-         BK Lim 10 October 2011 

There are always solutions. It is only a matter of interest. Corporate interests take over when you don’t.

Excessive monsoon rain for the last 3 months has drowned almost a third of Thailand's land mass; devastating some of the most productive farmland and putting at risk some of the most treasured ancient temples. The worst flood in 50 years dealt a dramatic blow to Japanese automobile, precision instruments and other industries because the nation is now an important global production base for numerous manufacturers. (19 Oct 2011 Japan Times).  Besides billions of dollars in damages and putting nearly 700,000 people temporarily out of work (23 Oct 2011, Seattlepi.com), the 2011 flood is a grim reminder that Mother Nature is not well and the worse is yet to come.

Thailand is not the only country faced with massive flooding problems. Other South-east Asian countries particularly Vietnam and Philippines seem to bear the brunt of the ferocious typhoons late in the season. Northern Australia (Queensland) was the first to be hit with the worst flood of the century lasting 2 months; from Dec 2010 till Jan of 2011. The 2011 Brazil floods of January were considered the worst in the country's history. By 18 Jan. the floods had taken about 700 lives and 14,000 people made homeless mainly due to landslides. In the June-Sept 2011 period, flooding in China affected more than 4.8 million people, with 100,000 evacuated and 54 reported dead. The floods which occurred in central and southern parts of China were caused by heavy rain that inundated portions of 12 provinces, leaving other provinces still suffering a prolonged drought. A total of over 36 million people have been affected, killing at least 355 and with direct economic losses of nearly US$6.5 billion ~ Wikipedia.

There seems to be more intense and widespread flooding less than a year after the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Is this a mere coincidence? Or is there more to it and the main stream media is not telling?

As of late Oct 2011, the massive oil spill has not run its course yet. There has been has been numerous sighting of fresh oils and reported gas bubbles at locations where previous oil slick had been found. See figure 145-1 (U20111023) below. All these confirmed our previous prediction of long term climatic consequences following the mega oil spill disaster in the gulf.

While massive flooding had occurred before; they have never occurred on such a massive scale over so many regions at such close intervals following a massive well blowout and a mega oil spill.

Pro-oil scientists and geologists often cite that it is impossible for a tiny 10inch well spewing only 60,000 bpd (upgraded from the initial 1,000) for 87 days to have caused such havoc to the world’s climate. Their favorite line of argument: “No well blowout in history has caused such massive environmental havoc before”.  But did they emphasize the huge fundamental flaws in their argument?

First and foremost there has never been a well blowout so deep underwater and so disastrous. Although the government officially capped it at 4.1 millions barrels, talks among industry circles put it possibly many times more. With the reservoir still leaking openly through the faulted pathways all around the gulf, the leaks will not stop until depletion. The Macondo recoverable reserves was estimated to be as low as 50 million barrels but a Forbes publication suggested it could more likely be a hefty 1 billion barrels.

This means a lot more oil has yet to leak out through the broken geology if nothing is done. In a worst case scenario, the wide spread underground erosion sets off an unprecedented shallow crustal adjustments in the New Madrid fault zone. Like an unwinding spring coil releasing all the pent-up stresses accumulate over thousands of years. The Macondo prospect lies within the central pivoting point of the intra-plate tectonics and a “deep puncture” here is more disastrous than anywhere else in the gulf.   

Further BP drilled not 1 but 3 wells (excluding the 2 relief wells) all within 1000 ft of each other. Even well A (showcased as the official blown well) spewed gas and oil continuously for 87 days. What about the blown crater at open well no# 3 (referred to as Well BE in the recently exposed videos) and several blowholes, dozens of vents along the fault lines and at the edges of the salt domes.

The oil slick pattern covering an area of 580 sq miles in just 2 days after the 22 April 2^nd explosion, could not have come from just one well at the south-western edge of the slick area. All evidences showed that a lot more oil (not just from well A alone) spewed out from the blown crater at the 3^rd well, blow holes, vents and fissures along the fault lines and salt domes. With BP still carrying out grouting works till late Nov2010, the actual amount of oil spewed could have been 10 times more than conservative estimates.

The main stream media has also not emphasized the massive amount of green house gases released into the atmosphere? The widespread vaporization of methane deposit (due to hot escaping oil) and toxic gasses leaking from the Macondo reservoir have not ceased for sure. After more than 15 months of relentless underground erosion (from reservoir level to the seafloor) the rate of toxic gas emissions is likely to have increased exponentially. 

Methane is more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas affecting climate change. More heating capacity means higher evaporation rate on a larger scale; leading to higher water vapor content in the atmosphere. Higher moisture content in our atmosphere means more volatility because water-laden air traps more energy and does not allow uniform distribution of heat over the earth’s surface. This allows more frequent building up of intense high pressure zones in the ocean. At the same time, dry continental masses heat up faster creating very low pressure zones. The increase in ferocity and frequency of the hurricanes (or typhoons) in the summer months that follow is not coincidental but a logical consequence of that mega oil spill. Prolonged droughts and flooding periods will certainly increase and will create havoc with agricultural production the world over.

To be fair, the world was already swamped with environmental pollution from the rapid pace of global industrialization, mining and urbanization. An oil spill and gas discharge on such a massive scale just turbo-charged and drove the world faster over the brink. Observational evidence shows a clear correlation between historic eruptions and subsequent years of cold climate conditions. See Geology SDSU.Edu on the examples of Laki (1783), Tambora (1815), Karkatau (1883) and Pinatubo (1991).  No doubt the volume of gases and other volcanic materials spewed during the eruptions are more massive within a few weeks but the Gulf’s mega oil spill disaster lasted much longer (at least 15 months longer and counting) and spread wider.

Our present surface irrigation and drainage systems (designed and built decades ago) cannot cater for the inevitable sea level rise, let alone the heavier and longer rainfall periods. Perennial flooding and droughts with massive and destructive forest fires are clearly on the rise. Rapid and massive deforestation (by fires) will increase even more greenhouse gas emissions.

We are thus on the threshold of a spiraling catastrophic climate cycle, thanks to mega oil spill and continuing massive gas discharge which has pushed us prematurely into this climatic roller-coaster ride.  If we do nothing now, more farmland, nuclear power plants and cities are going to be flooded sooner or later.  Is there a solution? You bet there is but corporate profit-oriented oil-centric interests are not willing to lose their lucrative multi-billion global business. The mega oil spill and HAARP have shown us that altering the earth’s climate is not that impossible. We should be able to reverse back the damage done not only by the Gulf’s disaster but from years of pollution and abuse of Mother Nature. It is time we Hydro-Balance Mother Nature back to health.

Why Hydro-Balancing?

Water cover 70% of the planet’s surface. A lot more is present within the earth’s crust than currently thought of. We have always assumed the hydrologic cycle to be balanced as illustrated below:

The hydrologic cycle is a conceptual model that describes the storage and movement of water between the biosphere, atmosphere, lithosphere, and the hydrosphere (see Figure 8b-1). Water on this planet can be stored in any one of the following reservoirs: atmosphere, oceans, lakes, rivers, soils, glaciers, snowfields, and groundwater.

Figure 8b-1: Hydrologic Cycle. (from http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/8b.html)

Water moves from one reservoir to another by way of processes like evaporation, condensation, precipitation, deposition, runoff, infiltration, sublimation, transpiration, melting, and groundwater flow. The oceans supply most of the evaporated water found in the atmosphere. Of this evaporated water, only 91% of it is returned to the ocean basins by way of precipitation. The remaining 9% is transported to areas over landmasses where climatological factors induce the formation of precipitation. The resulting imbalance between rates of evaporation and precipitation over land and ocean is corrected by runoff and groundwater flow to the oceans.

As you can see on this USGS website on NATURAL PROCESSES OF GROUND-WATER AND SURFACE-WATER INTERACTION (http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/circ1139/htdocs/natural_processes_of_ground.htm) much of the recharge groundwater never penetrate deep into the landmass except for some special conditions such as artesian aquifers.

Although most of the surface water is evaporated and falls back to ground, that water does not return to the inner continental mass or deep hydrosphere. Deep groundwater reservoirs were never replenished. For more than 2,000 years there has been a net loss of water (from the deep hydrosphere) and net gain in our surface hydrosphere (ocean, lakes, rivers, atmosphere and upper groundwater). Our hydrologic cycle was never balanced as we blindly assumed.

Our surface hydrosphere is like an enclosed glass container. Once the water enters it, it cannot escape. There is thus an increasing level of water content in the surface hydrosphere with increasingly disastrous heavy rainfalls and prolonged droughts. The Gulf's mega contribution in green house gasses would have mattered less, if not for the already imbalanced hydrosphere.

The water within the surface has nowhere to go but back into the ocean and the rain cycle repeats itself while the deserts within the continental land mass become drier and drier. Drying continental masses are also much lighter as air replaces water. Water is 781.25 times heavier than air.  1 cubic metre of water at 4 deg Celsius weighs 1000kg or 1 metric ton. Naturally the increase in sea level is less noticeable being accompanied by isostatic adjustments of the lighter continental mass. A 10m sandstone bed over 1sq. km could contain as much as 2 million cu.metres of water. Replacing even 50% of the water content with air would reduce the weight of the same sandstone bed by 998,720 tons for each 1 million cu.metres of water replaced. Any wonder why the world’s larges dam with 39.3 cu.km capacity would cause earthquakes, cracks and landslides. The difference in weight (heavier) is a staggering 39.25 million tons.

http://naturalplane.blogspot.com/2010/05/three-gorges-dam-causing-earthquakes.html

Officials dismissed the first landslides as the foreseeable side-effects of a massive dam project. They are not so dismissive now. A total of 9,324 potentially dangerous sites have been identified. Geologists working midway down the reservoir have found 700 around one town alone on the north bank. Experts say the landslides could go on for 20 years as a huge settlement of earth and water takes shape. It will cost China more than £5 billion to solve all this. A special budget is being worked out inside the opaque bureaucracy that controls the state’s megaprojects.

