The reasons for BP Deepwater Blowout failure The oil spill incident took place on April 20, 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico. The Deepwater Horizon was semi-submersible, mobile, floating, dynamically positioned drilling rig that could drill upto 3,000 metres. The Macondo well was the place where the rig was situated which was 41 miles off the Louisiana coast. It caused lives of 11 people on board with a lot of environment damage due to 4,900,000 barrels of oil. After the oil leaking, it damaged the oceans, shoreline nearby and marine life. According to the report, 2,200 tonnes of material which was damaged due to oil spill. Along with this, it affected the marine life which caused many dolphin deaths and tuna and amberjack life shortening results. The rig sank on 22nd April, 2010. There are eight main reasons for the explosion and oil spill: 1. Dodgy Cement The cement was …show more content…
Hence, looking at the test results it can be concluded that there was lack of communication, cement testing was not done accurately, risk management was not done appropriately. The following lack in activities could be warned by the BP Macondo well team. 2. The shoe track barriers did not isolate the hydrocarbons The shoe track barriers consisted of two barriers i.e. the cement and the float collar which was designed to prevent fluid flow into the casing. The shoe track barriers were positioned at the bottom of the casing. The float collar consisted of two check valves and a ported reamer. The investigation team found out the possible failures of both the shoe track barriers. As discussed earlier, the cement failure was caused due to contamination of nitrogen from the nitrified foam cement. The possible reasons for failure of float collar were: • Failure of the check valves to seal. • Failure of the float collar to convert due to insufficient flow rate. • Damage caused by the high