CONFIDENTIAL

WORKPLACE ACCIDENT INVESTIGATION PROCEDURE (DMS 2323)

SIR MUSYABBIR HAQIM BIN MUSTAFFAL KAMAL
FINAL ASSIGNMENT
SEMESTER II MAY-SEPTEMBER 2022 DMOSH 6F

One Industrial Accident:

Oil and Gas (Deepwater Horizon)

NAME ID NUMBER
LUQMAN HAKIM BIN ZAIDI 1200903088
SHAHRUL RIZWAN BIN ALIAMAT 1200903029
AMIR MUSTAQIM BIN RAMLI 1200903126
MUHD LUQMAN HAQIM BIN NORAZAHANI 1200903080
ANTONIO ANAK RICHARD 1200903159
MUHD MIRZA RAZIQ BIN MOHD ZAILANI 1200903092
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Table of Contents

1.0 INTRODUCTION ON CHOSEN INDUSTRY ..................................................... 3

2.0 CHRONOLOGY OF THE ACCIDENT ............................................................... 4

3.0 FACTORS OF THE INCIDENT ......................................................................... 5

4.0 CONTROL MEASURE ...................................................................................... 6

5.0 EMERGENCY RESPONSE PLAN .................................................................... 7

6.0 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................... 8

7.0 REFERENCE ..................................................................................................... 9

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1.0 INTRODUCTION ON CHOSEN INDUSTRY

As the world's main fuel sources, oil and natural gas are significant players in
the energy sector and have an impact on the global economy. Oil and gas production
and distribution processes and systems are highly complicated, capital-intensive, and
dependent on cutting-edge technology. Natural gas has historically been associated
with oil, mostly due to the upstream or production phase of the industry. Natural gas
was seen as an annoyance throughout a significant portion of the history of the
industry, and it is still flared in considerable amounts in some regions of the world
today.

With an anticipated $5 trillion in worldwide revenue as of 2022 based on the

Investopedia website (2022), the oil and gas business are one of the largest in terms
of dollar value in the globe. Oil has a significant impact on every aspect of the global
economic system, including transportation, heating, energy, industrial output, and
manufacturing. The oil and gas industry, which is regarded as the largest industry in
the world by dollar value, employs hundreds of thousands of people across the globe
and generates hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue annually. These oil and gas
firms are so important in the areas where the major NOCs are located that they
frequently make a sizeable contribution to the GDP of the country.

The upstream, midstream, and downstream segments of the energy sector are
its three main sectors. First, E&P comes upstream (exploration and exploration). This
include looking for natural gas or crude oil reserves that are underground or under
water, drilling exploration wells, and drilling into existing wells to retrieve oil and gas.
Next, the transportation, storage, and processing of oil and gas are included in
midstream. When resources are extracted, they must be transported to a refinery,
which is frequently located in a separate area than the oil and gas deposits and
tankers, pipelines, and trucking fleets are all examples of transportation. Lastly, the
filtering of the raw materials collected during the upstream stage is referred to as
downstream. This entails cleaning up natural gas and refining crude oil. Marketing and
commercial distribution of these goods to customers and end users in a variety of
forms, such as natural gas, diesel, gasoline, lubricants, kerosene, jet fuel, asphalt,
heating oil, LPG (liquefied petroleum gas), and several other petrochemicals.

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2.0 CHRONOLOGY OF THE ACCIDENT

2.1 Deepwater Horizon

The Deepwater Horizon was a 9-year-old semi-submersible, dynamically

positioned drilling rig that could operate in waters up to 3 Kilometer deep that built by
Hyundai Heavy Industries which is South Korean company and owned by Transocean.
The rig operated under the Marshallese flag and was chartered to BP from March 2008
to September 2013. It was drilling a deep exploratory well, 5.6 Kilometer below sea
level. The well is situated in the Macondo Prospect in Mississippi Canyon of the Gulf
of Mexico, in the United States' exclusive economic zone.

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill that also called as BP oil spill was an industrial
disaster that began on 20 April 2010, in the Gulf of Mexico on the BP-operated
Macondo Prospect, that can be considered as the largest oil spill disaster. The U.S.
federal government estimated the total discharge at 210 million US gallon of crude oil.
After several failed efforts to stop the flow of the oil, the well was declared sealed on
19 September 2010 but the reports in early 2012 indicated that the well site was still
leaking.

