Deepwater Horizon Fire Part 1. - Episode 63

After Kara's eight week long marathon of talking about Prohibition (Kara had been researching this four part series since July!). Ed has decided to get off the editing couch and put together an episode of his own. 

The Deepwater Horizon drill rig was one of the most powerful and highly regarded oil drilling rigs in the 2000's and for good reason. It held safety records for the longest running times of no serious accidents, it held the record for the deepest well ever drilled on the bottom of the ocean, and the Transocean crews that manned it were some of the most experienced the oil industry could supply. The Deepwater Horizon was heralded as "Lucky" because of its perpetual successes!

However, on April 20, 2010, everything changed when the drill rig suddenly exploded at around 10pm at night in a fireball that engulfed the entire rig 40 miles off the coast of Louisiana. This explosion eventually caused the rig to buckle and sink to the bottom of the ocean thus severing an oil pipeline that spewed 210,000 gallons of oil per day into the Gulf of Mexico for over 80 days. This led to the largest oil related disaster in American history. 

Worse yet, this disaster cost the lives of 11 crewmen working on the rig and on top of all the environmental issues that ensued, many questions remained as to why those 11 men had to die. 

In this episode Ed will explain:

• Why does the world revolve around oil (it's not just for gasoline, there are so many other reasons)
• How to we get it out of the ground, and what happens when there isn't enough land on the planet to support the demand for oil
• A very brief description as to how deep sea oil drilling works
• What was the Deepwater Horizon semi-submersible drill rig
• And lastly, what events incited the most horrific oil related disaster in history

In case you want more, check out these other related episodes:

First Oil Spill Disaster - The incident involving the Torrey Canyon oil tanker running aground near England

Byford Dolphin Incident - The incident involving an explosive decompression of 4 saturation divers which killed them instantly in a gruesome manner. 

You can find the above episodes plus so much more at thedaysdumpsterfire.com 

Hey before you go!

If have ideas for future episodes that you want Kara and Ed to look into, email them at thedaysdumpsterfire@gmail.com. They would love to hear from you!

You can also send them a text message by clicking on the link at the top.

Be sure to head on over to www.thedaysdumpsterfire.com for the ever growing library of historical dumpster fires.

Check us out on the ol Instagrams!
https://www.instagram.com/thedaysdumpsterfire/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Okay, Kara. I've got a question for you.

SPEAKER_03: 0:02

What's up?

SPEAKER_01: 0:04

Have you ever changed the oil in your car?

SPEAKER_03: 0:06

I've helped my husband change the oil in my car.

SPEAKER_01: 0:09

Okay. All right. I play nurse. Okay, so you you like you hand him the 17 millimeter wrench.

SPEAKER_03: 0:15

Yep, I hand him the phone.

SPEAKER_01: 0:16

Hand him the paper towels.

SPEAKER_03: 0:17

Yep, the oil pan, all the things.

SPEAKER_01: 0:20

Make sure you hand him the oil pan upside down so that on his head while he's under the car. Right.

unknown: 0:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 0:26

So just recently I changed the oil in in my car. Okay. And one of the problems that you have when you do your own oil change, as opposed to say, like a jiffy lube or a dealership, whatever, is they have what's known as a pit. Like they can just drain all that oil into a pit, and then a big giant truck comes by, sucks it all out, and then you know, Bob's your uncle. You're good to go.

SPEAKER_03: 0:51

Yeah, you don't have to worry about it anymore.

SPEAKER_01: 0:53

But when you do it yourself, you've got to find a place to put it. So my wife, who works for the Department of Environmental Quality, I always like to mess with her. Like, because she does the same thing whenever I do an old chain, she plays nurse, but she often hands me the wrong wrench, or she'll hand me the wrong socket, or she'll hand me like the old filter instead of the new filter that I put in.

SPEAKER_03: 1:17

Okay. I will not argue.

SPEAKER_01: 1:19

Yeah, she's she's she's she's a government worker. Um, so one of the things I always like to do is like, well, I'll collect the old oil, and I love messing with her. I'm like, hey honey, so uh can I just dump this in the canal? And of course, my wife who like is watching like water quality levels in the state, solid waste levels in the state, ground pollution, all that stuff. So I just love messing with her and like, hey, can I I'm just gonna go dump this in the canal? And she's like, no, no, you're not dumping this in the canal. That's what they did in the 60s. That's what canals are for.

SPEAKER_03: 2:01

No. I'm I'm taking her side on this one.

SPEAKER_01: 2:06

Right. So then I'll I'll mess with her further because in the 60s and 70s it was a common tactic in in this lovely state where you would just dig a hole in your backyard and then dump the oil in that hole and then just bury it, like you just pooed in the woods. Sick. Because the the reasoning was that, well, if it if it came from the ground, you're just putting it back in the ground. Not fully realizing that that oil has to pass through the state's water supply and the aquifers before it before it's settled.

SPEAKER_03: 2:39

Yeah, there's some things that it goes through.

SPEAKER_01: 2:42

Yeah, you know, the 1960s of it all.

SPEAKER_03: 2:45

Gotta love it.

SPEAKER_01: 2:46

So she's like, no, you're not dumping it in the backyard. Okay. Okay. Let's make a concession because we don't actually have anything to do with the ocean in this state here. Let's just bottle it all up and dump it in the ocean.

SPEAKER_03: 3:04

How are you gonna do that in a landlocked state?

SPEAKER_01: 3:07

Um, I know a guy with a car.

SPEAKER_03: 3:10

Fair.

SPEAKER_01: 3:14

So, like, why not? Like, it worked for Exxon Valdez. It worked for the uh it worked for the Tory Canyon outside Britain. Did it? Well, I mean, it eventually worked.

SPEAKER_03: 3:28

After you exploded it.

SPEAKER_01: 3:31

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They did use napalm and they did use high X and they did use some solvents that cause cancer and other terrible diseases. But that's an ocean problem, not a landlocked state problem.

SPEAKER_03: 3:47

I don't like it.

SPEAKER_01: 3:48

I don't know. It I I I feel like it's a valid solution because that's that's how it worked for the uh uh deep water horizon.

SPEAKER_03: 3:57

And the outcome of that was awful. Awful.

SPEAKER_01: 4:02

Yes, it was the worst oil spill in US history. And when that thing, when that thing went off, oh goodness gracious, 210,000 gallons of crude oil a day dumped into the Gulf of Mexico.

SPEAKER_03: 4:17

That's ridiculous. I can't.

SPEAKER_01: 4:19

But hey, it doesn't affect our state.

SPEAKER_03: 4:22

I don't like it.

SPEAKER_01: 4:42

And with that, welcome to the Days Dempster Fire. We don't celebrate humanity's successes, but its most fantastic failures. This is a simple little podcast where we look at all the times in human history where people have tried to map out, plan out, and try to just work out every single extraneous variable to make sure that absolutely nothing could possibly go wrong. And then five minutes later, it literally blows up in their faces. And thankfully, those people get to deal with the screw-ups of their own mishaps so that we don't have to do it ourselves. And joining us always is Kara, who is fresh off of the Prohibition marathon.

SPEAKER_03: 5:28

Hello. I've had a drink since then.

SPEAKER_01: 5:33

And you're like, and I even voted.

SPEAKER_03: 5:35

And I voted. I did, I voted this this past couple weeks, actually.

SPEAKER_01: 5:41

Yeah, so I brought it up.

SPEAKER_03: 5:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 5:44

So yeah, women's rights rides in and women's suffrage and alcohol.

SPEAKER_00: 5:50

Yep. Yep. And mobsters.

SPEAKER_03: 5:52

And mobsters.

SPEAKER_01: 5:53

Yeah. All the things. No, that was. I actually have um I have some of my uh drivers that are listening to that now. Like I've got we we've got super fans in the trucking industry.

SPEAKER_03: 6:05

All right.

SPEAKER_01: 6:06

Yeah. And at the at the place that I work, because there's like 300 forklifts running, uh, like we've got people listening to our show while they're operating forklifts.

SPEAKER_02: 6:17

Excellent.

SPEAKER_01: 6:17

That's what's I don't know how comfortable I feel because these guys are just moving back and forth, back and forth. They don't stop. In fact, at where I work, if you get run over by a forklift, that's your fault.

SPEAKER_03: 6:29

It's like traffic, I guess. Don't jay well.

SPEAKER_01: 6:34

It's yeah, it's it's not crossy road, it's crossy DC. Amazing. Yeah. And so, like, we've got we've got people that are like super fans of the show listening to how humanity has screwed things up beyond all recognition while they are operating 8,000 pound forklifts.

SPEAKER_03: 6:55

That's how we do it.

SPEAKER_01: 6:56

Yeah, we um yeah, that we may be on the news for all the wrong reasons. So, so yeah, today's episode is gonna be about the deep water horizon. This is gonna be a two-parter, uh, just because it's really hard to pinpoint. Well, it's easy to pinpoint exactly when the dumpster fire begins, but it's really hard to pinpoint when it ends.

SPEAKER_03: 7:20

That's fair. You're also talking to somebody who starts their episodes like a hundred years before the dumpster fire, so I understand.

SPEAKER_01: 7:27

Well, I'm kind of doing the same thing.

SPEAKER_03: 7:30

That's how we gotta do it, man. Historical.

SPEAKER_01: 7:32

Yeah, we got okay. So it started shortly after the Big Bang.

SPEAKER_03: 7:37

Perfect. Actually, you're pretty close. Let's hear it.

SPEAKER_01: 7:44

So, yeah, basically, uh part one here like oil and how we get the stuff. So a lot of people and and oil does get a bad rap for a lot of reasons. It's that black stuff that we see spewing out from the ground. Uh, we've all seen the opening to the uh Beverly Hillbillies, right? Where dude shoots the ground, oil comes bubbling up, and now they're super wealthy.

SPEAKER_03: 8:09

I don't know.

SPEAKER_01: 8:09

I think of There Will Be Blood, that's a very different Oh oh that's that's a good movie.

SPEAKER_03: 8:14

It's a great movie, but that's what I think of.

SPEAKER_01: 8:17

Because that really gives you a good insight into like yeah, oil is a is a nasty business.

SPEAKER_03: 8:24

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 8:26

Um, and and so many people like to think that it's from dead dinosaurs. That is actually a myth. Uh dead dinosaurs played a part, but most of the oil that we see is organic compounds, such as like plankton, plants, bacteria, smattering of dead dinosaurs, uh, regardless of what planet they come from. Um, if you're into that sort of thing. Sorry, Karen and I were talking before, just like, yeah, we know some people who think that dinosaurs never existed on Earth, that that dinosaurs came from other planets pieces that formed Earth.

SPEAKER_03: 9:07

And I really want to hear the explanation, but we're not gonna we're not gonna uh go off the rails.

SPEAKER_01: 9:13

I I I do want to hear the thought process behind that, so then I can just move on with my life. Um but yeah, it really all oil is is just organic compounds that got buried underground under tons and tons of pressure and heat, and that basically those organic compounds broke down into carbons and hydrocarbons, and that's where we get oil today. Yeah, it's believe it or not, it is a really, really abundant source, especially when we look at the fact that as it stands, the world is projected to use 105 million barrels of crude oil per day.

SPEAKER_03: 9:54

Good goodness, that's a lot of oil.

SPEAKER_01: 9:58

Yes, and America is the top producer. I thought it came from the Middle East. No, America is actually the top producer of oil in the world at 20 million barrels per day. Dang. And it's interesting is that America can't use its own oil.

