Oil well fire
Oil well fires are oil or gas wells that have caught on fire and burn. Oil well fires can be the result of human actions, such as accidents or arson, or natural events, such as lightning. They can exist on a small scale, such as an oil field spill catching fire, or on a huge scale, as in geyser-like jets of flames from ignited high pressure wells. A frequent cause of a well fire is a high-pressure blowout during drilling operations.
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Extinguishing the fires
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Oil well fires are more difficult to extinguish than regular fires due to the enormous fuel supply for the fire. In fighting a fire at a wellhead, typically high explosives, such as dynamite, are used to create a shockwave that pushes the burning fuel and local atmospheric oxygen away from a well. (This is a similar principle to blowing out a candle.) The flame is removed and the fuel can continue to spill out without catching fire.
After blowing out the fire, the wellhead must be capped to stop the flow of oil. During this time, copious fuel and oxygen are present; any spark or other heat source might ignite a fire worse than the original blowout. Thus brass tools, bronze tools, or paraffin wax-coated tools – which do not strike sparks – are used in capping.
Some of the technology used by the Red Adair to seal some of the Kuwait oil fires without re-igniting the flow of oil, originated in a patent by John R. Duncan (United States Patent 3,108,499 filed September 28, 1960, granted October 29,1963), a method and apparatus for severing section of fluid pipeline therefrom. The patent was granted a year after Red Adair's success in combating the Devil's Cigarette Lighter gas well fire.[2] The invention is concerned with removing a section of a fluid pipeline and inserting a valve or other component therein without destroying line pressure and without losing any significant amount of fluid passing through the pipeline.
With recent advances in technology as well as environmental concerns, many straight forward well fires today are capped while they burn.
There are several techniques used to put out oil well fires, which vary by resources available and the characteristics of the fire itself.
In essence the trade was started by Myron M. Kinley, who dominated the field in the early years. His lieutenant, Red Adair, went on to become the most famous of oil well firefighters.
Techniques include:[3]
- Dousing with copious amounts of water. According to Larry H. Flak, a petroleum engineer for Boots and Coots International Well Control, 90% of all the 1991 fires in Kuwait were put out with nothing but sea water, sprayed from powerful hoses at the base of the fire.[1]
- Using a gas turbine to blast a fine mist of water at the base of the fire. Water is injected behind the exhaust of the turbine in large quantities. This proved popular with tackling stubborn fires in the Kuwait oil fires (1991) and was brought to the region by Hungarians equipped with MiG-21 engines mounted on a tank, either a T-34 or T-62.[4][5][6] Based on a Russian idea, the Hungarian vehicle, named "Big Wind", was influenced by a similar concept used in Soviet times for extinguishing blown out gas- and oil-well fires and clearing snow off airfields by using a single MiG-15 jet engine bolted onto the bed of a truck. However, in this incarnation, it was not always powerful enough to defeat large fires, although it was also brought to and used in Kuwait;[7][8] to tackle more resilient fires MB Drilling Company constructed "Big Wind" with two more powerful jet engines fixed to the more-stable chassis of a tank.[5] The IMAX documentary Fires of Kuwait follows the numerous companies, and their methods, employed with the task of extinguishing the fires, with footage of the Hungarian "Big Wind" in action contained in the film.
- Using dynamite to "blow out" the fire by forcing the burning fuel and oxygen away from the fuel source. This was one of the earliest effective methods and is still widely used. The first use was by Myron Kinley's father in California in 1913.[9] Generally explosives are placed within 55 gallon drums, the explosives are surrounded by fire retardant chemicals, and then the drums are wrapped with insulating material. A horizontal crane is used to bring the drum as close to the wellhead as possible.[1] This method was depicted in the 1968 film Hellfighters starring John Wayne.
- Dry Chemical (mainly Purple K) can be used on small well fires.
- In the 1930s mechanical jaws were developed to clamp off the pipe below the fire, but they are seldom used today. The design became the basis for a safety device used on offshore wells.[10]
- Special vehicles called "Athey wagons" as well as the typical bulldozer protected by corrugated steel sheeting are normally used in the process.[11]
- Raising the plume - placing a metal casing 30 to 40 feet high over the wellhead (thus raising the flame above the ground). Liquid nitrogen or water is then forced in at the bottom to reduce the oxygen supply and put out the fire.
- The "LeRoy Corporation, Houston Oil well Firefighters" constructed a machine with an arm that was positioned over an oil well pipe on fire. The machine then lowers a cap over the pipe, extinguishing the flames. LeRoy Ashmore built 3 of these machines and named them Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, for the Biblical characters, who survived death from a fiery furnace. The walls of LeRoy's machines were hollow, allowing water pumped through them to circulate and keep the interior control room water cooled during fire fighting.[12]
- Drilling relief wells into the producing zone to redirect some of the oil and make the fire smaller. (However, most relief wells are used to pump heavy mud and cement deep into the wild well.) The first relief wells were drilled in Texas in the mid 1930s.[13]
- Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy, the use of underground nuclear explosions were successfully employed in the former Soviet Union to stop well fires, the high heat of the detonation simultaneously displaces and melts the rock in its vicinity, and with that seals the previously drilled hole.[14][15][16][17]
Effects
Oil well fires can cause the loss of millions of barrels of crude oil per day. Combined with the ecological problems caused by the large amounts of smoke and unburnt petroleum falling back to earth, oil well fires such as those seen in Kuwait in 1991 can cause enormous economic losses.
