A cloud of fear: Greenpeace releases infrared image of giant 'explosive' methane gas spewing from Elgin rig in North Sea

A cloud of fear: Greenpeace releases infrared image of giant 'explosive' gas spewing from Elgin rig

by LUCY OSBORNE, Daily Mail, April 5, 2012

It looks like a bizarre piece of 1960s pop art -- or perhaps a highly-coloured graphic from an old-style computer game.

But in reality, this neon-bright image of the North Sea is a chilling illustration of just how large the potentially explosive gas cloud spewing from the Elgin platform has become.

The infrared picture, which was taken using a special camera by environmental campaigners, lays bare the extent of the leak's impact on the atmosphere.

The photograph was released by the Greenpeace activists who have been assessing the potential dangers of the situation since Monday.

The infrared camera image taken by Greenpeace on Tuesday shows the scale of the gas cloud from energy giant Total's Elgin platform

The image shows the temperature of the surface of with light tones showing hot areas, and dark tones indicating cold

Greenpeace says the bright pink spots visible in the image show the natural - and non-toxic - hydrogen gases being emitted by the platform.

Meanwhile, the darker purple areas depict the dangerous portion of the gas cloud - which consists mainly of methane.

The image, taken from outside the security distance of three nautical miles, uses light tones to show heat and dark tones to indicate cold. 

More...

• 'One spark and we'll have another Piper Alpha on our hands': Naked flame that threatens repeat of Britain's deadliest rig disaster is still alight on 'well from hell'

Christian Bussau, chief scientist and ocean expert at Greenpeace, insist they found evidence of pollution and that there was 'oil on the water surface' and a 'chemical' smell in the air.

Air and water samples are being sent for analysis at a German laboratory to find out what is creating the sheen on the surface.

Mr Bussau added: 'Although we are five kilometres away, we can feel here that this is contaminating and polluting the environment and this is dangerous for the environment and for the climate.'

But a spokesman from the platform operator, Total, said: 'The only confirmation that we have had [of anything resembling an oil slick] is a sheen of gas condensate.'

He added that this condensate was a light hydrocarbon - similar to petrol - and was expected to dissipate naturally, either evaporating due to warmer weather or through wave action.

Danger: The leak from the Elgin rig, pictured, led to more than 300 workers being evacuated from that and surrounding oil and gas platforms 

Meanwhile, the French oil giant has further delayed plans to fly engineers to stem the 11-day leak of explosive gas.

This is due to continuing adverse weather conditions in the area, a company spokesman said yesterday.

Strong winds are reportedly blowing the gas cloud towards the spot where a helicopter carrying the team of crisis engineers would land - pushing relief efforts back to today or Friday.

The wind direction was initially forecast by the UK's Met Office to change by yesterday evening and through this morning.

It would have blown gas away from the landing point and allowed a team of eight experts to assess the steps needed to stop the large and potentially explosive leak.

The company -- which has calculated that the leak is costing it £1.6 million a day -- said on Tuesday that the team of engineers would assess conditions on the platform and find out whether a so-called 'well kill' was feasible.

This would involve finding out whether any other measures than pumping mud into the well would be necessary. 

Another, more expensive option also being pursued is to dig two relief wells to the source of the gas at 4,000 metres depth, far below the sea bed.      

Experts have said that can take up to six months to complete. Total says it will push up daily costs to more than £2 million.

Total's share prices have dropped by 6.5% since the leak was reported last week, knocking billions of pounds off its value.      

The company said the team of engineers would consist of staff from Total and U.S. specialist company Wild Well Control.

Fire-fighters and engineers working for the Houston-based company are experts at disasters such as oil rig explosions and have been dubbed 'Hellfighters' by Hollywood. 

Yesterday, an offshore worker told of being one of the last men left on board the North Sea platform after the gas leak was first detected on March 25, 2012.

William Cardno was one of the 19 men who stayed on board the Elgin platform to monitor the situation while all the others were taken to safety aboard emergency flights.

He said: 'When the first alarm was sounded, we had the helicopter on-scene within one hour.