SPEAKER_03: 10:13

Yeah, I've heard that before.

SPEAKER_01: 10:14

Yeah, the rif our refineries are not designed to handle American oil, which is actually a superior grade of oil, but our refineries aren't designed for it. And I guess it would I was talking to my wife about it, it would take like decades and billions and billions of dollars to change it over. So in the meantime, it's just not worth it. But if you think about it, like each barrel that you see is 55 gallons. So, like when you think about that, 105 million barrels of crude oil per day times that by 55, that's like a lot of oil.

SPEAKER_03: 10:49

That's a lot of oil. I don't feel like mathing right now. So it's too late in the day for that crap. Yeah, no, it's it's almost yeah, no.

SPEAKER_01: 10:56

But yeah, that that and that's just per day. So normally we associate oil with gasoline, um, which you get gasoline out of crude oil by distilling it, right? You take a huge vat of crude oil and you heat it up. The gasoline vapors will rise up, cool down, and then they collect it kind of like how you collect alcohol in a still.

SPEAKER_03: 11:20

I was just gonna say, so gasoline is the moonshine of the oil world.

SPEAKER_01: 11:24

Yes, perfect.

SPEAKER_03: 11:26

Yes, look at us go connecting prohibition to oil, right?

SPEAKER_01: 11:30

And and and the diesel is like the leftover stuff. Diesel's like the corn mash.

SPEAKER_03: 11:35

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_01: 11:37

Where so, like, yeah, diesel is like literally the last thing, but when you distill oil, like you can pull out all sorts of stuff from it. And gasoline is just kind of like a small part of it. We always just so associate gasoline and oil, like that's everything. No, like some of the stuff that you can get out of crude oil is like refinery gases such as methane, ethane, propane, and butane. We use a lot of that stuff, especially if you ever go camping. Yep, right. You've got gasoline, or if you're in Europe, petrol. And I like the list here. It's like for cars and other internal combustion engines. Cool. Nice. Uh, you can get nap napha, nap naphtha, nap napha. Yes. So that's a petrochemical feedstock for making plastic solvents and other chemicals, a source for high octane gasoline components. So basically, that fancy new computer that you just bought. Yeah. Yeah, you need oil for that. Not surprised. Kerosene. Cool. So kerosene is used in jet fuel heating oil. Uh paraffin. I didn't know that. I thought paraffin was like a like a traditional wax, but no, it's a kerosene-based type of wax. Um, obviously, diesel. Like if you want to buy anything from a grocery store, you need trucks running off a diesel to deliver it. Uh, my personal favorite, lube. Deja's have too much lube.

SPEAKER_03: 13:13

Deja's cringing somewhere.

SPEAKER_01: 13:15

Oh, yeah. Oh that and crabs.

SPEAKER_03: 13:18

Yeah, she's cringing somewhere. We love you, Deja.

SPEAKER_01: 13:21

She's like pounding her stuff.

SPEAKER_03: 13:24

Stop it!

SPEAKER_01: 13:26

So yeah, you you need uh yeah, you need oil for like mortar oils, greases, waxes, and polishes to reduce friction in machinery. That's a big one. Being able to have a metal on metal surface.

SPEAKER_03: 13:38

So we need oil lubrication.

SPEAKER_01: 13:42

Yeah. Everything otherwise everything would seize up. Yep. Like my um my best friend growing up, I think he had an aunt that she got an oil change on her car, but they didn't put any oil in. And she was just driving it, and she's like, Man, why does my car sound weird?

SPEAKER_03: 14:01

That's awful. Did it just seize up and then?

SPEAKER_01: 14:03

It started knocking and then screeching, and then it started overheating, and then within like five miles, the whole car just seized up and melted together.

SPEAKER_03: 14:16

Um, that's terrible. For my friends who do anything, construction, home projects, you're drilling into metal for some reason. Um, and you're wondering why your drill bits keep breaking, it's because you're not using oil.

SPEAKER_01: 14:30

Yep.

SPEAKER_03: 14:30

Blue bit up.

SPEAKER_01: 14:31

Yep, because oil sheds heat.

SPEAKER_03: 14:33

Yep, that's the worst thing you can get when you're doing anything, metal metal. Heat.

SPEAKER_01: 14:38

Yeah, yep. Uh, we also get asphalt and bitumen. I don't know what bitumen is, but I know asphalt.

SPEAKER_03: 14:46

Paving roads, roofing, and waterproofing.

SPEAKER_01: 14:49

Yes. Cool. And then my personal favorite, petroleum coke.

SPEAKER_03: 14:54

Sick. What is that?

SPEAKER_01: 14:56

I guess it's used for electrodes and solid fuel. Huh. So I I have no idea what petroleum coke is. I'm a huge Coke fan.

SPEAKER_03: 15:06

I'm afraid to Google it.

SPEAKER_01: 15:08

I feel like you can make a like a killer energy drink out of that. Just call it petroleum coke.

SPEAKER_03: 15:13

Actually, that's good branding. You're not wrong.

SPEAKER_01: 15:15

Yeah, like liquid death and and all that. Like, yeah, petroleum coke.

SPEAKER_03: 15:21

That'll get the millennials on it.

SPEAKER_01: 15:23

Yes.

SPEAKER_03: 15:24

We love that stuff.

SPEAKER_01: 15:25

And the caption you put on the bottom of it, it's like it hits you quicker if you snort it.

SPEAKER_03: 15:29

Perfect. We got something going here. Somebody do that.

SPEAKER_01: 15:34

Yeah, somebody, yeah. Check out our merch store for some petroleum coke. So, yeah, it's safe to say that oil is useful beyond than just what we associate with gasoline. So we often think about like when we go to the gas station and we see like, oh, the price per barrel is like, you know,$70 per barrel. And then when we see like$4 a gallon, we're like, oh, well, it's$4 a gallon because it's this much money per barrel of oil. When in reality, uh the gasoline prices is a very small part of the oil industry. So the first American oil well was drilled in Titusville, PA, which I thought was interesting because I used to have a customer up in that area in 1859. And this was at an astonishing depth of 69.5 feet. That that was considered insane.

SPEAKER_03: 16:32

I mean, for the time, I can see, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 16:35

Yeah. Yeah. And when I when I kind of get into like some of the science behind drilling, like you'll see that okay, yeah, we just didn't have the technology to really go beyond that. But 69.5 feet was considered pretty impressive. So today there are nearly 5 million oil wells across the world, and they are drilled down to thousands and thousands of feet. We're talking like 10, 15, 20,000 feet. And in the case of like the deep water horizon, um, which was an offshore uh drill rig, that thing held the record at like 34,500 feet.

SPEAKER_04: 17:16

Woo!

SPEAKER_01: 17:18

Yeah, that's like what six and a half, almost seven miles.

SPEAKER_03: 17:23

That sounds right. That's a lot of that's some math and yeah, that is that that's that that that's a deep hole.

SPEAKER_01: 17:31

And I think uh the the Soviet Union holds the record because they tried drilling uh like as far as like they wanted to hold a world record, and they drilled down so far that the heat of the Earth's crust was actually starting to melt drill bits and they couldn't go any further. But I think that was like uh hundred some odd thousand feet.

SPEAKER_03: 17:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 17:52

Because the the Soviet Union of it all.

SPEAKER_03: 17:55

That's also just what dudes do. Oh, you went down that far? I can go further.

unknown: 18:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 18:04

Oh, you landed on the moon? We dug a deep hole.

SPEAKER_03: 18:09

Yeah, we went the opposite direction.

SPEAKER_01: 18:14

Take that, you you freaking imperial pigs. So there's a catch though. There's only so much land on Earth that can be drilled. So, like, yeah, sure, America has a ton of land, has a ton of oil, but when you factor in that Earth is 70% water and only 30% land, yeah, you're eventually gonna run out of land.

SPEAKER_05: 18:39

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 18:40

And and there was a time in American history, especially like in Texas and whatnot, where there was just like a forest of oil rigs as far as the eye could see.

SPEAKER_03: 18:52

There are pictures, you can find them.

SPEAKER_01: 18:54

Yeah. And for me, what blows my mind is the coast of California.

SPEAKER_03: 18:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 18:58

So like when you go to like Long Beach or Venice or any of the other 500 beaches that are in like the LA, I don't know, is it valley basin?

SPEAKER_03: 19:09

I don't know what it would be the um, I would just say the LA area.

SPEAKER_01: 19:14

Okay. So all that coastline in like the early 19th century, um, I'm sorry, late 19th century going into like the early 1940s, all that coastline was nothing but oil rigs.

SPEAKER_05: 19:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 19:28

So like when you see videos or like film reels of California, like there's not a lot of stuff out there involving the beaches.

SPEAKER_03: 19:38

Not until you get to the 50s, I think.

SPEAKER_01: 19:41

Yeah. Because it was shortly after World War II that things started to change.

SPEAKER_03: 19:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 19:46

And uh they started taking down these these oil rigs. But yeah, you can you can look it up of like early 1900s, LA coastline, and we've got pictures that we'll we'll post up on our website. Days stemstofire.com. Um, but yeah, just from north to south, it was just nothing but oil rigs all across the beaches. And then when they were like, hmm, we can build piers, and those piers can go out into the ocean, and we can build more oil rigs. And it was really interesting is that there's still houses in California where they have like little mini oil rigs in their backyard, just pumping away, doing their thing. Like, I don't know, to me, that's just crazy. So thousands of spiring oil towers line the coastlines of California and piers jetted out in the ocean as far as possible, trying to suck up as much of the crude oil as possible. So there was this idea that like you could put an oil rig in the ground, and then you can then send pipes out horizontally to just try to absorb more of the surrounding oil. Um like roots. What's that?

SPEAKER_03: 21:01

Like roots, like a root system for a plant. Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 21:04

Yeah. Well, it was mentioned in There Will Be Blood.

SPEAKER_03: 21:07

Yeah, that's I think that's why I was like, wait.

SPEAKER_01: 21:10

Yeah. He's like, yeah, that the the antagonist is like, Well, you don't have mineral rights to my land. And then I guess he's the protagonist. He's like, I don't need it.

SPEAKER_03: 21:22

I remember that. Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 21:23

He's like, I just went underground and then I just went horizontally into your land and I just pulled everything out. So sounds like a personal problem.

SPEAKER_03: 21:34

Yeah, whoever has not seen There Will Be Blood, please go watch it. And if you come across an opportunity to watch it in the theater, do it.

SPEAKER_01: 21:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 21:42

That's all I'll say.

SPEAKER_01: 21:43

Yeah, that had uh what, Daniel Day Lewis in it?

SPEAKER_03: 21:45

Yep. It's one of his last movies, I think.

SPEAKER_01: 21:47

Yeah, one of his last ones, yeah. He's back now. I guess he's coming out of retirement.

SPEAKER_03: 21:51

Oh, he's a great actor. I wonder what he'll do next.

SPEAKER_01: 21:55

Yeah, yeah, he he does really good with historical pieces. He does. But anyways, anyway, uh in 1911, the Gulf Refining Company in Louisiana had a different strategy. Let's take an oil wheel, strap a bunch of floaty things on it, use a tugboat, and push it out a few miles off the coast of uh out into the the Gulf of Mexico.

SPEAKER_03: 22:18

See, on paper, that sounds really sketchy.