Smoke from burnt crude oil contains many chemicals, including sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, soot, benzopyrene, Poly aromatic hydrocarbons, and dioxins.[18][19][20] Exposure to oil well fires is commonly cited as a cause of the Gulf War Syndrome, however, studies have indicated that the firemen who capped the wells did not report any of the symptoms suffered by the soldiers.[21]
- 1904 fire at a Bibi-Eibat oil well.
- A Burmese oil well on fire, ca. 1905
- Two wells on fire, Santa Fe Springs, California, 1928
- Steel cap used to cap burning oil well in Santa Fe Springs, California, 1928
Famous fires
- Piper Alpha, an oil rig that caught fire
- Kuwait Oil Fires (1991)
- Deepwater Horizon explosion
See also
- Safety Boss, an oil-well-fire-fighting company
- Coal seam fire
- Derweze
References
- "Iraq Fires erupt in large Iraqi oil field in south Compiled from Times wires © St. Petersburg Times published March 21, 2003". Archived from the original on July 15, 2014.
- "Hellfighters". Archived from the original on 2014-07-14. Retrieved 2014-06-12.
- John Wright Company Technical Library resource on blowout control Archived 2008-02-01 at the Wayback Machine
- "TAB C – Fighting the Oil Well Fires". Archived from the original on 2015-02-20.
- "Stilling The Fires of War, A Hungarian company lashes two MiG engines to a Soviet tank and proceeds to huff and puff and blow out the worst sort of raging oil-well fire. 2001. page 2, story by ZOLTAN SCRIVENER". Archived from the original on 2014-07-14.
- Husain, T., Kuwaiti Oil Fires: Regional Environmental Perspectives, 1st ed. Oxford, UK:BPC Wheatons Ltd, 1995, p. 51.
- "Fighting an Oil Well Fire A Hungarian MIG jet engine that was used to extinguish the flames of some oil fires with high-pressure air, akin to blowing out a candle. These turbines were also equipped with three hose nozzles for simultaneously spraying the flames with seawater and chemicals. The procedure was very noisy. An athey wagon is in the background". Archived from the original on 2014-08-26.
- "Video". Archived from the original on 2014-08-26.
- "The Fire Beater," Time Archived 2008-12-22 at the Wayback Machine
- "Oil-Well Fire Squeezed Out As Jaws Close Casing" Popular Mechanics, July 1935 Archived 2018-01-08 at the Wayback Machine
- Putting Out an Oil Well Fire Archived 2006-09-01 at the Wayback Machine
- "VIDEO LeRoy-Ashmore fire fighting machine". Archived from the original on 2014-06-06.
- "Wild Oil Well Tamed by Scientific Trick" Popular Mechanics, July 1934 Archived 2015-04-07 at the Wayback Machine
- Nordyke, M. D. (2000-09-01). "Extinguishing Runaway Gas Well Fires" (PDF). The Soviet Program for Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Explosions. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. pp. 34–35. doi:10.2172/793554. Report no.: UCRL-ID-124410 Rev 2. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2016-12-23. U. S. Department of Energy contract no.: W-7405-Eng48.
- Broad, William J. (2010-06-02). "Nuclear Option on Gulf Oil Spill? No Way, U.S. Says". New York Times. Archived from the original on 2010-06-17. Retrieved 2010-06-18.
- Nuke the oil spill: Could nuclear bomb be answer for huge leaks as at US Gulf coast? (news video). Russia Today. Event occurs at 34 seconds. Archived from the original on 2010-05-05. Retrieved 2010-05-05.
- "Soviet nuclear solution could be part of tactics to halt oil spill off US coast". Russia Today. 2010-05-05. Archived from the original on 2010-05-08. Retrieved 2010-05-05.
- "IV. AIR POLLUTANTS FROM OIL FIRES AND OTHER SOURCES". Archived from the original on 2015-09-24.
- Hobbs, Peter V.; Radke, Lawrence F. (May 15, 1992). "Airborne Studies of the Smoke from the Kuwait Oil Fires" (PDF). Science. 256 (5059): 987–91. Bibcode:1992Sci...256..987H. doi:10.1126/science.256.5059.987. PMID 17795001.
- Desk Study on the Environment in Iraq Archived 2006-08-11 at the Wayback Machine, United Nations Environment Program
- Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses: Final Report Archived 2017-05-05 at the Wayback Machine, December 1996