'And within an hour after that we had 107 people evacuated. An hour after that, we had the full 220 people evacuated.

'We deliberately kept 19 people on board the platform to evaluate the situation and to see if there was anything we could do and really to maintain the systems.'

Close-up: Greenpeace say that the Total rig has a large gas cloud surrounding it and has left a condensed gas slick on the water

Mr Cardino added: 'If we had any escalation at all on the platform we were absolutely confident we could have been off the platform in five minutes by lifeboat.

'We all practised our lifeboat drill and we checked the lifeboat and strapped ourselves into it. I think this demonstrated that our procedures are good and our process is good.

'Although we never want these things to happen, when it does happen this clearly demonstrates that the safety of the people is our paramount priority.'

The gas leak is spewing an estimated 200,000 cubic metres of natural gas from beneath the evacuated platform into the air per day, forming a highly explosive gas cloud.        

It began after pressure rose in a well that had earlier been capped.       

Two fire-fighting vessels remain on standby outside the three-mile exclusion zone around the platform.

It is claimed the toxic gas leak could ignite, leading to an explosion like that seen in the Piper Alpha disaster in 1988.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2125471/Total-gas-leak-Greenpeace-release-infra-red-image-explosive-gas-spewing-Elgin-rig.html

French oil firm Total sends team to fight North Sea gas blowout at Elgin-Franklin wellhead platform

French oil firm sends team to fight North Sea gas leak

 

 

by Henning Gloystein and Muriel Boselli, Reuters, March 30, 2012

France's Total sent firefighting ships close to the scene of a gas leak from its North Sea Elgin platform on Thursday, as a large gas cloud led to fears of an explosion.

The company said the gas originated thousands of metres below the seabed, which engineers said might mean that a relief well -- one possible option to stop the leak -- could take months to drill.

Total has not yet found a way to stop the gas leak.

"The bad news is that the leak is continuing and that it reduces the possibility it could be plugged by sand or other material," Frederic Hauge, head of leading Norwegian green group Bellona, which has a team of oil experts monitoring Total's response, told Reuters.

"The good news is that the flow rate of gas coming to the surface is not increasing."

A flare needed to relieve pressure in the platform by purging excess gas has continued to burn less than 100 metres from the leak, and engineers said changes in wind and weather could lead to an explosion.

A team of international engineers, assembled by the embattled French oil company, are drawing up plans to tackle the leak and prevent the flare from coming into contact with the gas cloud, the spokesperson said.

The platform is currently off limits to the engineers, however, given the toxic and explosive plumes pumping out of the wellhead.

"The wind is pushing the gas cloud in the opposite direction (from the platform). At this time, the circumstances are rather favourable," Jacques-Emmanuel Saulnier, Total's head of communication said in an interview published on its website.

"A gas cloud is always a fire hazard," he added.

Total kept two firefighting ships in a state of readiness outside a 2-km exclusion zone, which was set up to protect marine traffic, a Total spokesperson said.

The company also has brought in a robot vessel, not yet deployed, to scan the sea bed for signs of spillage, she said.

The leak started on Sunday and forced the evacuation of all 238 workers from the platform, which sits in waters less than 100 metres deep and 240 km off the east coast of Scotland.

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/French+firm+sends+team+fight+North+leak/6383019/story.html

NewScientist: How large is the greenhouse gas effect of Total's Elgin-Franklin blowout in the North Sea?

How large is warming effect of North Sea gas leak?

by David Strahan, NewScientist, March 30, 2012

Total's Elgin platform (Image: Total E&P UK/PA)

Coverage of the gas leak at Total's Elgin platform in the North Sea, off the UK coast, has so far focused on the potential for an explosion, and damage to sea life from sulphur contamination – the latter now discounted. But methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, so what about the global warming impact? Here's what emerged from the back of my envelope.