The global sea level rise is not just the melting of the polar caps but increasing water content in the surface hydrosphere. A large part of that increase came gradually from the deep continental masses. Geologic records tell us that sea level in the past had been as high as 200 to 250m above the present level. How much is due to isostatic adjustment is debatable. In many past marine surveys, I was amazed at the recoveries of partially decayed and some well-preserved wood fragments in the core samples recovered at the edges of the present continental shelf. This could only mean the present continental shelf edges at 150-200m depths were once the estuarine and river mouths when global sea level receded as low as 200 m from the present sea level. Other geological evidences will be discussed in later postings. We are now roughly in the mid level of historic global sea level highs and lows.

Climate scientists have always estimated global sea level rise as 1.5 – 2.0 mm / year ~ www.climate.org/topics/sea-level/index.html. But like everything else this was estimated over the last 100 years. Is the increase in sea level gradual or occurs in sudden jumps of 2 to 10m each time the atmosphere decides to unload its excess water load? Just like the carbon sink models, the hydro sink in the hydrosphere will absorbed the increase in water content until full capacity is reached. It then dumps the excess load; resulting in a sudden rise. We may be lulled into a false sense of security with the gradual rise theory. Were the biblical great floods (commonly told in other cultural histories as well) the result of this sudden and hefty rise in sea levels? If such floods occurred 2,000 – 4,000 years ago, then such great floods may be due within our present life time.

Like all long term illnesses, the pressing problems of massive flooding cannot be tackled overnight. By the time massive flooding occurs, it is too later to handle the problems of draining massive quantities of water. The solution cannot also drain the rivers dry and should be able to return the stored water for use during prolonged droughts automatically. Each hydro-channelling scheme should be a building block towards the global solution of reducing our energy dependence on Oil and the excessive water vapor in our surface hydrosphere. The faster governments around the world adopt the principles of hydro-balancing with such simple eco-friendly geological solutions the faster Mother Nature is nursed back to health.

Instead of wasteful overproduction of cars and consumer goods, over-building of houses, dams and roads, over-mining of resources and destructive drilling / fracking exploration, just to keep the economy going, governments should look into channeling valuable human and financial resources into productive dual-use deep water wells, underground drainage channels to supplement and adapt available geological resources to recycle water back into the deep hydrosphere. Besides providing an economic boost with high employment, these master solutions tackle multiple problems at the very root level, water the basis of life.

Regional fault zones and deep aquifers (porous geological formations) can be easily converted into valuable water recycling/transport channels, water store and supplies, clean of toxic cancer-causing agents. Instead of building expensive filtration plants, why not allow natural filtration processes take their course in recycling our waste water into fresh mineral water deep within the rock formation. Civilisation should fit into the nature’s way of cycling water, not upset it with artificial manufacturing processes with compounded problems.

Massive hydro-dams, coastal tidal barriers, floodgates and dredging/deepening of waterways are not long term solutions as we do not remove the excess water from the surface hydrosphere. Instead we should have distributed flood control vertical drains to complement existing surface drainage system. The vertical drains do not flow back to the rivers (as in the present system causing congestion during peak flows) but connect back to the deep hydrosphere through the regional faults. With millions of cubic metres of freshwater diverted back to the continental interior through a network of faults, the amount of fresh water flows into the sea is not only reduced. New industries capitalizing on renewable sources of energy, automatic distributed urban flood-control schemes, cost-effective irrigation schemes to water the deserts and prevent massive forest fires could spring up. The billions of dollars saved from future environmental carnage should be sufficient to finance nation-wide construction. The construction boom in underground channeling projects and future increase in agricultural production are bonuses.

Long Term Eco-friendly geological solution to Thailand flooding woes.

As with the rest of the world, Thailand’s irrigation and flood control system has been built on the basic principle of water storage during the wet monsoon seasons and controlled release during the dry seasons for year round agriculture. This is done through a network of irrigation canals, hydro-power dams and flood-control sluice gates. There are also millions of shallow water wells, many of which had not been used in recent years. All surface runoff in the northern part of Thailand eventually flow into the four main rivers (Nan, Ping, Yom & Wang) which converged into the Menam Chao Phraya at Nakkon Sawan, approximately 140 miles from Bangkok.

An important rice bowl of the world, Thailand’s agricultural production depends on a regulated supply of water all year round. Bangkok, the commercial heart and capital, sits at the river mouth the Menam Chao Phraya. With a basin of 61,931 sq miles and a total length of 231 miles, it discharges an average of 718 cu.m of water per second (max: 5,960 cu.m/s) into the Gulf of Thailand. (source Wikipedia).

The floods since July 2011 had killed 270 people and had affected 8.2 million people in 60 of Thailand’s 77 provinces; 30 of which are currently inundated. Officials at the Agriculture Ministry said 1.17 million hectares of rice fields might be damaged. Thailand, the world's biggest rice exporter, has about 10.9 million hectares planted with the staple grain. Another 283,279 hectares of land planted with other crops is also likely to have suffered damage, the ministry said. Bank of Thailand governor PrasarnTrairatvorakul said a preliminary estimate by the central bank shows economic losses from flooding that began in late July range from $1.9 billion to $2.6 billion USD.

(cbc.ca/news/2011/10/11/thailand-flooding.html)

BANGKOK, October 27, 2011 (AFP) - Thousands of nervous Bangkok residents flocked to bus, rail and air terminals Thursday while heavy traffic snaked out of the sprawling Thai capital in an exodus from a mass of approaching floodwater. Water was seeping into central areas of the city of 12 million people, entering the grounds of the Grand Palace after the Chao Phraya river overflowed at high tide, but most of downtown Bangkok was still dry.

Many residents hunkered down in their homes, surrounded by sandbags or in some cases even hastily erected concrete block walls, after the government ordered a five-day holiday for 21 provinces including Bangkok from Thursday. "It's a crisis, because if we try to resist this massive amount of floodwater, a force of nature, we won't win," said a teary-eyed Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, facing a major test of her two-month-old leadership.

The Nation October 27, 2011 12:59 pm BANGKOK:  A Dutch expert on flooding, Adri Verwey, said yesterday the worst case scenario for Bangkok was that "extensive areas" of the capital could be submerged under more than one metre of water, if dykes are breached in many areas. Verwey, who was sent by the government of the Netherlands to assist the Thai government warned that Sukhumvit and other low-lying areas are especially prone - though it will take days for the water to reach inner Bangkok. "The levy is very important," he told The Nation and a small group of foreign journalists at Flood Relief Operation Centre (FROC) in Don Mueang airport which itself is now being visited by some flood water. Verway said this coming weekend would be "most crucial" with the expected strong tide. "I pity the Thai people," he said, adding that a lot of tasks will be awaiting the Kingdom in the recovery process. "You have this failure already. You can expect quite a few more."

The dilemma of a hydro dam control system

When the abnormally heavy rain started in mid July, the dams continued to retain water as per normal. No one could forecast 3 months ahead the heavy downpour would continue. By 2^nd Oct 2011, 11 of the country’s 26 major dams had contained more water than their official capacity while others were 82 to 99 percent full according to the Royal Irrigation Department. By August many of the Northern provinces had been flooded. To release even more water would have exacerbate an already disastrous situation. At that time many had already blamed their flood woes on the irrigation department for releasing too much water.

Now that the flood waters had flowed down to Bangkok’s flood canals, many residents were questioning whether the Royal Irrigation Department was too slow in reacting. But it was a “Damn if you do and Damn if you don’t” predicament.

The flood problem at Bangkok is worsened during the high tide periods when the discharge into the sea is impeded. Water that does not flow can cause a lot of damage to the canals and levees which were not designed to withstand high pressure. With nowhere to flow, the flood waters could take weeks to subside provided no new flood waters flow down the Chao Phraya.

So while the problem could have been solved and prevented months ago, it is human nature not to do so until it is too late. So will the rest of the world. Forget the global warming hoax and the punishing carbon tax solutions. They do not solve the world’s immediate environmental problems such as the one facing Thailand or any flood and drought prone countries right now.

When it rains, it pours

Hydro-dams can only control water when the water is still in the catchment area and not after the flood waters had reached the flood plains. Most typhoons, like Nesat and Nalgae dumped much of their rain load on the fluvial plains outside the control of hydro dams. Most existing drainage systems converge and drain into the main fluvial channels. This is like causing a massive traffic jam during peak flows and they all flow southwards towards Bangkok. With low elevation, there is not much gradient to speed up the water flow. Even if there is, the flood water will accumulate at the next flat zone. Our present surface drainage system is thus like a serial, linear system; never suitable to cater for peak flows during floods.

To solve our flooding woes, our fundamental concept of a converging system must radically change to a divergent distributed system (a complete reversal). In order to do that

1. there need to be alternative water outlets, not just the sea
2. any excess water above the optimum flow level of the main channels must be automatically removed so that the volume of water can never reach the danger level of flooding (tackling the problem at root level before it gets too massive to handle)
3. water in the alternative outlet can be stored for extraction during the dry period or channel out to areas in need of water.

Nature has already provided us with a ready made solution. All we need to do is to harness the enormous potential of our natural resources, hundreds to thousands of metres below us. Drill large deep wells into the highly fractured fault zones to act as vertical and inclined channels to the suitable porous rock formations for massive storage.  Each country will need to design their own distributed network of underground channels (a combination of connecting tunnels and suitable fault zones) to interconnect the aquifers and deeper formations based on their respective geological structures and stratigraphy.  

