A Sea in Flames - Carl Safina [18]
The gas quickly overwhelms the separator’s capacity and mud begins flowing onto the rig floor.
The blowout preventer is attached to the wellhead at the seafloor and to the riser pipe that connects to the rig at the surface. Its many components are often used during routine operations like pressure testing, sealing around drill pipe, and pressure control in the well. It doesn’t just sit there unless there’s an emergency. And it is tested routinely. It was tested just a few days before the explosion.
The blowout preventer is controlled from the rig through two cables connected to two redundant control “pods”—blue and yellow—and with a hydraulic line. Remotely operated vehicles can also control the blowout preventer by directly operating the pods.
The BP investigation team will conclude that, if the blowout preventer had been closed at any time prior to 9:38 P.M., the flow of hydrocarbons to the riser and up to the surface would have been reduced or eliminated.
They missed it by four minutes.
Remember, by pumping the extra 200 barrels of spacer fluid just to save disposal costs, they’d wasted fifteen minutes.
At 9:42, the crew did try to activate the blowout preventer, tightening a gasket against the drill pipe. At first it did not seal. It does appear that the blowout preventer was sealed around the drill pipe at approximately 9:47. The part of the blowout preventer that they closed simply tightened a rubber gasket against the pipe, a chokehold. What they needed was to close the blind shear rams and sever the pipe—to chop its head off and seal the well.
It was too little. And then, it was too late.
Randy Ezell, a Transocean senior tool pusher, was asleep when his room phone rang. He recalled,
Well, I hit my little alarm clock light and, according to that alarm clock, it was ten minutes till 10:00. And the person at the other end of the line there was the assistant driller, Steve Curtis. Steve opened up by saying, “We have a situation.” He said, “The well is blown out.” He said, “We have mud going to the crown.” And I said, “Well—.” I was just horrified. I said, “Do y’all have it shut in?” He said, “Jason is shutting it in now.” And he said, “Randy, we need your help.” And I’ll never forget that.
And I said, “Steve, I’ll be—I’ll be right there.”
So I put my coveralls on; they were hanging on the hook. I put my socks on. My boots and my hard that were right across that hall in the tool pusher’s office. So I opened my door and I remember a couple of people standing in the hallway, but I kind of had tunnel vision. I looked straight ahead and I don’t even remember who those people were.
I made it to the doorway of the tool pusher’s office when a tremendous explosion occurred. It blew me probably twenty feet against a bulkhead, against the wall in that office. And I remember then that the lights went out, power went out. I could hear everything deathly calm. My next recollection was that I had a lot of debris on top of me. I tried two different times to get up, but whatever it was it was a substantial weight. The third time something like adrenaline had kicked in and I told myself, “Either you get up or you’re going to lay here and die.” My right leg was hung on something; I don’t know what. But I pulled it as hard as I could and it came free. I attempted to stand up. That was the wrong thing to do ’cause I immediately stuck my head into smoke. And with the training that we’ve all had on the rig I knew to stay low. So I dropped back down. I got on my hands and knees and for a few moments I was totally disoriented on which way the doorway was. And I remember just sitting there and just trying to think, “Which way is it?”
Now there was mud shooting out the top of the rig and the loud and continuous whoosh of surging gas. More explosions followed, igniting a high-intensity hydrocarbon fire fueled by incoming gas and oil.
Up until the explosions, the crew had two different ways to activate the shear rams that could cut the pipe and seal the well.