SPEAKER_01: 22:22

Uh yeah. Because like I feel like when you're drilling hundreds of feet into the water, like how do you stabilize that thing?

SPEAKER_03: 22:31

Yeah. How does it not tip over?

SPEAKER_01: 22:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 22:34

If it's on a floaty thing. That's what I wanted to do.

SPEAKER_01: 22:37

With the clever use of floaty things.

SPEAKER_03: 22:40

Yeah. I mean, I appreciate the engineering, but it sounds really sketchy.

SPEAKER_01: 22:45

Well, I think what they did is they pushed it out there, and then they built like a structure that would anchor to the ground, like to the ocean floor. It's it wasn't until much later that we got to the like the deep water horizon where it was like an independent free-floating drill rig, and it used GPS and propellers to kind of like anchor itself in place.

SPEAKER_03: 23:08

Even that sounds sketchy. Uh the whole thing is just sketchy.

SPEAKER_01: 23:12

Yeah, but I mean it seems to work because it's true.

SPEAKER_03: 23:15

I mean, you're not wrong.

SPEAKER_01: 23:16

But there's also different types of oil rigs.

SPEAKER_03: 23:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 23:19

Because you've got ones that are like anchored, like shallow waters at like only like a hundred feet or something like that. Then you've got other ones that are anchored like a thousand or so feet, and then it goes deeper and deeper. And then once you get past a certain point, then they're like a free-floating like city. And then they drop like four or five anchors around them, and then they use these props and GPS to like maintain their location perfectly. It's pretty trippy stuff. Interestingly enough, uh, the pressures of the upcoming oil could be used to push oil via pipes onto nearby ships. So you they would they they would push these little oil rigs out, and then they would have a ship park up next to it, and they would pump oil straight from the little tiny oil rigged right into the ship. And like, okay, that's kind of clever. I think that's kind of how like the Torre Canyon got filled up was through something like that.

SPEAKER_04: 24:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 24:17

So, due to the strategy, today, 30% of that five million oil wells on Earth are water-based. Uh, this helped clean up many of the coastlines, um, the coastline-based oil wells. And if you go to California today, you don't really see those anymore.

SPEAKER_03: 24:33

Yeah, they're way out in the distance. Like you can still see them, but they're e little well, they look ity little tiny because they're so far away.

SPEAKER_01: 24:40

Yeah, they're out there like 20, 30 miles.

SPEAKER_03: 24:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 24:43

Um, but yeah, like if you were to go to like the coast, uh like if you could bring like a backhoe and start digging like this the super deep hole on the beaches, which they will never allow you to do, you will actually find a lot of the foundations that these oil rigs used to sit on.

SPEAKER_03: 25:03

I believe it.

SPEAKER_01: 25:04

Yeah, way, way back in the day. So, yeah, these these floating oil rigs did a great job to clean up California. So you don't see them anymore. And you're yeah, but what they are now are these tiny little dotted oil rigs way off in the distance. And at night you can see the little pilot flame.

SPEAKER_03: 25:22

Yeah, you can see the little little lights.

SPEAKER_01: 25:25

Yep, little yeah, they have like a little flame that comes up because when you drill for oil, it releases uh flammable gases. And so they just feed that through a separate pipe and burn it off.

SPEAKER_03: 25:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 25:37

So yeah, yeah, you can see those at night.

SPEAKER_03: 25:39

Oil rig parts.

SPEAKER_01: 25:41

Uh yes, yeah. Well little oil poots. Um these things are today, these things are like literal floating cities. And today they hold or they can process about 250,000 barrels of oil a day.

SPEAKER_03: 26:02

Do you know the average amount of employees are on an oil rig on any given day? Just curious.

SPEAKER_01: 26:09

Um, I know what the uh Deepwater Horizon was about 100 to 150.

SPEAKER_03: 26:13

Okay. Yeah, because I know there's a lot of people, but I just wasn't sure what the number is.

SPEAKER_01: 26:18

Yeah, because you you I mean, you've got everybody from roughnecks, you've got electricians, you've got engineers. Uh you you you have to have cooks, like it it they are cities, and I think today I would say between 100 to 200 people.

SPEAKER_03: 26:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 26:35

And and what what it is, they they're flowing out in like two-week shifts. So you'd go out, work two weeks, and you work, and I we'll elaborate a little bit more on this later, but like you get out there and you are out there for two weeks and you're working set like 24-7.

SPEAKER_03: 26:52

You're out there Yeah, it's work and sleep and work and sleep.

SPEAKER_01: 26:56

Uh if even that, it's like a lot of people report like 18-hour days.

SPEAKER_03: 27:01

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 27:01

The nice thing is that when you get back, you're off for like three weeks.

SPEAKER_03: 27:05

Right. So if that's your gym, it works for you, you you go for it.

SPEAKER_01: 27:09

Yeah. I mean, and if you're good at it, you can make halfway decent money.

SPEAKER_03: 27:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 27:14

So yeah, uh, these ore rigs could also be sent out to a range of about 250 miles. Um, and these things can cost billions of dollars to make, and they take about two to five years to build because you're literally building a floating city.

SPEAKER_03: 27:31

Yeah, and the things are massive, so I'm not surprised.

SPEAKER_01: 27:34

So part two. Before we pump, we need to drill. So when we see these oil rigs, we like to like we we're we're just seeing the end product, we're not actually seeing the weeks, if not months, of work uh that goes into actually getting the the source ready to oh, oh boy. It's a good thing you don't have smell of vision because I just vomited into my mic.

SPEAKER_03: 28:06

Oh, that poor mic.

SPEAKER_01: 28:08

Oh yeah. Gonna smell like cheese here pretty soon. But yeah, when we see these giant oil rigs, we like we're just seeing the end product. We're not actually seeing what went on to get that oil. So you can't just pick a spot and just start drilling. That's how it worked in the 1800s. Like they would literally in the 1800s, like, well, we know there was oil over there.

SPEAKER_03: 28:36

Let's try over here.

SPEAKER_01: 28:37

Yeah, let's go this way a thousand yards and drill a hole, and let's go that way and drill a hole. Uh, have you ever seen the um oh what is it? The uh that gemstone that comes from Australia. Um oh man, it's like a whitish rock, it has all the colors in it.

SPEAKER_03: 28:59

It's it sounds like opal. Opal, yes.

SPEAKER_01: 29:02

Yeah, so like Australia sits on a huge deposit of opal, but there's no cool way to find it. So it's just drill and drill and drill. And there's parts of Australia where you have to be careful where you walk because you could fall down like a 200-foot hole, and there's just thousands of them everywhere. All because you can't just scan the ground and like, oh well, here we go. Let's go find opal here. The only way you can do it is by doing uh drilling. That's kind of how it worked in the 1800s. Um, and back then, like they can only go down to maybe at like especially in the late 1800s, like a couple hundred feet. And that worked fine, right? The 1800s, that was okay because there wasn't that many automobiles, plastics weren't even a thing yet. It was mainly just gas lamps.

SPEAKER_03: 29:55

Yeah, so they didn't need a ton of oil yet.

SPEAKER_01: 29:59

Yeah, the supply and the demand work together nicely. Now the demand is through the roof, yeah, and we've got to be more scientific about it. So bust out sonic waves.

SPEAKER_03: 30:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 30:16

So the way that it works now is that you have a survey ship go out, and the back end of the ship, they have like this sonic wave projector that just blasts the ocean. I can't imagine it's good for fish. Uh, it's gotta drive sharks wild. Um, but basically the way this thing works is that it shoots out this mega blast of sound into the ocean. And the idea is that different frequencies of sound will penetrate different levels of the bottom of the ocean.

SPEAKER_05: 30:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 30:55

And then it would bounce up. So different frequencies would hit the it would hit the bottom of the ocean, go down a certain distance, and then certain frequencies would bounce off certain layers, and then they would tow like this giant like sound receiver behind the ship, and then from there, they basically can get like a ultrasound of the bottom of the ocean, and what they really look for are salt deposits. So basically, there's what's known as the salt domes, and there are these giant massive collections of salt deep under the bottom of the ocean, and they've noticed that oil tends to pool up around these salt domes. So when they find a salt dome, it's a pretty good idea, it's a good indicator that there's probably oil in that area.

SPEAKER_03: 31:44

Why is the oil attracted to the salt?

SPEAKER_01: 31:47

Um, I'm not sure, but I think, and this is just science by Ed. I have a PhD in nothing, but I have a funny feeling that whenever you have organic compounds breaking down, turning into hydrocarbons, there are a lot of salts inside organic compounds, and those salts got to go somewhere, and so they kind of like crystallize like salt crystals, and they form like these giant domes of salt, you know, thousands of feet underneath the ground, and then all everything that wasn't salty, like through organic compounds, turns into oil.

SPEAKER_03: 32:30

That would make sense.

SPEAKER_01: 32:31

I could see that's just my theory. I have no idea if it's accurate, but it's not a good thing.

SPEAKER_03: 32:38

I could see I could see it.

SPEAKER_01: 32:40

Yeah. Somebody who I wonder if it works the same way on land.

SPEAKER_03: 32:44

I don't know. Somebody who knows more about this stuff, please let us know. Because Ed knows more about me, about this stuff, so therefore.

SPEAKER_01: 32:54

Yeah, if anybody's out there just like screaming at your your car stereo because I'm a I'm a blasted idiot on this, you know, hit us up at the daysdumsterfire.com or um uh was it daysdumsterfire or gmail.com.

SPEAKER_03: 33:12

That's it.

SPEAKER_01: 33:13

Yep, yeah, but yeah, hit us up. Um, I'm kind of curious to get an expert's opinion on like why why do you see salt domes and then you can associate oil with it? Maybe organic creatures were saltier back then. I mean I don't know. Yeah. I may have to I may have to look into that. So uh to drill into the earth, you just don't use a typical drill bit, right? Like when you think of a drill bit, people think of like a wood bit where it's got like a uh it's a helically wrapped piece of metal uh rod, and then on the ends of it has like a chisel cut on it. And what that's what does the cutting is that when that turns, that digs into the wood, and then the helical cut parts that go around the drill bit, that's just for the sole purpose of collecting the the saw or the wood material and pull it out of out of the uh out of the wood. Um it doesn't quite work like that when you're trying to drill into the ground. You you've got to get a little bit more creative. So to drill into the earth, you don't use a typical drill bit that you would use for wood. A wood bit, um, like I just mentioned, uh it cuts into the wood and then it uses the helical cutouts to bring it up. In the olden days, drill bits uh used to drill for oil were like straight rods with a tip that had like a harder metal at the end of it, so they had like um almost like teeth that would you would turn that and then it would just grind its way through the rock. Um, that works fine. The problem is that uh in the old days they didn't have a way of getting the pulverized rock up, so they could only go down so far before all the sediment, dust, and ground up rock would just bind everything up.

SPEAKER_03: 35:09

And you're just trying to drill into a hole of sand at that point.

SPEAKER_01: 35:13

Yeah, yeah, it's like flour.

