great info on ATPG: SURFACE BLOWOUT PREVENTERS with SID

---- the power of web 2.0 information gathering. Again, this proved that financial analysts from big firms are no match to information gathering power of internet. Internet a lot of times will beat field experts on their own since there are a lot of experts on internet and they are connected, motivated and united. It is the same principle of open source movement on computer industry.

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http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/Stocks_%28A_to_Z%29/Stocks_A/threadview?m=te&bn=1612&tid=62946&mid=62946&tof=4&frt=3#62946

You guys are COMPLETELY missing the point 30-May-10 07:13 pm
It\'s not whether or not the rig is floating or still. It\'s whether or not the MMS can be sure that the technology on the rigs are safe enough to permit drilling.

In this case, the thing that *MATTERS MOST* is what kind of Blow out Preventers it has. The Deep Water Horizon had Subsea blowout preventer a mile below the sea.

ATP Titan has SURFACE BLOWOUT PREVENTERS with a SUB-SEA ISOLATION DEVICE. It\'s the SAFEST DESIGN TECHNOLOGICALLY POSSIBLE. If they Stop the Titan from Drilling, they\'d have to STOP ALL OCEAN DRILLING because they\'re not as safe.

If the Horizon incident had happened on the Titan, it would be IMMEDIATELY CONTAINED because:
1) The Blowout Preventer is on the Surface, allowing more time for reaction.
2) even if the explosion occurs, the Blowout preventer would be easily accessible if the Titan does not sink because it\'s at the surface.
3) the SID can be remote activated via droids to remotely shut off the well, even if the Riser breaks. IT would take less than a day to do this.

Needless to say, if this same exact situation on the Deepwater Horizon happened on the Titan, it wouldn\'t be an issue at all.

If the technology can be proven safe, it will be allowed to drill. Otherwise, it won\'t. PERIOD.

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Here\'s a research paper completed just in April of this year. I\'ve quoted some relevant parts

The entire doc is here, dated April 2010: http://www.mms.gov/tarprojects/640/aa.pd...

Page 21: The use of the SID in conjunction with the SBOP may not necessarily imply the day rate savings that would come from using the simple SBOP configuration. However, the advantages of this system lie in the ADDED SAFETY OF DRILLING IN ULTRA-DEEPWATER where shallow
gas or well control may be an issue. IF A GAS KICK PASSES THE SUBSEA STACK, IT CAN BE HANDLED BY THE SURFACE STACK. (btw. This is the *EXACT* Scenario of what happened at the Deepwater Horizon but BP was unable to deal with) This could be considered a driver for using this configuration over a Subsea BOP in ultra deep drilling campaigns

Page 21: IN ADDITION TO VESSEL AND PERSONNEL SAFETY, RISK TO THE ENVIRONMENT IS REDUCED, AS THE WELL IS ABLE TO BE SEALED BELOW THE RISER, IN CASE OF RISER FAILURE OR BLOWOUT . this is in regards to the SBOP+SID system versus a traditional Subsea BOP.

Deep Water Horizon had a Subsea BOP, while the ATP Titan has the SBOP+SID Combo. This research was done by MMS itself in April. Instead of speculating on what we think is safe, how about we take it straight from the horse\'s mouth?

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It\'s pretty eerie how applicable the paper was to the BP disaster. Here\'re some more tidbits:

it is important to note that the SID, if designed correctly has the potential to greatly reduce the consequence of a catastrophic blowout event by preventing the well from flowing uncontrollably for extended periods. - Page 21.

In other words, it would mitigate the *exact* scenario that BP is having problems with. This is pretty eerie, considering that the paper was finalized just 3 weeks before the BP disaster.


Activation of the SID allows the well to be sealed, and the vessel to move away from the location in case of an emergency disconnect situation. In addition to vessel and personnel safety, risk to the environment is reduced, as the well is able to be sealed below the riser, in case of riser failure or blowout [15]. THE TIME TO RUN THE SID TO THE GROUND IS SIGNIFICANTLY LESS COMPARED TO RUNNING A SUBSEA BOP AND LOWER MARINE RISER PACKAGE (LMRP)p.21

What\'s BP doing now that the top kill failed? Yep. Running a Lower Marine Riser package.


One potential way to avoid this would be by using a subsea isolation device (SID), which is essentially a set of shear rams, above the wellhead, where a traditional SSBOP would usually
sit. However this is not deemed necessary in all cases. A respondent to the survey noted
that “additional fail safes are not required if the proper design, manufacturing and in-service monitoring and inspection practices and procedures are in place to ensure the riser is designed, built and operated to reduce risk to as low as reasonably practicable” - Page 5.

In other words. A SID isn\'t even required. But ATP went above and beyond regulations to ensure that their platform is safe. Also note that regulations only call for designs that can handle 100 year Metoocean events. The Titan was designed to handle 1,000 year events. Again, above and beyond the current regulation for safety.


Other things of note:
-There has never been a case of failure for DDRs (dedicated drilling risers, like those used on the titan) in the GOM. Ever.

What\'s the significance? The significance is that with the Moratorium, Obama now has made sure that out of ~40 drilling facilities in the Gulf, only 9 will remain. The 9 remaining are all production platforms with the stability required for SBOPs. If they shut down ATP for safety reasons, it would mean that the *ENTIRE* GOM drilling is halted, because every other rig/platform is less safe than the Titan. With 30+% of US oil supplies coming from deepwater GOM... I somehow doubt a complete shut-in will happen.

Which brings me to my next point. With only 9 platforms remaining... Obama just took out 75% of ATP\'s competitors. Leases from now on will be cheaper. If a major wants to drill a field, they may be forced to route their production through the Titan, or build one of their own. It takes at least 3 years to build a production platform from scratch and install it on site. This means ATP\'s titan is now one of the only games in town. This could actually be a net positive for ATP.