Head Count

Saudi Arabia beheaded another murderer in March bringing the year to date total to 3.

Aviation Disaster Averted

There were 13 minutes of drama over the skies of New Orleans Monday morning. United flight 497 took off destined for San Francisco. Within minutes, the pilot requested a return to the airport because of smoke in the aircraft. As he was making his turn he declared an emergency and requested the longest runway. Unfortunately, there were construction vehicles on it and as they tried to clear the vehicles, he lost all instruments. Now he needed the tower to direct him home and his favored runway was not available. He quickly adapted to the situation and headed for the shorter N-S runway. By now he was at 600 feet and must have rattled a few houses as he headed in from Lake Pontchartrain. He hit the deck so hard that he blew a tire and skidded off the runway. But everyone walked away! Follow this link for an audio and transcript.

Petrobras in the GOM

There is a recent news item that should be a little disturbing to the public - if the public knew about it.

We all know that Petrobras was given a permit by BOEMRE to produce from their deep water lease (8,000' water depth) in the Gulf of Mexico. On April 3rd, it was reported that they had lost the riser buoyancy can on one of their wells. The 130 ton can floated off and the riser pipe collapsed to the sea bed causing damage to the subsea equipment. This link gives some pictures of how the risers are set up.

The incident should raise questions about the entire design - especially the connection of the buoyancy can to the riser. I will try to watch the BOEMRE web site for an accident report. That this should happen during calm seas raises serious concerns in my mind.

For background, the Petrobras FPSO is the first FPSO permitted in the Gulf of Mexico even though they are common elsewhere in the world. The ship , the BW Pioneer, was built in 1992 in a Japanese shipyard. It was converted to an FPSO by Keppel Shipyards in Singapore. It is a turret moored design which means the well flowlines enter into a common hub and the ship is allowed to "weathervane" around this hub or turret. In bad weather, they can lower the turret and the ship can leave the area under its own propulsion. The well connections are through a hybrid riser. The riser consists of a steel pipe held in tension by a buoyancy can. A flexible pipe connects the top of the riser to the turret. The FPSO will be operated for Petrobras by a contractor. The FPSO will be flagged in Bermuda.

Most folks in the industry hold a low opinion of Petrobras' safety record. While they are industry leaders in subsea technology, they tend to have a cavalier attitude and don't do their due diligence when using new technology. The sinking of the P-36 brought some of this to public attention. Here are my concerns:

1. Not operated with Petrobras personnel but by contractors whose training, experience and commitment to safety may be open to question.


2. Not flagged as a US vessel meaning it was not built to USCG requirements.


3. Riser buoyancy can failure may mean the entire design is suspect.


4. Petrobras reputation for short cutting safety issues.

Da Project

I posted recently that the project was on the verge of Phase 4: Total Confusion. I can now confirm that we are there. The grownups visited this week and informed us that they were going to change engineering firms. We have all been less than happy with the progress being made by our current engineering firm but changing firms at this point will lead to a couple of months of delay to break in the new firm and generally getting them up on the learning curve. This should all occur in early May. By July, I predict we will be into Phase 5: Search for the Guilty.

Priorities

We had some rough weather around New Orleans the other night. 100 mph winds and hail. My niece was studying with a friend when they heard the radio give a tornado alert. Her friend thought they should hunker down in an interior room. My niece replied, "We've got a Physics test tomorrow. That's much more important than death."

Project Update and Engineering Win

Most engineers know that there are 7 stages to a project. I summarize them here:

Phase 1: Uncritical Acceptance
Phase 2: Wild enthusiasm
Phase 3: Dejected disillusionment
Phase 4: Total confusion
Phase 5: Search for the guilty
Phase 6: Punishment of the innocent
Phase 7: Promotion of nonparticipants

We are currently in Phase 3 and rapidly heading into Phase 4. Management has come aground upon the shoals of reality and are realizing that cost and schedule estimates developed with fairy dust by magic unicorns do not stand up to reality when you have start putting the iron together. They are grasping at straws and asking us to investigate kneejerk cost saving scenarios, thereby taking us away from the task at hand and further delaying the project.

On the positive side, I did have an engineering win recently.

My niece asked for my help with her senior physics project, which was building a bridge of specific dimensions and weight out of balsa wood. We penned out a simple truss design and built it. The short story is that not only did she get a "100" for her project, it was the most efficient of the class carrying a load of about 30 lbs while weighing in at just under 15 ounces.

Automobile Adventures

There was a local car club show this past weekend and my son wanted to take a couple of his cars to display. He asked me to drive his 1966 Sunbeam Tiger. (Grandson J had spent a fair amount of time cleaning, polishing and getting it ready.)

I arrived at the appointed time and J and I headed out with my son following. We were just commenting on how well the car was running when, about 11 miles from home, it died. We pushed it into a Taco Bell parking lot and proceeded to troubleshoot the problem. We decided that the aftermarket electric fuel pump had given up the ghost. We couldn't find any blown fuses so we figured this would require a new pump, which we did not have.

We called for a tow and sat down to wait. While we were sitting there, we had our own impromptu car show as people pulled of the highway to ogle the Sunbeam.

The tow truck came and I volunteered to escort the Sunbeam home while they went on to the car show in the other car.

The day wasn't a total loss. While they didn't get any trophies for the car, they did win second place for the best hard luck story.