Industry Safety NEWS

The contractor has downplayed an incident that took place during work to dismantle what’s left of the Buchan Alpha oil rig. A video appears to show a worker attempting to run to safety when the structure he’s cutting into with a blowtorch, in waters off Shetland, becomes detached and off-balance. No one was injured and the Health and Safety Executive has not been involved.

More than one-fifth of U.S. offshore oil production and exporting ports were shut in lieu of Hurricane Sally which will make landfall on the U.S. Gulf Coast. Sally was upgraded to a Category 2 hurricane and could strengthen further before making landfall late on Tuesday. 21% of offshore crude oil production and 25% of natural gas output were shut in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico.

Energy firms shut 57.6% of offshore crude oil production in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico because of the twin threat from Hurricane Marco and Tropical Storm Laura. Also, 44.6% of natural gas output was shut ahead of the storms by the federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. Workers have been evacuated from 114 production platforms out of the 643 manned platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.

Baghjan’s high-pressured gas well was finally capped by successfully placing the BOP at the well head after a long struggle of 83 days. The well capping operation by the alert team was assisted by the crisis management teams of OIL, ONGC and Schlumberger. Placing the BOP successfully atop the well head was quite a challenging task for the team considering its sheer weight and the risky working environment.

US-based well control company, Wild Well Control and Oil Spill Response have formed an alliance to provide increased capability to the O&G industry. The collaboration between the two companies is designed to meet industry and regulatory expectations for a strong source control emergency response planning solution. The collaboration is said to provide a ‘one-stop solution’ to the O&G industry that covers all aspects of the emergency response.

Crew members of OIL, ONGC, Alert, Schlumberger and other contractors are at the gas well site in Baghjan and the final preparations for placing capping stack is underway, The gas well site in Baghjan witnessed an inferno a month ago. The capping stack was ready and wrapped with a ceramic blanket and ceramic cloths. A team from IIT Guwahati completed data collection for thermal imaging and sound measurement at required areas under the guidance of district officials and the OIL team.

Royal Dutch Shell Plc shut on Saturday the gasoline-producing fluidic catalytic cracker at its 318,000 barrel-per-day joint-venture Deer Park, Texas, refinery after a fire, sources familiar with plant operations said on Sunday. All individuals were safe and accounted for at the Shell Deer Park Complex, which includes the refinery and adjoining chemical plant. The Deer Park refinery is a 50-50 joint venture between Shell and Pemex, Mexico’s national oil company.

Two staffers of Oil India Ltd have been suspended for alleged negligence of duty in the gas well blowout at Baghjan in Assam’s Tinsukia district. Earlier, Oil India Ltd (OIL) Chairman and MD Sushil Chandra Mishra said a five-member inquiry committee was formed and actions would be initiated on employees of the company if there was any prima facie evidence of human error.

On May 27, oil and natural gas began to gush out uncontrollably from the Baghjan oil field in Assam’s Tinsukia district in an event known in industry parlance as a blowout. But even as OIL officials and engineers scrambled to contain the leak, a fire broke out on Tuesday afternoon, birthing a towering inferno at the site. Over 2,000 people have been moved to relief camps since the blowout occurred.

A three-member expert team from a Singapore-based emergency management firm on Monday reached Assam's Tinsukia district from where gas is "uncontrollably" flowing out from a well for the past 13 days. State-owned Oil India Limited (OIL) brought the foreign experts to control their gas well blowout at the Baghjan village in Tinsukia, around 550 km east of Guwahati, after natural gas started spewing since May 27.

Following the May 27th blowout at OIL's Baghjan well, the state-run oil major has called top experts from Singapore's Alert Disaster Control to tackle the uncontrolled gas leak from the site. A statement from the firm read, "All safety and security measures are continuously being monitored to protect surrounding villagers and their properties,". The Baghjan blowout is the second in 15 years at an OIL installation.

bp Plc began shutting down production at three platforms in the northern Gulf of Mexico and evacuating workers, in preparation for the Tropical Storm Cristobal. The storm is forecasted to make landfall in Louisiana over the weekend. bp is reducing production at its Thunder Horse, Atlantis and Na Kika platforms. Non-essential workers are being pulled from the Mad Dog platform, but production is not being cut back.

Oil India Limited (OIL) authorities in Assam’s Tinsukia district shifted 25 families to safety after a natural gas producing well reported a blowout on Wednesday morning. An OIL press statement said that blowout occurred at the Baghjan-5 well at 10.30 am. The well suddenly became very active while the operation was on, the statement added.

About 50 workers were infected by the novel coronavirus during an outbreak in recent weeks at a production well owned by Brazilian oil firm Dommo Energia SA, two regulatory sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters. The production well, at the offshore Tubarao Martelo field, has been paralyzed since early May, added the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss private operational matters.

More than 400 people have tested positive for the coronavirus at Kazakhstan's top-producing oil field, health officials said on Friday. The number of infections at the giant Tengiz oil field rose from 17 on Thursday to 401 by Friday, according to officials in the Atyrau region. Kazakh state company KazMunayGas, ExxonMobil and LukArco - a subsidiary of Russia's Lukoil - are stakeholders in this project.

A team of Forensic experts examined the site for two days and claimed that the gas leakage happened due to human error and negligence. The cooling process was not maintained during the lockdown and this resulted in the generation of enormous amounts of heat and vapors started coming out of the breathers, said the experts. This laxity resulted in the death of 12 people, whilst hundreds were hospitalized.

In an unfortunate event on Sunday, 15 people died in a gas explosion in Lagos, injuring many more and destroying around 50 buildings. State-run Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) said that the blast happened due to a truck that "hit gas bottles stacked up in a gas processing plant. National emergency services spokesman told AFP, "15 bodies have been recovered now. So many people have been injured," .

Oklahoma-based Chesapeake Energy has informed about an oil well fire at one of its drill sites in Texas, saying that emergency personnel are responding to the situation. Local media in Burleson County have claimed multiple injuries at the site, approximately 75 miles east of Austin. Chesapeake spokesperson did not respond to questions on injuries.