“Everyone involved with the job . . . was completely satisfied. . .” The Deepwater Horizon, the Macondo Well, and Sudden Death on the Gulf of Mexico Chapter 1 Source: Deepwater: The Gulf Oil disaster & the future of offshore drilling (2011), Report to the President, Commission on the BP Deepwater Oil spill and Offshore drilling, January, 2011. At 5:45 a.m. on Tuesday, April 20, 2010, a Halliburton Company cementing engineer sent an e-mail from the rig Deepwater Horizon, in the Gulf of Mexico off the Louisiana coast, to his colleague in Houston. He had good news: “We have completed the job and it went well.” Outside in the Gulf, it was still dark—beyond the glare of the floodlights on the gargantuan rig, the four decks of which towered above the blue-green water on four huge white columns, all floating on massive pontoons. The oil derrick rose over 20 stories above the top deck. Up on the bridge on the main deck, two officers monitored the satellite guided dynamic positioning system, controlling thrusters so powerful that they could keep the 33,000-ton Deepwater Horizon centered over a well even in high seas. The rig’s industrial hum and loud mechanical noises punctuated the sea air as a slight breeze blew in off the water. The crew worked on the well bore, aiming always to keep the pressure inside the well balancing the force exerted by the surrounding seabed. By the time the Halliburton engineer had arrived at the rig four days earlier to help cement in the two-and-a-half-mile-deep Macondo well, some crew members had dubbed it “the well from hell.” Macondo was not the first well to earn that nickname; like many deepwater wells, it had proved complicated and challenging. As they drilled, the engineers had to modify plans in response to their increasing knowledge of the precise features of the geologic formations thousands of feet below. Deepwater drilling is an unavoidably tough, demanding job, requiring tremendous engineering expertise. BP drilling engineer Brian Morel, who had designed the Macondo well with other BP engineers including Mark Hafle, was also on board to observe the final stages of work at the well. In an April 14 e-mail, Morel had lamented to his colleagues, “this has been [a] nightmare well which has everyone all over the place.” BP and its corporate partners on the well, Anadarko Petroleum and MOEX USA, had, according to government reports, budgeted $96.2 million and 51 days of work to drill the Macondo well in Mississippi Canyon Block 252. They discovered a large reservoir of oil and gas, but drilling had been challenging. As of April 20, BP and the Macondo well were almost six weeks behind schedule and more than $58 million over budget. The Deepwater Horizon was not originally meant to drill Macondo. Another giant rig, the Marianas, had initiated work on the well the previous October. Drilling had reached more than 9,000 feet below the ocean surface (4,000 feet below the seabed), with another 9,000 feet to go to “pay zone” (the oil and gas reservoir), when Hurricane Ida so battered the rig on November 9 that it had to be towed in for repair. Drilling for oil had always been hard, dirty, dangerous work, combining heavy machinery and volatile hydrocarbons extracted at high pressures. Since 2001, the Gulf of Mexico workforce -35,000 people, working on 90 big drilling rigs and 3,500 production platforms - had suffered 1,550 injuries, 60 deaths, and 948 fires and explosions. On the morning of April 20, Robert Kaluza was BP’s day-shift company man on the Deepwater Horizon. On board for the first time, he was serving for four days as a relief man for Ronald Sepulvado, a veteran well-site leader on the rig. Sepulvado had flown back to shore April 16 for a required well-control class. During the rig’s daily 7:30 a.m. operations conference call to BP in Houston, engineer Morel discussed the good news that the final cement job at the bottom of the Macondo well had gone fine. To ensure the job did not have problems, a three-man Schlumberger team was scheduled to fly out to the rig later that day, able to perform a suite of tests to examine the well’s new bottom cement seal. According to the BP team’s plan, if the cementing went smoothly, as it had, they could skip Schlumberger’s cement evaluation. Generally, the completion rig would perform this test when it reopened the well to produce the oil the exploratory drilling had discovered. The decision was made to send the Schlumberger team home