Some preliminary quantitative food for thoughts.

At 1m flood height over an area 1sq km, the volume of flood water is 1 million cu.metres.  A sandstone bed 10 m thick with 20% porosity over 1 sq km area, has the capacity to store an equivalent of 1 million cu.metres of water assuming 50% impermeability. In addition a highly permeable fault zone with just 30% porosity (100m wide x 1km length x 1 km depth) could store as much as 30 million cu.metres of water. As these regional fault zones run for miles into the interior of the continental mass, their storage and transport capacity is potentially enormous. Clearly suitable geologic conditions can be utilized as deep underground resource (water store) with the appropriate adaptations. See illustrations in figures #7001a to c.

If excess water is continually removed as soon as it rises above the optimum main channel level, there is no need to actively pump the water into the wells. There can be various contraptions to generate electricity as the water flows downwards under gravity. These wells can have triple purposes; drain excess water into the underground store, generate electricity and provide fresh water sources during droughts.

As contingency (in the event of an unforeseen accidental flood outside the main channels; depending on the setup) water from the flooded area can be pumped into the nearest series of wells. With 5 wells per sq km and a conservative discharge rate of 20,000 cu m /day/well, it would take 10 days to clear 1 million cu.metres of water by pumping the water into the wells. The discharge rate can be improved by various means such as increasing the diameter and depth of the wells. The money to be spent on building more irrigation canals and flood control dams (now proven to be ineffective), can be better spent on these vertical dual purpose deep wells. With faster construction periods (than dam construction) and the immediate availability of the natural geological resources, a system of vertical wells can be installed progressively to prevent the next catastrophic flooding. With the unpredictable climate change following the gulf’s mega oil spill disaster, the next flood in your neighborhood could be just around the corner.  Prevention is definitely better and less costly than cure. Those who had experienced the floods first hand and had suffered personal losses of loved ones & irreplaceable valuables, the aftermath clean-up of the disaster is as traumatic as the tragedies themselves.  

For the love of mankind, for the prevention of such mega disastrous tragedies and for the compassion of those who had suffered immense losses, let us all work together to prevent such massive destruction of lives and properties. It is in our interests to act together in unison. Remember corporate interests take over when you don’t.

Quick Links

Singapore Civil Defence Force
http://www.scdf.gov.sg

National Environment Agency
http://app2.nea.gov.sg

Shell in Singapore
http://www.shell.com.sg
Quick Facts

Shell has shut at least 340,000 barrels-per-day (bpd) of capacity at the 500,000-bpd plant in Pulau Bukom. A third crude distillation unit of 110,000-bpd is running reportedly at reduced rates.

Singapore is the world's largest market for fuel oil and Asia's hub for crude and refined product trading, and any disruptions from the fire could impact regional prices as some capacity has already been taken offline. - REUTERS.

• by BK Lim (23 Feb 2011) email: bklimgeohazards@gmail.com

Is there a common factor between the quake off Fort Morgan on 18 Feb 2010 and the recent swarm of quakes occurring in the vicinity of the New Madrid Fault zone? You are right if the BP Mega Oil spill and the Deepwater Horizon blowout on 20 April 2010 comes to mind.

They are all quakes similar to the disastrous 22 Feb 2011 quake that occured close to Christshurch in New Zealand. Their shallow epicentres are off the main tectonic (or intra-plate) main fault lines. There are significant differences though, especially in magnitude and tectonic plate settings. The recent NZ disaster was more devastating than an earlier quake 11 times more powerful with its epicentre on the plate margin.

Since the 2Aug 2010 quake at Louisiana, we have been warning of more occurrences of such shallow low magnitude quakes. See figure 145-1 which shows some of the hidden series of NW-SE strike-slip fault lines typical of intra-plate movement. The fault chart (prepared in August and updated only with annotations) was only published on 10 Nov2010, Update On BP Rigs Location & the Fault Connection. The consequence of the continuing corosive erosion along these faults by leaking hydrocarbons from deep reservoirs (not only from the Macondo prospect) is the release in stresses between the upper and lower crust; resulting in shallow quakes of generally low magnitude. This was mentioned in a recent article, first written on 14 Feb and updated 20 Feb 2011.

~~~start of quote~~~Silencing The Independent Voices Of Truth On The BP's Mega Oil Spill GOM

For millions of years, the south-eastern part of the North American tectonic plate (south-east of the New Madrid Fault line) has been thrusting in a north-easterly direction while the western half of the plate has been moving south along the San Andreas fault line. This is the main reason for the present gulf seabed morphology.

The resultant torsion tension is reflected by the fault pattern illustrated in a previous article BP's Rigs Location & Fault Connection. Besides lateral stresses, vertical stresses also developed between the upper and lower section of the tectonic blocks due to differential upper and lower slide movement. The abnormal occurrences of hundreds of shallow and low magnitude earthquakes since the Macondo blowout are the direct consequence of the continual release of these pent-up stress zones. FEMA recently sent out RFI (request for information) to identify vendors for the emergency supply of food rations, various fuels and hydration in support of disaster relief efforts based on a catastrophic disaster event within the New Madrid Fault system for a survivor population of 7 million to be utilised for the sustainment of life during a 10-day period of operations. Is FEMA having privileged information of an impending disaster in the New Madrid Fault area, 9 months after the BP's Mega-oil Spill disaster?

~~~end of quote ~~~~

What is the area extent of these continuing leakages of hydrocarbons along these faults , vaporisation of methane hydrates due to warming effect of these leaking hydrocarbons and rapid mass depletion caused by continuing sub-seabed erosion? Judging by the number of reported quake-swarms, we are pretty close to the point of no return if we have not passed that point yet.

So far the quakes had been low magnitude between 2 to 4 on the Richter Scale. FEMA is expecting a major quake disaster similar to the recent Christchurch Quake in New Zealand. As we have seen, the shallow quakes are more devastating than a deep one at the base of the crust. The New Madrid Fault is an intra-plate tectonically stressed zone. It behaves very differently from the tectonic plate margins.

