The buzz at this year’s Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in Houston, Texas, could have come from Michael Bromwich, director of Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, when he told the audience, “We can exercise such authority as we deem appropriate.” What he said was in reference to his bureau’s mandate for broader legal oversight and a tougher review process of new drilling leases.
Welcome to the new regulatory environment the industry earned for last year’s BP oil spill.
The buzz could have come from Martin Massey, CEO of Marine Well Containment Company, the new non-profit that the oil supermajors financed with more than $1 billion in an industry-wide response to the Deepwater Horizon blowout.
At the oil spill panel, Mr. Massey explained what has been done in less than a year, “Being ready to respond to the next well control incident,” by deploying the firm’s undersea containment system, which is now under contract at five offshore wells.
Then again, the buzz could have come from the press conference held by Kvaerner ASA, a large global engineering, procurement, and construction company with headquarters in Oslo, Norway, on its July 8 demerger from its bigger parent, Aker Solutions, ending their 2005 corporate marriage.
Or the new “spiral centralizers” developed by Halliburton, a subcontractor on BP’s notorious Macondo well. Richard Best, an account representative, showed the new spiral centralizers, which are wrapped around a drilling pipe like threads of a screw. Mr. Best said, “The spiral centralizers were used in the drilling of the relief well, but not on Macondo. Don’t know why.”
The National Academy of Engineers, which will release its final report in June on its findings of the BP blowout and oil spill, might want to know why, too.
The buzz could very well have been the sobering remarks of Dr. Michael J. Economides on ‘Energy Geopolitics.’ Dr. Economides, an engineering professor at the University of Houston and author of the Color of Oil, stated the U.S. energy policy is “dysfunctional” and that natural gas in Russia, Qatar, and Egypt will drive up prices in the near-term, but will lead to “excess supply in a decade.”
Besides entertaining the audience with his self-deprecating humor, Dr. Economides called corn-based ethanol a “scam,” and hinted that wind and solar energy will never reach “critical mass.” He also confirmed the trio of fossil fuels—oil, coal, and natural gas—are the “dominate form of energy until 2100.”
Technology Response, the Old and New
Of the OTC’s 2,500 exhibitors and more than 100,000 attendees—the most since 1982—the real buzz came from old firms and startups. They are addressing the costs and challenges of a global thirst to extract more energy in harder-to-reach regions, and the need to protect the environment.
A 150-year-old German marine pump company, Bornemann Pumps, Inc., announced that it’s giving its multiphase pump system, which allows oil and gas to flow through one pipeline together, a retrofit to become an underwater vacuum cleaner. The subsea suction system can be lowered over a blowout or leak in a seafloor pipeline and suck up the oil-water liquid that will be separated aboard an oil recovery ship.
The Bornemann subsea system can pump 300,000 barrels per day, more than three times the worst flow rate of the Macondo well.
A Scottish firm, Paradigm Flow Solutions, Ltd., unveiled its pipe-pulse technology that locates blockages in subsea flowlines, pipelines, and umbilical lines, by sending out sonar pulses, and then unblocking the wax, scaling, or buildup in a platform’s arteries.
Managing director Rob Bain said, “Paradigm is now developing a new technology that will locate leaks in pipelines and seal them. This product is currently being tested and will be out in 2012. It looks very promising.”
Food for Thought on Oil Spill Technologies
With all the advancement in technology and equipment in keeping the areas below and on top of platforms clean, one small firm stood out with a host of products to deal with oil and fuel spills.
Plutus Global Technologies, a two-year-old UK startup, brought its eco-safe solutions to the American market.
In a phone interview with the firm’s technical director, Clement G. Wilkinson said, “BP approved our product E-Safe as a shoreline cleaning agent in the last six months— although too late for the Macondo well. Made from food-grade surfactants and emulsifiers, E-Safe changes the molecular structures of hydrocarbon spills, contamination of coastlines, on land, in water, fueling depots, refineries—making them harmless short chains on contact, turning them into nutrients that are then consumed by naturally occurring bacteria.”
When asked about his view on BP’s misuse of and the environmental damage made by chemical dispersants injected into and sprayed on the oil spill, Mr. Wilkinson said, “Dispersants make the oil emulsions more dense, thus sinking them.”
In essence, dispersants make the government-sanctioned remediation method harder to treat spilled oil. Last year, dispersants failed to keep the oil spill from reaching the coasts, beaches, and estuaries of the Gulf States.
Mr. Wilkinson added, “E-Safe is Hazmat rated 0-0-0. When used it reduces fire risk by dampening the flashpoint. So the market for E-Safe is also on land for emergency services, such as treating road and rail crashes more efficiently and safely.”
PRA is another oil well product from Plutus Global. It’s being sold to drilling and production operators to treat paraffin, asphaltene, and downhole scale problems in flowlines and pipelines.
Sheen Magic is designed for watercourse management and the pleasure craft industry. “Pleasure crafts have a history of using detergents (which act like dispersants) that are unsafe and illegal,” Wilkinson said. “Sheen Magic breaks up polluting hydrocarbons into nutrients for naturally occurring microorganisms. It removes sheen with an incredible rapid remediation time. This restores lakes and watercourses to pre-contamination quality.”
With the ongoing controversy over hydrofacturing—the “fracking” of deep earth gas deposits in shale with respect to the 70-plus chemicals used by the industry, including many chemicals made by Halliburton—Plutus Global’s mainstay might be the product they have yet to bring to the market.
E-Frac, which is being formulated and tested as a greener, less toxic chemical, is being positioned to ensure the fracking of shale formations from Texas and Louisiana to Pennsylvania and New York (where fracking is not yet approved). It is purported to be more safe and effective in reducing the chemical footprint in the environment.
Related Articles The pursuit of energy deposits and the technology used to safely extract them offshore and beyond, will be heading to the International Oil Spill Conference in Portland, Oregon, May 23-26.
As one OTC exhibitor said, “Portland might be a small venue. But it will be a more important than Houston.”
As a young man, James Ottar Grundvig worked on Norway’s offshore oil platforms. Today he is a writer living in New York City.
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