At approximately 7:45 pm Central Time, on 20 April 2010, high-pressure

methane gas from the well expanded into the marine riser and rose into the drilling rig,
where it ignited and exploded, engulfing the platform. The report shows that eleven
missing workers were never found despite a three-day U.S. Coast Guard search
operation and are believed to have died in the explosion. Ninety-four crew members
were rescued by lifeboat or helicopter, 17 of whom were treated for injuries and the
Deepwater Horizon sank two days after the occurrence of the incident

Numerous investigations explored the causes of the explosion and the U.S.
Government report that published in September 2011, pointed to defective cement on
the well, faulting mostly BP, but also rig operator, Transocean. Earlier in 2011, a White
House commission blamed BP and its partners for a series of cost cutting decisions
and an inadequate safety system, but also concluded that the spill resulted from
“Systemic” root causes and “Absent significant reform in both industry practices and
government policies, might well recur” based on the Wikipedia entry.

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3.0 FACTORS OF THE INCIDENT

A poorly constructed well design that did not contain enough cement between
the 7-inch production casing and the 9 7/8-inch protective casing led to the blowout
and oil leak on the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico. The suspected blowout
preventer (BOP) failure is a significant but unrelated problem. Recent attempts to
reduce the flow via an insertion tube appear to be successful, despite the oil spill's
potentially serious environmental effects. Drilling two neighboring relief wells that may
cross the MC 252 wellbore within 60-90 days is one of several ongoing initiatives to
reduce or stop the flow.

Furthermore, the cement mixture was unable to withstand the pressure. The
cement was incapable of sealing the well. This was due in part to the use of liquid
nitrogen to accelerate cure periods, which eventually weakened it and enabled the gas
and natural gas to escape. Aside from that, the leak was not discovered until it was
too late. The workers were taught how to spot and detect leaks in wells by observing
unusual changes in pressure. A pressure increase occurred about an hour before the
explosion, but the crew did not believe it was a leak.

Additionally, the gas and mud combination that was spilling into the rig's floor
was improperly diverted. The gas and mud combination could have been safely
pushed over the side of the rig by the employees if they had been able to redirect and
vent it through pipes. Instead, they made the decision to use a separator to attempt to
separate the mud from the gas. Finally, the separator became overworked, resulting
in combustible natural gas covering the rig. Then, the safety gas alarm system failed.
On the Deepwater Horizon, there was a gas detection safety system that should have
activated an alert and turned off ventilation fans and ducts to stop the flammable gas
from getting close to an ignition source.

Prior to the explosion, the system was completely inoperative. For additional
information on this case, the analysis of fire risk for Deepwater Horizon explosion is
jet fire, which the collapse of the cement at the bottom of the 18,000-foot-deep hole
that was designed to retain oil and gas within the well bore was the primary cause of
the explosion onboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. This set off a chain reaction
of human and mechanical faults, allowing high-pressure natural gas to fly onto the
drilling platform, resulting in an explosion and fire.

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4.0 CONTROL MEASURE

Deepwater Horizon that happens because of the collapse of the cement at the
base of the 18,000-foot-deep hole that was designed to retain oil and gas within the
well bore was the primary cause of the explosion onboard the Deepwater Horizon
drilling rig so Corrective and preventive measures to prevent recurrence of the incident
for this to happen again.

First is by doing an administrative control to all worker that work at the oil rig by
doing back training for the emergency situation that might happen twice a year to make
sure that the worker doesn’t forget thing that they should do if had an emergency
situation because at the oil rig any simple mistake can produce big accident like
Deepwater Horizon that cause so many problems. This can make sure that their
efficiency is always maintained while on the oil rig and this can make sure that the
worker will always learn how use the machine at the oil rig so that doesn’t happen any
accident.

The Deepwater Horizon is major cause of the accident was determined to be

concurrent maintenance work on one of the high-pressure condensate pumps and a
safety valve, which resulted in a condensate leak so, to make sure that this will never
be happen again, the company should have good worker to handling the machine by
training them before take them for work. For example, safety officer should make sure
that operation running very smooth so that any accident will never happen. Company
should also change the system for to do it more easily in future or do the substitution
the work with robot or automatic system so that it will do better job for work that hard
for human.

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5.0 EMERGENCY RESPONSE PLAN

1. When an accident occurs in an area involved, a person who is close to the accident
area, needs to act quickly by pressing the emergency alarm that is close to him to
give an alert to every employee that there is a situation where an emergency
occurs.

