Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill - An Ethical Analysis

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill - An Ethical Analysis"

Sharon May
10 years ago
Views:

1 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill - An Ethical Analysis BE Section Group 2 Jacob Yacks ([email protected]) Patrick Erickson ([email protected]) Abhishek Saini ([email protected])

2 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill On April 20th 2010 the oil rig Deepwater Horizon exploded killing 11 and wounding many. The Explosion was caused by a methane bubble from the well and caused the rig to lose power. This caused the BOP (Blow out protector) to attempt to activate. The BOP is supposed to be able to stop the flow of the oil and, in an emergency, separate the well from the rig and seal the well. After the explosion occurred there was a valve manually shut off by the rig before the power failed. This caused the pipes to build up pressure and bend. There were multiple things that went wrong during the accident and also leading up to it. This report will focus on the specific failures immediately after the rig explosion.

3 Specific Failures (BOP) 1. Well casing seal failed, hydrocarbons entered riser 2. Gas ignited on the rig, which lost power and drifted 3. The riser pipe started to bend after the pressure difference. 4. This caused the blind shear ram, when it closed, to not completely shut the well. 5. The circuits of for the blind shear rams failed in 3 different places.

4 Ethical Violations 1. Engineers of the BOP violated Sections II. 1.a-b,f of the Code of Ethics for Engineers 1. Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public. a. If engineers judgment is overruled under circumstances that endanger life or property, they shall notify their employer or client and such other authority as may be appropriate. b. Engineers shall approve only those engineering documents that are in conformity with applicable standards. f. Engineers having knowledge of any alleged violation of this Code shall report thereon to appropriate professional bodies and, when relevant, also to public authorities, and cooperate with the proper authorities in furnishing such information or assistance as may be required

5 Ethical Violations (cont) 2. It could also be speculated that an engineer violated section II.2.a of the Code of Ethics for Engineers 2. Engineers shall perform services only in the areas of their competence. a. Engineers shall undertake assignments only when qualified by education or experience in the specific technical fields involved.

6 Ethical Protagonists There were a few Ethical Protagonists : 1. The Engineer(s) who designed the rig 2. The Engineer(s) who tested the effective compression of the riser pipe 3. The Engineer(s) who conducted the negative pressure tests 4. The Engineer(s) who wired the connections and batteries in the two pods of the blind shear ram 5. The Engineer(s) who attempted to activate the BOP blind shear rams using a ROV

7 Protagonist Behavior 1. The Engineer(s) who designed the rig had many choices to make about their design based on risks. They chose to go with the easier and less-reliable features in their rig positioning casing design, cement design, and cement installation.

8 Protagonist Behavior 2. The Engineer(s) that tested the compression of the riser pipe either was not experienced enough to carry out the task or he reported the information wrongly. 3. The Engineer(s) who conducted the negative pressure tests were unfamiliar with the test protocol, as well as how to interpret their results. In fact, there existed no standardized test protocol or method for interpreting results, as it was expected to be run by individuals already familiar with them. This led the rig crew to misinterpret their test results and fail to recognize the hydrocarbon inflow.

9 Protagonist Behavior cont. 4. The Engineer(s) who wired the BOP shear ram pods made several wiring mistakes and battery connection mistakes, leading one to infer he/she was not experienced in that line of work. 5. The Engineer(s) who tried to close the well remotely with the ROVs were ethically in the right and made the best decisions available to them to attempt to remedy the situation

10 Sources used edu/courses/1/be_1200_1409_004/content/_ _1/code%20of% 20ethics.pdf

11 Guidelines to Presentation i. Identification of the central ethical issues involved in the chosen engineering incident of product or process failure. ii. Identification of the ethical protagonists and the central ethical issues that they encountered throughout the incident. iii. Choosing one of the main characters or ethical protagonists involved in the case analyze their behavior and actions as compliant or in contradiction to actions dictated by the NPSE Code of Ethics found on Blackboard or at:

Deepwater Horizon Summary of Critical Events, Human Factors Issues and Implications

Deepwater Horizon Summary of Critical Events, Human Factors Issues and Implications 23 Sept 2010 Alison Hubbard David Embrey Deepwater Horizon Summary of Critical Events, Human Factors Issues and Healthcare