Off Shore Drilling Now Requires Extensive PE Oversight 2

[lacajun]

NSPE achieved a victory when the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement issued a final rule that makes permanent the additional safety measures authorized in the wake of the 2010 BP oil spill. The rule requires professional engineers to be more involved in the design and certification of offshore oil wells.

NSPE has been working toward this ruling for over two years. NSPE Deputy Executive Director and General Counsel Arthur Schwartz commented before the Chemical Safety Board in 2010 that professional engineers should supervise all engineering design, operations, and maintenance of offshore oil wells.


Specifically, the new rule stipulates that:

PEs must be involved in the well casing and cementing design process;
PEs must certify that well casings and cementing are appropriate for expected wellbore conditions;
PEs must certify well abandonment designs and procedures; and
PEs must certify that well designs include two independent barriers in the center wellbore and all annuli.

The rule also requires independent third parties to conduct blowout preventer inspections. These third parties must be licensed professional engineers, professional engineering firms, or technical classification societies.

Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC

 

[zdas04]

The Federal Government is the biggest boon to licensure ever. EPA keeps sticking it into regulations (SPCC was the first, but there have been a couple since, API was successful in getting it pulled from the new Clean Air Act SubPart OOOO that regulates wellsites for new source VOC and SO2 air emissions). I've read a bunch of these regulations lately and they mostly don't make sense.

For example, on SPCC a PE has to sign off that the site inventories are accurate and complete. I signed one that had 2800 sites. I had people visit them all. I picked 10% of each of their sites and audited them. 6 people were doing the inventories and only one of them had a site that didn't match the inventory. I did 10% more of her sites and didn't find a second problem. Does that mean that I can say with assurance that there wasn't another bust? No, but the SPCC regulation requires me to sign and stamp the form. I would had preferred language saying that I certify "that controls are in place to minimize the risk of human error" or something like that. But I signed off that all 2800 sites were accurate and complete. If there is a spill at one of them and the inventory was wrong then I guess EPA will bring charges and I'll fight them on the basis that the requirement is unenforceable.

My bet is that the new S&EE regulation has just as many holes and stupidities.

Thing is that I only know one PE P.E. and he asked me to serve on the P.E. test prep committee because they can't find enough PE P.E.'s to fill the committee slots. This is going to get ugly.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

"Belief" is the acceptance of an hypotheses in the absence of data.
"Prejudice" is having an opinion not supported by the preponderance of the data.
"Knowledge" is only found through the accumulation and analysis of data.

 

[lacajun]

David, one plant manager reminded us often that he signed papers sent to various governmental agencies re: our safety, compliance, and a host of other issues. He emphasized each time that he relied upon us to do our jobs, tell him the truth, and protect his integrity in signing those documents. He also emphasized that if something went wrong from an audit to an explosion, he would go to jail. He implied we had better not be lying to him and we'd better be doing our jobs. I understood his position but realized some didn't. This plant manager also got paid the big bucks to manage that situation. Hopefully you were, too.

There are large corporations that are bowing to these regulations. If they want to fight it, they can and they have the resources, individually and collectively, to do so. If they aren't, shame on them unless they're in agreement.

There are lots of engineers who aren't engineers regardless of licensure status. There are lots of engineers who are engineers regardless of licensure status.

I don't think it's going to get ugly. I think it's been ugly for a long time in a lot of ways. But that, dear sir, is human nature.

Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC

 

[zdas04]

As a P.E. in Oil & Gas I expect I'll get tapped to do some of these mandated reviews even though I have no relevant expertise at all. I'll probably pass even though the money will be awesome, but a lot of unqualified CE and ME P.E.'s will not pass and some poor results will come of it.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

"Belief" is the acceptance of an hypotheses in the absence of data.
"Prejudice" is having an opinion not supported by the preponderance of the data.
"Knowledge" is only found through the accumulation and analysis of data.

