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everything we do each and every day is important to ensure the safety of personnel
and the environment.
we've never lost human life during hurricane season all these facilities are evacuated.
because our number one goal is protecting people and the environment.
once we get all the personnel out of harm's way then obviously our next priority
is protecting the environment.
BSEEs main goal is safety at all levels, safety at all levels,
safety at all levels, safety at all levels, and at all times
the main mission of the hurricane response team is to be prepared to respond to a hurricane
as it approaches and as it moves through the federal outer continental shelf.
as a hurricane approaches we ensure that our team is stationed out of harm's way to
monitor what is going on offshore that includes evacuations, it includes monitoring the shut-in
of production.
and then it monitors for damage as a hurricane passes through the field.
US Coast Guard is embedded in our hurricane response team so that all the information
related to OCS activities can be fed into one place, and can be fed up the line for
those that need to know.
we stand up a team here in New Orleans at our regional office and we also stand up
a mirror team in our Lake Jackson District Office in Texas this way as the hurricane
approaches either one of the offices we have a backup plan to continue the response to
the hurricane.
the hurricane response team is responsible for reviewing and accepting operators daily
evacuation and curtailment reports so, anytime that an operator has to shut-in any production
or they evacuate any of their platforms,
their rigs as a result of a hurricane or tropical storm entering the Gulf of Mexico
they have to turn in a report that's due by 11 am.
this is our online system that we call "e-well", operators use this to submit their
daily curtailment and evacuation reports.
you'll see they actually list each facility by facility so this is one platform that's
shut-in as a result of this hurricane they tell us the name of the facility, what type
of facility it is. This is a fixed leg platform.
they'll tell us how much oil and gas the facility was producing prior to the hurricane
this column tells us how much they are currently producing so you'll see this has
all zeros so all these are completely shut-in
then over here they tell us how much that shut-in rate actually is
once we get all of the personnel out of harm's way, we sure that the dynamically
positioned rigs have moved to a safe location
then we move to monitoring for any pollution event
today we're here at New Orleans District's helicopter base
we coordinate flights, getting district personnel back into our aircraft and do overflights
looking at the facilities
a lot of our inspectors are familiar with the location of facilities so they'll
fly, kind of get a general idea or assessment of the status to see how much damage there
may be
if there's any pollution that we need to report back to operators
we fly the Gulf, try to get a look at a lot of our deep water facilities, especially
the floaters and ensure that everything is stable so it's kinda getting an overall assessment
of after the storm has passed with the potential damage looks like.
it's a very proactive approach, we have partnered with NOAA and
NGA and with them what we're looking to do
it's a pilot program still, we provide them data before the storm comes on where
all our facilities are, all the pipelines, and all the drilling rigs, they will acquire
commercial satellite imagery, they do an analysis
and they will overlay that satellite imagery of the mapping and they'll be able
to identify where facilities are missing and where pollution is emanating from
and it's not a picture like you take with a camera or anything , it's dots, it's
black and white imagery and if the platform is there it's a dot and if that platform is
not there the dot is not there
but yet the mapping is going to show it should be there, so that's how they'll
know
they're gonna be able to do this like one to three hours after the storm passes
as compared to when we get out there when we're able to fly, that's one to three
days
when the New Orleans area goes into the warning cone the hurricane response
team is stood up in the Lake Jackson District
the choice of the Houston area is we have some space over there from an agency
we used to be grouped with
we are now separate agencies but we do share some common reporting requirements for
Gulf of Mexico oil and gas production, so we have some space over there it's in the
Northern part of Houston so it's a high elevation
it is less likely to be impacted, certainly by hurricane surge but also even by loss of
power, and we setup a team over there to record hurricane shut-in of oil and gas production
statistics
also, information on evacuations from deep water production platforms and drilling
rigs, and we record this information daily.
we continue to report this information on a daily basis until the team is either
shifted back to the New Orleans area after passage of the storm
or in the event of a hurricane strike in New Orleans that causes an extended stay
in Houston we proceed to expand the team that we have over there in the Houston area.
at BSEE when we talk about hurricane season, it's more than just a season, it's
what we do everyday
our inspectors and engineers each and everyday are looking at prevention efforts
to prevent catastrophic failure during hurricane season.
BSEE's goal is safety at all levels, at all times.