on the 11:00 a.m. helicopter, thus saving time and the $128,000 fee. As BP Wells Team Leader John Guide noted, “Everyone involved with the job on the rig site was completely satisfied with the [cementing] job.” At 8:52 a.m., Morel e-mailed the Houston office to reiterate: “Just wanted to let everyone know the cement job went well. Pressures stayed low, but we had full returns on the entire job…We should be coming out of the hole [well] shortly.” At 10:14 a.m., David Sims, BP’s new drilling operations manager in charge of Macondo, e-mailed to say, “Great job guys!” At 10:43 a.m., Morel, about to leave the rig on the helicopter with the Schlumberger team, sent a short e-mail laying out his plan for conducting the day’s tests of the well’s integrity and subsequent temporary abandonment procedures. Few had seen the plan’s details when the rig supervisors and members of the drill team gathered for the rig’s daily 11:00 a.m. pre-tour meeting in the cinema room. “Basically [we] go over what’s going to be taking place for today on the rig and the drill floor,” said Douglas Brown, chief mechanic. During the rig meeting, the crew on the drill floor was conducting the Macondo well’s positive-pressure test. The positive-pressure test on the casing was reassuring, a success. There was reason for the mood on the rig to be upbeat. Ross Skidmore, a subsea engineer explained, “When you run the last string of casing, and you’ve got it cemented, it’s landed out, and a test was done on it, you say, ‘This job, we’re at the end of it, we’re going to be okay.’” The Transocean managers discussed with their BP counterparts the backlog of rig maintenance. A September 2009 BP safety audit had produced a 30-page list of 390 items requiring 3,545 man-hours of work. The managers reviewed upcoming maintenance schedules and discussed efforts to reduce dropped objects and personal injuries. After concluding that the negative-pressure test was successful, the drilling crew prepared to set a cement plug56 deep in the well—3,000 feet below the top of the well. They reopened the blowout preventer and began pumping seawater down the drill pipe to displace the mud and spacer* from the riser (the pipe that connected the rig to the well assembly on the seafloor below). When the spacer appeared up at the surface, they stopped pumping because the fluid had to be tested to make sure it was clean enough to dump it in the Gulf, now that it had journeyed down into the well and back. By 9:15 p.m., the crew began discharging the spacer overboard. Captain Kuchta looked up and remarked “What’s that?” He strode to the port-side door and opened it. Outside, O’Bryan could see the supply vessel Bankston glistening with what looked like drilling mud. The captain shut the door “and told everybody to stay inside.” Then there began a hissing noise. BP’s Vidrine had headed back to his office to do paperwork. He had been there about 10 to 15 minutes when the phone rang. It was Anderson, who reported “they were getting mud back and were diverting to the gas buster.” Vidrine grabbed his hard hat and started for the drill floor. By the time he got outside, “[t]here was mud and seawater blowing everywhere, there was a mud film on the deck. I decided not to continue and came back across.” Up on the main deck, gantry crane operator Micah Sandell was working with the roustabouts. “I seen mud shooting all the way up to the derrick. . . . Then it just quit. . . I took a deep breath thinking that ‘Oh, they got it under control.’ Then all the sudden the. . . mud started coming out of the degasser. . . so strong and so loud that it just filled up the whole back deck with a gassy smoke. . . loud enough. . . it’s like taking an air hose and sticking it in your ear. Then something exploded. . . that started the first fire...on the starboard side of the derrick.” Down in the engine control room, Chief Mechanic Douglas Brown, an Army veteran employed by Transocean, was filling out the nightly log and equipment hours. He had spent the day fixing a saltwater pipe in one of the pontoons. First, he noticed an “extremely loud air leak sound.” Then a gas alarm sounded, followed by more and more alarms wailing. In the midst of that noise, Brown noticed someone over the radio. “I heard the captain or chief mate, I’m not sure who, make an announcement to the standby boat, the Bankston, saying we were in a well-control situation.” The vessel was ordered to back off to 500 meters. Now Brown