The Houston Chronicle reprints an investigative journalism piece from the Mobile Register on whether or not offshore oil & gas structures in the Gulf of Mexico are built to withstand strong storms and wave damage.
In the days after Katrina, as hundreds of oil-producing platforms remained off line — and some continued to leave a conspicuous trail of petroleum in the Gulf of Mexico — federal officials insisted to Congress that they were doing everything they could to make this infrastructure stable during hurricanes, designing platforms to withstand Category 5 storms.But federal and industry documents obtained by the Mobile Register show that the latest design criteria for offshore oil and natural gas platforms require only that these structures withstand winds and seas typical of a borderline Category 2/Category 3 storm, well below the Category 4 and 5 winds that affected Gulf oil fields at least four times in the last five years.
Under the latest International Building Code, a model adopted by many states and localities, beach houses on many of the Gulf's barrier islands would be constructed to withstand stronger winds than is required by the design criteria for offshore platforms.
The implications of platform design decisions extend beyond the oil drilling industry, and include the gasoline price spikes since Katrina and the spreading oil slicks emanating from multiple platforms in the Gulf.
Last week, federal officials released reports of at least 64 spills associated with Gulf platforms after Katrina.
"For these platforms and other critical facilities, I'm really surprised that people would put that type of investment out there without more consideration," said Lawrence Twisdale, an expert in hurricane impacts and risk assessments for Applied Research Associates in Raleigh, N.C.
In the past year, several hurricanes with sustained winds of 140 miles per hour or greater have damaged platforms in the Gulf.
According to a Shell Web site, Ivan destroyed seven platforms in September 2004 and damaged 26 others. Katrina destroyed at least 46 platforms last month and significantly damaged another 16, according to the American Petroleum Institute.
Many other platforms could not operate following Katrina because of pipeline ruptures and other problems throughout offshore oil fields.
The Katrina damage seems to speak for itself.
Given the harsh, but ordinary, January weather I once saw long ago when visiting a gigantic, rock-solid gas production complex in the North Sea (the Frigg field, now being decommissioned, it's clear that the industry knows how to build very strong structures. It's a matter of assessing risk and making investments appropriately, not a particularly difficult engineering challenge.
Posted by Alan at September 25, 2005 03:04 PM