Like Being Blind on the Moon: The Trouble with Deepwater Oil Exploration

• Print
• E-Mail
• Feedback

"One in four exploration wells must be abandoned in the deep water Gulf of Mexico because of (these) drilling hazards," says Arthur Weglein, physics professor and Director of the Mission-Oriented Seismic Research Program at the University of Houston in the US. "We are taking risks we don't understand," adds Robert Bea, a professor at the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of California, Berkeley. Bea is leading an independent investigation into the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe.

The oil-exploration industry is now preparing for higher safety standards. These will likely include duplicate "shear rams" in the blowout preventer system, which would shut down the bore hole in an emergency -- simply a spare system, like the backups found in any nuclear power plant. In the future it will also be standard for a blowout preventer to be able to be remotely activated, using an acoustic signal. But will any of this prevent future disasters?

Brazilian firm Petrobras has started to increase its production capacities aggressively. They now produce a quarter of all oil from deepwater sources, worldwide. There is hardly any company listed on stock exchanges with more oil reserves at its disposal. The firm could insure Brazil's entry into the league of industrialized nations, and the company will not be stopped because of an accident in the Gulf of Mexico.

Deepwater Oil 'A Gift from God'

At the end of 2007, Petrobras engineers discovered the Tupi field off Rio de Janiero, with reserves between five and eight billion barrels. Only a few short months later, Petrobras reported finding three more giant oil fields. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva described it as "gift from God," although the gift lay under two kilometers' worth of ocean, two kilometers' worth of salt and three kilometers of other sediment, at a depth of 7,000 meters. "It is among the most complicated projects in the world, in terms of deep water," says Caio Carvalhal, research associate at Cambridge Energy Research Associates in Brazil.

There is also a potential oil-production boom off the coast of Africa, in particular off Ghana and Angola. At the same time oil companies are exploring the Arctic, where it is suspected further, massive stores of gas and oil are hidden -- and that is despite the particular difficulties of the fragile eco-system in that area.

And all the while, crude oil continues to flow into the Gulf of Mexico. And there could be worse to come. Deep-sea researcher Linke has concerns that the oil flow and the attempts to prevent it may have damaged the pipelines at the oil source. In which case gas and oil could start coming up through the sea floor. "That is a worst-case scenario," he says, and drilling to relieve pressure would be in vain.

The emergency plan BP has provided may indicate the level of concern the petroleum giant has about such horror scenarios. The plan says walruses must be protected, even though walruses don't live in the Gulf of Mexico. The company also promises advice from an expert, Peter Lutz. In case of catastrophe, the biologist from Boca Raton, Florida, can help assess damages to the environment. But the originators of the emergency plan at BP had evidently not spoken to that particular expert for some time; Professor Lutz died of cancer five years ago.

• Back
• 1
• | 2

• Part 1: The Trouble with Deepwater Oil Exploration
• Part 2: 'Taking Risks we Don't Understand'