Nexen energy oil spill

[Handsome B. Wonderful]

Originally Posted by FLAMESRULE

Yikes, this looks like a complete F up by the engineers + operations group there.

Standard Nexen operating procedure.

[FLAMESRULE]

Originally Posted by kunkstyle

Plant/pads ops have little interaction with gathering lines/headers. A contractor (heat trace, insulator, what have you) would be more likely to find something like that.

Although I have no idea how the control room wouldn't have caught that.

Sure...but WTF are the field operators doing then? I've seen some true morons as Ops, but there is no excuse for this kind of volume. I hope the AER crucifies them. And I don't think operations groups for thermal are that different than conventional (except they cost a crap load more in salaries!).

[EldrickOnIce]

Should put a few of them in jail for something like this, assuming it's negligence and not just an unfortunate circumstance.
That might tighten controls.

[GGG]

This could have been a slow leak overtime. And if this is coming directly from pads a small leak wouldn't be detected from volume as your measurement off the well has a fairly high error margin.

What temperature do they run that line at? Everything I've seen for emulsion off of the pads has been in the 180ish or higher range which makes it difficult to bury.

If it was sudden then to high temperature of the fluid, a Surge wave, or bad pipe. Stress Corrosion cracking or hydrogen cracking at the welds might also do it.