Montara Oil Platform Fire, 2009, photo via Flickr / CC.
Usually when Mark Ruffalo is upset about collecting natural gas, he’s talking about fracking the stuff out of shale. But today, it’s a natural gas rig in the Gulf of Mexico that has him hulking out.
Last Tuesday, all 44 rig workers on the offshore drilling rig, Hercules 265, were evacuated when it was discovered that natural gas was leaking from the well. Before leaving, the workers tried to close the well using its blow-out preventer, and just like with 2010’s Deepwater Horizon disaster, the blow-out preventer didn’t work. That night at 11, as the workers were all safely on an adjacent rig, working on a relief well, the Hercules 265’s leaking gas caught fire.
The oil rig burned from Tuesday night until Thursday morning, when parts of the platform folded and collapsed. Somewhere in the fire and collapse, the leak was stopped, essentially through good fortune.
“They are lucky,” said Bud Danenberger, a consultant and former chief of offshore regulatory programs at the Minerals Management Service. Danenberger told Fuelfix that, “what really happened is that natural sediment flowed into the well bore and essentially blocked the flow.”
Without the sand and sentiment falling into and closing the hole, blocking the well would have been extremely difficult. As the fire burned Wednesday night, the Coast Guard told the Washington Post that the blow-out preventer had collapsed and said that the next option was bringing in another Hercules rig to drill a separate relief well, which would have taken 25 days.
For now, with the fire stopped and only a slight plume and sheen on the water, the remains of Hercules 265 are being fitted with natural gas detectors and high-capacity hoses, so crews can safely plug the well permanently. Scientists and researchers are sampling the water around the rig from about five miles out, as close as the Coast Guard will let them.
The aerial Gulf-monitoring non-profit On Wings of Care has footage of the rig after the fire was put out.
While “oil rig leak and fire in the Gulf of Mexico” has a familiar ring, Hercules 265 is a different beast than Deepwater Horizon; Hercules was drilling down only 8,000 feet. The leak was likely above the waterline, although some gas might be released into the water, the leak will likely release less methane than Deepwater Horizon.
“Even if we look at the amount of methane that was emitted from the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which was by far more than what we have here, that was not able to contribute to the current level to the methane increase in the atmosphere that we are observing,” John Kessler told Fuelfix. Kessler is a professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Rochester and studied the impact of Deepwater Horizon. There are microbes that feed on methane in the gulf, but too much of a leak can overwhelm them. Scientists and environmentalists will be monitoring the area.
Still in the estimation of many, including Ruffalo, this is further proof that regulatory changes made after Deepwater Horizon haven’t gone far enough. And maybe there isn’t enough regulation to make the extraction of fossil fuels ever safe.
“As we continue to encourage a shortsighted pursuit of extreme dirty fuel sources,” Ruffalo wrote at the Daily Beast, “we can expect a steady litany of disasters ranging from oil spills and gas leaks to runaway climate disruption.”
This time, Mother Nature clogged the leak for Hercules 265; the environment disrupted oil extraction in a rare switcharoo. But even though nature fills in about a third of accidental leaks, that’s probably not something you want to be counting on. Something you can depend on, though, is that oil companies will be watching the environmental reports that follow the Hercules 265 disaster, just as closely as environmentalists.