Sentences with phrase «blowout preventer»

The regulatory blowout preventer failed long before BP ever started to drill — precisely because Salazar kept in place the crooked environmental guidelines the Bush administration implemented to favor the oil industry.

Last year, Transocean commissioned a «strictly confidential» study of the reliability of blowout preventers used by deepwater rigs.

The regulations also strictly control the types and amounts of fluids pumped into wells, require redundant safety devices, increase the frequency of inspections of critical emergency equipment — known as blowout preventers — and require offshore operators to take steps to center pipes inside wells when pumping cement into them.

Later this summer, we'll probably be debating the need for sonar shut - off valves on blowout preventers.

In only six of those cases were the wells brought under control, leading the researchers to conclude that in actual practice, blowout preventers used by deepwater rigs had a «failure» rate of 45 percent.

A new capped blowout preventer that BP has installed may avert that in future.

It found 11 cases where crews on deepwater rigs had lost control of their wells and then activated blowout preventers to prevent a spill.

PET scanners and undersea oil - well blowout preventers are still pretty different, for example.

With headquarters in London and Houston, the combined company will have roughly $ 23 billion in annual revenue and offer oilfield gear including blowout preventers, pumps, drilling, chemicals, other products and services for oil producers in 120 countries.

Nor did the agency certify blowout preventers, but instead allowed companies like BP to certify the equipment themselves.

By the end of next week, BP is hoping to use the hoses and multi — valve manifold connector that it had deployed for the failed «top kill» operation to take oil and gas from the Deepwater Horizon's idle blowout preventer through a separate riser to the Q4000 multipurpose floating rig on the surface not far from the drill ship, Wells said.

Image: The mobile offshore drilling unit Q4000 holds position directly over the damaged Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer as crews work to plug the wellhead using a technique known as «top kill,» May 26, 2010.

For all their confident pronouncements about blowout preventers (the «ultimate failsafe device,» some called it), oil industry executives had long known they could be vulnerable and temperamental.

Very important were the ALARP risk management requirements for a near drilling location blowout preventer capping stack, and relief well drilling unit.

The new regulations give offshore operators up to seven years to retrofit undersea blowout preventers with pipe - centering technology.

Even though modern oil wells contain blowout preventers that are designed to reduce the risk of a blowout, these types of accidents still occur.

In April 2007, an environmental assessment covering the area where BP would drill concluded that blowouts were «low probability and low risk,» even though a test funded by MMS had found that blowout preventers failed 28 percent of the time.

The central component of blowout preventers is a powerful device called a blind shear ram that crimps the well pipe in an emergency.

(6:01 p.m. Updated A Dot Earth reader noticed a newsletter report last year in which officials at Transocean, which owned the rig, said the company was having trouble with blowout preventers.)

Closer or «blowout preventer.»

Plus, the blowout preventer hadn't been working properly for several days.

Never again, they vowed, would the planet be forced to sit by, powerless, while oil execs confessed — after the fact — that stopping a leak at such depths is like performing «open - heart surgery at 5,000 feet in the dark,» as BP America's chairman and president, Lamar McKay, told ABC News about the early attempt to plug the well by triggering the failed blowout preventer.

Remote imaging of the failed blowout preventer, stress testing various containment devices as well as other high - tech tasks helped contain the Deepwater Horizon disaster

The report says the panel has not yet had time to work out why the blowout preventer, a giant valve on the seafloor which should have stopped the flow of oil as a measure of last resort, failed to activate.

So far, a total of nine oil spill investigations have been launched by the president, BP, Congress, and various federal agencies; according to NAE, this one will look into practices and technologies, including the ill - fated «blowout preventer,» that might have lead to the explosion, with an eye toward preventing future blowouts.

When BP scientists couldn't figure out how the blowout preventer failed, Chu suggested gamma - ray imaging, which could visually pierce the giant piece of equipment at the bottom of the sea.

So Chu and his colleagues required BP to monitor the well's pressure continuously for the 48 hours of the test and to keep tabs on the blowout preventer, the well itself, and the underground regions around it through both acoustic and visual methods offered by two of the 12 ROVs as well as a NOAA survey ship.

Even when BP began pumping oil and gas through a line from the blowout preventer to the Q4000 well - servicing ship — at Garwin's suggestion — the flow of oil into the sea remained undiminished.

What finally worked on July 12 was a smaller blowout preventer installed atop the failed blowout preventer at the well's head on the seafloor, replacing the top hat.

Such sudden spikes in pressure should be controlled by a device known as a blowout preventer (BOP).

«We know automatic systems did not close it, we know workers hit the manual switch before evacuating the rig, and we have been trying since hours after the incident to activate the blowout preventer [using remotely operated vehicles] and that has not been successful.»

One thing to watch for is the fountains of mud spewing from the leak sites in the blowout preventer and riser pipe to die down as BP brings the pumping down — that may have already happened.

There's still a lot that could go wrong: the mud now flowing from the leak points could end up hollowing out more of the blowout preventer, ultimately making the spill worse.

There was a failure of the «blowout preventer,» an undersea fail - safe device that is supposed to close off a gushing pipe.

Anyone doing a basic worst - case scenario for deep wells would have to consider having a plan should a blowout preventer fail.

One could well be the way it chose the basic design of the well — not just the infamous failed blowout preventer on the top, but the entire system from the seabed to the oil source deep below.

The Times has published a detailed and devastating report on weak links in the design and operation of the blowout preventer that was the last line of defense against an uncontrolled seabed gusher like the one at BP's Macondo Prospect well in the Gulf of Mexico.

But it just takes one for us to have a wake - up call and recognize that claims that fail - safe procedures were in place, or that blowout preventers would function properly, or that valves would switch on and shut things off, that — whether it's because of human error, because of the technology was faulty, because when you're operating at these depths you can't anticipate exactly what happens — those assumptions proved to be incorrect.

Postscript: The Department of Energy has released a large amount of information on the wrecked BP well and components such as the blowout preventer.

The story shows how companies doing offshore oil drilling had shifted progressively to cutting the risk of failure by adding a second blind shear ram to blowout preventers.

A new regulatory regime was nearly ready and Secretary Salazar was announcing final approval for Cape Wind, the much - delayed and long - awaited first U.S. offshore project, when BP blew its blowout preventer.

The bill requires that any company seeking a drilling permit must first guarantee that it could prevent any future blowouts; promptly stop any blowout, even if the blowout preventers and other measures fail; and drill a relief well within 90 days of any blowout.

Failure of blowout preventers to halt a sudden rush of oil and gas has been cited as one of the chief contributors to the April 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster.

The tale of the Deepwater Horizon disaster is, at its core, the tale of two blowout preventers: one mechanical, one regulatory.

As for the BP leak, on 12 May 2010 California Democrat Representative Henry Waxman said that the House Oversight and Investigations subcommittee investigation into the Gulf oil spill revealed that the Deepwater Horizon Macaondo oil platform's blowout preventer (BOP) did not pass a crucial pressure test just hours before the explosion.