Well blows out in Colorado and is uncontrolled for 4 days. Wild Well had to cap the well.
One school closed for a week, residents evacuated, one worker hurt, and oil made it to a stream. Cause - a single untested barrier in a well that failed. Not all cost cutting initiatives save costs. Will any high level manager be held accountable?
41 replies (most recent on top)
Never forget
Where were all the Chevronnnnnnnnn health and safety standardsssssssss - oh are they outsourcing those also - maybe it was a language barrier or a different time zone issue
With Chevron you can't fix stupid.
@q8 They still blame Texaco and Unocal when it is convenient.
How can they blame PDC? What part of this was not under the vaunted CVX “processes”?
Minor issue? 9 figure clean up. A school that’s still closed. Adjacent landowners still evacuated. 1 person with undisclosed injuries. Yet accounted for ag impacts. Significant reputational damage in a region that already skeptical. And this was nearly best case scenario. If this had happened at some of the locations more densely populated, or more sensitive areas - which there are plenty of - this would’ve been a legit disaster. These “minor” impacts were d-mb luck.
Not a minor issue to those of us who value safety and environmental responsibility
This is a minor issue; no fatalities, no explosion that decimated nearby property, no long term environmental damage, no huge financial costs, overall minimal consequences. We can learn and move forward with better procedures and requirements. About as significant as your talent card in the upcoming reorg.
Management is already blaming it on heritage PDC sloppiness that was not up to Chevron standards. They are distancing themselves and claiming it was really not a Chevron mistake.
What’s been addressed? Well construction or potential inappropriate interpersonal activity amongst execs?
Stop spreading rumors, it’s been addressed.
RBU VP has adult relations with another high ranking member of the company
I thought Wellsafe said you had to have two proven mechanical barriers at all times.
It is my understanding that you can bench test a BPV before it is installed and then count the threads when installing or negative test once installed if there is pressure on the well. This Chevron failure is that if neither occurred then the BPV is not a barrier as it has to be tested and verified to be considered a barrier. There also was no second barrier installed.
Someone high up needs to fall due to this issue over their stupidity.
If it was a failed back pressure valve there is no way to test that barrier but there should been a secondary barrier either a bridge plug or tubing plug with packer
This isn’t about personal merit or how good of a person someone is. It’s about accountability. If you’re the VP and you keep leaders that are incompetent, or worse yet, willfully pushing to weaken standards, then you are accountable. Those decisions take place under your watch.
Chevron is modeling S&TB to compete with the independents, but you watch, we will not be fined like an independent. And permitting? That’s going to be a fun going forward. License to operate, indeed.
We only use single barrier envelopes? Huh…
No one is talking about the cause because there is a profound shroud of secrecy around it all. No one knows anything
Appears to have happened while N/D BOP N/u Tree. The single untested barrier, a back pressure valve, failed.
It's funny. 21 one responses into this post and nobody has yet signaled what actually went wrong. Here I was thinking this is an engineering company.
We're they snubbing? Managed pressure drilling? Drilling out on coil/stick?
No sense in speculating on what's wrong organizationally without particulars.
Agree that KM is a good person who made it on merit not DEI. Her husband on the other hand would have been let go years ago if not for KM protecting his incompetence. I would not be surprised if he talked her into the single barrier that failed because he was a big proponent of single barriers whenever possible despite rules and regulations contrary to that.
The comment about the DEI VP is laughable. KM is actually knowledgeable and competent at her job and thanks to DEI we have ONE competent VP among a sea of completely inept folks dr-g up through the ranks by their homogenous cronies. DEI actually allows good candidates to occasionally be considered against the mediocre status quo, but y'all wanna act like KM isn't miles above TRB in MCBU. KM is further detrimented by the TS as her GMO - TS being an absolute stalwart of stupidity, representative of the "norm". So yeah, blame DEI for this. Really good read, you absolute dips*hit.
Don’t worry ENGINE will fix it from India.
I’m just glad we’ve got new leadership for S&TB so these kinds of events can be prevented.
Oh, I forgot. It’s the same 2 leaders as before.
I remember when we were concerned about being one Macondo away from going under since it almost took BP down. Could have happened with Frade. This isn't a good leading indicator for our new culture of outsourcing and ENGINE.
Bro, why bother? We are an IT company already
Our drilling disasters have historically come in threes, so look for a couple more mishaps in the next year or so.
Comparing a top line capex budget to catastrophic clean up costs is apples and oranges. Clean up is pure expense, no ROI there. That’s a lot of oil you gotta sell just to get even.
Disappointing you never hear about this kind of stuff internally. Never hear about fatalities, mishaps, accidents. Internally we are fed a never-ending diatribe of stay safe, winning in any environment propaganda. How can we learn if we never own up our shortfalls to ourselves? Where's the responsibility?
My guess is that some low level BP will be fired to say we took action. Meanwhile we won't learn anything from this.
Against a $5B+ capital program, you can withstand a couple.
More broadly, what's your proposed design change that preempts the issue?
Isn't winning in any environment fun!
This will be a $100 million effort by the time it’s all said and done…how many if those you think we can withstand…
Sh-t happens. Chevron spends over $5B per year on L48 unconventional. Of course there will be the occasional casing part or bad tree.
They'll generously compensate the worker, cleanup the surface spill and stream, and move on.
Or we could retain a couple hundred extra D&C bureaucrats and still not solve the issue.
Automation makes us lazy, AI makes us stupid, and a hurry up minimize cost culture breeds mistakes. Better get used to this.
BK can fix this
Whoa whoa whoa- the press release said it was mostly water, so no harm done!
I’d like to now see some of that leadership accountability that we have all been hearing so much about lately.
“Step up or step out” I think was the way it was phrased… so let’s see it!
Who’da thunk pushing for faster cycle times and an unrealistic production target during this turmoil would lead to something like this???
DEI VP hire will not take any blame.