 

[beej67]

What sort of PE needs to oversee this? Civil? Chemical? Are there enough out there to do the oversight?

Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[zdas04]

If you look at the list

PEs must be involved in the well casing and cementing design process;
PEs must certify that well casings and cementing are appropriate for expected wellbore conditions;
PEs must certify well abandonment designs and procedures; and
PEs must certify that well designs include two independent barriers in the center wellbore and all annuli.

Well casing design has components of ME, but the codes are VERY different than I use for pipeline, cementing seems to be pretty clearly a CE function. In short is must be a Petroleum Engineering (PE) function.

Abandonment design is probably more Environmental Engineering than anything else, but forces and fluids involved leave they typical EnvE quivering. Again PE.

The independent barrier is similar to what I do in pipes, but I don't recognize the equipment that is typically used (the gate in an API gate valve has a hole in it for gods sake). I would lean toward a PE.

While you probably shouldn't believe anything you see on the Interwebz, I just looked at A Brief Guide to Engineering Majors and found:

• The “Big Four” Disciplines: Civil, Computer, Electrical, and Mechanical Engineering, which together collectively account for approximately two-thirds (67%) of all engineering bachelor’s degrees awarded annually.
• The “Medium Four” Disciplines: Aerospace, Biomedical, Chemical, and Industrial/Manufacturing Engineering, which collectively account for approximately 20% of all engineering bachelor’s degrees awarded annually.
• The “Smaller Ten” Disciplines: Agricultural, Architectural, Engineering Management, Engineering Physics/Engineering Science, Environmental, General Engineering Studies, Materials, Mining, Nuclear, and Petroleum Engineering, which collectively account for less than 10% of all engineering bachelor’s degrees awarded annually.
• The Specialty Disciplines: A variety of specialty disciplines offered (such as Ocean Engineering) that collectively account for less than 5% of all engineering bachelor’s degrees awarded annually.

Which lists 10 disciplines that make up less than 10% of the graduate engineers. So say 1% of the engineers in the world are PE. I found a link that said in 2000 there were 1.7 million people working as Engineers in the U.S. Of those, 450,000 were licensed. Extrapolating from the statistics above, the number or PE P.E.'s should be less than 8,000.

If we were only talking about the sexy deepwater projects then that should probably be plenty. Most of the offshore activity is "small" shelf stuff that is a bunch of wells and not many PE P.E.'s to do it.




David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

"Belief" is the acceptance of an hypotheses in the absence of data.
"Prejudice" is having an opinion not supported by the preponderance of the data.
"Knowledge" is only found through the accumulation and analysis of data.

 

[lacajun]

I was taught the Big Four are Electrical, Mechanical, Chemical, and Civil. Computer engineering is a subset of EE, in my opinion. Shows you how much I know and/or have kept up.

Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC

 

[cranky108]

Interesting no mention of specilitys like power engineering?
We hire EE's, then have to train them in power engineering. Send them to classes, etc. Because of a shortage of power engineers.
The problem is most EE training is more of a micro-electronics area, and lesser in the actual computer, radio, or analog areas.

I suspect the same is true for some of the less attended engineering areas.

 

[rbalex]

Interestingly enough, PEs (usually electrical, but occasionally others) are not required to create/review/approve electrical area classification by FedOSHA unless it is to NEC "Zone" standards and the NEC has removed the requirement for PE review altogether in Article 505. Offshore rigs have a large percentage of Class I, Zone 0&1 (Division 1, more or less) and a sufficent number of fires to warrant the review.

 

[buzzp]

A bunch of hooey. A lot of the hoopla around PE's is due to people not even understanding what it is or why its there. Why would you let an EE sign off on a well casing? Makes no sense as much of the PE world don't (due to the layman not understanding the whole picture). Civils can sign off on electrical prints, of limited scope, as I understand. How does that make sense?

The feds don't even require PE's in their own organization (well they do but only a signature and no stamp) but its a state license so don't make much sense.