Since these shallow intra-plate quakes had been unleashed by the drilling and blowouts at the Macondo prospect, it makes sense to monitor closely the seafloor and the continental shelf edges. Mapping the gas vents in the vicinity of these faults and shelf edges would go a long way to making accurate predictions of what to expect in the vicinity of the New Madrid Fault zone. More powerful need not necessarily be more devastating but one thing for sure, the disaster has not ended yet despite what you have been told. Christchurch was hit by a hidden fault (???)

~~~ start of quote ~~~~

New_Zealand_Earthquake_Science By ALICIA CHANG, AP Science Writer–Tue Feb22, 6:10pmET

No one died in that early morning quake — which was 11 times stronger — mainly because it was centered farther away, about 30 miles west of the city center. It was also twice as deep as Tuesday's aftershock. Shallower quakes tend to be more damaging.

LOS ANGELES – The latest New Zealand earthquake was a deadly combination of distance, depth and timing. While weaker than the one that rocked the area last September, it did more damage and cost lives, primarily because of its location. Tuesday's magnitude-6.3 quake was centered about 3 miles from the populated hub of Christchurch, toppling buildings, killing dozens and trapping others. It was also only about 3 miles deep and occurred during the middle of a workday when commercial buildings were filled with employees.The jolt "is squarely beneath the city itself," said seismologist Egill Hauksson of the California Institute of Technology. "All the old historic buildings are being shaken more violently than they were built to withstand." Scientists classified it as an aftershock of the powerful magnitude-7 that struck last Sept. 4.

The recently published National Commission Report to the President of the United States of America (11th January 2011) and BP's own earlier Accident Investigation Report dated 8th September 2010 have focused almost entirely on the failings of equipment and processes on the drilldeck of the Deepwater Horizon, on the seafloor BOP and associated equipment and on the errors and mistakes made in drilling and cementing up of the close to completed well.

The fact is that BP were drilling at Macondo MC 252 in an area of well known and documented geological hazards (known in the industry as "Geohazards"). At Macondo these included such features as extensive beds of frozen gas (or methane hydrates) and a number of layers of artesian overpressured sands where the interstitial natural water pressures could cause casing collapse due to disturbance of those sands. This process is known as "liquefaction", also known in the trade as "shallow water flows" [SWF]. The presence of gas hydrates and shallow water flows in this Mississippi canyon shelf edge zone is very well documented by the MMS, BP and other operators.

SIX people were injured when a fire broke out at an oil platform of Petronas Carigali, Malaysian state energy firm Petronas said on Tuesday.

Petronas said the blaze broke out early on Tuesday at the Bekok C platform, which is operated by its unit Petronas Carigali. The platform is located 200km off Peninsula Malaysia.

'The fire started just after midnight and was contained by the platform's emergency response team soon after,' Petronas said in a statement.

Petronas said six people suffered injuries and have been taken to a hospital in eastern Terengganu state, while the remaining 102 personnel have been evacuated to nearby platforms.

Petronas said Bekok C was undergoing a scheduled shutdown for maintenance at the time of the incident, adding that an investigation was underway. -- AFP

An Australian gas drainage engineer who visited the site last year said operating standards were "extremely poor".

His comments were backed up by a world renowned Kiwi mining safety expert who said the explosion at Pike River should never have happened.

Neither will be publicly identified but say safety problems will be investigated in the coming weeks.

"In developed countries like the United States and New Zealand we shouldn't be having these kinds of accidents," the New Zealand expert said.

He was also referring to an explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia which killed 29 miners on April 5.

This may not involve the BP's Oil disaster but it illustrates how grandiose projects are being suddenly pushed forward, all in preparation for the coming snap election. Vested political and business interests precede sound geological judgement. Another man-made disaster in the making?

Malaysia do not need another 100 storey building to put it ahead of Taipei's 101, Shanghai World Financial Centre and Dubai's Burj Khalifa.

The KL Limestone formation beneath the top alluvial cover, is highly fractured and faulted with full of underground caverns and pinnacled topography. This is no place to build the tallest building in the world.

Just as BP could not have chosen a more dangerous Macondo well location to drill into an unforgiving Oil Disaster, Kuala Lumpur especially in the vicinity of the friable unpredictable geological contact zone between the KL Limestone Formation and the Kenny Hill Formation, could not be more suitable for the world's tallest disaster. Come to think of it, the World's Tallest Leaning Tower may be a feat difficult to upstage.

(31 July 2010 – hydrocomgeo@gmail.com)

Return to main article:

Why is BP's Macondo blowout so disastrous & Beyond Patch-up.

(25 July 2010, hydrocomgeo@gmail.com).

There has been so much information (or mis-information) on the disaster it is difficult to separate the facts from the myths, let alone decide who is or are to be held responsible for the oil spill disaster. There is a need for a working geological model to integrate all the scattered pieces of information and evidence together, so that law makers can zoom into areas where data had been lacking (or withheld) and the wrongs be corrected in order for the industry to move forward. The fact that so many wells (even in deeper waters) had been drilled successfully in the past in the same Gulf region suggests that there may be more “hidden” factors that caused this blowout to be so disastrous.

The geological model presented here is based on facts derived from past blowout investigations that had been equally puzzling. It provides a fresh perspective into the blowout investigation which until now had been overly focused on the drilling itself. If the well blowout was already a disaster in waiting, there is absolutely nothing the drilling crew could do to prevent the blowout, short of abandoning the well prior to reaching the reservoir. The fact that this geological model had been independently generalized from data and information available on the public domain means that there is room for more detailed infill and ample opportunities for BP’s technical experts to prove the model wrong. On the other hand, if subsequent revelations (from yet to be published data or information) substantiate or improve on the accuracy of the model, then this geological modeling effort, is heading the right direction in providing a more sound basis for corrective measures towards making the oil industry safer from such future disasters.

1 Key components of the qualitative geological model.
It is reasonable to assume that BP was targeting a structural reservoir in the vicinity of a salt dome. In BP's bathymetric chart, both Macondo’s wells (A & B) were located on an escarpment discernible on satellite images of the seafloor obtained from Google Earth. Texaco Rigel well which is about 2.43 km from BP Macondo A, is about 1 km away from the edge of the escarpment. Thus, while a salt dome is selected for the model, any vertical geological structure like an intrusive dyke or a vertically inclined fault zone (lateral fault), would essentially produce the same effects. The present qualitative geological model can be converted to a quantitative one when sufficient quantitative data is available. For now this qualitative model is sufficient for us to understand how the blowout occurred, why it occurred, what should have been done to remedy a bad situation from getting worse and how it could have been prevented in the future.

2 Information substantiating the qualitative geological model
There have been “unconfirmed” reports that Macondo Well A which was first drilled by TransOcean Marianas and aborted on 9^th Nov 2009 after reaching a depth of 4023 feet (1226 m) below seabed, was re-entered by TransOcean Deepwater Horizon on 13 or 15 Feb 2010. Thus the present blown out well is Macondo B. There were also unconfirmed reports that Macondo B was so badly blown, that the well which is been shown to the worldwide audience is the first Macondo A well which blew earlier in early March (??), before the 20 April blowout. While such “unconfirmed” information would fit in quite nicely with the geological model, it does not affect its validity even if they are not true.

On 13 Feb BP told MMS they were trying to seal cracks in the well. It took 10 days to plug the first cracks. In early March , BP told MMS they were having trouble maintaining control of surging natural gas (according to emails).

A March 10 e-mail to Frank Patton, the U.S. Minerals Management Service’s drilling engineer for the New Orleans district, from BP executive Scherie Douglas said BP planned to sever the pipe connecting the well to the rig and plug the hole. “We are in the midst of a well control situation on MC 252 #001 and have stuck pipe,” Douglas wrote, referring to the subsea block, Mississippi Canyon 252, of the stricken well. “We are bringing out equipment to begin operations to sever the drillpipe, plugback the well and bypass.” Bloomberg News (31 May 2010).

According to Bloomberg news, Douglas or BP received verbal approval at 11pm on 11 March to insert the cement plug about 750feet (229m) above the bottom of the hole. The Federal regulators gave BP permission to cement the well at a shallower depth than normally would have been required after the hole caved in on drilling equipment.

In the congressional hearing on 15 June 2010, BP Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward and other top executives gave the impression they were ignorant of the difficulties the company’s engineers were grappling with in the well before the explosion… according to U.S. Representative Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “We could find no evidence that you paid any attention to the tremendous risk BP was taking,” Waxman said as Hayward waited to testify. “There is not a single email or document that you paid the slightest attention to the dangers at this well.”

BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles and exploration chief Andy Inglis “were apparently oblivious to what was happening,” said Waxman, a California Democrat. “BP’s corporate complacency is astonishing.”

Perhaps Henry Waxman was not aware that there was a massive share sell-off (531,461 shares in total) by 4 BP directors just days after the 11 March incident. Tony Hayward sold 223,288 shares (a third of his total holding) on 17 March. This was followed by Byron E Grote on 18 March (58,536 shares), Andy Iglis on 23 March (219,500 shares) and Ian C Conn on 30 March (13,073 shares). And that were only BP’s directors. What about the shares sell off by BP’s executives? See Massive Shares sell off prior to expected disaster.

It is not that BP directors and executives were ignorant to the problems on the Macondo wells. Their personal fortune mattered more. It is not that they do not know a blowout was inevitable. They were only wrong in thinking that the blowout could be controlled. They had not expected the blowout to spin so badly out of control.

It did not matter whether Macondo A or Macondo B was eventually drilled to reservoir level since both wells were located right on top of the seabed escarpment which is clearly an indication of some massive geological structure beneath.

Would moving the location have made a difference?

Texaco’s Rigel well 2 km from BP’s Macondo wells (but 1 km from the edge of the escarpment), was drilled safely in stark contrast to BP’s ill fated wells. Why? The reason is obvious on Figure 1a.

