Speaker: No more Macondos

Since the 2010 Macondo well blowout, the oil and gas industry has become much more prepared to respond to a potential blowout and to prevent a blowout, for which the industry was previously not ready, said Nicholas Lirette, drilling completion manager for Noble Energy Deepwater Gulf of Mexico Business Unit, on Tuesday.
Lirette, who works out of Noble Energy’s office in Houston, was the guest speaker at the Atchafalaya Chapter of the American Petroleum Institute’s monthly meeting at the Petroleum Club of Morgan City.
Noble Energy is an independent oil and gas company, which took a leadership position in developing well containment plans and well containment equipment after the BP Macondo well blowout, Lirette said. “We wanted to make sure that we never expose south Louisiana to something that could impact the coastline and our people the way it did in 2010,” Lirette said. Lirette joined Noble Energy in 2010.
The oil and gas industry was not prepared, in 2010, to respond to a blowout, he said. “The industry would’ve had a blowout sooner or later,” Lirette said. “There was a lot of close calls in the industry that you didn’t hear about. (If) oil never reaches the surface, nobody hears about it. But people were just getting lucky.” Unfortunately, leaders made some bad decisions that caused the BP oil spill, Lirette said.
Noble Energy helped lead the industry back to work after the oil spill by safeguarding personnel, protecting the environment and providing assurance to all stakeholders, he said.
“A lot of companies complained about the new regulations,” Lirette said. “They saw themselves as the victims. They said they weren’t going to work in the Gulf of Mexico again. We were focused on being positive. We were focused on providing solutions.” Company leaders listened to Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement officials and “developed solutions with existing technology,” he said. Noble Energy got the first two completion permits during the drilling moratorium, Lirette said.
Oil and gas companies now have two options to provide for well containment in the Gulf of Mexico, the Helix Well Containment Group and the Marine Well Containment Company, Lirette said. HWCG was developed by independent companies with a philosophy of using existing equipment in the Gulf of Mexico and modifying it for use in the event of a blowout, Lirette said. Noble Energy helped formed HWCG with 23 companies, a group that now has 16 member companies, he said.
HWCG had a mission of developing a comprehensive and rapid deepwater response system to meet regulation requirements, Lirette said. “The solution had to be effective and timely,” Lirette said. “We couldn’t have another four-month blowout. We had to respond quickly if a well did get out of control.” The membership fee to the group is $2 million annually.
MWCC was formed by Chevron, BP, Exxon and Shell, which built brand-new equipment for well containment. MWCC now comprises 10 companies. Original membership into MWCC required a $250 million fee.
HWCG relies on the expertise of different companies within the group to provide for well containment solutions, he said. In June 2013, Noble Energy demonstrated that the well containment screening tool worked and got positive feedback from the Department of Interior’s Science Review Team, Lirette said.
At the time of the Macondo blowout, no proper equipment was available to respond, he said. “We had to get really creative on using existing equipment that could be fit for purpose for another blowout in the Gulf of Mexico,” he said.
Regulations were changing rapidly during the 2010 incident so Noble Energy had to make sure it appeased all stakeholders, he said.
At the time of the spill, lots of uncertainty existed as to when companies would be able to return to work, Lirette said. Though the BP oil spill was an environmental disaster, companies learned that “the Gulf of Mexico is more resilient than we thought it was,” he said.
Since 2010, the industry experienced “a huge paradigm shift in deepwater drilling,” Lirette said. Before 2010, industry leaders believed that subsea blowout preventers had enough redundancy, he said. “We’d never seen a blowout preventer fail because it had so many backup systems. Now we know BOP systems can fail,” Lirette said. Industry leaders now know they need to do routine preventative maintenance on the systems, he said.
During the Macondo incident, which lasted four months, 500 million barrels of oil spilled, he said. When the blowout occurred, well designs were based on drilling loads only, Lirette said. Now, wells are designed to sustain “worst case blowout,” Lirette said. “Now, we have tools to determine, before we go to drill these wells, that they are designed for the worst possible scenario,” he said.
Emergency response capability was limited to surface cleanup during the oil spill. “We know that’s not good enough anymore. Now we’ve got trained personnel that know how to respond to subsea blowouts,” he said.
The industry had no dedicated equipment in 2010 to respond to a blowout, which it now has, he said. “There were no regulatory requirements around well containment. Now we have stringent requirements,” Lirette said.
Regulators introduced a well containment screening tool, which is used by every well operator today, he said. “It’s part of our regulation and our permit process to get approval to drill these deepwater wells,” Lirette said. The screening tool was developed through a joint task force, which came out of the Department of Interior’s increased safety measures on May 27, 2010, he said.
Independent third party verification is also necessary to ensure a blowout preventer is fit for its purpose, he said. “We now need to do a tremendous amount of testing, both on the surface and subsea,” Lirette said.
Well containment is aimed at responding to and reestablishing well control at the source, he said. The key priority of well containment is safety of personnel followed by minimizing the impact to the environment, saving the major asset, including the rig and infrastructure, and lastly, minimizing the companies’ and stakeholders’ reputation and financial liability, he said.
“The industry is ready to respond if a subsea blowout does occur. We’re in much better shape now than we ever were before,” Lirette said. Though companies are prepared to contain a well in the event of a blowout, preventing a blowout in the first place is most important, he said. Competent workers with lots of training and testing at well sites is crucial to blowout prevention, Lirette said. “The regulations are appropriate, and the regulators are doing their part to ensure that we are operating safety,” he said.

This story was written by Zachary Fitzgerald of The Daily Review staff. Reach him at zfitzgerald@daily-review.com.