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Posted in BP British Petroleum,Deepwater Horizon,Gulf Coast,Louisiana Maritime News,Transocean on June 9, 2010
In an exclusive interview which aired June 7, 2010, five Deepwater Horizon rig survivors told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that the morning the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, a BP executive and a Transocean official argued over how to proceed with the drilling.
The survivors’ account paints perhaps the most detailed picture yet of what happened on the deepwater rig — and the possible causes of the April 20 explosion.
WATCH AC360 SURVIVORS INTERVIEW
Brown, the rig’s mechanic, had traveled with the rig from South Korea, where it was made nearly a decade ago. He had seen the mechanical crew get downsized over the years. Yet as the rig aged, the engines began having more problems.
“It became overwhelming,” he said. “We couldn’t keep up with the flow of it. … We constantly over the years kept telling them, ‘Hey, we need more help back here.’
“They pretty much just said, ‘Well, we’ll look into it.’ ”
About nine months ago, Brown said, he got an additional first engineer, yet the crew was still overloaded with work.
Even more alarming, the rig survivors said, was the amount of resistance the well was giving them. “We had problems with it from the day we got on,” Matthew Jacobs said.
There was always like an ominous feeling. This well did not want to be drilled.
Nearly every day, Jacobs said, “we had problems with that well.”
Barron said it was like an eerie cloud hung over the well being dug 5,000 feet into the sea.
“There was always like an ominous feeling,” he said. “This well did not want to be drilled. … It just seemed like we were messing with Mother Nature.”
At times, the drill got stuck. Many times, it “kicked,” meaning gas was shooting back through the mud at an alarming rate.
“I’ve seen a lot of gas coming up from muds on different wells, and the highest I’ve ever seen in my 11 years was 1,500 units. And this well gave us 3,000,” Brown said. “I’ve never been on a well with that high of gas coming out of the mud. That was kind of letting me know this well was something to be reckoned with.”
It all came to a head at 9:56 p.m., when the first of three explosions rocked Deepwater Horizon, 52 miles southeast of Venice, Louisiana, with 126 people aboard. Tiles fell from the ceiling, walls collapsed, and people ran for their lives. It reminded Matt Jacobs of the movie “Titanic.”
“It looked like you was looking at the face of death,” he said. “You could hear it, see it, smell it.”
Deepwater Horizon as it sinks into The Gulf of Mexico
He scrambled to the lifeboat deck. Jacobs had been trained to fight fires aboard the rig. But when he looked at the flames shooting 150 feet into the air, he knew there was nothing they could do. “There is no way we can put that fire out,” he thought.
Jacobs hopped in a lifeboat. He screamed for co-workers to jump aboard. A second explosion rocked the rig. The lifeboat, still suspended in the air, went into a free fall of about 3 feet.
“Here I am on a lifeboat that’s supposed to help me get off this rig,” Jacobs thought. “And I’m gonna wind up dying.”
He bowed his head and prayed.
Now, 50 days later, the survivors are telling their stories. It’s become part of their everyday lives. They can’t shake what happened that day, even when they close their eyes at night.
“It’s like being in a neverending nightmare,” Brown said. “You dream about it. You see it in your sleep. Then, we wake up in the morning, and we realize it’s not a dream. It’s real. … It doesn’t end for us.
Source: Anderson Cooper 360