Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Safety is #1
The number one objective on every drilling company's, as well as other oil and gas operators, list is safety. There are many issues during operations that can be harmful to personnel on location. Substantially high reservoir pressures are regularly present during drilling operations which is the origin of blowout accidents. Aside from that, thousand and thousands of pounds of steal are present in the field and is evident that it causes a risky environment to work in if precautions aren't taken. The public often times, as I have mentioned before, doesn't hesitate to criticize oil companies as well as drilling service companies. There are several regular statements that drilling operations are far too unsafe to continue executing them. One comment from a lady being interviewed about the BP oil spill stated that the technology for deep sea drilling is simply not here today. There are several hurricanes which have swept through several offshore platforms and drill ships and completely destroyed the multi-million dollar structures. The technology in the blow out preventors however, have done exactly what they were designed to do, prevent a blowout. These large pieces of equipment are always shut in and the platform is evacuated when a threatening storm is approaching. Safety meeting, offshore and onshore, are conducted every single day of operations to ensure all personnel on location is fully aware of what to do in case of several different harmful situations. Due to the emphasis of safety in the industry, accidents and spills have been mitigated several times. There are several instances of destroyed drilling structures as I mentioned above, but the amount of oil spills related to those is extremely low. As for nuclear energy, the experience of Fukushima sums it up. When a hurricane or other forceful storms decide to crash into the shore destroying everything in their path, there isn't much that can be done to prevent a reactor from exploding when it is being tossed around so violently that I know of. Safety will always be number one in the industry, and I believe that will open doors in the future for extraction of much needed energy sources.
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You are right...safety is number one. The fewer number of accidents the less negative publicity the petroleum industry receives.
ReplyDeleteI think the nuclear industry and the petroleum industry are on the same page when it comes to safety. The Deep Horizon accident last year and the Fukushima incident this year. Safety must be number one in both industries if they are going to have any public support.
ReplyDeleteOn a technical note, it is not possible for reactors to explode in any situation. Reactors are built so stoutly that a hurricane would have little affect on it. In fact, even crashing an airplane into it would have little effect on the operation of the reactor. Nuclear power is held to much higher safety standards then the oil and gas industries are, probably for good reason. Because of this though, the performance of nuclear power around the globe has been phenomenal. Nuclear power in the United States has had a nearly flawless safety record over the past 30 years. Why? Because safety is #1. The safety figures for the oil and gas industries don't compare to the safety records of nuclear power. It isn't really fair to say that there isn't anything that can be done to make nuclear power safe.
If you think about the disasters than have gone been a major topic in the past in terms of nuclear energy, there is 3 mile island, chernobyl, and recently Fukishima. In terms of oil and gas industry, the once instance before the BP spill was the Exxon Valdez. The BP spill was also due to poor judgement of an engineer who did not produce a quality cement job. If the proper procedures were taken, it would have never happened. A hurricane thrashing a nuclear reactor however, I don't see much of a method to avoid destruction there. Feel free to let me know how to mitigate that possibility.
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