SPEAKER_03: 35:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 35:16

Like, yeah, you're you're trying to like punch your way through a bag of flour kind of a thing. So that's why the reason why the early wells weren't very deep, you know, anywhere between 20 and 60 feet. However, by the 1900s, things changed where we could drill up to hundreds of feet by using water to flush off the debris. So basically, drill bit goes into the hole, it starts turning, and then you take pressurized water and then you blast that water into the hole while it's drilling, and then it it will blow all the uh debris and crap out. So that helps significantly. Uh, today we use a substance that is affectionately as mud. If you ever look at this stuff, you can see why it's called mud. It looks like mud. It's brown, it's nasty, but this stuff makes it literally possible to drill like miles underground. So mud or drilling fluid is made of a base of either water oil or synthetic oil, and it's mixed with various different minerals to cool the drill bit, remove debris from the bottom of the borehole via hydraulics, and lubricate the cutting bit. Since today they're made out of like, if you look at these cutting bits now, they look like they have like three wheels that kind of like diverge and converge at the same time, and those wheels spin independently of each other, and then they've got like hardened, like carbide teeth on them. So the drill bit is spinning, those wheels are spinning with the teeth on it, and it really looks like a device that would make anybody talk.

SPEAKER_03: 36:52

Yeah, that sounds horrifying.

SPEAKER_01: 36:54

Yeah, yeah. Like if you if you went to a proctologist and they pulled out something that looked like that, you're running out screaming. It's just uh-uh. That but it works, and it works very well. And the formulas for mud are wild because the mixture changes per location, and it is a science. They've got a factor in temperature, proposed depth, uh, type of drilling machinery, type of cutting bit, and all sorts of other parameters. And we're talking, you know, 5% this, 5% that, adjusting this weight by like 12%. It is like being one of these guys that puts mud together is that that's a career in itself. So once there's a reasonable idea of where the oil could be uh under the ocean, a drill rig or a mobile offshore drilling unit or a modu is sent out to get to work. That's what the deep water horizon was. It wasn't necessarily an oil rig, although it's not uncommon for a drilling rig to limelight as an oil rig. So, like the drill rig will find the oil and then it'll start pumping oil until they can bring out a proper oil rig. And then it's like then it's it's mass production for decades after that. The drill rig comes out and positions itself based on the GPS coordinates of this where the search vessel identified. Uh, the rig will then send down a drill to the ocean floor and begin what is known as spudding, or in other words, it's just starting the borehole in the bottom of the ocean. As the drill extends into the ocean floor about 30 feet, the drill stops, and then another extension is added to what is known as a drill string. So when you see videos of these guys drilling, like they drill, drill, drill, drill, drill, stop, and then they grab another extension, and then they screw that extension on, they clamp it, and then they drill, drill, drill, drill. So they go down in like 30 feet increments, and they do this over and over and over again to a point where they're getting into like thousands of um feet at a time. So there's like no room for error. This is considered one of the more dangerous jobs out there because it is like you've got these giant clamps that if you have a finger in the way, it will just pinch them off. Like it will crush your arm. And these guys are just, you know, I think they're paid per paid per the foot. So it's in their best interest to get down there as fast as possible. So eventually, a device called a blowout preventer. So I feel like after you eat Taco Bell, you need a blow up preventer.

SPEAKER_03: 39:45

I feel like the older you get, the more you need it. You know?

SPEAKER_01: 39:49

Actually, when you have a baby, you really wish you had a blowout preventer.

SPEAKER_03: 39:54

Yeah, you're not wrong.

SPEAKER_01: 39:56

Because when those babies have a blowout, like they explode.

SPEAKER_03: 40:00

Yeah, you're right.

unknown: 40:03

Dang.

SPEAKER_01: 40:06

I believe you so a blowout preventer uh sent down it is sent down to the hole, so where it was sputted, you know, and then they get down deep enough. They put this blow-up preventer on there, and then a what is known as a riser is sent through the middle of the blow-up preventer. So basically, what a blow-up preventer is, it's a massive hydraulically powered set of clamps that once initiated would try and close off the well pipe. Um so basically, if you look at it, it almost kind of looks like a uh like a weird like piston engine. So you've got your your um you get the blow preventer, and then you drill uh the riser through that, and then basically the bottom part of it has a series of clamps that when initiated, it will pinch around the riser and it will cut off the flow of mud. Okay. Then as you go up and up and up, you have what is known as a uh a dead hand mechanism or a blind clamp, and these are like two diamond carbide blades. So let's say you are dealing with a massive amount of pressure coming out of this oil well that's going to be uncontrollable. You would close those clamps in the bottom. If that didn't work, you would have what's known as annulars up at the top. Those annulars are kind of like donut-shaped balloons, and when they're inflated, they pinch off the actual flow of oil. They're annulars because they're round, they're like donuts. And the idea is like that's like your first line of defense. If that doesn't work, then you have to resort to those clamps. If that doesn't work, then you resort to the dead hand, which is basically a series of carbide blades that physically cuts through the entire riser and permanently seals the whole thing off.

SPEAKER_04: 42:16

Dang.

SPEAKER_01: 42:17

So this is that is like your last ditch thing. Like this is that's your e-breaking. What's that?

SPEAKER_03: 42:25

That's your e-break.

SPEAKER_01: 42:27

Uh yeah, yeah. The BOP is probably one of the most important devices in all of oil drilling. It is the thing that like if if if you run into problems and this oil that's under the ocean, it is under thousands of pounds of pressure.

SPEAKER_03: 42:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 42:45

And once you access that, that those gases and everything are just wanting to escape. So that that BOP is the thing that controls whether or not everything's going to explode violently.

SPEAKER_03: 43:01

Sweet. That's great.

SPEAKER_01: 43:03

So yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 43:04

I feel like this is um some foreshadowings happening right now.

SPEAKER_01: 43:07

Uh yes. Yeah. Yeah. Because we're gonna we're gonna talk about the BOP a little bit in this episode, but then we're really gonna dive into it in the next one. No pun intended.

unknown: 43:15

Cool, cool, cool.

SPEAKER_01: 43:16

Oh, yeah. And so the BOP, um, or blow up preventer, it sits on a concrete platform. So basically, you spud your hole and then you pour down like dozens and dozens of feet of concrete that's like a foundation that surrounds the the the borehole, and then you mount your BOP on top of that, and then from there, it's just drilling and drilling and drilling. You know, it's just you know, the the BOP just kind of chills out there unless it's absolutely needed. To kind of complicate things a little more, around the riser and the and like the the borehole, there's another pipe that goes around that. That is the pipe. So when you're drilling, you pump mud down the borehole. So it goes all the way down to the tip of the the drill bit, cools everything down. It's a super heavy, dense fluid. It acts kind of like a plug because it's so heavy, it's heavier than oil, so that if gases do leak out, if things do go sideways or whatever, that mud helps kind of keep things under control. And then it will go down and around this outside, it will go like around the borehole, and then it can be pumped back up to the rig where then it's filtered, recycled, and then pumped back down. So it goes down the the bore hole, hits the drill bit, does its business, goes around the drill bit, and then it goes back up to the surface for recycling.

SPEAKER_03: 44:47

Interesting. That's cool.

SPEAKER_01: 44:48

Yeah, that's that's how they clear out debris and and all that stuff. So it's kind of a kind of a cool way of doing it. It's uh that mud serves so much of a purpose. It is everything to uh a rough neck. Like that is yeah, it's the lubricant, it is a plug, it is a way to cool things down, it's a way to get rid of debris. Without that mud, man, you're you're in trouble. As they get deeper and deeper, what they do is they switch to smaller and smaller drill bits. And so, like the hole at the top could be, you know, 10, 12 inches in diameter. By the time they actually get down to where the oil is, it could just be a few inches in diameter. And the idea is this it once you hit something with a massive amount of pressure, it's gonna go through that small little hole and then dissipate as it gets higher up because the hole's getting bigger. Okay. As opposed to like saying, let's say you start with a small hole at the top and then it gets bigger and bigger and bigger as you go down. You hit all that pressure, that pressure is gonna fill up that large volume of space, and then it's only gonna increase in pressure as it gets smaller and smaller and smaller. So, for example, you can take like a pipe, right? You can take a uh say a four-inch diameter pipe has water running through it at say like 10 psi. If you neck that pipe down to a smaller and smaller pipe, like say like down to a half inch, that 10 psi is gonna skyrocket to like hundreds of psi. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 46:22

Yeah, it's like um when you have a water hose and you change the little nozzle to a smaller hole and it goes.

unknown: 46:28

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 46:28

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It goes further that way. So yeah, that's exactly how it works. But with the here, it it with this case it's backwards. You start big, go small, so then when you do hit that pressure, it will only dissipate as it goes up, so it'll only go down.

SPEAKER_03: 46:43

I'm just picturing one of those old school like uh lightsaber toys where it's the only reason it extends is because it's it nests. That's what it reminds me of.

SPEAKER_01: 46:53

Yeah. And so, like the other reason why um they make the hole smaller and smaller as they go deeper is that it's less material that needs to be pumped back up. Because if that mud is so heavy, like trying to get that thousands of feet back up to the surface, like you need a mega pump for something like that. Like, yeah. So obviously, if you make it smaller and smaller, it makes it easier to maintain. So once oil is detected, the shaft is essentially sealed off and prepared for an old rig to start to come out and collect the oil and use the pressure that the oil is under to push itself through a series of underwater network of pipes that are connected to a series of rigs in the area. So when you see, like you can actually look up a map of this, there's thousands of miles of underwater pipes connecting all these different oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. And so, like, all these oil rigs are kind of networked together. And instead of having the oil come up to the surface to be put onto a ship, it just gets basically the pressure just goes up to the where the uh BOP is, and then it just gets outsourced or outconnected to a network of other pipes that then eventually makes its way to the coast.

SPEAKER_03: 48:08

Okay. Makes sense.

SPEAKER_01: 48:10

And then from there you don't need any ships, you can just pipe it to wherever refinery you need. It's yeah, it's kind of a clever, uh, kind of a clever way of of uh doing things. You you're using the pressure that the stuff is under uh to get it to where you need to go versus using mechanical means.

SPEAKER_04: 48:26

Work smarter, not harder.

SPEAKER_01: 48:27

Right? Yep. So that is a very, very basic explanation of how a drill rig works. I've skipped about 5,000 steps, but hopefully this gives you an idea of the significance of what happened with the deep water horizon.

SPEAKER_03: 48:44

Cool. Well, hey, I learned something new today. I had no idea how any of that works.

SPEAKER_01: 48:49

So yeah, yeah, it's it's a pretty incredible piece of engineering, and the math and the precision that goes into this is it is just mind-blowing to me.

SPEAKER_03: 48:59

I believe it.

SPEAKER_01: 49:00

So now that we're all expert drillers, great.

SPEAKER_03: 49:05

Go ahead. Yes, I'm ready.

SPEAKER_01: 49:08

I'll send you your certificate in the mail. It may be drawn in crayon.

SPEAKER_03: 49:12

Perfect. As long as that crayon is yellow, that's all I care about.

SPEAKER_01: 49:18

Yeah, yeah, yellow and white paper. That's it. Here we go.

SPEAKER_02: 49:22

I'm framing that one.

SPEAKER_01: 49:24

Part three, the deep water horizon. So now let's get into the dumpster fire here, or at least the beginnings of it. So Deepwater Horizon commissioned in 2001. Uh, it was a semi-submersible, dynamically positioned drill/slash oil rig, which spanned 400 feet by 260 feet, and it was about 136 feet tall with the Derek sitting at about 220 feet.

SPEAKER_03: 49:53

Sweet. That's really big.