2. Immediately isolate, turn off and shutdown all processes that are running, so as to
reduce the risk of this explosion that can have a big impact and can explode the oil
spill area.

3. A person or individual needs to immediately provide information about the case to

the appropriate parties such as the security or safety officer and the management
itself in order to be able to take preventive measures and the next steps to prevent
the situation from getting worse.

4. Obtain all necessary maps or models that is related to the oil area involved in order
to identify areas that have a risk of continuing accidents

5. Every of each information you have needs to be made into a report and every
report needs to be based on the Spill Reporting Regulation, this includes the root
cause of the accident and review of the accident.

6. If it is found that this incident is large and it is out of control, help from outside
parties must be taken, which is the Public Safety Department for the assisted safety
team that is above the emergency area.

7. Every employee who is within the range of the incident area, they need to move in
a group and gather in one area called the "assembly point" with the help of security
and competent person to bring them safely.

8. Every victim involved needs to be examined and take health information for each
person, if physical health problems are found, it is necessary to do an immediate
medical check-up and provide treatment and compensation if necessary.

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9. After the situation calms down, investigation and discussion are conducted
between competent persons to identify the cause or factors of the accident.

10. The cleaning process is done by using a spill kit, after cleaning is completed contact
the Environmental Health and Safety department to refill the spill kit that has been
used so that it can be used again in the event of another emergency accident in
the future.

6.0 CONCLUSION

To sum up the everything that been written, the high-pressure methane gas from the
well expanded into the marine riser and rose into the drilling rig of the Deepwater
Horizon on 20 April 2010 causing eleven missing workers that were never found.
Report shows that the original explosion triggered a cascade of crude oil burns,
illustrating the domino effect which was fed by continued production from adjacent oil
rigs which can be detailed as Secondary Fire. When the occurrence of fire breaks out
in Deepwater Horizon, firefighters used several special ships and boats equipped with
fire extinguishers to extinguish and reduce the fire. A poorly constructed well design
that did not contain enough cement between the 7-inch production casing and the 9
7/8-inch protective casing led to the blowout and oil leak on the Deepwater Horizon in
the Gulf of Mexico. Published Emergency Response Plan (ERP) can become the
preventive measure to avoid the occurrence of similar incident in the future.

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7.0 REFERENCE

Berman, A. E. (2020, December 15). What caused the Deepwater Horizon disaster?
Resilience. Retrieved August 8, 2022, from https://www.resilience.org/stories/2010-
05-21/what-caused-deepwater-horizon-disaster/

Broder, J. M. (2011, September 15). BP Shortcuts Led to Gulf Oil Spill, Report Says.
The New York Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/15/science/earth/15spill.html#:%7E:text=The%20c
entral% 20cause%20of%20the,gas%20within%20the%20well%20bore.

Deepwater Horizon oil spill. (2010, April 21). In Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill

How the Oil and Gas Industry Works. (2022, June 9). Investopedia. Retrieved August
8, 2022, from https://www.investopedia.com/investing/oil-gas-industry-overview/

Muspratt, A. (2019, May 1). Introduction to Oil and Gas Industry. Oil & Gas IQ.
Retrieved August 8, 2022, from https://www.oilandgasiq.com/strategy-management-
and-information/articles/oil-gas-industry-an-introduction

Nancy Pelosi Speaker of the House. (2010, August 3). Legislative Action on BP Oil
Spill. https://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/legislative-action-on-bp-oil-spill.

ResearchGate. (2014, November). What-If Scenario Modelling to Support Oil Spill

Preparedness and Response Decision-Making.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271670662_What-
If_Scenario_Modeling_to_Support_Oil_Spill_Preparedness_and_Response_Decisio
n- Making.

Skogdalen, J. E., & Khorsandi, J. (2012, January). Evacuation, escape, and rescue
experiences from offshore accidents including the Deepwater Horizon. Research
Gate.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/251621681_Evacuation_escape_and_resc
ue_exp eriences_from_offshore_accidents_including_the_Deepwater_Horizon

Transocean. (n.d.). Chapter 3.6 Muster and Evacuation. Retrieved March 1, 2022,
from
https://www.deepwater.com/documents/MacondoDocs/10_TRANSOCEAN_Ch_3-
6.pdf

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