The Rigel exploration well, the Texaco OCS-G-18207 #1, was drilled in 1999 in Gulf of Mexico block MC 252 in 5200’ water depth. The well targeted a Miocene age, low-relief downthrown closure/stratigraphic trap that was supported by a strong amplitude response on the 3D seismic data. The results from the Rigel exploration well were disappointing. The well encountered what was interpreted to be a 176’ thick gas-charged, low-permeability siltstone in the Rob E-age target. This reservoir was believed to be uneconomic at that time. This presentation focuses on a few stalwart individuals’ efforts to continue to pursue appraisal of this marginal discovery. These efforts included pre-appraisal geologic modeling, reservoir modeling, and analog work. (Westside - Rigel Deepwater Field Appraisal and Development 16 Nov 2005.)

3 What possibly happened?
Figures 1a shows the geological setting just prior to drilling BP’s Macondo well. Problems started as soon as the drilling entered the GWSF hazardous zone. The top hole condition would have deteriorated as escaping gas swirled outside the well casing, enlarging the well bore. With heavy circulation losses, the drillers would have reduced ECD (equivalent circulation density) to limit mud losses and minimize damage to the pervious (weak) rock formation. Unfortunately, each time the ECD dipped below the previous charged pressure, gas influx would kick in. Thus the drillers would have no choice but to keep ECD high enough to keep the gas out. Cementation to isolate the hydraulic connection between layers would be futile as the cement would not remain static long enough to set. This was partly due to pressurized gas and cavitations in the GWSF zone caused earlier, by drilling in an open hole. The dynamic movement of fluids in the GWSF zone gradually increased the fractures and permeability in the vicinity of the poorly cemented well bore as the drilling continued deeper.

The presence of gas-saturated weak rock formation immediately underlying the non-lithified sediment is a slow acting hazardous condition (GWSF hazards) not readily recognized or understood by the industry despite being the common factor in most blowouts. Although GWSF hazardous conditions do not immediately caused a blowout, the seeds of destruction are sown at this shallow sub-formation depth. The deterioration of the well bore outside the casing and damage to the rock sub-formation is beyond the control of any drillers. Pumping in cement to seal the cracks would not work under gas-charged conditions.

The drilling problems were further compounded when up-dipping beds were encountered with sudden loss of circulation. To cut mud loss, ECD had to be reduced. But when pressure in the well dipped, gas influx kicked in as the Extended Gas Charged Pressure (EGCP) zone had previously been charged to a higher mud weight. See illustrations in figures 1d &1e.

The permeable contact aureole of the salt dome or an intrusive dyke, obviously added to the problem. It is like having a “U-tube” counterbalancing the mud column inside the well. No wonder the drillers described the Macondo well as a “Hell Well”. Compare this nightmare scenario with the Texaco Rigel well which was drilled safely just a km away from the salt dome. BP’s management should have correlated the drilling problems with the geological structure. If they had done that (which is the gist of this article), they would have realised that the Macondo well was just a disaster waiting to happen. They should have taken the responsible way out by abandoning the well before reaching the reservoir.

By failing to do that, they were just postponing the inevitable. The “giant aquifer system” was fully charged and just waiting for any mistake to trigger the blowout. No wonder the directors and top executives were rushing to sell off their shares after the 11 March incident, in anticipation of the worse to come. Perhaps BP should stand for “Before Public-interest” for the blatant manner in which personal profits come before the welfare of the environment and public.

As soon as the pressure in the well dipped below the EGCP (replacing the drilling mud with seawater) gas influx kicked in, at the leaking points in the well from pressurised gas stored at the GSWF zone. When the gas bubble in the well started to rise and expand with lower pressure, it rapidly displaced the seawater column (>5,000 ft) in the riser. This is like sucking liquid out of a glass with a straw. The tremendous suction and static pressure exerted by the reservoir created a sudden jump in differential force, resulting in the breach of the bottom cement plug 2 days later. This triggered the uncontrollable continuous gushing of oil and gas out of the reservoir through the blown well. See figure 1f.

The futile attempts to “Top Kill” or “Top Cap” the gushing well only made the bad situation worse by increasing the damage to GWSF zone and increasing the EGCP size. See previous article; The high risk of top capping the gushing well.

After quickly reaching 6,400 psi in the pressure test using the TOP CAP, the increase in the well pressure slowed down to 10, then 2 to less than 1 psi per hour. Oil and gas are obviously being forced into the “giant aquifer” which kept expanding and finding new pathways in the rock formation. That is why the initial 8,000 to 9,000 psi passing mark would never be reached. After 41 hours, the pressure inside the top capped well was 6,745 psi and still rising very slowly. Of course, the pressure inside the capped well would never decrease (until the reservoir is depleted) even as oil and gas are being forced further into the EGCP zone and into the giant aquifer.

As only the light hydrocarbons (methane) filter or seep through the Quaternary Sediment layers, no oil seeps would be evident at the sea floor yet. The oil would remain buried beneath the sea floor until weaknesses in the sediment developed into cracks big enough to result in active oil seeps (which would also mean a near calamity). By then the hot oil and gases from the reservoir may have tilted the world into an irreversible ecological disaster, by warming up and vaporising strata of methane hydrates into gas. The result would be an exponential increase in dissolved methane in the deep waters of the Gulf and eventually into our atmosphere. No one knows how much methane hydrates lay beneath the Gulf sea floor.

But one thing is for sure. The longer the gushing well stays “top capped”, the more severe is the environmental damage. There is no logical reason why the gushing oil could not be tapped through the LMRP TOP CAP with a floating platform or subsea facilities; rather shutting it off completely to cause further damage to the fragile sub-seabed structure and sediment.

4 What you don’t see can be covered up.
Perhaps the botched-up “photochop-chop” photos put up by BP was just a test. To see how keen the public eyes were in following BP’s clean up efforts. It would be hard to believe BP paid professionals for such a shoddy job. We should give BP more credit than that (remember the shares issues)? Let’s play dumb and the problems will go away.

Many experts in the oil industry were surprised and questioned the rationality of capping the well when the relief wells were so close to achieving their “bottom kill” objectives. They could have installed the TOP CAP much earlier. This means that BP knew if the gushing well was completely shut at the top, the oil and gas would spread beneath the sea floor and gas seeps would start appearing. So the TOP CAP had to be placed just before the relief well was ready for the “magic show”. Hurricane Bonnie spoilt the show and the delay is already showing signs of stress (gas seeps).

This could also mean that BP was getting less and less confident that the relief wells would work. The relief wells were held up as the last Trump card. If it fails in full (ROV) view of the concerned public throughout the world, BP’s shares would drop like a stone. There are good geological reasons why the chances of the relief wells’ success are less than 30%. But that would be in the next posting.

So instead “of going on a public stage with a final trump card of 30% chance of success” and risking everything BP stands for, a magic show will be set up so that what ever happens, it will be a success. How?

With a gushing well in full view, a successful bottom kill would show oil slowing down to eventually a tickle. With the cap on, it would be easier to manipulate the data. Thus botched-up photos were a test to check the keenness of the public eye. If the bottom kill fails, there is no independent monitor to prove it. BP could quickly pack and leave the site. Without ROVs’ video, the world is blind. Independent scientific researches later on could be disputed or controlled in post-recovery mopped up battle plan.

The TOP CAP had to be installed and the integrity pressure tests used as an excuse to completely shut down the flow. There is no need to prove the well is leaking. It is already a fact. David Copperfield could not have performed better.

For complete appendix to article see Diagrammatic Illustration of blowout

Investigators also said "nearly everyone" among the workers they interviewed believed that Transocean's system for tracking health and safety issues on the rig was "counter productive".
Many workers entered fake data to try to circumvent the system. As a result, the company's perception of safety on the rig was distorted, the report concluded.
Transocean's equipment report may shed new light on why the blowout preventer failed to stop the surging well, one of the biggest remaining mysteries of the disaster.

One by one, slowly but surely all the unethical practices will surface. Is this unique to BP or are the practices more prevalent than we care to admit?

- hydrocomgeo@gmail.com

Out of plain curiosity after being Barred from Drilling Ahead website for posting the truth on Tony’s BP share sell off, I made a check on the London Stock Exchange on BP’s directors share transactions. Amazingly, there seems to be a pattern of massive share sell-off by BP directors just before the two major incidences at the Macondo well, Mississippi Canyon Block 252, 41 miles (66 km) off the Louisiana coast. See the recompiled information in a spreadsheet incorporating the key dates.

The Transocean Marianas commenced drilling on the Macondo Well location on 7 Oct 2009. Three weeks later on 28 Oct 2009, Tony Hayward sold 220,000 shares at 587.5p. Ten (10) days later, on 9^th Nov 2009, the Transocean Marianas had to abandon the well due to damage by Hurricane Ida. It seems strange that Tony Hayward & Iain C Conn would want to buy 56 shares each at 595.2p on 10 Nov 2009, a day after the rig pulled out. Seven (7) days later, Byron E Grote sold 150,000 shares at 9.92 USD.

On 15 Feb 2010, the Deepwater Horizon reentered the abandoned Macondo Well and commenced drilling. The well was targeted for completion on 8 March 2010. There had been reports of numerous problems on the rig including an accident which damaged the gasket on the blowout preventer. On 17 March 2010, Tony Hayward sold 223,288 shares at 623.2p. Byron E Grote followed suit on 18^th March 2010 by selling 58,536 shares at 9.74 USD and 17,064 shares at 9.73 USD (making a total of 57,600 shares). Andy Inglis followed 6 days later on 23 March 2010, selling a total of 219,500 shares at 630.6 in two transactions. The sell-out trend from 17 to 30^th March 2010 was broken by George David who bought 112,890 shares at 568.9p at an intra-low price on 29 March. David Jackson managed to buy 13,073 shares at also the same price of 568.9p on 30 March, the same day Iain C Conn sold 13,073 shares at 625.36p.

Since his massive sell-off on 17 March, Tony Hayward had bought back BP’s shares 4 times: 50, 55, 83 and 85 shares at prices of 641.1, 553.9, 391.55 and 364.8p respectively. Strangely, from 12 April till 12 July no directors sold their shares but they bought back token shares (50 to 85 shares). Only Carl-Henric Svanberg buck the trend by buying 175,000 shares at 618.96p on 28 April, 8 days after the blowout incident.

It is very clear Car-Henric Svanberg and George David are both caught in the wrong trend while Tony Hayward, Iain C Conn, Byron R Grote and Andy Inglis were the directors right on the money.