SPEAKER_01: 49:55

So, yeah, semi-submersible, meaning that like it sat on on these pontoons, and so like when they bring it out there, it's funny because it's like super high up in the air, and it's just like bobbing along on these pontoons. It's got like these four legs that stick out. They look really funny when they're out there, but when they actually get out to the position, they will they will fill those pontoons with a certain amount of water, which will bring the whole thing down. They don't want the oil rig to sit flush with the ocean, they actually want above uh like 100-200 feet, and then those pontoons stay under water. So when there's waves coming by, it just goes around like you like these oil rigs can sustain hurricanes and these tidal forces.

SPEAKER_03: 50:42

It's amazing to me because it sounds so sketchy.

SPEAKER_01: 50:45

Yeah, it's really sketchy, but when you understand that when you see a wave, you're not actually seeing water move per se, you're seeing the molecules of the water kind of go up and down, and that up and down motion is how it transfers the energy to the coastline. So, like, yeah, they they they submerge like halfway down, and that's that's why when you look at these oil rigs, they have those four giant pillars underneath. Uh, that's done on purpose so that the waves have absolutely no effect on on the functionality, which I thought was kind of interesting. And and those pontoons have a series of propellers underneath that they can use to like turn the rig, go forward or backwards, maintain its position. And these things are like automated. It is like they're connected to GPS, and it's incredible the amount of precision. Because if you think about it, that thing is sitting up there, you know, a couple hundred feet above the water. It's got a pipe going tens of thousands of feet below. You know, you can't have that thing moving around because it's going to be torquing that riser to like no end. It'll want to break it.

SPEAKER_03: 51:58

Yeah. There would be too much tension on something like that. It'll break it, snap it easy.

SPEAKER_01: 52:04

Yeah. Or it'll warp it in a way that will make other things ineffective.

SPEAKER_03: 52:09

Or it'll blow something up.

SPEAKER_01: 52:11

Or it'll blow something up. So the rig itself was capable of maintaining a drill shaft about 10,000 feet below the water. And once it got to the bottom, it could drill up to about 35,000 feet underground, which at that time was the world record. Uh, the Deepwater Horizon was built in South Korea by the Hyundai Heavy Industries and was operated by TransOcean. However, it was leased out to British Petroleum or BP for a series of contracts ranging from 2001 to 2004, 2005 to 2009, and then 2010 to 2013.

SPEAKER_05: 52:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 52:47

So, in other words, British Petroleum would go to Transocean, hire Transocean to bring out one of their drill rigs to begin drilling for a BP oil rig to go on it.

SPEAKER_03: 53:02

To put a Hyundai rig on it?

SPEAKER_01: 53:04

Uh no, this that that the the Hyundai Heavy Industries was the company that manufactured it. Oh, oh, oh. So basically, Transocean would write a check to Hyundai Heavy Industries and give them the schematics to build the drill rig. They would build it and then ship it over to Trans Ocean, and then Transocean would staff it. So now you've got this bright, shiny new oil drill rig with a crew, and then British Petroleum's like, okay, I'm gonna pay you guys to start drilling this hole for us.

SPEAKER_03: 53:40

Got it. Okay, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01: 53:42

And it gets a little more complicated too because like each rig is especially like the oil rigs, it could be like 25% is owned by this company, 35% is owned by this other company, 20% is owned by that company. So like all these oil companies have this weird network of like part ownership of all these rigs. And the reason being is that you know the contract for the uh Deepwater Horizon was$544 million or about$500,000 a day. So the rig itself cost about$560 million to put together, and it was insured for that amount of money as well. So the whole rig was powered by six Wartzilla 18 V32 7.2 megawatt diesel engines with six AC backup generators.

SPEAKER_03: 54:42

That's gibberish to me. What does that mean?

SPEAKER_01: 54:44

So there was six engines, diesel engines, right? Your most diesel engines that you're used to seeing are like a V8.

SPEAKER_03: 54:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 54:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_03: 54:54

Uh is a V32. Is that what that means?

SPEAKER_01: 54:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 54:58

Awesome. Okay, that makes sense now.

SPEAKER_01: 55:00

Yep, times that by six, and I think actually, no, I'm sorry. I think they're 18. There's 18 cylinders, and I think the 32 is how many liters? Like that's like the volume.

SPEAKER_03: 55:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 55:14

I think.

SPEAKER_03: 55:15

In other words, it's just a giant diesel engine.

SPEAKER_01: 55:18

But freaking big engine.

SPEAKER_03: 55:20

Okay, cool.

SPEAKER_01: 55:21

Yeah, these these things are are humongo. So keep this in mind. We're we're gonna be like, don't forget about the this little part here about the engines because they come back with a vengeance.

SPEAKER_03: 55:33

Sweet.

SPEAKER_01: 55:34

So uh under the water on the pontoons, eight Kamewa 5.5 megawatt fixed propeller azimuth thrusters. So, in other words, the pontoons had these these good-sized electric thrusters that could be used to position the uh deepwater horizon, move it around, turn it. Um so there's a lot of tech in this thing. Uh, the deepwater horizon was heralded as lucky and celebrated as one of the most powerful rigs in the world at the time. Its safety record was legendary. Uh, I think it went seven years with no incidences that caused a stall in production.

SPEAKER_03: 56:14

Is that why they called it Lucky?

SPEAKER_01: 56:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 56:17

Cool.

SPEAKER_01: 56:18

Um, on February 10th or February 2010, the Deepwater Ryzen was sent out to the Makando site um about 40 miles south of Louisiana to begin drilling with a crew of 126 that had to be helicoptered in on three-week shifts. Uh sorry, I said two weeks earlier, three-week shifts, which include 12-hour consecutive shifts. So that means there was like no days off. When you got on that oil rig, it was three weeks, 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Sick. But you also get a lot of time off afterwards. So it's kind of like the uh saturation divers. Like they go out for a couple weeks at a time and then they're like off for like a month.

SPEAKER_03: 56:59

Yeah, that's kind of what it reminded me of.

SPEAKER_01: 57:02

Yeah, that that's that's a fun episode too. Uh the saturation divers, the uh Bifard Dolphin incident.

SPEAKER_03: 57:08

Yeah, that's a crazy one. It's good.

SPEAKER_01: 57:10

Uh yeah, that one um learned Extruded Human is the best way to describe that one.

SPEAKER_03: 57:14

You know what's funny? Because of that episode, I understood the which we should do an episode on this, but there's a movie about a guy, one of those divers who got stuck down there. Like he was trying to repair something, a cage or whatever, and he got stuck. Oh. Yeah, I'll send it to you. I I don't remember what it was called, but it was it was pretty good. It had the Woody Harrelson in it. Yeah, it had Woody Harrelson and uh Simo Leo in it.

unknown: 57:42

Huh.

SPEAKER_03: 57:42

It really happened too. I actually went and looked it up, and the guy's still alive, amazingly enough, and yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 57:48

Wow, okay.

SPEAKER_03: 57:49

Yeah, I'll send that to you. It was good. But I understood that because of that episode. So yes, go listen. Go listen to it.

SPEAKER_01: 57:55

Look at you learning sciencey stuff.

SPEAKER_03: 57:56

I know.

SPEAKER_01: 57:57

On um, yeah, February 10th, uh Deep Order Rosen was sent out to the Makando site about 40 miles uh south of Louisiana, and it had a hundred and twenty-six crew, and they worked 12-hour shifts. Uh later on, politicians argued that excessive shifts is what led to the disaster that was about to take place on April 20th, 2010. I don't know. Uh, we're gonna dive way more into the controversy that happened afterwards and the blame game and all that kind of stuff. I think everybody's wrong.

SPEAKER_05: 58:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 58:30

I I I have a theory um based on my extensive background of literally minutes of research um that I think will really shed light on what really happened, but we'll get there. So they started in February. Uh, by March, it was evident that the drilling was not going according to plan. The process was only supposed to take like three, four weeks.

SPEAKER_03: 58:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 58:56

By the time March rolled around, it was just like, okay, what's going on? It was like delay after delay after delay. There was a lot of like once these delays started hitting, then like BP started sending out more and more people to investigate why uh and what's going on. And I can't like they came in and they started making changes after changes after changes, and it was kind of annoying, especially for Transocean. They're like, guys, we know what we're doing, this is a dangerous spot. Just leave us alone and give us a time.

SPEAKER_05: 59:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 59:31

From BP's perspective, I can understand where they're coming from because they were burning through a million dollars a day.

unknown: 59:40

Oof.

SPEAKER_01: 59:41

That's how much it cost to operate and drill and all that stuff. So when this thing was like 45 days late, it was 45 million dollars over budget.

SPEAKER_04: 59:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 59:53

So, like, I I can kind of see where BP's coming from a little bit.

SPEAKER_03: 59:57

I see both sides. I get it.

SPEAKER_01: 59:58

Yeah, yeah. So, like these delays were were very costly. Yeah. Uh one of the major issues the crew at Deepwater Ryzen had was that they were dealing with what is known as kicks. So, in other words, as the drill bit goes through each layer of rock, it may come across a pocket of gas. That that pocket of gas could be the size of a football field, and it could be under tens of thousands of psi, and that gas has to go somewhere. It's like poking a hole in a balloon, right? The air inside that balloon has got to go somewhere and it's going to take the path of least resistance. And if that is a big giant drilling hole, then it's going to go through that.

SPEAKER_03: 1:00:44

Does it make the little beep noise?

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:46

Oh, yeah, yeah. It makes that's exactly how it sounds.

SPEAKER_03: 1:00:51

That's what I want to hear.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:52

As as it's just like that, would be kind of funny if you like look at videos of the deepwater rise on fire and it's like that's the warning sign sign that you need to look at. It's very anticlimatic. Meanwhile, there's flames everywhere and people jumping into the ocean and fantastic. Or like a balloon where you like you squeeze the end of it and it goes.

SPEAKER_03: 1:01:19

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:21

That that that would be That's great.

SPEAKER_03: 1:01:23

Love that.

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:27

So yeah, they were dealing with a lot of kicks, and these pockets of gas would basically go up the borehole. That sounds so weird.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:39

I mean you hate it when a gas goes up the borehole.

SPEAKER_03: 1:01:47

Yeah, it's supposed to go the other direction.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:49

Yeah, it's supposed to go out the borehole, not up the borehole. Oh boy.

SPEAKER_03: 1:01:56

Uh it's gonna get worse. Just keep reading it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:02

Because we got mud involved.

SPEAKER_03: 1:02:06

No, this is really the Taco Bell analogy. Keep finish it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:11

Right? All that gas and mud coming out of that borehole. Oh crap. Alrighty.

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:22

I didn't even realize how bad it sounded until I started reading it out loud. But yes, uh, the gas would go up that that that pipe and it would want to push the mud up with it. And that's a problem because that could cause the the drill bit to overheat and melt.

SPEAKER_03: 1:02:44

Can I read it for the listeners?

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:47

Yeah, yeah, read it.

SPEAKER_03: 1:02:49

Friends, it would come across pockets of gas that would cause the pressure of borehole to climb rapidly and potentially push the mud out and even cause an explosion. It's great.

SPEAKER_02: 1:03:07

My middle school mind is so happy.

SPEAKER_00: 1:03:13

It's supposed to be a serious topic. Sorry. It's going sideways. Oh crap.

SPEAKER_01: 1:03:22

Alrighty. So after each kick, the drilling would need to stop, and then the well would need to be tested for safety reasons. Otherwise, you need to see a doctor about that.