A company spokesman is reported as saying about 200,000 cubic metres is escaping per day, based on the plume visible above the platform. Of that, around 90% – or 180,000 m³ – is likely to be methane, according to gas expert John Baldwin, of CNG Services. Total says it may take six months to drill a relief well to plug the original, so if the leak continues at its estimated rate, 32,760,000 m³ of methane would be emitted altogether. At about 1,500 m³ per ton, that amounts to roughly 22,000 tons of methane. What would that mean in warming terms?

The standard global warming potential of methane is 25 over 100 years, meaning it has 25 times the warming effect of carbon dioxide over that period. So 22,000 tons of methane is the equivalent of 550,000 tons of CO₂. That's more than twice the annual emissions of the power station at the Sullom Voe oil terminal in Shetland, according to figures from the EU Emissions Trading Scheme.

However, scientists attribute methane with a much higher global warming potential over shorter periods, because it persists in the atmosphere for much less time than CO₂, so its impact is concentrated in the early years. The IPCC's 20-year global warming potential is 72, and on that basis the Total leak would be the equivalent of 1,584,000 tons of CO₂ over six months. That's almost four times the annual emissions of the Lafarge cement works at Dunbar, and more than a year's worth of CO₂ from RWE's power station at Staythorpe in Nottinghamshire, which serves almost 3 million homes.

Recent research has suggested methane should have an even higher short term global warming potential of 105, because it reduces the concentration of aerosols that cool the atmosphere. That would raise the emissions of a 6-month leak from Total to just over the equivalent of 2.3 million tons of CO₂ – roughly equal to the 2010 emissions of the massive Teesside Power Station. At 1,875 MW Teesside was – until its partial shutdown in 2011 – the largest combined cycle gas turbine power station in Europe, capable of supplying 3% of UK electricity needs.

Of course, the Total leak might turn out to be smaller than 200,000 m³ per day, or it could be fixed in less than 6 months. But if the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 is anything to go by, early estimates of the size of the leak from the operator may turn out to be a massive underestimate.

No wonder Michael Liebreich, chief executive of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, has tweeted suggesting Total should be obliged to buy carbon offsets to compensate for the emissions.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21649-how-large-is-warming-effect-of-north-sea-gas-leak.html

Total crisis team reveals source of ongoing gas leak - that has challenged Elgin for weeks - it's from the Hod formation, 4500 meters below the seabed

Total crisis team reveals source of ongoing gas leak - that has challenged Elgin for weeks

The Elgin rig. (Total)

Thierry Debertrand, of Total’s crisis team dealing with the leak at the Elgin/Franklin well system in the North Sea today told Bellona that the company has isolated the leakage as coming from the Hod formation, a natural gas-bearing limestone and chalk formation located 4,500 meters below the seabed.by Charles Digges, Bellona, March 30, 2012
Abnormalities were noticed at the well four weeks earlier, in February, and the crew that was evacuated from the Elgin on Monday had been aboard in an attempt to address these issues when the leak became critical, Debertrand told Bellona in a telephone interview. Debertrand took pains to note that the gas leak is coming from a reservoir and not a "gas pocket" as has been widely reported in mainstream media.

“On February 25th we observed irregular pressure in the annuli on the plugged G4 well. We very quickly moved to kill the annuli pressure by pumping it full with high density mud," Debertrand said. "During this process, on March 25th, we observed a sudden pressure increase followed by an escape of mud and then gas.”

The well was originally shut down in February of 2011.

Stratiography of Elgin/Franklin/Shearwater area, showing typical gamma ray response to the Hod formation. Click to enlarge.

Total (with additions by Keith Whiriskey)

Total is examining two possibilities to staunch the flow of gas, which is leaking from the Elgin platform itself 240 kilometers east of Aberdeen, Scotland, said Debertrand.

The first is re-boarding the rig and performing a dynamic kill, which involves reclosing the well drill mud.

The second and more likely scenario involves digging a relief well with the Rowan Gorilla V rig, which will take as much as six months to complete, but is a far safer option for workers, Debertrand said.

