resulting in the death of 2 of the 154 personel onboard
and a fire that burned for 46 days before a relief well was finally drilled.
Citing a transcripts of rig workers obtained from Britain’s
Rail, Maritime and Transport trade union, Reuters reports that workers on the
KS Endeavor were ignored by Chevron when expressing concerns of increasing
smoke billowing from the drilling borehole and requests for evacuation.
“Chevron knew for over a week that the well was unstable yet
they refused to evacuate us,” said one of the rig workers who gave his account
to the RMT union.
In fact, Reuters reports that instead of addressing fears that
equipment failures and smoke presaged disaster, Chevron flew extra staff to the
platform just before the January 16, 2012, blowout.
The most senior witness to give testimony to the RMT, a
Frenchman, said a series of pump failures throughout the drilling operation led
to a massive build-up of pressure that triggered the blowout.
The Frenchman said rig engineers held a site meeting and
advised Chevron to evacuate staff while well pressure control measures were
applied.
“That advice was not heeded and additional personnel were even
brought onboard to get ahead of what was believed to be impending strike
action,” the Frenchman, who was at that meeting, said.
Chevron denied claims that they ever received evacuation
requests in an emailed statement to Reuters
HOW BLOWOUTS OCCUR IN JACK-UP RIGS
From a drilling safety standpoint, jack-up rigs are inherently
more dangerous than floating rigs for two main reasons.
First, if the well blows out and catches fire, there’s no way
to unlatch the rig from the wellhead and move off station, thus removing the
fuel source. Either the blowout preventer will close and the fire is
extinguished, or the rig is going to burn to the waterline. There’s very
little in-between.
Secondly, because the blowout preventer is located roughly 60
feet below the rig floor, and not hundreds (if not thousands) of feet below on
the sea floor, if the rig crew is unable to detect a “kick,” or influx of gas
into the wellbore, before it reaches the blowout preventer (BOP), then it’s pretty
much guaranteed that there will be a flammable geyser of mud, gas, and possibly
oil, over the rig. On a deepwater rig, such as the Deepwater Horizon,
a huge steel pipe called a riser connects the floating rig to the blowout
preventer on the sea floor. There are added dangers in this situation as
well, however there are effective means of mitigating these risks as well.
Do kicks happen often?
A kick is a well control issue that a driller will contend with
dozens, if not hundreds, of times throughout a career in the oilfield.
While drilling, natural gas from the surrounding formation will quite
frequently enter the wellbore as the rig crew is drilling down into the earth,
and this pressurized flammable gas naturally wants to float to the surface…
So imagine a barrel-sized unit of natural gas enters the
wellbore at 10,000 feet.
According to Boyle’s Law, the volume of gas will
double each time the pressure is halved. So at 5,000 feet, it’s expanded
to 2 barrels, as it migrates up to 2,500 feet, it’s at 4 barrels, 1,250 feet –
8 barrels, and so on, until the bubble has expanded to the rig floor.
Left unmitigated, this kick can cause serious disaster on board
a drilling rig as witnessed in this case, and as seen in the Deepwater Horizon
disaster.
So how do you know when kick is migrating up a well bore?
While drilling a well, a fine, soupy, and dense mud is
continuously being pumped down the drill string (which turns the drilling bit),
and it returns up the annulus of the wellbore, where it is then filtered via
the “shakers”, and then recirculated back down the drill string. Most of
the time, it’s a closed loop process, meaning what is pumped down the well,
eventually returns back up the wellbore to get reprocessed again. The
volume, and rate of return of the mud is highly predictable, and is easily
calculated.
This scenario changes when a gas bubble enters the
well bore.
As bubble migrates up the wellbore, it pushes the drilling mud
(and well cuttings) above it up with greater and greater force as it
continuously expands. Drillers can sense this situation in progress when
they start seeing an increase in the flow rate of mud returning from the well.
It’s not a fool-proof system however because the expansion of gas is
exponential as is rises, and an increase in mud returns is not always an
indication of a kick. Without getting too technical and discussing all
the different possible scenarios, the important factor is to understand that at
the end of the day, if a kick goes unnoticed, and the rapid gas expansion goes
unchecked, a “blowout” is guaranteed to occur.
Did this happen off Nigeria?
GSF Baltic, image courtesy Transocean
We’re still waiting on specific details, but it seems very
likely the answer is yes. Chevron
is reporting that the surface well control equipment (the BOP) may have failed
in some fashion. They also report that Transocean’s GSF Baltic rig has
been contracted to drill a relief well that will intercept the blown out well
and kill it in a similar fashion as the BP’s Macondo well.
The unchecked flow from this well could also bridge off and
kill itself naturally, but the best option in this case is certainly to try and
stem the flow via the relief well.
