As the world watches helplessly as BP furiously tries to stop oil gushing uncontrollably into the Gulf of Mexico it’s somewhat staggering to think that our government’s response is to wave their hands furiously in the air yelling “come and drill over here”.
It would only take one thing to go wrong, one disaster like the one they are facing right now in the Gulf, and the entire New Zealand economy would go down the drain. Tourism would be dead. Aquaculture and fisheries down the gurgler. Our agricultural and horticultural industries would struggle as our “100% pure” brand disappeared beneath the oil slick enveloping our coastline.
This week US President Barack Obama reversed a planned expansion of offshore drilling stating he’d been wrong to think oil companies knew how to deal with a catastrophic spill. “It just takes one to have a wake-up call” he was quoted as saying. Apparently not if you’re Gerry Brownlee…
And as for natural gas, this trailer for the documentary Gasland is an eye opener.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZe1AeH0Qz8&feature=related
from:http://www.metafilter.com/92714/So-much-for-that-ace-in-the-hole
That’s an amazing graphic charlie. At that depth the drill head must have been many revolutions behind the driving motors.
@Loota, it is a reality on every field with more than one rig – which is the majority…
That is why you don’t really hear about spills on these fields, if there is shaft trauma on a rig a safety plug is activated, the oil pressure diverts to another rig (which actually increases it’s rate of production) and the well is capped and a new well bored…
@charlie, the 2009 MED report stated in the executive report that unless NZ finds more NG our production will peak in 2013…
@DeepRed cheers Brian Gould in his book Rescuing the NZ Economy suggests the same thing.
Here is an interesting article that shows that if oil supply fell short by 15% prices would increase by 550%
http://www.roadtransport.com/Articles/2008/01/30/129667/Is-the-UK-ready-for-an-oil-shortage.htm
JMH said:
As far as I know, the Deepwater horizon disaster involved catastrophic total wellhead/riser failure.
The automatic safety shut-offs which were in place at the well head also failed.
I can’t see how the safety system you describe would alter outcomes with this mode of wellhead failure.
Failure mechanisms deepwater horizon. Triple safety precautions should have worked individually but were either not in place or failed.
http://media.nola.com/news_impact/other/oil-cause-050710.pdf
Also:
http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/05/safety_fluid_was_removed_befor.html
Basically the engineer/technologist has to be aware that mechanisms and technologies do fail, they can fail in unexpected and unpredictable ways, that the human variable cannot always be taken into account, and that adding more layers of technology does not necessarily provide robust solutions.
I wasn’t aware that the well head had a shut off installed but it doesn’t suprise me it failed as the three safety plugs hadn’t been installed, the pressure of a virgin field is huge and no single valve unless massive would stand up to the pressure, for example one of the Saudi supergiants was under such initial pressure it has been pumping without water injection since 1949 (from memory)…
The point is you can never eliminate the risks of a spill completely but you can mitigate them (in NZ’s case by refusing to develop marginal fields) and if you have the redundancy of multiple wells in the event of a spill you can rectify the problem with little environmental damage, so I’m left wondering why a member of the LABOUR party is ruling out even the exploration for oil, that if successful, could provide hundreds of jobs for decades… Also billions in revenue for the government to pay for healthcare and schools or invest in new green industries… Maybe the Green Party may be a better fit for the poster, who oppose fossil fuel use on ideological grounds…
JMH I have a comment in moderation but this explains the basics of the deepwater horizon catastrophic failure.
I’m not sure what “single valve” you are referring to but it does not seem at all related to this incident.
Hundreds of jobs for decades. Meh.
We need to spawn clean advanced industries capable of producing tens of thousands of jobs (e.g. like Dairy does).
Opening up a dirty industry and justifying it by saying that you could use the money from it to invest in clean industry is also a weak argument.
@loota, I don’t think your reading my posts, everything you have linked has been exactly what I have been saying… Go back and read my first post…
The human element in this case was safety was thrown out in favour of expediency…
Also we aren’t opening “a dirty industry” it’s already open, to argue against expanding it because of a single reckless incident that happened in a country with weak legislation is IMHO a weak argument… NZ already produces the equalivalent of 40% of our oil use…
If you are unemployed an oil rig job paying 100K plus a year means a whole lot, certainly more than a comment of, “meh”, it means opportunity…
JMH – I’ve been reading your posts and responding to individual points that you have been making. I don’t think you should begin to label criticisms of oil exploration as “ideological” when the risks are real, the systems failures are real, the costs are real. The culture of expediency in the industry is real, too.
By trying to label the deepwater horizon disaster as a “single reckless incident” you are attempting to position it as irrelevant to the NZ situation, when in fact we need to learn the lessons from it. Far from paying attention to the fact that new drilling permits have been suspended in the US until such time the problems with deepwater horizon are fully understood, you are appear to be saying “I already know how to prevent it happening again”.