"The next 10 days will be critical – if a dynamic kill of the well from the Elgin platform is not feasible this leak will continue for months as a relief well is prepared," said Bellona President Frederic Hauge. "

“Bellona appreciates the openness of Total on this issue," he added. "Major concerns and uncertainties remain, assessing the quantity of gas in the Hod formation is of critical importance.”

The Gorilla V, according to Jake Molloy, of offshore union RMT-OILC, can work as many as 4.8 kilometers away from the Elgin in order to drill the relief well, he told Bellona in a telephone interview.

Debertrand told Bellona that crews were being mobilized for operations on the Gorilla V.

Debertrand confirmed the gas is reaching the surface via the well’s annulus as gas ingresses into the drilling column.

Problem plaguing development for years

The Hod geohazard has caused significant problems throughout the production life of the Elgin/Franklin fields, as described by Total experts in a report produced in 2005 obtained by Bellona.

“It was realized that conventionally cemented casings was unlikely to hold this gas back during the production lifecycle of the wells,” read the report.

The study resulted in improved drilling and completion procedures. However it is clear that these procedures did prevent gas ingress from the Hod geohazard.

The well, dating from 1997, and other older wells, may be susceptible to particular danger. It is known that other wells have shown increased annular pressure due to the Hod formation.

The Hod formation is regionally distributed, covering a wide area. It is of high pressure – 800 bars according to the Total spokesman. Information on the Hod formation is sketchy, as the reservoir has never been commercially produced.

However, it is known that the gas it contains is clean, meaning that it does not contain hydrogen sulfide. This will result in fewer detrimental environmental impacts.

It is estimated that the Hod formation still contains high quantities of gas, erasing the possibility that the gas leak will simply peter out on its own.

Debertrand estimated that some 2 kilograms a second, or 200,000 cubic meters of a day, of gas condensate were leaking, though he added that these figures are highly speculative. Satellites and airplanes have been used to establish the absence of hydrogen sulfide in the leaking gas.

He also said that condensate production is increasing with gas production.

Shell, meanwhile, which had evacuated its crew from the nearby Shearwater rig on Tuesday, may be returning its workers and rig to normal activity.

Keith Whiriskey contributed to the preparing of this report.

http://www.bellona.org/articles/articles_2012/elgin_total_iview

Reuters: Total Tries to Prevent Methane Explosion at Blownout North Sea Elgin-Franklin Wellhead Platform

Total Tries to Prevent Explosion at Leaking North Sea Gas Platform

The options on the table include drilling a relief well, which could take six months. The leak is one of the North Sea's biggest in decades.

by Oleg Vukmanovic, Reuters, March 30, 2012

Total's Elgin offshore platform in the North Sea, 150 miles off the coast of Aberdeen, Scotland/Undated photo issued by Total

France's Total is laying plans including a helicopter water drop, fire-fighting vessels and spraying nitrogen to extinguish a flare on its Elgin North Sea gas platform that is leaking explosive clouds of gas, the energy department said.


The flare, lit as part of evacuation proceedings to relieve pressure in the abandoned rig, cannot be turned off remotely and remains at risk of igniting the explosive plumes pumping out of the platform, the department said.


But it added aerial surveillance suggests the flame has reduced in size, offering hope for a safe resolution to the crisis.


The authorities have praised the embattled French oil firm's handling of the leak, one of the North Sea's biggest in decades, calling it "effective" and conditions on the rig "stable" as hydrocarbons continue to spew into the atmosphere.


Total has dismissed the risk of a blast at the platform and has two fire-fighting ships ready to act outside a two mile-exclusion zone set up to protect marine traffic. Experts warn Elgin could become "an explosion waiting to happen."


The leak started on Sunday and forced the evacuation of all 238 workers from the platform, which sits in waters less than 100 metres deep and 240 km (150 miles) off the east coast of Scotland.


Total as well as UK authorities have described the expected environmental impact from the plume of gas and a spreading sheen of light oil on the water as "minimal," although environmental experts said much of the gas "cocktail" would be either flammable or poisonous at close quarters.


Memories are still raw in the North Sea industry of the Piper Alpha platform fire 24 years ago, when 167 people were killed in the world's deadliest offshore oil disaster.


