UNIVERSITI TEKNOLOGI MARA

UITM SHAH ALAM

Faculty of Chemical Engineering

CGE653 Health,Safety and Environment
Incident Summary (Deepwater Horizon)
LECTURER: Mdm Azzah
Date of Submission: 7th October 2016
MUHAMAD ADNAN

2015208916

Deepwater Horizon was an ultra-deepwater, semi-submersible offshore drilling rig

owned by Transocean in the Gulf of Mexico. The rig had 126 crew and the rig OIM is Mr.
Jimmy Harell. The incident occurred at approximately 9:45pm on 20 th April 2010. The 9
years old rig had many complications and faulty machineries, alarm system and even
communication system. The BPs Mocando Well is 43 behind schedule of completion. To cut
cost, BP send Schlumberger workers home which had earlier conducted a well-logging test
without conducting the cement bond test. Mr. Jimmy however wanted to conduct a wellintegrity test which is the negative pressure test before abandoning the well. The 1 st negative
pressure test was unsuccessful. Mr. Donald Vidrine, BPs rig supervisor however stated that
due to bladder effect at the drillpipe, they should conduct another test on the kill line.
Although the kill line negative pressure test showed 0 psi reading, it does not tally with the 1 st
negative pressure test which is at the drillpipe. A Transocean employee however agreed with
Mr. Vidrine and called Mr. Jimmy to continue with the temporary abandonment process. As
the mud is pumped out, all hell broke loose. Mud surged out of the wellbore through the riser
pipe to the rig floor. The 1 st and 2nd annulus was closed, but it could not prevent the high
flowrate kick. As the kick subsides, methane gas from the formation were released
throughout the rig and an explosion occurred in the engine room via a spark. This showed
that the gas detection system in the engine room failed to respond. Mr. Jimmy and other rig
crew rushed to the Emergency Control Room (ECR) tried to stabilized the rig through
Emergency Disconnect System (EDS). However, the shearing rams of the BOP shattered and
the drill pipe could not be cut thus the well are not sealed. Mr. Jimmy then stated that, the rig
could not be safe and they had to rush to an emergency lifeboat. All the lifeboats had already
left thus they have to find an alternative escape plan. They found an emergency raft however
Mike Williams (Senior Electronics Technician) and Andrea Fleytas could not make it. Both of
them had to jump 100 feet high from the helipad into the water to save themselves. Both of
them survived the jump. The blowout caused 11 rig crew to lost their life and 17 other injured
which ignited a fireball visible from 64km away.
The aftermath of the incident lead to US biggest oil spill in history with over 4.9
million barrels total discharge. It affected marine biology in the area and even fisherman
business at Gulf of Mexico. A settlement however had been distributed among those who got
affected. BP and Transocean had also been sued and penalized that could range from 5$
billion to 20$ billion. Two years and a half investigation had charged Donald Vidrine and

Robert Kaluza had been charged for the manslaughter of the 11 men who died in the
explosion due to wrong judgments but later had been dropped by the goverment.
We can learn that although time and money is precious, safety must be our top
priority. Besides, maintenance and good working equipment or machineries are vital to keep
the workplace and environment safe. A good communication also is very important. Lastly,
we should not jump into conclusion which could be a matter of life or death.