Business Technology; How the Offshore Rigs Rode Out Gulf's Storm
By THOMAS C. HAYES,
Published: October 21, 1992
DALLAS, Oct. 20— It was two days after the most savage hurricane of the century ripped through the Louisiana gulf waters and Scott Sewell, the chief Federal regulator of offshore oil production, was touring the region by helicopter, dreading the worst. He was amazed by what he could not find.
"The massive oil slicks that we didn't want to see weren't there," Mr. Sewell recalled recently. "There was very little environmental damage and, frankly, the losses were minimal given the ferocity of the storm."
Twenty years ago, a hurricane with 160-mile-an-hour winds and 71-foot waves might have turned Louisiana's southern shores into a catastrophe not only for thousands of birds, fish and other wildlife poisoned by oil slicks but also for the oil industry, which could have faced a financial and public-relations disaster like the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska. But on Aug. 25, when Hurricane Andrew whipped up the water surrounding hundreds of offshore rigs, modern drilling-platform architecture stood up to nature's fury.
Although daily output of as much as 800 million cubic feet of natural gas and maybe 90,000 barrels of oil remain out of production while repairs continue on pipelines, older platforms and other storm-damaged gulf machinery, even some environmentalists are giving the oil industry credit for being technologically prepared. Little Oil Is Spilled
By the Government's count, 249 of 3,800 offshore platforms in Federal gulf waters were damaged by Hurricane Andrew, but spilled oil amounted to less than 500 barrels. Nearly half of that was skimmed up by recovery crews, and no slicks were found along the shoreline. By contrast, the Exxon Valdez wreck spilled 250,000 barrels into Prince William Sound, and the cleanup is still not finished.
A Texaco platform apparently caused the worst environmental damage after Hurricane Andrew ripped a rig called the Treasure 75 from its moorings. The wind and waves sent the platform sailing more than four and a half miles before one of its 30,000-pound anchors tore through a concrete-sheathed oil pipeline, spilling 300 barrels. The platform then ran aground in 35 feet of water.
Industry officials and structural engineers say that improvements in standards and techniques in platform design and construction over the last 20 years passed an important test by taking blows from Hurricane Andrew without fouling Louisiana's coastal waters or beaches.
The episode "should show that offshore drilling can be done safely, even when you have a 100-year hurricane," said William F. O'Keefe, executive vice president of the American Petroleum Institute, the Washington trade group financed by major oil companies. Oceanographers say storms with the winds and steep waves of Hurricane Andrew occur in gulf waters perhaps once a century. Banned in Other Areas
Offshore rigs are an entrenched part of the Louisiana and Texas economies. But Congress has banned drilling in areas off the Atlantic coast, the Florida gulf coast and the California coast -- areas that geologists say have large oil-and-gas reserves. The nation still faces a substantial risk from oil spills, however, because it imports so much of its oil in tankers, more than eight million barrels a day. Tankers have a far worse environmental record than offshore wells.
"The overwhelming evidence, just overwhelming, is that the industry takes all the precautions that are needed" for safe offshore drilling, Mr. O'Keefe said. "Future operations are bound to be safer as long as we keep investing in new technology."
Environmentalists concede that the industry's offshore drilling techniques have improved steadily since the disastrous 1969 spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, Calif., that was a flashpoint for the modern environmental movement.
"Whether it's been the industry pushing or environmentalists pushing from the outside is hard to say," said Thomas M. Miller, a spokesman for the Center for Marine Conservation in Washington. "Standards have been taking a gradual step up in the last couple of decades on offshore platforms. We applaud the industry, but it needs to keep improving the technology. Nothing is infallible."
The industry learned that lesson the hard way in 1965, when Hurricane Betsy washed away and destroyed 20 platforms in what then was a much smaller universe of Gulf of Mexico production; still, the storm produced no major spills.
At the time, most of the major oil companies had designed platforms with decks nearly 43 feet above the water level, or high enough so the decks would be missed by waves measuring 57 feet from trough to crest. A few companies built their decks lower, at about 35 feet above sea level.
By the late 1960's, most major companies had raised decks on new platforms in water depths of 300 feet or more to at least 50 feet above the water level. The Minerals Management Service, the Federal agency that governs offshore drilling, in 1972 adopted that level as the official standard.
In addition to putting more space between decks and gulf waters, engineers fortified the platforms with more and stronger steel legs known as piles -- as many as a dozen, instead of four. The steel footings for offshore platforms are thicker and longer, commonly driven 300 to 400 feet into the gulf's mud floor. Little Amoco Damage