The energy department said that while alight the flare remained a risk despite prevailing winds blowing the gas cloud away from the flame for the foreseeable future.


"Total has assured the government the platform is designed so the flare is located in a position where the prevailing wind blows the gas release away from it," it said.


The team of international experts advising Total on how to plug the leak -- which has now entered its sixth day -- has not made its final recommendation, it said.


Options
The options on the table include drilling a relief well, the safest but also slow and costly, and pumping heavy mud into the stricken well from the platform itself, faster but far more dangerous.


Relief drilling would take six months and require boring through 4 kilometres of rock with painstaking mathematical precision, because it must intercept the gas pocket at exactly the right point, an engineer said.


The accident has thrown a spotlight on the safety record of energy production in the British sector of the North Sea, with union officials claiming that the frequency of safety lapses has become intolerable.


The depth of the pocket leaking gas to the Elgin platform via compromised layers of piping suggests there is more gas present rather than less, increasing the pressure on Total to drill a relief well, an engineer with knowledge of the matter said on Thursday.


The company previously said it hoped the leak would run itself dry as reservoir pressure dropped, removing the need to bore a hole that could take six months and cost up to $3 billion.


Total believes a section of well pipe 4,000 meters below the seabed -- prey to conditions of high pressure and temperature -- had become porous, the energy department said.


The government said it had convened a crisis committee of energy ministry, healthy and safety, marine and coastguard officials from England and Scotland to advise and monitor on Total's response.


Credit ratings agency Fitch said current reports of the leak suggested the incident was not as serious as the explosion at the Deepwater Horizon platform in the Gulf of Mexico.


http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20120330/total-north-sea-gas-platform-elgin-aberdeen-explosion-bp-deepwater-horizon-oil-spill

The Oil Drum: Gas Leak at North Sea Elgin Platform

Gas Leak at North Sea Elgin Platform

Posted by JoulesBurn on March 28, 2012 - 1:40pm
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: elgin, gas leak, natural gas, north sea, total [list all tags]

A crisis situation has developed at a gas and condensate production platform in the Elgin field in the North Sea. Gas is leaking out of a well near a offshore platform at a rate of approximately 2 kilograms per second (12 MMCF/day if gas), and a large sheen (assumed to be condensate) has been observed on the water. All workers on Total's Elgin PUQ (production-utilities-quarters) Platform plus those on the Rowan Viking drilling rig, which had been working next to it, have been evacuated. On Monday, workers on a platform and drilling rig at the Shell-operated Shearwater field (4 miles / 6.4 km away) were also evacuated. There is currently a two-mile vessel exclusion zone around the site and a no-fly zone. As current winds are light, the most immediate concern is the potential for explosion both at the PUQ and elsewhere. While it is possible that the leak rate will lessen over time, the Rowan Gorilla V jack-up drilling rig is being provisioned by Total for a possible relief well that could take months to drill.

The Where
Elgin is a high temperature/high pressure (HT/HP) gas field in the middle of the North Sea between Scotland and Norway at an ocean depth of about 90 meters. The reservoir is about 5500 meters deep with temperatures near 190°C and 1100 bar pressure. It was discovered in 1991 by Elf Exploration UK Ltd. It is being produced along with the nearby Franklin field using one unmanned wellhead platform in each field. The PUQ platform, connected to the Elgin wellhead platform by a 90m bridge, processes the sour gas and condensate for pipeline transit to shore. Production from the combined fields currently averages 140,000 boe/d (though a report on Rigzone said 230,000 boe/d), and accounts for 10% of UK gas production. Total recently upped its stake to 46.2% in the project, where the focus is shifting to new prospects in the West Franklin field. From SubseaIQ:

This phase of development is aimed at producing estimated reserves of 85 million barrels of oil equivalent, and will consist of drilling three wells and installing a new platform tied-back to the Elgin/Franklin facilities.

The map below shows the location of the fields and the platforms within.
The picture below is probably representative of the location of the
Rowan Viking relative to the Elgin PUQ platform.