Now explain to me what skill set and experience an unemployed person would need to qualify for your hypothetical $100K a year job on an oil rig?
And why that person is not already in Australia earning 50% more than that?
JMH said:
Uh actually my links demonstrate how multiple technological safeguards and procedural regulations were circumvented or failed to work, which sorta undermines your argument that more technological safeguards and regulation is the answer.
So what is this “single valve” you were referring to?
My links do not mention a “single valve”. They do not support your assertions.
JMH said
Hard to have a spill if there’s no well being drilled.
And a “Mining Fund” should be put together where a % of proceeds from all mining is placed and invested for the future prosperity of the country.
This will ensure that windfall monies from mining doesn’t simply get expended.
If we are serious about increasing mining around NZ this needs to be done to help make it truly worthwhile.
A Scottish viewpoint:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/News/This-Week/Speeches/Weathier-and-Fairer/oilfund
My misunderstanding of your statement of a well head safety mechanism or what your next post identified as a BOP (that post didn’t appear till after mine, I didn’t know about this feature but what I initially posted was from a conversation with a friend of mine in the industry) was the single valve I was referring to…
A sovereign fund..? The Norwegians do it and it works well… We basically already do via royalties, if we raised the royalty percentage and diverted a percentage of that to the Cullen fund it would essentially do the same job…
“Hard to have a spill if there’s no well being drilled.”
We can go back to living in caves and only going outside to fish, like we did for a few hundred thousand years if you’d like Loota, we’d very safe for our 22 year life expectancies…
The bottom line is if the following had happened in the GoM case I’d support the position that we shouldn’t even explore for oil in the two identified basins:
If there was two rigs (or more) on the field
If the three safety plugs had been installed before the mud was drained
If the three safety plugs had been in operation and the BOP (I didn’t know about)
If all that was in place and the spill happened on this scale I’d support the no exploration call, but the reality is there are thousand of rigs around the world and it took an isolated case, in a country that stupidly let the industry write it’s own regulation, then a reckless manager ignoring safety and a few other things to go wrong for the GoM result…
Passing up jobs and wealth due to the above circumstances is, in my opinion, irresponsible…
Methinks we aren’t going to change each others mind……
What a fascinating thread!
Certainly very illuminating to myself and I hope a few others too. Thankyou for sharing your thoughts and information.
I think that there are definite questions that need to be asked of the NACTs who are authorising the oil exploration. These revolve around precisely the sorts of legally binding guidelines to be set in place. I would be very interested to hear how Norway deals with the fundamental risks and enforcing safety standards. It is important to get this right now because it will become a much tougher call when/if oil is discovered in large quantities deep in some remote place off New Zealand’s coastline.
Our leaders have some big calls to make in balancing risk and possible reward. Oil and mineral extraction can deliver substantial wealth to the country under the right sort of tax regime. However extraction will not directly create a large number of jobs. Thatcher’s Britain has been mentioned as a very good example of how the North Sea oil windfall did not create lasting wealth to the community.
JMH said
Yes my understanding is that the safety mechanism is an extremely complicated device. It is not a single valve.
Collecting royalties and taxes alone is of course not a sovereign fund. Those can be spent on daily govt expenditure or given away on tax cuts. Diverting a % of oil revenues into the Cullen fund – now if that was done that could indeed be considered a sovereign fund. Nice one.
I don’t like this perspective. Only one Deepwater Horizon, only one Chernobyl, only one 9/11. And somehow you can position these in your own mind as isolated and irrelevant?
At least take some time to learn the lessons. Even the Government said that its good no new wells are planned around NZ for the next 18 months because we will have some chances to really understand what happened at Deephorizon by then. Don’t be in a rush, the oil is still going to be there in 10 years (and will be worth far mroe then).
I’m not sure our current set of leaders have the vision of the Norwegians, the Canadians, the UAE, the Australians, and others in terms of what to do with this mineral wealth.
The UAE and Saudi Arabia have been investing their soveriegn oil funds big time in American banks and technology companies, for instance.
You raise a good point at the end JMH, do we have the guts to make good use of this mineral wealth for future generations, or will we piss it away in tax cuts and spend ups.
Soz I meant tuktuk you made a good point at the end of your post re: the difference between how Thatcher used that North Sea oil wealth and how the Norwegians did.
Well Loota, you are largely going to get your wish in any event, the lead time between discovery and first production is on average 6 to 7 years (a disvcovery vs production graph is a good way to see this) and we haven’t even begun exploration yet…
I guess I should have mentioned that earlier as I think that “lead time” is plenty of time to “learn the lessons”, due to this fact I don’t think we are rushing at all…
I also don’t get what your advocating for with your point about 9/11 and Chernobyl… Should we get rid of air travel..? What would the world replace Nuclear with..? Coal is the only viable option in the next decade… Hardly what we want…