could hear the rig’s engines revving. “I heard them revving up higher and higher and higher. Next I was expecting the engine trips to take over. . . . That did not happen. After that the power went out.” Seconds later, an explosion ripped through the pitch-black control room, hurtling him against the control panel, blasting away the floor. Brown fell through into a subfloor full of cable trays and wires. A second huge explosion roared through, collapsing the ceiling on him. All around in the dark he could hear people screaming and crying for help. Dazed and buried in debris, he pulled himself out of the subfloor hole. In front of him appeared Mike Williams, chief electronic technician, blood pouring from a wound on his forehead, crawling over the rubble, screaming that he had to get out. The air smelled and tasted of some kind of fuel. A second explosion roared through, flinging Bertone across his room. He stood up, pulled on his coveralls, work boots, and hard hat, and grabbed a life vest. Out in the hall, clogged with debris from blown-out walls and ceilings, four or five men stood in shock. Bertone yelled to them to go out by the port forward or starboard forward spiral staircases and report to their emergency stations. He ran toward the bridge. He went to the portside back computer, the dynamic positioning system responsible for maintaining the rig’s position. “I observed that we had no engines, no thrusters, no power whatsoever. I picked up the phone which was right there and I tried calling extension 2268, which is the engine control room. There was no dial tone whatsoever.” It was then that Bertone looked out to the bridge’s starboard window. “I was fully expecting to see steel and pipe and everything on the rig floor.” “When I looked out the window, I saw fire from derrick leg to derrick leg and as high as I could see. At that point, I realized that we had just had a blowout.” Bertone was now back to his station on the bridge, thinking, “The engines should be starting up because in approximately 25 to 30 seconds two engines start up, come online. . . . There was still no power of any kind. No engines starting; no indication of engines starting.” Outside, the derrick fire roared upward into the night sky, an inferno throwing off searing heat and clouds of black smoke. The blinding yellow of the flames was the only illumination except for the occasional flashlight. The rig’s alarms were going off, while over the public announcement system Keplinger yelled, “THIS IS NOT A DRILL!” As the crew struggled out of the blasted quarters, galley, and offices, in various states of undress, they converged in a chaotic and panicked mass at the lifesaving vessels, putting on life vests. Winslow directed the dazed crew toward the covered life-saving vessels, instructing the first arrivals, “We need to make sure we get a good head count.” Seeing Captain Kuchta standing at the starboard bridge door, he ran up, and said people should evacuate. Kuchta answered, “Okay.” Panic was building as the derrick fire roared. Winslow heard someone yelling that people were jumping overboard. As the lifeboats filled, crew members were screaming to lower the boats. But not everyone was there. Carden and Murray appeared with Trahan on the stretcher and handed him into the vessel, where he was laid out. People in the boat screamed, “We’ve got to go! We’ve got to go!” Back up on the Deepwater Horizon bridge, Bertone asked Captain Kuchta’s permission to go to the standby generator room to try to manually start it. He assumed that the EDS had worked. “My thinking at that point was the BOP [blowout preventer] had unlatched, what remaining fuel would be in the riser it would burn away and we were going to need power, as well as fire pumps.” Inside the standby generator room, Bertone flipped the switch from automatic to manual, hitting the reset and the start button. “There was absolutely no turning over of the engine. I tried it again, the reset button and the start. Again, nothing happened.” Bertone yelled, “That’s it. Let’s go back to the bridge. It’s not going to crank.” When they opened the water-tight door to walk back out to the bridge, the heat struck like a blast furnace. The derrick fire roared into the sky, billowing black smoke. The rig had not unlatched from the well. On the bridge, Kuchta was standing with the door open watching the lifeboat station. The first lifeboat had departed, while the second vessel was visible in