Oil Spill's Failure Nexus : the Blowout Preventer

During the wild and early days of oilfield operations, gushers would occur when underground pressures were encountered during drilling. There was no way to stop them until James Smither Abercrombie and Harry S. Cameron in 1922 devised a solution. Two horizontally opposed hydraulic rams were designed to close off a well at the surface of the wellhead. It was the the first blowout preventer or BOP.

To be honest, I never knew out about blowout preventers before this term entered the national lexicon last week with the continuing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

In actuality there is not just one hydraulic ram on the modern day BOP.  It is built to be foolproof with multiple redundancies. There are a series of hydraulic rams and a different valve called an annular preventer. As shown in the diagram below, the annular preventer usually sits on top of the BOP and has a rubber doughnut that is mechanically squeezed inward to seal the pipe.

Houston we have a problem. Right now, engineers and specialist are gathered in Houston trying to figure out if this blowout preventer can be closed using six remotely operated robotic submersibles.  So far attempts at closing this blowout preventer have been unsuccessful.

Lets hope they figure it out.

Section Cuts of Rams:
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