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These different facilities, both on the production or drilling, are based on where they are actually going to be located, and it is usually by water depth.  Some of the rigs are rated for only certain water depths, such as jack-ups are generally in shallower water. And the deepwater rigs or either moored semi-submersibles or drill ships. Same with the production facilities, the larger deepwater are the floating facilities and the fixed facilities are generally on the shelf.

Generally, most of the facilities that we have offshore are located on the shelf, and more concentrated off the coast of Louisiana. But there are facilities off the Texas coast and the Mississippi/Alabama coast as well.  There are also more concentrated closer on the shelf as opposed to offshore in deepwater. However we are seeing more and more deepwater facilities put in.

Minerals Management Service, when they’re looking at the safety of both facilities – drilling and production facilities – we have a multi-tiered process that we go through. Generally a permitting part of the process and then there is also an inspection part of our process. So on the permitting side, our engineers are reviewing permits that come in. We are looking at the production safety systems to make sure that they are up to standard. And then we follow that up in the field through our inspection process. Our inspectors are doing over 20,000 inspections a year to ensure safety of these facilities.

Currently offshore we have over 4,000 production facilities.  Those include the major deepwater facilities all the way down to the single well caisson.  We have approximately 112 drilling rigs offshore right now. To cover all those we have 57 inspectors that go offshore on a daily basis to handle that.  Of those production facilities, approximately 800 are manned.

The range of the number of people on a given facility depends on the operation that is out there.  Production facilities are generally less. There maybe be anywhere from 2 people up to 50, 60, maybe even 100 people.  Drilling, on the other side, generally ranges from 50 on the low side for the number of manned people to anywhere around 150.

What our inspectors do when they go offshore is ensuring safety.  How they do that is they are ensuring that all those safety devices are installed as we’ve approved according to the standard. So that is first and foremost that those devices are in place. The next thing they do is start testing those safety devices. This is somewhat different than our counterparts overseas. We actually do test devices.  And when we test those devices that is what is ensuring that those devices will work when they are needed.

What MMS is doing post hurricane, after the 2005 hurricane season, is working in several areas. One, related to production facilities that were lost, we’re working closely with American Petroleum Institute on looking at the current standards that are in place and looking at how we can improve those standards to ensure that more facilities are not lost in the future.

If I can give you an example on the drilling side, there were several drilling facilities that were lost also. On that, once again, we worked with American Petroleum Institute.  Where there really weren’t standards in place for station keeping, we worked with them to establish new criteria to improve station keeping both for jack-up type rigs and moored semi-submersibles. And those were established and put in place prior to the 2006 hurricane season.

The main thing that we saw when we were out there-- there was some minor pollution.  But with the number of facilities that were lost and the number of wells that were lost--there were 861 wells that were lost from those two storms.  And the pollution was not there. And that was due to the safety devices. And I think that was the thing that everyone in MMS was very happy to see, that those safety devices that we require and that we inspect did the job that they were supposed to do.

Well over the last 50 years what we’ve seen is a large evolution; I guess you’d say, from the very simplest platform--a single well structure close to shore, where we didn’t have directional drilling. So we put hundreds of these small facilities in to efficiently produce a reservoir. Now with the directional drilling capability, we are able to put in larger facilities and drill many of these reservoirs from one given location.  Of course that does lead to larger, more sophisticated facilities. Facilities that are going in today are-- you can almost compare then to space-age technology. Where we used to have the rough necks on the floor with all the pipe, now everything is robotic. All the pipe is handled by robots.  A driller is using joy sticks to control the operations.

When a hurricane watch or warning is posted, the industry is actually probably ahead of us as far as watching things. Their weather services are watching things before they even get to the gulf.  And they have a timeline that they are looking at as the approaching storm comes closer. And they start immediately removing nonessential people off of their facilities-- both production and drilling.  And then as the storm approaches closer, they removing all their personnel off the facilities that are in the path of the storm and shutting in production. They also are securing wells that they are currently drilling to make sure that they are secure and there won’t be any problem with those wells.

As far as Minerals Management Service is concerned, when a storm is approaching the gulf, we start looking at activating our Continuation of Operations Plan, which involves getting several key designated people offsite into another location where we can track the storm and monitor the activities of the oil and gas industry form another location. What those people are doing initially is monitoring the evacuations of offshore facilities and the shutting in of production. And that is their key role and responsibility up front.

From the two storms, both Katrina and Rita in the 2005 hurricane season, there were many lessons learned. Some of them were good lessons and some of them were lessons we need to improve on.  One of the good lessons that we learned is that the safety equipment that we require and inspect offshore did the job that they were supposed to do, and did not allow any significant pollution to occur. So that was very valuable lesson.  It proved that the equipment worked. Other lessons that we learned is that the industry was well equipped to do the evacuations that they needed supposed to do. At any given time there are over 30,000 people offshore employed by the industry or their contractors. All those people had to be evacuated for these storms. And they were able to do that effectively and efficiently without any serious injury to any of those people.  And they did it twice for those significant storms. Other lessons learned where we need improvements were where we did have lost production facilities and lost drilling rigs. And in those areas we are working closely with American Petroleum Institute to ensure that we increase those standards so that we don’t have those problems in the future.

On any given day there are over 30,000 people employed on the Outer Continental Shelf in the Gulf of Mexico. It is a tremendous task for mainly our inspectors that go offshore on a daily basis. We have 57 inspectors, 14 helicopters under contract.  We cannot prevent all accidents by our supervision of their activities but I feel that their presence out there does prevent many accidents from occurring.

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Last Updated: 08/18/2007, 10:24 AM Central Time