SPEAKER_03: 1:03:32

Yeah, that's pretty bad. You got gas coming up and exploding mud coming out.

SPEAKER_00: 1:03:41

I got mud everywhere.

SPEAKER_03: 1:03:46

You're gonna need a new borehole after that.

SPEAKER_01: 1:03:52

All right, sorry. Sorry. More more drilling is is necessary.

SPEAKER_05: 1:04:03

Oh god.

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:08

I knew I should have read this out loud before we started this. Sounds so bad.

SPEAKER_03: 1:04:13

Entertainment gold right here. This is good.

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:15

Oh man, all right. So, furthermore, due to all the kicks and subsequent mechanical issues, Shane Roshto, who was one of the crew members on the rig, phoned his wife. And the the this was like the day of the incident, and he was supposed to go home the next day. He never made it home. He was one of the 11 people that died. Um, but he he coined this well as the well from hell just because of all the issues they were having with it. It was just it was just like one issue after another. Now, I wanna I want to address this part because there's a lot of like when you when if you research this, there is so many articles on who is to blame. Everybody is so focused, and and whenever there's a tragedy like this, whether it's like the Hindenburg going up or you know the Boston molasses flood, we want to find a human being to blame.

SPEAKER_03: 1:05:17

I feel like this comes up a lot because uh we did have the same conversation when we were talking about Hindenburg, but everybody wants to blame a person when really it's just a horrible accident.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:27

Yeah, it's like we want to see heads roll.

SPEAKER_03: 1:05:29

Yeah, like who's responsible when in reality sometimes just really bad things happen and goes wrong. Now it could be bad choices were made, but it doesn't mean that one person is solely responsible for all of the choices that were made when it was probably more like a group effort.

SPEAKER_05: 1:05:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:05:47

Or just something going wrong. Like you know, something something was deteriorating in the salt water, or like the wind was really high that day, or whatever.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:59

Like or in a case like this, I believe that there was absolutely nothing anybody could have done on that vessel to prevent what was gonna happen. Um maybe like there there were some test results that came back that they should have paid more attention to or whatever. Like maybe they should have stopped earlier or whatever. But yeah, as you'll see, like especially in part two, like I I don't think that even if the test results came back positive and they proceeded, there was nothing that could prevent what was going to happen. And so that's why, like, uh with this episode, I don't want to focus on names, I don't want to focus on too many individuals because these people have been through the ringer, they have been through lawsuits, they've been through interrogations, they've been through hearings, they've been through Senate hearings. Um, whether they were good, bad, indifferent, neglectful, or whatever, these people are still alive today. And I my my interest is not in throwing these guys through any more crap than they've already been through. Because like, even the the quote unquote good guys have just been absolutely wrecked by this, and then like I I think there are some executives that probably could have handled things better afterwards, but yeah, I don't want to focus on the names and all that kind of stuff. Like, you can find those names, you can find all the people that were involved. I I I was gonna go down that path, but it got ugly, and it got ugly fast.

SPEAKER_03: 1:07:40

It's understandable.

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:42

Like, politics got involved, and like there were death threats, and it's just like I'm no, I just want to focus on the rig itself. Let's do it because that's where I think the real dumpster fire really sits. So, but mid-April, the delays and mechanical issues were becoming a problem for BP due to the mounting costs, and as well as like investors were like, what the heck's going on? Like, you're just burning money, literally. There was a lot of conflict between the Transocean crew and the BP leadership sent out to try and get things back on track. Uh, the crew understood that this well that they were drilling was tricky and needed to be treated carefully. However, the BP execs needed to get this well operating ASAP because it was going on 45 days, past this deadline, and it was literally just dumping money into the ocean. And all fairness, the the in all fairness, the executives and and the BP leadership, like already on the rig. So the folks that BP had out there to kind of manage things uh like next to the Transocean folks, they did have some experience. These weren't just ignorant, you know, office jockeys. These were people that had experience, these were people that were educated in this. This this these were people that had a pretty good idea of what was going on. I think the Transocean folks had a better idea because they're like boots on the ground. This is what they do every single day. But there is when I was doing research on this, so much shade was thrown at the uh BP leadership on the site that like I don't know. I I I can't as much as you want to blame somebody, because like there was one leader, he got charged with uh manslaughter, 11 accounts of manslaughter, and it actually went before the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled, like, no, no, after this investigation, uh we we can't just hold this one guy solely accountable for everything. So, in all honesty, I could see both sides of the argument, but when it comes to human safety, I think the operational side should win up because when things go wrong and human lives are at stake, then the cost and the bottom line skyrockets even more.

SPEAKER_05: 1:09:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:09:55

Like once you start losing lives, who cares about equipment and all that kind of stuff? Yeah, it's gonna get a lot more expensive really fast. And for BP, they're going to really, really see uh some repercussions here. During the early afternoon on April 20th, uh, 2010, a negative pressure test was conducted to see if the cement casing that held the BOP to the borehole had been fully cured, as well as check for any issues along the way. So basically, instead of pushing, like pushing pressure in like on the mud into the borehole, instead of putting pressure on it, you actually kind of pull a vacuum. And that gives you an idea, because if you pull a vacuum, ocean water will leak in if there's any issues and and whatnot. So a if the negative pressure test is a good one, then it starts off at neg or zero psi, stays at zero PSI, and ends at zero PSI. Okay, that means that there's no pressure, nothing, there's no outside factor pushing in, and there's no like there's no pumps on the on the rig pushing down. So it's just a great way to tell to see if the if everything is operating correctly.

SPEAKER_03: 1:11:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:18

However, during the uh pressure test, the pressure of the drill pipe rose to about 1300 psi, indicating that something was drastically wrong.

SPEAKER_03: 1:11:29

Yeah, that's uh that's a high number there.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:32

Uh yeah, yeah. That means that that means when the pressure skyrocketed, that means that there's pressure coming from somewhere and it's coming from the bottom because the the drill bit and everything, like they they pulled that out, but when that pressure started rising, that means that they were seeing a return of gas from the well going up into the riser. So that basically means like they are sitting on a pretty incredible amount of stored vapors and gases and stuff like that. However, though, they're like, well, if that was the case, then why wasn't there any mud coming up through the borehole? There should have been through the rig that there should have been mud like bubbling out of that thing. So that was a confusing result. So they ran the test a few more times and they got one positive result. They got like one result, and like, okay, cool, that's all we need, we're good to go. Can you see the logical fallacy in that?

SPEAKER_04: 1:12:39

I don't like it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:12:40

You have three failed tests, one positive one. Does that really a good indicator that you're good to move on?

SPEAKER_04: 1:12:46

No, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:12:48

So I think that's where they could have stopped.

SPEAKER_03: 1:12:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:12:51

And really investigated things.

SPEAKER_03: 1:12:53

That's the stopping point that every episode has. There's always like a stopping point, right?

SPEAKER_01: 1:12:57

Like well This is the point where you can turn around, yeah, walk away, and then reapproach it.

SPEAKER_03: 1:13:04

This is the point where you get to the haunted house and you say, Nope, and you go back to your car.

SPEAKER_01: 1:13:10

Yeah. This is the part in every horror movie where you you you can tell when the characters have made the wrong choice by going into that creepy house with the axe murder in it.

SPEAKER_03: 1:13:19

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01: 1:13:20

And then everybody runs upstairs and hides in a closet and they wonder why they die.

SPEAKER_03: 1:13:24

On the second floor.

SPEAKER_01: 1:13:25

On the second floor, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:13:26

We love slasher flicks. I do.

SPEAKER_01: 1:13:28

Or or the attic. I know. Never find us up here where we can't go anywhere.

SPEAKER_03: 1:13:34

80s slasher flicks, you gotta love them. All right, anyway.

SPEAKER_01: 1:13:38

Yes, this was probably the turning point. However, though, let's say I I'm gonna make the argument that okay, let's say they stop and they fix things. I still don't think that was gonna prevent what's gonna happen.

SPEAKER_03: 1:13:51

Okay. Why?

SPEAKER_01: 1:13:52

I'll get to that. Cool. This is the engineering by Ed. Got it. Coming in in the next section. And once once you see the explanation or hear the explanation, you'd be like, got it. Okay. That this makes a lot of sense. It's kind of like the Hindenburg, right? Where the whole thing was a giant capacitor, and once once you like have it explained to you that way, you're like, okay. So it just wasn't hydrogen gas, there was more to it that was completely unpreventable. So, but yes, this would be the this would be the stopping point on paper.

SPEAKER_03: 1:14:28

On paper. On paper, yes.

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:30

So drilling commenced as scheduled, with many of the roughnecks on deck reporting really, really weird events. Uh, like they were experiencing like more kicks, they were experiencing vibrations on the drill shaft or the extensions. There's like if you're ever watched these guys drill, it's interesting. The like the the foreman will always, while he's operating the drill, he has his hand on it. So as the extension is going down, he puts his hand on it and he can feel when there's a kick, he can feel weird vibrations, he can get an idea of what's going on thousands of feet below ground just by feeling that thing turning as it's drilling into the ground.

SPEAKER_03: 1:15:11

It's like fishing.

SPEAKER_01: 1:15:13

What's that?

SPEAKER_03: 1:15:14

It's like fishing.

SPEAKER_01: 1:15:15

Yeah, yeah. Oh, and that's the reason why those guys are the ones in charge is because they've got the most amount of experience and they just like they can just tell when things are are misbehaving.

SPEAKER_02: 1:15:26

Makes sense.

SPEAKER_01: 1:15:28

So let's go back to the early 1900s, Venice Beach. Okay, you got workers out there building these piers, putting these oil derricks up and whatnot. And a lot of these workers reported while they're pumping the oil up, they would see like a lot of bubbles coming up from the bottom. Keep in mind the ocean was only like maybe 10, 20 feet deep, you know, because they're all they they can only go out so far. Uh, but they noticed that right around uh the pipes that were pumping the oil up, they saw like a lot of bubbles coming up. And they they also reported a very strong like petroleum kerosene smell coming from the water. These bubbles would often, these these bubbles and the strong smell would often preclude a massive blowout. And these blowouts would take out like 10, 15 wells at a time. So, like, and and of course, these guys are smoking cigarettes and and all that stuff. So, like, yeah, there were there's a lot of history in California where these workers in the early 1900s are like, huh. You just don't see bubbles coming up of this volume from the bottom of the ocean.

SPEAKER_03: 1:16:40

Yeah, it's weird.

SPEAKER_01: 1:16:41

Yeah, it's it's a very weird thing, and have it to smell like gasoline and kerosene.

SPEAKER_03: 1:16:47

That's I'm sure it's great for the environment as well. That's oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:16:52

That's like I can only imagine what the smell must have been like in California and those beaches. Because you know those those rigs leaked like a sieve.

SPEAKER_03: 1:17:00

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:17:01

It's like no wonder why California, no wonder why the Palisades was so bad. It probably had all that residual oil in the ground from the the oil rigs. So, part four, the disaster. This is the oily dumpster fire we've all been waiting for. Excellent. By about 9 p.m., if you could go down thousands of feet under the ocean and look at the BOP and the concrete casing, you would see a similar sight of bubbles emanating from the seafloor. Uh it it would just be everywhere. No one on top could see these bubbles because they're one, they're hundreds of feet above the surface, and two, uh, water does a really weird thing. Remember in our classroom where I had that CO2 thing in the fish tank? It had the little bubbles. You notice how the bubbles would come out of the the uh dispenser and they would just get smaller and smaller and smaller as they went to the top. That's because the water absorbs gases.