Ida was a late season hurricane that had a large impact on the east coast of Nicaragua and the adjacent islands. It was the first November hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico since Kate of 1985. Ida's genesis was associated with a poorly defined tropical wave that reached the western Caribbean Sea on 1 November. It was the strongest landfalling tropical cyclone during the 2009 Atlantic hurricane season with winds of 85 mph (140 km/h).

With the Transocean Marianas having problems 3 weeks into the drilling and the brewing hurricane, Tony Hayward apparently made the right choice of selling off his shares (220,000) before the impending hurricane. He was right when the well had to be abandoned 10 days later. No other directors followed him in the sell-off.

Tony’s sell-off on 17^th March 2010 (2283,228 shares) was made after the well had numerous problems and missed its targeted completion date of 8 March 2010. This time 3 other directors (Conn, Grote & Inglis) followed suit. A total of 531,461 shares were disposed by the 4 directors in the period 17 – 30 March 2010. From 12 April till 12 July 2010, Tony Hayward and Iain Conn were seen to be buying miniscule shares (total 491 shares) in an apparent bid to throw off the sense; 50 shares each at 641.1p (losing 18p) on 12^th April.

After the Deepwater Horizon missed its targeted 8^th March completion date, it seems that at least some directors knew of something that might cause the share prices to fall. Four directors selling off 531,461 shares within 2 weeks is no coincidence.

The moral question is, did they allow “the speeding train to continue on its collision course” as pointed out in “The root causes of BP's oil spill & the imminent threat of more oil-related disasters. Part 1”, so that they could personally profit from a “limited disaster”. Obviously, they did not expect the disaster to spread that far and wide.

- hydrocomgeo@gmail.com

On 7 July I started a discussion thread titled “Deep Horizon Blowout – was it a disaster in waiting?” at http://www.drillingahead.com, a social network website for oil and gas professionals.

On 13 July 2010, there was a thread discussion posted by Stan asking an apparent contradiction. Why “shallow hazards reports and assessments” were cited in BP’s permit application to MMS (dated 10 March 2010) for drilling the ill-fated Macondo well in 5,000ft of water? This is an obvious legitimate question from a keen member of the public on an apparent “red flag”. Somehow in the discussion, the website owner (Curtis) started to chastise Stan for being “stupid” and misled by false reporting. To prove that point Curtis posted a listing of share transactions showing Tony Hayward buying BP’s shares (50 lots each) instead of selling. The listing however started from 20 March 2010 onwards. Curtis closed further posting on the threat discussion, thereafter.

At 4:25pm July 13, I replied to Stan’s request on the apparent “red flags”. Shallow hazards do not mean shallow water but shallow sub-seabed (below mudline) hazards. In the same posting, I pointed to Stan that Tony Howard disposed of his shares (223,228 lots) on 17 March before buying them back a week later on several transactions but on smaller lots of 50.

Apparently this struck a raw nerve at DrillingAhead website. At 9:01 am July 14, Curtis sent me an email. Apparently this was to get me to log on to the website with my internet connection (to obtain my IP address) and to bar me from accessing the website without notice. My email to Curtis requesting the basis for barring me from the website has been unanswered.

This brings up several questions:

1. Isn’t this barring legal in prohibiting “freedom of information”?
2. This is supposed to be a social network website for open professional discussion. Or is this just a cover to channel one-sided information? Was BP or Tony Hayward sponsoring this website?
3. Was there a hidden agenda?
4. There is nothing offensive at all in my posting. All my postings had been deleted from the website’s discussions. Why the haste in barring me?
5. Why was Tony’s share sell-out so sensitive on this technical website for professional?
6. Is there money to be made from an apparent “rig accident”?
7. Were the shares in small lots (50) bought to cover Tony’s track?
8. Why did Curtis not list Tony’s share sellout on 17^th March 2010 in his posting? Was it deliberate?
9. There is probably more than it meets the eye in this disaster.

Stan, if you are reading this, you can contact me through hydrocomgeo@gmail.com.

BK Lim

14 July 2010

- hydrocomgeo@gmail.com

Today on day 81 of the disaster, an estimated 4 million barrels of oil would have spilled into the Gulf of Mexico and the end to the oil gush is still no where in sight. At today’s price of 75 USD per barrel, more than 300 million USD had been flushed into the sea. BP has spent more than 3 billion USD on the recovery efforts so far and still counting. BP’s investors lost even more in billions, as BP’s share value dropped more than 50% from its high of over 60 USD per share to less than 30 USD recently.

As oil continues to gush out from the ill-fated Macondo well at more than 50,000 barrels a day, the causes of the disaster are still in question. While the Obama Administration is battling with the Gulf states on the moratorium on deepwater offshore drilling (>500m water depth), oil producing countries are holding their breath and oil companies continue business as usual.

Could a BP’s style disastrous oil spill happen in South-East Asia? It is not a question of IF but when. If the threat of a disastrous oil spill is imminent, should we then not try to avert it or be more prepared for the containment following the disaster? Should we not be concern of the environmental damages and its financial woes about to hit our shores?

As oil industry’s standards and regulations in the US and Australia, are much higher than in South-East Asia, disasters of this nature should have happened more often in this region if it is only the question of industry and safety standards. Why would the worst of oil spill disasters in recent years occur in the better regulated countries? Montara disaster on 21 August 2009 in the Timor Sea, offshore Australia and Macondo disaster on 20 April 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico, offshore USA?

Before we jump with joy, let’s look more closely why no major oil spill (BP’s style) has yet occurred in South-East Asia?

First and foremost, the recent disastrous oil spills all occurred at deeper waters close to the shelf-edges (see figure 1 and 2). The shelf edge zones are more hazardous to drilling not only because of deeper water depths (>500m) but because of the presence of abnormally weak highly fractured-faulted stress zone at the upper rock formation immediately underlying the Quaternary sedimentary deposits; collectively termed as Gas-saturated Weak Sub-Formation (GWSF) zones. GWSF hazards are less hazardous within the shallower shelf zone because of shallower depths and gentler slopes. Still we did have blowouts and we learned to handle them over time.

As the shallower and cheaper (easier) to exploit oil reserves get depleted, oil exploration in South-east Asia will intensify in the shelf-edge zones. Figure 3 shows the shelf-edge zones that are currently the most promising prospects. If we are to avoid the costly mistakes of PTTEP and BP’s oil spill, we must learn the root causes of the disasters and not the superficial political excuses[1].

Deep water wells require advanced drilling technology. But while modern drilling techniques are credited to preventing more blowouts, they are also the reason why mega oil spills occur.

As recent as 10 years ago, most wells would have blown at the GWSF hazardous zones. Now with advanced drilling technology, many of the wells “safely” bored through the GWSF hazardous zones without blowing out, to reach their high-pressured gas/oil reservoirs thousands of metres below. Unfortunately, gases (even at low pressure) do cause cavitations in the overlying unconsolidated sediments, as they escape into the water column. Drilling mud invasion into the highly fractured rock formation can seriously undermine the cementation of the top-hole section. “Damaged” geotechnical conditions beyond the immediate vicinity of the wells are not normally monitored. Abnormal drilling losses, complicated well cementation, erratic test results and gas influxes such as those observed while drilling the Macondo Well, are indicative of the problematic GWSF zones.

Given the high daily costs (>1 million USD/day) of drilling operation, the pressure to drill and complete the well in the shortest time possible is understandable for any oil company. Suppressing the blowout at shallow depths however only postpone and compound the disastrous consequence to the next higher cost level.

In BP’s case, more than 81 days of massive oil spill. It took more than 3 months for PTTEP to control Montara’s oil spill in the Timor Sea. In Total’s 1988 Sisi-2 blowout in the Straits of Makassar, offshore Kalimantan, there was no oil spill as the well blew after drilling less than 900m below the sea floor. The well collapsed into a crater swallowing the whole drill ship and continued to bubble out gas for a few weeks. In the 1991 Shell’s Barton BT05 blowout, previous drilling mud and cement were spewed out with the gas since the well had only intercepted an undetected feeder fault and not the gas/oil reservoir hundreds of metres below.

Delayed Blowouts as the name implies do not occur instantaneously as “normal blowouts” do when a well is drilled into a high pressured gas pockets or abnormally high-pressured formation. That is why Delayed Blowouts are difficult to understand just as Cancer, AIDS and other slow-acting diseases were initially misunderstood in Medicine.

The PTTEP’s Montara blowout occurred more than a year after the platform was installed. At BP’s Macondo well, the blowout (20 April 2010) occurred almost 2 months after Deepwater Horizon had resumed drilling the well in Feb 2010. The well was first drilled by Transocean Marianas semi-submersible rig on 7 Oct 2009 but was aborted at 4023 feet (1226 m) below seabed on 29 Nov 2009 when the rig was damaged by Hurricane Ida (Wikipedia & various sources).

Reports of localised subsidence at some of the offshore producing platforms within the shelf edge zone are particularly disturbing. Localised subsidence up to a few km in diameters, are unlikely to be associated with reservoir depletion but more likely due to problems associated with the shallower GWSF hazardous zones. These platforms would be prime candidates for future blow-outs and oil spill disasters.

But not all future oil spill disasters need to be triggered by man-made blowouts. There are many potential submarine landslides on the deeper shelf slopes just waiting to fail. Evidence of past giant landslides is evident from sea floor down to as deep as few hundred metres below. With the recent spate of earthquakes in the region, it is only a matter of time.

Is there any hope of us averting a BP’s style oil spill disaster? Are the oil companies and the governments not worried of another mega-oil spill and their high clean up costs? Are they as clueless as the mainstream public or simply “tidak apa” (could not care less) on the disastrous effect on our marine environment, the Armageddon of the marine world? Isn’t prevention better than the cure?

Believe it or not, the oil industry does have a first line of defence against disasters. Geohazards Site Surveys are specifically commissioned to seek out geohazards for each and every well or platform location. But in reality, this line of defence against disasters is a badly broken one; brought about by years of easy profits, vested business interests and pandering to the whims and fancies of the oil companies rather than being an independent watch-dog. Hidden from public scrutiny, the geohazards industry was having an easy ride on the waves of windfalls from the meteoric rise in oil prices. Mega disasters like BP’s oil spills are inevitable consequences of the “Oil Bubble” and its past exuberance just like the global financial meltdowns from the housing bubble, credit crunch and Ponzi schemes.

The offshore oil industry is often thought as being infallible with stringent HSE regulations and strict code of conduct, all in the name of safety and preservation of the environment. The BP’s Oil Spill disaster busted that myth and confirmed our worst fears. BP’s Oil Spill disaster publicly confirms what many professionals in the industry had long known and feared in silence.

