Fire on the Horizon by Tom Shroder

Author:Tom Shroder [Shroder, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins US
Published: 2011-01-08T22:00:00+00:00

In late February, an ROV was cruising around the wellhead when an operator noticed something on his video monitor. There was a definite spurt coming from a joint in the hydraulic lines leading into one of the two BOP control pods. These pods, like boxes perched atop the BOP, were the modules that linked back up to control panels on the rig, and through which the BOP could be directed, whether it was opening or closing a fluid line or activating one of its hydraulically powered rams to seal the well in an emergency.

The hydraulic leak was reported to the senior BP company man, Ronald Sepulvado. Of the four company men assigned to the Deepwater Horizon, two at a time, Sepulvado was probably the most experienced, having been with ARCO oil and gas company for twenty years before it was purchased by BP. He’d worked for BP for twelve years, the last seven and a half aboard the Deepwater Horizon. He knew the rig, he knew the crew, and they trusted him to do the right thing, especially when their safety was concerned.

Sepulvado discussed the hydraulic leak problem in a morning conference call with his BP supervisor, John Guide, a fifty-two-year-old engineer at BP’s campus on the western outskirts of Houston. Guide had been the Horizon’s well team leader for the twenty-four wells leading up to Macondo and he knew the business. Any issue involving the BOP definitely got Guide’s attention, and everyone else’s. Federal regulations regarding them were strict and explicit. They stated that any rig encountering “a BOP control station or pod that does not function properly” must “suspend further drilling operations until that station or pod is operable.”

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