After Another Close Call, Transocean Changed Rules

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After Another Close Call, Transocean Changed Rules
By ROBBIE BROWN
Published: August 16, 2010

Four months before the Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, another oil rig owned by the same company faced a strikingly similar emergency in the North Sea that was contained only because its safety equipment functioned properly, according to confidential internal documents.

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Times Topic: Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill (2010)In response to the near disaster, Transocean, the world’s largest offshore drilling company, ordered critical changes to its own policies for handling oil well safety. But it is not clear whether those policy changes reached the Deepwater Horizon crew before that rig exploded.

Like the disaster in the gulf, the North Sea emergency involved dangerous pressure levels, a failure to detect those pressures in time, a risky plan for sealing the well and an emergency order for the crew to evacuate to lifeboats.

“In this case, they were lucky,” said Satish Nagarajaiah, a professor of civil and mechanical engineering at Rice University in Houston. “It’s strikingly similar, but this time, the emergency equipment functioned.”

more:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/us/17transocean.html