SPEAKER_04: 1:18:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:18:06

So, like, there was no way anybody on that rig had any idea of what was going on in that ocean floor. Uh, because I mean it was just swarms of gases coming out of that whole concrete pad and the BOP and the substrate and all that stuff. Um, I wonder if they anybody even noticed like dead fish coming to the surface.

SPEAKER_04: 1:18:31

Yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01: 1:18:32

I feel like that would have been a good indicator. Like, so like, why are all these dead fish all over the place? Because fishermen actually really liked hanging around the oil rigs because fish would gravitate towards the oil rigs because they would eat stuff off of the pontoons and stuff like that. So I wonder if there was like anybody on the rig that, like, why are there dozens of dead fish all over the place? That would have been a good indicator as well. So at around 9 40 to 9 50, things happened really fast. We're talking minutes out of nowhere. The pressure of the drill pipe skyrocketed to about 3,000 psi. Mind you, it it red lines at a thousand. So this was in the control room, and alarms started going off all over the place. In the movie, they call them magenta alarms. Uh, I don't know if it's that's a real thing or not, but like I guess in the movie Deep Water Horizon, um, great movie. It is very well done. Um, like a magenta alarm means critical failure. It's like the check engine light flashing on your car. It is like the worst possible scenario. Uh so alarms started going off all over the place. Workers in the mud room. So on the lower deck, they had that mud room. That's where the mud would get pumped up, recycled, and then sent back down again. Workers in the mud room where the mud. Was pumped to the bottom of the board and then recycled and all their fun stuff. Uh, they started hearing like these giant, like eight, nine, ten inch in diameter pipes. They started like groaning and creaking, and then the valves uh were starting to like spit out mud shortly after that. Like normal, however, though, the pumps weren't running, so some degree of pressure was pushing the mud back up into the return lines of the mud room. Sick. So, like that that so like the people in down there were like, Why that's not supposed to happen? You know, was pushing all this up. They didn't know that the magenta alarms were going off like crazy upstairs. So, up top where the drilling took place, workers felt what was described as an earthquake of sorts, but instead of the vibrations coming from the ground, it was actually coming from the drill shaft. So the whole drill shaft started shaking.

SPEAKER_03: 1:21:06

Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_01: 1:21:07

The operators in the control room instantly saw the pressure increase and quickly moved to close the annulars. So remember, the annulars is that first line of defense. Those are those donut-shaped things that you basically you squeeze them and then they put pressure on the pipe, and that's supposed to like stop the flow of mud coming up and stop the pressure uh from coming any higher up. That's the first line of defense. So, so yes, they they tried to close the annulars. Uh, this was no normal kick, and the annulars that sat above the BOP would be the first step to prevent a blowout. This did work, but only for a few minutes. So they're like, oh, cool. And then after a few minutes, things started acting weird again. It was not long before the annulars failed, and then the pressure skyrocketed to over 5,000 psi. We don't actually know what the max was because the max on the gauge was 5,000.

SPEAKER_03: 1:22:12

Uh that's like the radiation levels of Chernobyl.

SPEAKER_01: 1:22:16

Yes, yeah, like, oh hey, yeah, it's only 3.5 Ronkin. Okay, that's not great, but not terrible. But that's the max the decimeter goes to. Oh okay, whatever. It's fine. It's 3.5. Let's just roll with it. Um, but I don't think this was a case of like this, this was five times above what the rig was rated for.

SPEAKER_02: 1:22:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:22:39

So this wasn't just three four 3.5 ronkin. This was This was a lot. Yeah, this was a lot, even for what they couldn't measure. Once they saw that 5,000 psi, the BOP was activated. Uh one clamp after another. So now you got below. Okay, you got below the uh those cutoffs, those those dead hands. The there was a series of clamps that then circled the drill pipe, and these are like stronger than the annulars. This is like the next line of defense, right? Usually this would stop anything coming up. Uh the pressure still kept climbing, like nothing was changing. So those clamps failed. Eventually, uh the dead hand was activated. So then remember, the dead hand is a series of blades that physically uh they have these solenoids on either side of them, and they physically cut the pipe and they seal it. Like once that pipe is cut, that well is done for, right? That dead hand, the blind cutter thingy, that like once that is activated, there's no fixing that well, it's done for. Like you you have to go drill someplace else.

SPEAKER_05: 1:23:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:23:55

So, but that was their that was their last option, was to just cut it off and hope for the best. Um, by 956, every safety option that had been implemented had failed within minutes. So the annulars, you've got the clamps, now you got the dead hand. Um, the people in the mud room were trying to like open and close valves to release pressure. Uh literally, the deep water horizon was turning into a pressure vessel. From here, the well up top exploded into a stream of mud, oil, and gas that blew hundreds of feet above the derrick, which was already 250 feet tall.

SPEAKER_05: 1:24:38

Man.

SPEAKER_01: 1:24:39

So it was crazy. People reported like it was just like the derrick was just like one mud explosion after another, and as it was just taking out uh the whole drilling mechanism. It was it it the whole thing just blew apart into pieces. Once the operators in the control room confirmed the blowout, a Mayday was sent out to the Coast Guard and any other vessel in the area. Uh the people in the control room were like, okay, Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, like, and now the Coast Guard is being notified that there was a catastrophic failure. Um like ships, like there were little like little fishing vessels all over the place. They saw it from like dozens of miles away. Like just the one guy called it it looked like a brown Christmas tree, and the whole rig was just covered in it. In the mud room, pipes and equipment started to explode at every point as the crew tried to close valves. Uh the valves, the valve wheels, which were up to about two feet in diameter, blew off the valves and it killed anybody in the way. Uh these these valve wheels probably weighed about 70, 80 pounds, and they were probably moving at nearly five to seven hundred feet per second.

SPEAKER_03: 1:26:03

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_01: 1:26:04

So if you got hit by that, it's just gonna go right through you.

SPEAKER_03: 1:26:07

Yeah, game over.

SPEAKER_01: 1:26:08

Yeah. Uh on the drill deck, mud and now oil covered everything and making it impossible for anyone to see what was going outside. Uh, soon debris such as rocks and pieces of metal came shooting out of the borehole near where the workers were working like bullets. So people heard like ricochets. It was literally like being shot at with a machine gun. That that's the kind of pressures that we're dealing with here. Some striking the workers as they tried to find some sort of cover. The real disaster is about to begin. So, like, it would have been a happy day if it just stayed at this.

SPEAKER_03: 1:26:43

If it stopped.

SPEAKER_01: 1:26:45

Well, even if the blowout just continued the way it was, like, that is still manageable. It everybody's covered in mud, but it's manageable. Like, this is okay, fine, we can work with this. Yeah, even though the blowout shot mud and oil hundreds of feet in the air, highly flammable gases were being blasted out into the air. So you're thinking, like, crap, that's gonna make it hard for people to breathe. That's not the real danger. The real danger were the giant diesel engines that powered the entire rig. Flammable fumes got sucked into um all the air intakes. Oh man. That fed the six Wartzilla 18 V32 7.2 megawatt diesel engines.

SPEAKER_02: 1:27:27

Oh man.

SPEAKER_01: 1:27:29

You cannot put like gasoline in a diesel engine. Yeah, it will cause a lot of problems. If you have a diesel engine and you start spraying, like, say, like brake cleaner into the turbo, it will cause that engine to run away.

SPEAKER_04: 1:27:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:27:45

So, like a V8 diesel engine kind of redlines at like 3,000 RPMs. Imagine what it would be like if that thing revved up like 10,000 RPMs. So these fumes cause the six engines to literally run away. A runaway diesel engine is a phenomenon where something happens where the engine revs up to an RPM that far exceeds what it can handle. In this case, the fumes cause the engine engines to climb to thousands of RPMs above the rating, which then turn, uh, which in turn caused the props and the pontoons to run away as well. So now the the deep water horizon, all those props are just spinning like crazy, and the whole thing was turning left and right, going forward and backwards, putting a lot of torque on that riser pipe. People inside reported that like all the lights inside got super bright because those generators are now, you know, they're probably humming along like at 1200, 1300 RPM. Those generators are now humming along like at, you know, between three and six thousand RPMs, producing all that electricity. So everybody inside reported that like it got suddenly super bright in there, and then light bulbs started to explode. So, yeah, light bulbs started to explode, computers started shorting out, uh, because there was just way too much current running through everything. Yeah, it's too much power. Yeah. So by 10 p.m., the engine seized, and uh it's a bad deal when a diesel engine seizes because there's uh the the compression on a diesel engine it far exceeds a gas engine because you really, really, really have to compress that diesel in order for it to combust. Whereas like gasoline, you have to mix it with a bunch of air and compress it and throw a spark and then it fires and all that stuff. Diesel, there are no spark plugs, they have glow plugs, but yeah, a diesel just relies on air and then you compress the crap out of the diesel and then it ignites. When a diesel seizes up like that, each cylinder is like its own stick of dynamite. It is there's just so much air and gases compressed in there, but yet they the engine is still trying to run. Uh, it eventually causes the engines to explode catastrophically. The explosion was so great that it nearly destroyed the living quarters, which were on the opposite end of the rig. Yeah, I I I have a picture here, we'll we'll put it up on the website. You can see where the living quarters is on the below deck, and you can see where the engines were on the opposite end, like 400 feet away. The explosion was so great that it like took out nearly the entire living quarters, and people were like, if you were standing by a closed door, the explosion would have blown the door in you like through a wall. Yeah. So like people got rocked when that took place. Like that was and and that also causes another problem. When the engines exploded, you now have an open flame. Oh, the gases that are in the air, and the oil that is now spewing out of this thing at 400 feet tall.

SPEAKER_03: 1:31:06

It's horrible.

SPEAKER_01: 1:31:08

A fireball.

SPEAKER_03: 1:31:09

Yeah, a big fireball.

SPEAKER_01: 1:31:12

It was 500 feet in diameter and it engulfed the entire deep water horizon.

SPEAKER_03: 1:31:18

Holy crap.

SPEAKER_01: 1:31:20

So, like you couldn't see, you couldn't see the Derek, you couldn't see the crane, and and the fishermen that were miles away saw that. And this extremely bright fireball off in the horizon, and a lot of these fishermen are like, uh that's not supposed to happen.

SPEAKER_03: 1:31:38

That's not normal.

SPEAKER_01: 1:31:40

Yeah, like that that's not like the Titanic launching fireworks.

SPEAKER_03: 1:31:44

Like, this is Yeah, that's uh that's different.

SPEAKER_01: 1:31:47

Yeah. All in all, the explosion killed 11 of the 26 crew.

SPEAKER_03: 1:31:52

Out of how many people?

SPEAKER_01: 1:31:54

11.

SPEAKER_03: 1:31:55

Out of how many people in the crew?

SPEAKER_01: 1:31:56

126.

SPEAKER_03: 1:31:57

126.

SPEAKER_01: 1:31:58

I'm surprised that so many people made it in.

SPEAKER_03: 1:32:01

I am too, actually. That's um it's horrible for the 11 people in their families to have to go through that. But out of 126 people, that's pretty lucky.

SPEAKER_01: 1:32:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:32:11

Hence the nickname.

SPEAKER_01: 1:32:12

Yeah. Like this could have been so much worse. This could have been like a total loss.

