Southern California Oil Spill 1

[bimr]

As divers for Houston-based Amplify Energy Corp. on Sunday searched for the location and cause of the massive leak, public records revealed a pattern of changing ownership and compliance warnings for the company. Amplify had also been working to upgrade its aging infrastructure and had plans to initiate new drilling near the site of the leak in the final three months of this year, according to company records. It remains unclear whether the drilling had commenced or whether the work was connected to the leak.

Government officials say the spill originated from a broken pipeline off the coast of Huntington Beach that runs from the Port of Long Beach to a production and processing platform called Elly, located in the Beta Field, an accumulation of oil nine miles from the California coast. Drilling in the Beta Field, discovered by a consortium led by Shell Oil Co. in 1976, began in 1980 and oil production started in January 1981.

The exact cause of the leak remains unclear. But the devastating scope of the spill is already renewing calls for the government to take more aggressive action against the aging oil platforms that dot the Southern California coast. Environmental groups have raised the alarm for years about the condition of some of the systems and what they consider a lack of oversight.

Although California banned new offshore oil operations decades ago, platforms such as Elly continue to operate in federal waters — more than three miles from the coast.

Beta Operating Co., a subsidiary of Amplify Energy, operates Elly. The offshore facilities platform processes and routes crude oil from Ellen and Eureka, the firm’s two oil production platforms in the Beta Field, to an onshore pumping station in Long Beach via the 41-year-old, 17.3-mile San Pedro Bay Pipeline.

Link

 

[LionelHutz]

OMG, I wrote "might have" and posted a possible scenario...

Coast Guard letting them leave (without releasing a statement why) = IAS was proved to be in error is a fallacy.

 

[IRstuff]

Both MarineTraffic and Hapag-Lloyd claim the GPS location data was erroneous.

While sitting in the middle of the ocean with no obstructions or multipath and a clear view of the entire sky -- right, GPS glitched the position so badly that it looks like the ship moved a significant distance

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list

http://www.eng-tips.com/forumlist.cfm

 

[TugboatEng]

IR, the reporting is done by VHF radio. Signal comes and goes. If the ship transits and it's signal is not reported for a period of time, the position between two points will be interpolated. This interpolation may not be representative of the actual course.

 

[IRstuff]

Is that what happened, or is this more speculation?

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list

http://www.eng-tips.com/forumlist.cfm

 

[TugboatEng]

AP reviewed tracking data that appeared to show the Rotterdam Express made three unusual movements over two days that appeared to put it over the pipeline.

It would be an explanation for the "unusual movements".

 

[1503-44]

And a rip in the pipeline.

I think the time it occurred could be reasonably estimated by the appearance of the scarring and the local biology.

 

[JohnRBaker]

The Coast Guard is now turning their investigative focus toward a large, Swiss-owned, cargo ship that was anchored during a January storm in the same area where the pipeline was damaged:

Massive Cargo Ship Dragged California Oil Pipeline: Coast Guard

Investigators believe a 1,200-foot ship dragging anchor in rough seas pulled the pipeline across the seafloor, months before the leak spread to the Southern California coast.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ship-caused-california-oil-spill_n_616cb042e4b00cb3cbd4616a

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-'Product Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

Wonder what's the legal aspects of a ship anchored in a dedicated anchorage as dictated by a port authority. Dragging it's anchor in a storm.

 

[LionelHutz]

Same as a ship crashing in the Suez Canal with a Canal appointed pilot in charge, they're still screwed.

 

[1503-44]

Amplify Energy didn't notice the leak alarm.

https://www.pipelinetownhall.com/ne...il&utm_term=0_7c55b147a5-4fd76aa692-119417737

 

[TugboatEng]

I'm curious if anybody can elaborate how the leak alarm worked on this system.

 

[1503-44]

I dont know what type of alarm was installed in that specific system there, however they typically involve hydraulic modelling compared to real time values, often coupled to summations of inflow - outflow over time, sometimes not, depending on the number of flow indicators they have on the system. A simple gathering line may only measure flow from the wells into the gathering pipeline, in which case they can't make any in/out comparison at all. Many gathering pipelines do not have any real time data capacity, so they can't use the comparison with a hydraulic model. So often it's just a simple low pressure switch to an audio alarm or flashing light. Continuous monitoring using other technologies, leak sonics, disturbance monitoring of fibre optic cables, adjacent sniffer tubes, etc. exist, but have very limited adoption. Hydraulic modelling against real time values is pretty accurate and timely. In/out flow comparison takes time, but can detect smaller and smaller leaks as the time of the calculation period increases. A PSL works, but somebody needs to be paying attention. Some systems have remotely operated valves connected to an automatic shutdown system, but those are often limited to shut in critical sections of a pipeline, or a specific pump or compressor station that's having a local problem. The best installations use a combination of all three common methods plus routine and frequent eyes-on and mobile sniffer and/or infrared monitoring. The worst have nothing, actually combining flows from potentially many gathering lines into one common flow meter located at a field pumping or compressor station. The station might be on auto tank level control with nobody watching what is happening on a daily basis. A tank truck driver might check it once a week. Sometimes they have a PSL and alarm, but they don't work. It sounds like this system didn't have much more than a PSL, but I dont know for sure.

New regulations, just officially adopted this month, have added around 400,000 miles of previously unregulated gathering pipelines, so hopefully this situation will change as offshore and beach crossings and others will be considered sensitive areas, subject to more rigid inspection and leak detection requirements.

https://www.phmsa.dot.gov/news/inte...nsitive-areas-great-lakes-coastal-beaches-and

https://www.phmsa.dot.gov/news/new-...s-gathering-pipelines-under-federal-oversight

 

[LittleInch]

I have a feeling this line is form a platform to shore so could easily have some form of flow measurement to be able to compare (mass balance) the amount arriving over a certain period.

Such relatively simple systems suffer from lack of ability to find small leaks and if this was a two or three phase flow, then it can get out of balance and create false positive alarms.

Pipeline leak detection systems have an unhappy history with operators ignoring them as they don't believe them anymore or are waiting for the system to get back to a steady state after a change in flow or direction.

Without knowing the operational history of these leak detection system alarms it is not possible to say whether the operators were just complacent and willfully ignored the alarms or so inured to false ones that they just ignored them.

There are more sophisticated versions now which tend to look for changes in pressure, flow etc or look out characteristic signals / pulses when something happens. I don't get the impressions that anything like that was installed here....

Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.

 

[1503-44]

I think both, it wasn't elaborate and nobody was minding the store.
The bare minimum to get approval is one FI, one PI and a PLS/ESD on the platform, which may not even have tripped, because it was set too low. Onshore could easily be just a PSL w/o ESD. Many small platforms like these might not even have anybody there full time. Not sure if that's the case there, but it's really common in the GOM. Someone goes out once a month to change the flow chart and clean the seagull crap off the navigation light's solar panel.