It is human nature to ignore early warning signs of potential hazards; just as 90% of you reading this article would dismiss this imminent threat of another mega oil spill disaster. Even if a mega disaster had been accurately predicted, trying to avert it is like trying to stop a speeding train from its collision course, miles before the actual collision.

Would any geohazards specialist be brave enough to stand by his/her geohazards prediction or give in to expediency? The typical geohazards prediction given for the ill-fated Macondo’s well was intentionally ambiguous, designed to allow BP to proceed with the drilling while providing some defensive cover in the event of some “problems”. It cleverly evades the question of a disaster; by meaninglessly ranking the risk of encountering gas from “negligible to moderate”, from top to bottom, far and wide (see extract below).

Imagine paying hundreds of thousands of dollars only to have a generalized standard assessment that is almost the same for every site, save for the numbering and sequencing. It reflects the depth of insignificance this once important role of geohazards prediction had sunk into.

Imagine paying thousands of dollars for a fire inspector to report to you that your house is at a moderate risk of fire for using gas in the house. The presence of gas is not the question but the piping condition and potentially hazardous leaks are. The risk of encountering gas is less important than the quantity, distribution, pressure and nature of occurrence in relation to the geological structure. If the gas occurrence is assessed to be potentially hazardous then the assessment needs to define the means by which drilling could have triggered or developed the situation into a blowout or disaster. In addition, the geohazards assessment should have recommended the best alternative in averting the potential problems, blowout or disaster which is the primary objective. The cheapest way of averting a disaster is to relocate the well location.

Geohazards surveys and geohazards predictions are not as easy as currently practiced worldwide. The oil companies and the world have been short-changed into accepting “half-past six” geohazards assessment and playing Russian roulette with our lives and our environment. Is it unreasonable to demand for a more reliable and accurate geohazards interpretation without the “cover all” ambiguities?

There is a simple solution. Less than 20% of all sites surveyed are at risk of any immediate short term geohazards. A QC review of past geohazards reports by a knowledgeable and experienced geohazards expert can quickly isolate the risky well or platform locations for more detailed assessment. For risky wells that had not been drilled yet, safer alternative locations can be found while for platforms already in place, detailed trajectory risk analysis can be carried out to minimize the risk of a disaster. For locations at risk of landslides, the solution will be more difficult since significantly larger areas are involved. Nevertheless, it is better to face the situation now than later; after a disaster has occurred.

Life is about choices; resolve it now or postpone it to a later date at a much higher cost. BP’s oil spill disaster is another warning sign that the worst is yet to come. Given the many unreported problems of production wells sited dangerously at the (shelf) edge (pun intended), the next oil spill disaster need not necessarily be triggered by a drilling mishap. So far very few in the oil industry recognized the potential disasters that could result from induced or natural occurrence of giant submarine subsidence, landslides and earthquakes in the vicinity of the production platforms. If an oil giant could teeter on the brink of financial collapse, what hopes do poor third world countries have in the face of a massive oil spill disaster? More booms, anybody?

[1] The root causes of BP’s oil spill & the imminent threat of more oil-related disasters. BK Lim, 1 July 2010

- BK Lim (hydrocomgeo@gmail.com)
1 Introduction
After gushing more than 3.55 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico in 71 days, the end to BP’s oil spill disaster is still nowhere in sight; at least until mid august when the relief wells are expected to intercept and seal off the ill-fated Macondo well. At today’s price of 75 USD per barrel, the oil would have fetched more than 266.25 million USD in revenues. BP has spent more than 2.6 billion USD on the recovery efforts so far and still counting. BP’s investors lost many billions more as BP’s share value dropped more than 50% from its high of over 60 USD per share to less than 30 USD recently.

At a hearing on June 15, when Congress pressed oil executives on their readiness to handle the worst-case blowout scenario, Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson responded frankly, "We are not well equipped to handle them. There will be impacts." He added, "That is why the emphasis is always on preventing these things from occurring." In the same hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, BP argued that this disaster was an aberration and would not have occurred given proper corporate oversights and safeguards.

After more than 2 months, the causes of the disaster are still in question. A disaster of this magnitude could not have been caused by any single human error. It is a culmination of a chain of human errors, misjudgment and oversights even before the well was spud. The health of Mother Earth from such environmentally disastrous “accidents” is at stake. It concerns all the 6 billions inhabitants of this tiny blue planet which we all call home. Finding a convenient scapegoat to blame and missing the real lessons to be learnt from all this, would be the true tragedy of this aberration. The search for the root causes of BP’s Macondo blowout must include investigations on other similar gas blowouts around the world, if we are to prevent another environmental disaster of this magnitude from happening.

2 The high risk of over reaction and over simplification of facts
The question of imposing a total ban on offshore drilling is as silly as the total ban on air flights over Europe caused by the recent volcanic eruption in Iceland. Although 4 jet engines failed on the 1982 BA09 flight after passing through the ash cloud, it must be borne in correct perspective that the flight path was less than 200 km from the erupting volcano Mount Galunggung. In contrast, EU airspace is thousands of km from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano. Simple logic dictates that the particle size of the volcanic ash would diminish exponentially with distance from the erupting source as the heavier and more destructive larger factions progressively dropped back to ground without the powerful eruptive force of the volcano. The concentration or density of the volcanic ash, the vertical and lateral distribution of the ash clouds are also key factors since at low concentration, the ash would not be sufficient to clog the powerful jet flow. In essence, hazards assessment is more than just the simplistic aerial distribution of ash clouds (or amplitude anomalies in seismic interpretation) as shown by the satellite imagery.

Just as drilling locations had been moved unnecessarily to get away from pseudo-geohazards, the flight ban over Europe had been totally unnecessary since the vertical extent, particle size and concentration would have been too minute to cause any serious damage. The lateral distribution of the ash clouds (visible from the satellite above) may appear menacing and “potentially hazardous” even if the ash particles are too fine and the thickness of ash clouds strata too thin to cause any significant damage. The Eyjafjallajokull volcano eruption flight ban exemplifies the over-reactions, over-simplification and the real dilemma facing any disasters predictions.

A total ban without knowing the root causes of the disaster would only lead to disasters of a different kind. There are clearly many things wrong with the oil industry but the "wrong medicine" would be a cure worse than the disease itself. Has advanced drilling technology actually decreased the number of disasters? Or has it merely suppressed and postponed the disasters to a later date with far more disastrous consequences. Assessing the risks of disasters using superficial data in isolation and imposing arbitrary limits (water depth > 500m) to offshore drilling without understanding the underlying root causes would be a grave mistake. It would be an over-simplification on the same magnitude as the recent total flight over Europe. Surely the underlying root causes could not be that simple.

3 In search of the root causes of the disaster
If the oversights, misjudgment and the long list of cut-corners are to be blamed for well blowouts, it stands to reason that wells drilled by less advanced smaller oil companies with even more appalling safety and quality standards in less regulated countries, would have blown more frequently before the recent Macondo blowout. PTTEP’s Montara blowout occurred six months earlier in Australia; another first world country with an apparently well-regulated offshore industry.

If the Macondo Blowout was an aberration as asserted by BP, then either

1. the drilling techniques used had deviated from normal industry practices or
2. the sub-seabed conditions at the ill-fated well location were not recognized as potentially hazardous, or
3. both.

Admittedly there had been some obvious cut corners and oversights. It would however, be difficult to argue that experienced technological giants like BP, Transocean and Halliburton would be so naïve to cut corners so deep, to push an apparently “safe” well into the brink.

With record annual earnings, BP does not look like an exploration giant that was skimming to save a few dollars here and there. BP could have used cheaper rigs instead of the state of the art, ultra-deepwater dynamically positioned Deepwater Horizon semi-submersible drilling rig. The “Rolls Royce” of drilling rigs had successfully drilled the deepest oil well in history (10,683 m deep) in the Tiber field at Keathley Canyon block 102, in 1,259 m of water. Transocean’s Deepwater Horizon had apparently won the 2008 MMS award for safety. On the day of the disaster, BP and Transocean managers were on board to celebrate “seven years without a lost-time accident”.

It goes to show that safety records, experience and technological capability are not the yardsticks by which we measure the safety of our oil industry and environment. BP, Shell, Exxon-Mobil and Total are all technologically advanced giants in the oil exploration industry with some of the most stringent Health Safety & Environmental (HSE) policies. Thus while corporate oversights, cut corners and safety lapses in the field might be the “straws that broke the camel’s back”, there is absolutely nothing the field crew can do if the Macondo well was a disaster waiting to happen.

The analogy is like lighting up your gas stove everyday without any problem if there is no gas leak in your kitchen. Even with a gas leak, there would be no explosion if the kitchen is well-ventilated. Thus, while a gas leak does not necessarily lead to an explosion, it would if the escaping gas is allowed to accumulate till the air-gas mixture is just right for an explosion to occur on ignition.

4 If hazardous sub-seabed conditions exist why wasn’t BP forewarned?
This brings us to the question why BP was not forewarned of the impending disaster by the geohazards site survey which was precisely commissioned to seek out potentially hazardous sub-seabed conditions.

There has been a complete silence on the geohazards site assessment of the ill-fated well location. Why? Would this not be the crucial starting point of any site disaster investigation? It reflects the insignificance attached to the geohazards site survey in general and the perceived negligence. This should not be surprising given the second-rate expertise, incoherent and ambiguous cover-all geohazards predictions found in most geohazards reports[i].

