THE FIRST OIL WELL DRILLED

Edwin Laurentine Drake (March 29, 1819 – November 9, 1880), also known as
Colonel Drake, was an American businessman and the first American to
successfully drill for oil.

Edwin Drake's 1859 well near Titusville, Pennsylvania, is popularly considered

the first modern well. Drake's well is probably singled out because it was drilled,
not dug; and it touched off a major boom.

The modern US petroleum industry is considered to have begun with Edwin

Drake's drilling of a 69-foot (21 m) oil well in 1859, on Oil Creek near Titusville,
Pennsylvania, (originally yielding 25 barrels per day (4.0 m3/d), by the end of the
year output was at the rate of 15 barrels per day (2.4 m3/d)).

At the beginning, their intentions to find oil were disappointing, the technology of
that moment was insufficient because they used percussion tools to drill...
Meanwhile, crowds of people began to gather to jeer at the apparently
unproductive operation. By 1859 Drake was also running out of money. Drake's
colleagues back in Connecticut gave up on finding any oil by April 1859 and after
spending $2,500, Drake took out a $500 loan to keep the operation going. On
August 27, 1859 Drake had persevered and his drill bit had reached a total depth
of 69.5 feet (21 m). At that point the bit hit a crevice. The men packed up for the
day. The next morning Drake’s driller, Billy Smith, looked into the hole in
preparation for another day’s work. He was surprised and delighted to see crude
oil rising up. Drake was summoned and the oil was brought to the surface with a
hand pitcher pump. The oil was collected in a bath tub.

The Method

Drake is famous for pioneering a new method for producing oil from the ground.
He drilled using piping to prevent borehole collapse, allowing for the drill to
penetrate further and further into the ground. Previous methods for collecting oil
had been limited. Ground collection of oil consisted of gathering it from where it
occurred naturally, such as from oil seeps or shallow holes dug into the ground.
MACONDO

INTRODUCCION

The strange explosion and the sinking of a British Petroleum platform off the coast
of Louisiana: why did the well get out of control? How was it that a gas outbreak
6 kilometers deep could rise to the floor of the platform and explode? Did not they
have dozens of alarms and automatic extinguishers? Why could not they close
the well? Not that the platforms have valves to close the well, 10 meters high and
more than 350 tons of weight?

Confidential information

Among other contributions is explained the failures in the valves that did not close
the well, despite being equipped with five redundant mechanisms. That device,
the blowout preventer (Bop) is located at the top of the well, it will seem incredible
but the investigation revealed that the batteries to operate one of its mechanisms
were almost unloaded, that is, had not received maintenance.
A defective equipment on BP's oil rig caused the oil spill that ejected 172 million
gallons of oil in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, says an official study.

The device, a safety device on the underwater platform, had several defects, it
had not been subjected to effective tests and present risks because it is still used
on some platforms.
The device was carrying damaged cables in two different places, had worn
batteries and a bent pipe.
It has long been known that the safety valve had not worked in that instance but
"the problems with this valve were worse than we thought" those valves were
"very damaged, full of holes"
"There are still defects in the devices that are used today, and they must be
repaired if we want to prevent this from happening again
The spill occurred after an explosion that killed 11 workers on the Deepwater
Horizon platform, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) off the coast of Louisiana.
Valves of this type are generally connected to the lids of submarine oil wells. In
case of emergency, the devices employ various mechanisms - such as padlocks
or pliers - to stop a tanker spill and prevent oil from emerging from the well to the
platform. They can work automatically or manually.
The valve that failed in the case of Deepwater Horizon was nine years old, was
about 18 meters (57 feet) tall and weighed about 400 tons.
These valves are like lifeboats on a cruise, that is, they are used only in
emergencies, but they are absolutely necessary.
What happened in the Deepwater Horizon on the night of April 20, 2010?

As we have anticipated, the explosion and collapse of the platform was not the
product of only one error, but a cascade of poorly performed work, wrong
decisions of the crews on board, both British Petroleum and Transocean, owner
of the equipment. All the sources also attribute part of the responsibility to
contractors that provide services such as Halliburton, and even contributed to the
accident factors such as the design of critical tools, such as preventers and the
distribution of some components of the equipment on the floor of the platform.
Damage to the ecosystem
Due to the position of the platform in the Gulf of Mexico, a territory shared by the
United States, Cuba and Mexico itself, the damage can extend over an extremely
large area. The first impacts of the spill were located in the marshes of the mouth
and delta of the Mississippi, with the appearance of turtles, dolphins and several
species of dead or stunned seabirds. The losses to the fishing and shrimp
business in the Louisiana area are estimated in millions. The fragile ecosystems
of swamps, with a varied animal and plant population are affected; species like
the manatee, are the most affected. The damages anticipated to the tourist sector
of beaches of Florida and Cuba, are also considerable.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) determined that the
dispersant chemicals used by British Petroleum (BP) (2.5 million liters of the
Corexit dispersant were discharged during the first month), were not safe for the
marine fauna, which can bioaccumulate in the tissues of organisms. The
discharge from the Gulf of Mexico affected more than 944 kilometers of coastline.
The most affected states were Louisiana (540 km of coastline), Mississippi (180
km), Florida (114 km) and Alabama (110 km).
A study published in Science concludes that the disappearance of the oil slick is
slower than expected, being below the surface, which could pose a serious risk
to marine wildlife.