Flaming Rig – No Worries

As fires blazed on an old Petrobras production rig at the Campos Basin on the 19of January, silence was the rule, as has always been the rule with such trivial emergencies such as a large fire on an oil rig. 

I must be thick or something, but I consider it strange that a major fire on an oil rig only comes to public notice nearly ten days after it happened. Actually I shouldn´t complain because normally these small accidents would never have become known. Hey, no one even died, right, that a failure on an oil transfer pump caused a massive blaze, including a full on electric fire, which took Petrobras´s onsite fire brigades all of half an hour to control, is no big deal! Now imagine that this kind of attitude has been going on for decades.

Since no deaths occurred and no spills were caused there is no need for this to become public. Wrong, that kind of attitude will have to change.  It´s easy to say you have a transparent operation, it´s a whole lot harder to actually be transparent. In this day and age it´s foolish to think you can keep things under wraps, it´s better to be honest.

A fire that is so intense that it takes firefighters so much time to control is no minor accident. Trust me, a fire blazing for half an hour on ANY oil rig ANYWHERE is a big deal and a very scary prospect for the 160 souls there at the time.

The production on the Cherne II rig at the Campos Basin has been halted since the 19. The flames reached the safety valves on the oil separators, forcing the halting of production even after the blaze was extinguished. Although the Campos Basin emergency plan was activated and rescue-firefighting vessels were stationed around the rig, the onboard firefighters managed to control the blaze by themselves. The fire destroyed electric and instrumentation cables on the rig, which was installed in 1983, about 120km from the coast of Macaé.  Although there were no casualties and it was deemed unnecessary to abandon the rig. Some safety inspectors believe that the correct procedure would actually have been to remove unessential personnel from the rig while the fire was being fought.  The accident was only communicated to the Brazilian Navy and port authorities the following day, something which some believe should have been done immediately.

This recent accident only highlights the risks being taken on these old production rigs and the need to increase inspections and provide more maintenance rigs to accelerate maintenance on the old production rigs. It also indicated that there may be procedural flaws that need to be addressed when dealing with major rig accidents. All in all, Petrobras appears to be doing a good job in keeping the production rigs safe, but oversight is still needed as it is all too easy to downplay risks when struggling to maintain production. ANP, vigilant as ever will look into the accident, however I find it strange that they only plan to inspect it, in JUNE, even after this recent fire. Go figure.

With the massive growth Brazil faces in terms of drilling, production start-ups in shallow and deepwater, and what not, it´s easy enough to forget these old production rigs that have been our bread and butter for so long. Lest we forget.

Claudio Paschoa