The key question then is “why did the blowout occur so late in the drilling process (almost 2 months after drilling had commenced) and not when the well first penetrated the abnormal hazardous conditions in the first few hundred metres of the sub-seabed?” Delayed Blowouts as the name implies do not occur instantaneously as “normal blowouts” do when a well is drilled into a high pressured gas pockets or abnormally high-pressured formation. That is why Delayed Blowouts are difficult to understand just as Cancer, AIDS and other slow-acting diseases were initially misunderstood in Medicine.

Past investigations into previously unrecognized Delayed Blowouts at Total’s SiSi-2 (1988) at the Makassar Straits, Indonesia and Shell’s Barton-BT5 (1991), offshore Sabah, Malaysia have all revealed a common geotechnical factor as far back as 1991; the presence of gas-saturated, abnormally weak highly fractured-faulted stress zone at the upper rock formation immediately underlying the Quaternary sedimentary deposits; collectively termed as Gas-saturated Weak Sub-Formation or abbreviated as GWSF.

The widely held perception that low-pressured gas occurrences are not hazardous to drilling is not true under such geotechnical circumstances. Cement placement is a critical component of well architecture for ensuring casing mechanical support, protection from fluid corrosion, and most importantly isolating permeable zones at different pressure regimes in order to prevent hydraulic communication. The presence of gas-saturated permeable formation immediately underlying poorly consolidated Quaternary deposits can seriously undermine cementing the well as evident in Barton, Montara and Macondo cases.

The 1991 Shell’s Barton-BT5 delayed blowout occurred years after 4 previous problematic trajectories had been drilled. The recent PTTEP’s Montara delayed blowout (21 August 2009, Timor Sea, offshore Western Australia) occurred more than a year after the platform was installed. At BP’s Macondo well, the delayed blowout (20 April 2010) occurred almost 2 months after Deepwater Horizon had resumed drilling the well in Feb 2010. The well was first drilled by Transocean Marianas semi-submersible rig on 7 Oct 2009 but was aborted at 4023 feet (1226 m) below seabed on 29 Nov 2009 when the rig was damaged by Hurricane Ida (Wikipedia & various sources).

In both BP’s Macondo and PTTEP’s Montara incidences, the drilled wells had already reached their targeted reservoirs when the wells blew; compounding the blowouts with even more disastrous oil gushes from the high pressured reservoirs. Would BP and PTTEP stop and abandon their wells before reaching the oil reservoirs, even if they knew that the wells had a high risk of blowing as the list of abnormalities grew as the drilling progressed? It would be like stopping a speeding train. On the contrary, BP was rushing to complete the well and in the process skipping a few critical procedures and integrity tests. It appears at least some top managers knew the score and were hoping against hope and racing against time to quickly plug the well before something “serious” happens.

"Any employee, anywhere at any level, if they have any concern about safety, has the ability and, in fact, the responsibility to raise their hand and try to get the operations stopped, whether that's our operations or a contractor's operations," Lamar McKay, chairman and president of BP America, told the House Natural Resources Committee. (CNN,27 May 2010)

Preliminary findings from BP’s internal investigation released by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on May 25 indicated several serious warning signs in the hours just prior to the explosion.[29][30] Equipment readings indicated gas bubbling into the well, which could signal an impending blowout.[24] The heavy drilling mud in the pipes initially held down the gas of the leaking well. [31] A BP official onboard the rig directed the crew to replace the drilling mud, which is used to keep the well's pressure down, with lighter seawater even though the rig's chief driller protested.[23] According to a number of rig workers, it was understood that workers could get fired for raising safety concerns that might delay drilling.[23] (Wikipedia & various sources)

Was it a coincidence that the CEO of BP (Tony Hayward) cashed in a third of BP’s shares before the rig burst out in flames? Similarly Goldman Sachs sold more than half of its BP’s stock in the month of April before the blowout (The Telegraph, 29 June 2010). It seems that the tell tale signs from the “nightmare Macondo well” were taken more seriously than most would care to admit. If it was a prudent financial precaution, perhaps more could have been done on the “nightmare well” (proactively) instead of letting the “speeding train continue in its collision course”. Imagine telling a board of directors that an almost completed well had to be abandoned after spending millions on it. You would be told to “jump into a lake” first.

On March 10, 2010, a BP executive e-mailed the Minerals Management Service that there was a stuck pipe and well control situation at the drilling site, and that BP would have to plugback the well.[32] A draft of a BP memo in April warned that the cementing of the casing was unlikely to be successful.[24] Halliburton has said that it had finished cementing 20 hours before the fire, but had not yet set the final cement plug.[21][33] A special nitrogen-foamed cement was used which is more difficult to handle than standard cement.[31]. (Wikipedia & various sources)

It happened in Barton-BT5, Sisi-2, Bajt-F and many other near-misses and near-disasters around the world. That is the reality of the oil business. It is almost impossible to stop a disaster from happening when it has not happened yet and even more impossible to pin the blame on the ones who could have prevented the disaster from happening in the first place.

5 BP’s Oil Spill a disaster waiting to happen
The gas blowout on TransOcean’s Deepwater Horizon rig on 20^th April 2010 was a disaster waiting to happen, just as Total’s SiSi-2, Shell’s Barton-BT5 and PTTEP’s Montara. Sad to say, many more such disasters are just waiting to happen especially at the shelf edge zones. Why?

With water depths rapidly changing from tens to thousands of metres, the geotechnically stressed continental shelf edge zones are fraught with GWSF hazards. High resolution seismic data from geohazards site surveys at these shelf edge zones reveal evidence of past landslides, creep movements, subsidence and other geotechnical instability. Yet none of these potential geohazards were ever understood or reported. Why? (see part 2).

6 Our badly broken line of defence
Our line of defence against disaster in the oil industry consists of:

• Geohazards site surveys;
• Certification & Regulations (safety training, medical fitness, critical failsafe systems and policies);
• Quality Control (QC) supervision at site.

On paper it makes good sense to seek out geohazards and geotechnical problems and to forewarn the oil companies of impending disasters if appropriate precautions are not taken. Regulations, certifications and various safety audits are in place to ensure that Health Safety & Environmental (HSE) rules and policies are complied with. Lastly we have a system of QC supervision on sites to ensure that the safety rules and policies are strictly adhered to and to snuff out any incidents at sites before the situations spin out of control.

Sounds good but in the reality, our line of defence is badly broken due to years of cozy business relationship, vested interest and unscrupulous profiteering and neglect. Hidden from public scrutiny, the geohazards industry was having an easy ride on the waves of windfalls from the meteoric rise in oil prices. But the good times cannot last forever. Somewhere down the line, the party has to end. Mega disasters like BP’s oil spills are inevitable consequences of the “Oil Bubble” and its past exuberance just like the global financial meltdowns from the housing bubble, credit crunch and Ponzi schemes.

The offshore oil industry is often thought as being infallible with stringent HSE regulations and strict code of conduct, all in the name of safety and preservation of the environment. The BP’s Oil Spill disaster busted that myth and confirmed our worst fears. BP’s Oil Spill disaster publicly confirms what many professionals in the industry had long known and feared in silence.

Although there are whistleblower policies and ground feedbacks in most HSE procedures, these appear to apply only to minor infringements and violations in the field. More damaging as we see in most disasters, are the imprudent management decisions that circumvent legal regulations; scandalous decisions that are clouded with technicalities with the sole aim of improving the bottom line. These are root causes of the disasters, not the minor abuses, infringements and improprieties committed at site that are being paraded out now in the aftermath of the disaster.

The mixture of imprudent business greed, geohazards and our broken line of defence, is a potent recipe for disasters, not only in the Gulf but in every region around the world where oil is actively being explored or produced. Part II of this report explains how the Macondo Well was destined to blow even with the best safety standards, drilling technology and well designs. Part III describes the rot that had set into the industry, rendering our geohazards site surveys as ineffective as searching for a needle in a haystack.

BP’s oil spill disaster is another warning sign that the worst is yet to come. Given the many unreported problems of production wells sited dangerously at the (shelf) edge (pun intended), the next oil spill disaster need not necessarily be triggered by a drilling mishap. So far very few in the oil industry recognized the potential disasters that could result from induced or natural occurrence of giant submarine subsidence, landslides and earthquakes in the vicinity of the production platforms. If an oil giant could teeter on the brink of financial collapse, what hopes do poor third world countries have in the face of a massive oil spill disaster? More booms, anybody?

[i] BK Lim, 12 June 2010 National Geoscience Seminar KL. The need for post survey independent QC to check the high failure rate of geohazards predictions. (in publication, Geo Soc Malaysia bulletin)

BK Lim, Tim Pugh & Fiona Fitzpatrick (RPS) 25th March 2010 Australiasian Oil & Gas Exhibition and Conference, Perth. The need for QC on Geophysical Interpretation of Geohazards and Engineering Site Surveys.

BK Lim and Wong S C, 1990 BTJT-A Platform Location, BT-105 Post-drill Analogue And Digital Site Survey, Report no. XTS/1 – PSS.SB.14. Topographical Department, Sarawak Shell Bhd.

BK Lim and Wong S C, 1994 BAJT-F 1991 Digital Seismic Site Survey (Proposed BAJT-F/4 location) and Correlative Study of Digital Seismic Data And Boreholes, Report no. XTS/1 – PSS.SW.35. Topographical Department, Sarawak Shell Bhd.

JP Velasco and Wong S. C, 2000 Survey report on the Offshore rig location site survey At the Bungong Seulanga 1 location, Offshore North Sumatra, Indonesia. Report No. S0956/02. LASMO KRUENG MANE LIMITED

SF Yap, YT Tan, BK Lim & Jack Fitzsimons, 2003, Trans Thailand Malaysia (TTM) Project Gas Pipeline, Pre-Engineering Survey Report, Offshore Section (from KP 0 to KP 262). Report no: ED.A-0303.08-010-001. SAIPEM.

Mohamad Kodri Aziz and HJ Ang, 2006 Final Geophysical Report for the Proposed Aster-4a, Aster-4b and Aster-4 (modified) Well locations In Bukat Block, Offshore East Kalimantan, Indonesia. Report no. S1797/02. ENI KRUENG MANE LTD.

BK Lim and John Worthington, 2008 Report On Contractor’s Performance, Deep water site investigation surveys at Krueng Mane PSC, offshore north Sumatra and Maura Bakau PSC, Offshore East Kalimatan, Indonesia by Fugro (M/v GeoSurveyor & M/v Voyager) for Eni Krueng Mane Ltd.

Graham Macdonald Bell, HJ Ang and Agus Norman Bin Abdul Rahman, 2008 Onboard Preliminary Report on the Provision Of Deep Water Sea Bed Survey Services, BSN-1, Offshore North Sumatra, (M/v GeoSurveyor & M/v Voyager). KRUENG MANE PSC

BK Lim and David Waugh, 2008 Report On Contractor’s Performance, Site Investigation Surveys at Calauit 2, Block SC50, offshore Palawan, Argao 1 & Bahay 1, Block SC51,offshore Cebu by Fugro (M/v Baruna Jaya 1) For NORASIAN Energy Ltd, Philippines (operated by OTTO Energy Ltd).