the burning water just pulling away from the rig. Bertone returned to the bridge, looked through the open door, and yelled to Williams and Meinhart, “That’s it, abandon ship. Let’s go.” He turned to Keplinger and Fleytas, still manning their radios. He shouted over the noise, “That’s it. Abandon ship. Let’s go, now.” Bertone looked up and saw “a tremendous amount of smoke bellowing out from under the rig.” At that moment boots appeared out of the smoke: it was Captain Kuchta, jumping into the water. Unable to get into the raft in the confusion, he leaped over 100 feet. He splashed into the Gulf five feet from Bertone. Then a second person came flying through the air, out of the thick smoke, crashing into the water: Keplinger had jumped, too. By now, Bertone and his men had managed to pull the life raft far enough away from the rig that they could see the circular helipad silhouetted against the flames. Bertone could see someone running at full speed across the helipad deck and then leaping off the rig. It was Mike Williams, the electronics technician.158 Williams splashed down nearby, resurfaced, and began swimming toward the Bankston. Captain Kuchta went directly to the bridge, where he worked with others “to see who had firefighting capacity,” among other matters. Sims and Winslow were already there, organizing BP’s and Transocean’s response. Harrell remained on the main deck with the traumatized rig crew, many still half dressed, lacerated, or soaked from being in the sea. The crew filled the 260-foot Bankston’s lounge, galley, and parts of the main deck, including a temporary medical area. Some lay in the bunks. The Bankston crew pulled out whatever dry clothes and boots they had, and handed them to the survivors. With both life vessels and the life raft secured to the Bankston, the Deepwater Horizon leaders could try to take muster. There had been 126 people on the rig when the well blew out. In the confusion, no one yet knew exact counts, but conspicuously missing were those working the drill floor. On board the Bankston, the atmosphere was grim. The crew was forbidden to call home until there was more definitive information. By 11:30 p.m., the managers had taken a final muster and 11 men were missing: Jason Anderson, Dale Burkeen, Donald Clark, Stephen Curtis, Roy Kemp, Gordon Jones, Karl Dale Kleppinger, Blair Manuel, Dewey Revette, Shane Roshto, and Adam Weise. Not until 8:13 that morning, when many boats were on the scene, did the Bankston get permission to set sail with the 99 survivors on board for Port Fourchon, Louisiana, the sprawling oil-supply depot that was its home base. The Coast Guard’s coordinated search had located no further crew—dead or alive. An hour into the Bankston’s 114-mile journey back to shore, it stopped at the Ocean Endeavor rig to take on two medics. BP’s Sims and Transocean’s Winslow, along with subsea engineers Mark Hay and Chris Pleasant, debarked to await the Max Chouest. They would return to the burning rig and dispatch a remotely operated vehicle down to the burning rig’s blowout preventer. The plan was to activate it with a so-called “hot stab” of hydraulic fluid to finally close in the wellhead. It was a clear spring day as the Bankston sailed along through the Gulf, passing the many offshore platforms that dot its blue waters. At 2:09 p.m., the Bankston pulled in at the gargantuan Matterhorn production rig to take on more supplies: tobacco, water, and coveralls. Officials from the Coast Guard and Minerals Management Service also boarded. There was still almost a 12-hour journey to Port Fourchon. Officials intended to gather information while memories were still fresh. At 6:35 p.m., the federal officials began conducting interviews, asking each crew member to write a witness statement describing the events they experienced leading up to the blowout and then the abandonment of the rig. At 1:27 a.m. on Earth Day, Thursday, April 22, 27 hours after the crew had fled the exploding Deepwater Horizon, the Bankston berthed in slip 1 at the C-Port terminal at Port Fourchon. The exhausted men and women walked on to land. Arrayed before them was a table stacked with forms and surrounded by uniformed officials and company managers. Beyond that stood a long row of portable toilets. As each crew member walked up, he or she was handed a small plastic cup. Per federal regulations, they would all be drug tested. The investigation of the Deepwater Horizon disaster had begun.