Rowan Viking rig next to Elgin PUQ platform

The Upstreamonline report provided the following on the sequence of events:

Hainsworth said the problems had occurred during operations to plug and abandon the field’s G4 well.
“On Sunday there was quite a sudden rise in pressure and they were finding it difficult to bleed off this rise in pressure,” he said.
“That initiated what followed. Witnesses who were working on the well saw a release of what we expect is mud from just below the wellhead at the top of the casing followed by gas.”
Hainsworth said that gas is being released on the Elgin wellhead platform at low pressure – about five bar - and that it is coming from a non-producing reservoir above the Elgin formation.

The Telegraph has something similar:

The exact cause of the leak has still to be confirmed but Mr Hainsworth said workers at Elgin on Sunday had reported "a spray of liquid followed by a gas release" from a well casing.
The well had ceased production a year ago when it was plugged at its reservoir source, 6km below ground. Workers spotted changes to the pressure in its outer casing weeks ago and had been in the process of pumping in heavy mud to "kill" the casing on Sunday.
Gas is thought to be entering the casing from another, non-producing reservoir 4km underground, Mr Hainsworth said. Total did not yet know the capacity of this reservoir but in a "dream" scenario it could simply "run itself out".

From HazardEx comes this third-hand report:

"Engineers have told me that it is almost certain that gas is leaking directly from the reservoir through the pipe casing."

The Well
The Elgin 22/30c-G4 well was the first development well drilled there. A paper in SPE Drilling and Completion, Field Hydraulic Tests Improve HPHT Drilling Safety and Performance discusses the drilling of this well, specifically on some testing that was conducted above the HT/HP regime (but at greater depths than suggested by Mr. Hainsworth's assessment above of where the gas is coming from).

One problematic zone (the Kimmeridge clays) is situated at a vertical depth between 5130 and 5370 m. The problem of the Kimmeridge clays is the uncertainty on the native pore pressure gradient (between 2150 and 2200 kg/m 3), and the possibility of a ballooning effect.

According to this source, the well was producing 20,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day and gas at a rate of 2.6 million standard cubic meters per day in 2008.
The Why
The well was in the process of being shut. But why? The HazardEx link provides another quote:

"The well in question had caused Total some problems for some considerable time ... a decision was taken weeks ago to try to kill the well, but then an incident began to develop over the weekend," he said.

This source says it has been shut off for a year. A very recent paper in the Journal of Petroleum Technology as some very useful information:
Advanced Drilling in HP/HT: Total’s Experience on Elgin/Franklin (UK North Sea)
The paper discusses infill drilling in the Elgin and Franklin fields. After over 15 years of production, these fields are rather pressure depleted (over 800 bar!), which causes sand infiltration problems and liner deformation due to compaction of the sandstone reservoir. It is possible that well G4 had several problems and they eventually gave up on it.
Given the pressure depletion and the fact that both fields seem to be well past their prime, can they possibly still be responsible for 10% of UK gas production? Perhaps not. From HazardEx:

Peak production capacity for the Elgin/Franklin field is 280,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (around 7% of UK production), 175,000 barrels per day of condensates and 15.5 million cubic metres of gas per day (mcm/d), according to Total.

7% of UK production is less than 10%, but then this:

The Elgin-Franklin fields produced a daily average of 61,386 barrels of condensate in November, according to the most recent government data.

Condensate production is only about a third of original capacity, so gas production might be proportionally lower. Of course, UK production is down overall as well...
Here is more information on the development of the fields:
Elgin/Franklin: What Could Have Been Done Differently?
(note: article starts on page 54 of the above)
The What Next
Given that there is nobody within two miles of the platform at present, and the story is still unfolding, it is prudent to be cautiously skeptical of Total's analysis of the situation. Some questions:

1. 1 kg/sec (reported by several sources) is a very high leak rate from a formation they drilled through to get to the one they were going to produce. In any case, if the report is true, how was this estimate made?
2. BBC has reported that the flare is still burning high above the platform. If the wells have been shut off, why is this?

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/9072