FLASH ALERT
/No/Year: 16 -2010
Date: 14-March-2010
Time: 21:23Issued by: / West Hercules / TYPE OF ALERT (tick one or more boxes)
For more info, contact: / West Hercules OIM & DSL / LTI / FAC / PD / Drops / X
Synergi: / 1078146 / MTC / NM / X / EF / Spill
“TOP DRIVE COLLIDES WITH STAND AND VERTICAL PIPE HANDLER”
Location of Incident: Derrick/Drill floor
Description of Incident:
At 21:24 hrs the driller was POOH. The AD had broken out a stand of pipe and was in the process of moving it away from the rotary table. The driller observed the stand being moved towards the setback area and then commenced coming down with the blocks. The elevators were still latched around the stand in the VPH. By coming down the elevator landed on top of the VPH gripper and the consequence of this was that the total weight of the blocks and the DDM was supported by the VPH. The stand of pipe crimped over the top of the gripper head and pushed under the blocks. A considerable amount of drilling line was spooled off the drum and hanging down over the windwall on the port side.
At the time of the incident the SZMS was not operational. A permit and TBRA were in place.
Our immediate priority was to respool the line to take out the slack to prevent shockloading the wire in case the top drive came free of the VPH. Slack was picked up till 50K pounds of tension was back in the drilling line and mitigate the immediate risks. This action was carried after a thorough risk assessment and were successfully completed at 23:14 hrs. Topdrive was hydraulicly and electrically isolated at this time.
We are currently working on a plan to assess how to rectify the situation. No injuries were sustained by any member of the crew. We expect downtime to be considerable more then 6 hours.
PHOTOS: