Preparing for subsea source control response and optimising timelines – IOGP Reports 592 and 594
Andrew Best A and Patrick Brenan B CA National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Authority (NOPSEMA), Level 8, 58 Mounts Bay Road, Alluvion Building, NOPSEMA, WA 6000, Australia.
B International Association of Oil & Gas Producers (IOGP)/OWE Consulting, Level 14, City Tower, 40 Basinghall Street, London EC2V 5DE, United Kingdom.
C Corresponding author. Email: Patrick.Brenan@OptimalWellEngineering.com
The APPEA Journal 61(1) 70-76 https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ20041
Submitted: 20 November 2020 Accepted: 3 March 2021 Published: 2 July 2021
Abstract
In response to the Montara and Macondo subsea well incidents in 2009–10, the industry’s ability to respond to a subsea source control (SSC) event has greatly improved. Industry invested in response capabilities, and established best practices to resolve future potential offshore incidents. The investment has advanced science, engineering, and equipment developments, establishing a higher standard of preparedness and capability. The industry now has a high confidence in its ability to deal with a subsea well release. This rapid growth in capability has led to variations in equipment and response plans, resulting in elevated complexity within an already highly technical field. To simplify SSC response plans, common understanding and consistency is required. With a common understanding of the response plan comes enhanced industry, regulator, and community confidence in the ability of the energy industry to appropriately manage its environmental and social impacts. The IOGP Report 594 Source Control Emergency Response Planning Guide for Subsea Wells is one of the available simplification resources. Another is the joint IOGP and NOPSEMA Report 592 Subsea Capping Response Time Model Toolkit User Guide and tools, which map the response plan linking dependencies between all the actions and the critical path items that influence response time: both were published in 2019. This peer-reviewed paper describes these efforts and shares their content. It aims to highlight the available resources, promote a common standardised approach, and share how workshops are supporting implementation. In doing so, a standard of recognised best practices in planning and engineering requirements is communicated.
Keywords: IOGP Report 591, IOGP Report 594, subsea blowout, blowout, response time model, RTM, Montara, Macondo, Deepwater Horizon, blowout contingency planning, source control emergency response plan, Source Control Emergency Response Planning Guide, SCERP, SWRSC, source control.
Andrew Best graduated from Murdoch University with a BSc in Environmental Science. He has over 20 years’ experience as an environmental and emergency response specialist in the petroleum industry, implementing pollution control systems and emergency management systems. A significant amount of this time has been in developing offshore oil and gas emergency and oil spill response capability. Andrew has specific focus on response mechanisms to a loss of well control incident. He works as a Spill Risk Specialist for the Australian National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Authority (NOPSEMA). |
Patrick Brenan, MIEAust CPEng NER (Mechanical & Petroleum), graduated from the School of Petroleum Engineering at UNSW in 2001 and joined BP UK as a Graduate Drilling Engineer. He has since worked for various large and mid-sized operators worldwide focusing on high pressure high temperature and deepwater projects. He has been responsible for well and project delivery as well as holding positions within centralised wells functions. During his career he has attained an intimate knowledge of well integrity, risk management, blowout response prevention and planning as well as direct experience with complex well control response activities. In 2018 he joined the IOGP Wells Expert Committee and the SWRSC. He actively participated in in the update or creation of reports 485, 591, 592, 594 and 595. In 2019–20, Patrick was Chair of the SWRSC and has had an active role in advancing developments of subsea source control for both member companies and external stakeholders. In 2020, he founded OWE Consulting, which offers services in well engineering, subsea source control, advisory and advocacy and has been supporting IOGP as an Advisor. |
References
International Association of Oil & Gas Producers (IOGP) (2011a). IOGP Report 463 – Deepwater wells – Global Industry Response Group recommendations. (IOGP: UK)International Association of Oil & Gas Producers (IOGP) (2011b). IOGP Report 464 – Capping and containment – Global Industry Response Group recommendations. (IOGP: UK)
International Association of Oil & Gas Producers (IOGP) (2011c). IOGP Report 465 – Oil spill response – Global Industry Response Group recommendations. (IOGP: UK)
International Association of Oil & Gas Producers (IOGP) (2019a). IOGP Report 594 – Source Control Emergency Response Planning Guide for Subsea Wells. (IOGP: UK)
International Association of Oil & Gas Producers (IOGP) (2019b). IOGP Report 592 – Subsea Capping Response Time Model Toolkit. (IOGP: UK)
NOPSEMA (2019). Subsea Wells Source Control Workshop Report. (NOPSEMA: Australia)