SPEAKER_03: 1:32:16

Yeah. Easy, man.

SPEAKER_01: 1:32:19

The remaining uh workers scrambled to get on the lifeboats. Um, they got onto the lifeboats, but the problem was is like they still weren't out of danger. They had to get away from this thing as fast as possible because they were worried that the whole entire thing would collapse on them. Like the whole rig would collapse on the lifeboats. So you get everybody in the lifeboats, and then now it's like, okay, now we gotta get out of here. Yep. Nearby uh fishing vessels saw the explosion and they pulled anchor and started rushing to the scene. Shortly after the explosion, the rig lost all power, leaving survivors below deck in complete darkness while their bodies were embedded with glass and metal shards and and all that stuff. Uh, there was one dude, he was the Transocean leader guy. He was taking a shower and it blew him across the cabin, and he literally had like glass shards embedded into his hands and feet, and like he was laying in pitch black darkness, you know, obviously buck naked. And so, like, with glass embedded into his feet, he somehow managed to get dressed, get boots on, and he was blind because he had like glass in his eyes. Um, he was blind in he was like the foreman, and he managed to get himself out, and he rescued like a number of people. He got them on the lifeboat and got them on on the safety vessel that was nearby. Holy crap. Yeah, and he managed to like stay up for the rest of the night, taking constant inventory, like taking attendance and roll calls to figure out who was on and who wasn't there anymore.

SPEAKER_03: 1:34:00

What's this guy's name? What was this guy's name? Um, only asking because I think he deserves some recognition here. That's great.

SPEAKER_01: 1:34:08

Like incredibly, but he got blamed.

SPEAKER_03: 1:34:11

Well, let's not say I'm saying for the good things he did.

SPEAKER_01: 1:34:16

But yeah, I think most people kind of recognize him. Uh his name is Jimmy Harrell.

SPEAKER_03: 1:34:20

All right, Jimmy.

SPEAKER_01: 1:34:22

Yeah, uh Kurt Russell plays him in the movie.

SPEAKER_03: 1:34:25

Okay. I haven't seen the movie. I've I've heard of it. I've heard it's good. I just haven't said that.

SPEAKER_01: 1:34:29

Yeah, it's a really, really good movie. Um, yeah, Jimmy Harrel, he was kind of like the foreman. He was like the lead engineer for uh everything, and he was the one that always butted heads with the VPs of BP. Got it. And so yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:34:44

Well, just the feat alone of going through all of that and still managing to rescue as many people as he could and making sure that his crew, he was responsible for his crew, even though he was all jacked up.

SPEAKER_01: 1:34:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:34:58

So much respect to that.

SPEAKER_01: 1:35:00

Yeah, he had like a coat on, and yeah, he was basically trying to get people onto the onto the um the life rafts, and like he was still like almost pretty much completely naked. All he had was a coat, and then he was just like porky pig in it, just trying to get everybody out there, and then yeah, he had glass embedded all over him and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_04: 1:35:25

Man.

SPEAKER_01: 1:35:26

Yeah. So at this point, the entire top deck of the Deepwater Horizon was on fire. Um, after a last-inch attempt to get back the uh or get the uh backup generators up and running. Like, hey, if we get the generators up and running, maybe, just maybe they could save the rig. Like, at this point, that that Jimmy Harrell guy, he was just like, okay, because he really couldn't see. Yeah, he didn't know how bad it was. So he was just trying to like, okay, let's just get this, let's get some power going here. Meanwhile, everybody's like, um, I don't think we can save this. This is like a foregone cause kind of a thing. Yeah. So yeah, uh once they couldn't get the backup generators to work, at this point, it was time to abandon ship. Yeah, just out of the 126 crew, 94 made it to the life rafts and lowered down to the ocean surface. I didn't know this, but 17 were rescued by helicopter.

SPEAKER_03: 1:36:22

Oh, that's interesting. They were still.

SPEAKER_01: 1:36:24

Yeah, I thought that was I like I don't remember that part. I don't remember researching it until this this afternoon. But I thought that was interesting. Like they managed to get a helicopter out there to get some people out, and then of course, 11 lost their lives.

SPEAKER_04: 1:36:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:36:38

Uh many of these guys were set to come home the next day. That's so sad. That that's that's really sad. Yeah, yeah, it's it's pretty, it's pretty tough. And then four crew members literally just jumped off the top deck into the ocean. And thankfully they they were all recovered. They they survived. Uh huh. So during the daytime, uh in normal operations, there was a ship called the Damon B. Bankston. It was a uh it was a supply ship, and it would be tethered to the deep water horizon. It would supply the um it would supply the rig with like mud and supplies, food, and all that kind of stuff. So it was kind of like just hanging out there, and it was maybe a few hundred yards away. And yeah, the the crew of the Bankston were like, when they saw that fireball go up, um, they're like, uh, okay, that's a bad deal. We should go. So they jumped into action and they started to like put together uh like this this was crucial. If it was if that bankston wasn't there, who knows how many more people would have died? Because they set up like a field operation on that ship and they got everybody aboard and started getting medical treatment going and all that kind of stuff. Um, and that was it was that ship that brought the surviving crew back to shore. Uh, I think it was like a day later, a day or two later. Meanwhile, the deep water horizon burned for two more days. And again, we'll have pictures of it um on the website at DaveStemps of fire.com. It is an an intimidating fire.

SPEAKER_03: 1:38:08

Well, yeah, it's just it's an oil rig. Oil's highly flammable, so I'm not surprised.

SPEAKER_01: 1:38:16

Well, and the thing is, is like it would be much preferred if it would just stay this way. Let the fire burn out of the rig. Because the oil is being burned.

SPEAKER_04: 1:38:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:38:29

Yeah, pollution and stuff like that. But it's easier to deal with a fire like that when it's above surface versus what's about to happen.

SPEAKER_03: 1:38:39

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:38:40

Um it burned for two more days, surrounded by a Coast Guard, ship spring, water on the inferno, and yeah, it it that the the the the actual derrick itself was beginning to melt. That's how hot it was getting. However, on April 22nd, the structural integrity of the deepwater horizon gave out, and the entire rig buckled, tipping over, and proceeded to sink to the bottom of the ocean.

SPEAKER_04: 1:39:07

Oh no.

SPEAKER_01: 1:39:09

It's at this time that the ecological dumpster fire begins because the deepwater horizon sank, the drill pipe snapped off where it connected to the BOP, and since the BOP failed, there was nothing to stop the flow of oil being dumped into the ocean. It is estimated that 210,000 gallons of oil per day was being dumped into the ocean via that broken pipe, um, and that it would take engineers 87 days for them to figure out how to stop this pipe. That's awful.

SPEAKER_04: 1:39:46

The whole thing's awful.

SPEAKER_01: 1:39:48

And this is the end of part one of the largest oil related disasters in American history, and the ramifications have only just begun.

SPEAKER_03: 1:39:58

What a way to end it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:40:02

Right. So yeah, in the next episode, I'm gonna go into how this affected the ocean, how it affected the coastline, how it affected the economy of the entire Gulf of Mexico area. And then I'm gonna go into like who did they bring in to try to fix this venting oil in the ocean. Um because they came up with like five, six different ideas, and almost all of them failed miserably, uh just because they just couldn't get anywhere near that vent. Right. So so yeah, that is that is the part one.

SPEAKER_03: 1:40:45

Awful. Like the disaster's awful. Episode's good. Excellent work. Yeah, that's rough. That's hard. I don't even know what to say after that. Like just because there's no it's a cliffhanger. It's like watching the end of the first Lord of the Rings when you haven't read the book and you're just like, wait.

SPEAKER_01: 1:41:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:41:06

Wait, that's it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:41:08

Frodo and Sam are just walking out in the Mordor.

SPEAKER_03: 1:41:10

Like, yeah, you're like, wait.

SPEAKER_01: 1:41:12

Well, because that's actually how the first book ends, is like that. That's true. Yeah. The second book doesn't end the way the movies did, but that's whatever. Yeah, but that's fine. But but yeah, no, that's end of part one. Um be sure to hit up our website, daysdomsafire.com, uh, where we are we do, we we we're fully caught up on there, right?

SPEAKER_03: 1:41:34

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 1:41:35

With all the episodes, all updated. Oh, beautiful.

SPEAKER_03: 1:41:38

All the way up to Prohibition. Perfect.

SPEAKER_01: 1:41:40

So yeah, uh, we have that fully updated. Um so go be sure to check that out. Uh, one of these days we'll get our Instagram updated. We'll get there. I'm actually kind of digging into doing some uh research on how to like actually use Instagram to promote a podcast. Um, so yeah, we'll we'll we'll have uh check out our Instagrams. Uh if you have any ideas for more topics, or if you want to send us clarification on things that I probably got mixed up on this episode, and you yourself are an expert on this, yeah, send us an email um at thedaysimsifier at gmail.com. And for everybody else, please uh share this with your friends and family. Uh, we do have like we're we are building quite a library of episodes ranging all sorts of topics and whatnot. Parents, this podcast may be handy if you've got a kid that needs to write like a history report on something that is a little bit more unique than just like Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492. Because we could argue that that whole expedition was a dumpster fire in his own.

SPEAKER_03: 1:42:52

Actually, you're not wrong.

SPEAKER_01: 1:42:54

Yeah, as we approach Thanksgiving. Um, so yeah, uh grab people's phones, show them how to get here if you've got anybody that's interested in history. Uh, I actually I was talking to one of my drivers today. He had no idea that it had a podcast, and he's a huge history nut. So he's now gonna start listening to everything. I've got some drivers that like to listen to podcasts in terms of like science-y stuff, and we've got we've got a 50-50 mix of sciencey stuff and good old-fashioned historical events and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, the spread the word. It it'll um it yeah, it'll it it'll help us out greatly. So I know Kara, you're I think you're on a vacation from researching.

SPEAKER_02: 1:43:37

I'm not.

SPEAKER_01: 1:43:38

Oh, you are you working on the next the next dumpster fire?

SPEAKER_03: 1:43:43

Yes. Um, I'll tell you what it is this time. I'm I'm uh I'm working on the Great Depression.

SPEAKER_01: 1:43:48

I thought oh wait, that was the well, we talked about the Dust Bowl.

SPEAKER_03: 1:43:52

Yes, we talked about the we touched on the depression, we haven't actually done the depression. And I was like, it's time.

SPEAKER_01: 1:44:02

Yeah, yeah. Given how things are going today, economically, it may be a worthwhile. Because it's it's a it's complicated.

SPEAKER_02: 1:44:11

It's been very enlightening.

SPEAKER_03: 1:44:12

So uh yeah, keep an eye out for that. That is in the pipeline.

SPEAKER_01: 1:44:15

No pun intended.

SPEAKER_03: 1:44:16

No, but that's a good one.

SPEAKER_01: 1:44:18

At least it's not in the borehole.

SPEAKER_03: 1:44:20

That's true.

SPEAKER_02: 1:44:23

All the mud, with all the mud and explosions.

SPEAKER_00: 1:44:29

Gotta keep drilling, Kara. You gotta keep drilling until you get that borehole.

SPEAKER_02: 1:44:34

Nice and muddy. And with that, we should probably end the episode. Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 1:44:41

Yes. So, yeah, guys, keep it a hot mess, and we will catch you for the next episode.

SPEAKER_00: 1:44:47

Bye. Uh, the borehole.