Ivan may have been terrible, but the September 2004 hurricane taught the oil and gas industry what it was doing right and wrong in the Gulf of Mexico and helped the industry prepare for Katrina.
Both hurricanes threw waves up to 86 ft (26.2 m) at some of the more prolific platforms in the Gulf of Mexico. Ivan shut down 85% of the oil and 55% of the gas from the Gulf of Mexico as it went by. Katrina closed down 91.6% of the oil and 87% of gas production and forced the evacuation of 75% of the rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Katrina affected 2,800 platforms, and 1,100 platforms faced hurricane-force winds of more than 75 miles (120.7 km) an hour.
Ivan demonstrated the additional work operators and service companies must accomplish to prepare for a 100-year storm, and Katrina hammered the lesson home.
Destruction
Katrina destroyed 37 shallowwater platforms, including eight Apache platforms between Apache's South Timbalier 161-A and Newfield's Main Pass 138-A, and inflicted heavy damage on four large deepwater platforms, including the prolific Mars platform, which had 147,000 b/d of production before Katrina.
Damage to platforms, pipelines and other facilities may take up to 6 months to return to action, but according to one estimate from Rigzone, 90% of Gulf of Mexico production should return within a month.
There's no question that Katrina was the more ferocious hurricane. Damage from Ivan was estimated at US $14.2 billion. Some preliminary guesses about Katrina's damage are 10 times that high.
Representatives of operators, service companies and the US Minerals Management Service (MMS) gathered at the Ninth Annual Gulf of Mexico Technical Symposium & Exhibition in New Orleans before Katrina's stampede to discuss lessons learned in Ivan's school of hard knocks.
Lessons from previous storms helped. No offshore oil industry lives were lost to Ivan's ferocious assault, and none was lost to Katrina.
Don Howard, regional superintendent for field operations with the MMS, speaking at the Technical Symposium, said Ivan caused substantial damage at the Matterhorn, Petronius, Medusa, Mars, Ram-Powell, Neptune and Devils Tower platforms. It destroyed three older platforms built in 1969 in the Main Pass area and one platform built in 1984 in Mississippi Canyon 20 in 475 ft (144.9 m) of water, he said. More than 40 wells from those platforms will have to be plugged and abandoned.
Ivan set four mobile offshore drilling units adrift. Katrina set five units adrift, not counting the Petrobras unit in drydock in Mobile Bay that floated upriver into a bridge.
Damage
The main damage to production resulted from damage to pipelines. Ivan caused 172 pipeline failures, including 22 by mudslides. It moved one line 2,000 ft (610 m). The industry still is counting Katrina's damage.
Cumulatively, Ivan delayed more than 42 million bbl of oil production and 164 Bcf of gas production. By Sept. 7, Katrina had delayed delivery of 13.6 million bbl of oil and 71.66 Bcf of gas.
Describing the magnitude of Ivan, Kevin Guilbeau, senior vice president and general manager offshore for Dominion E&P Co., said the storm had a 50-mile (80-km)-diameter eye wall. It threw 94-mile (151.2-km)-an-hour winds and 86-ft waves at the company's Neptune platform on Viosca Knoll 826. At Devil's Tower, on Mississippi Canyon 772, the hurricane pounded the platform with 67-mile (107.8-km)-an-hour winds and 74-ft (22.6-m) waves, destroying the platform rig and a crane. Katrina's eye-wall diameter was estimated at 150 miles (241.3 km).
The company already is designing stronger rig fastening systems for future platforms in case another Ivan strikes. On its way to the sea floor, equipment broken loose by the storm damaged two mooring lines. It didn't sever the lines, but it cut the protective coating, and the lines had to be replaced.
Murphy Oil's Medusa platform also lost a rig to Ivan. "Rig stability is an issue on platforms," Guilbeau said.
Questions
Ivan raised a number of questions that are bound to reappear in the aftermath of Katrina, according to Chris Schoennagel, deputy Gulf of Mexico regional director for the MMS. Among them:
• Is 100-year-storm criteria sufficient?
• Should we install platforms in mudslide areas?
• How do we make platform rigs more secure?
• Should mobile offshore drilling units be removed from high-volume facilities before storms?
• Are synthetic mooring systems adequate?
• Are pipeline design standards adequate?
• Are pipeline storm preparation procedures adequate?
The MMS initiated a series of studies after Ivan, including loss of station by floating drilling units, toppling of drilling and workover rigs, the integrity of fixed offshore platforms, and an assessment of pipeline design.
Melody Meyer, vice president of the Gulf of Mexico business unit with Chevron North America E&P Co., was transferred to the Gulf of Mexico a month before Ivan hit. On its way by Chevron's Petronius compliant tower, one of the tallest man-made structures in the world, Ivan turned over the platform's rig quarters, shifted the drilling rig, damaged cellar deck equip-ment, caused structural and piping damage, and buckled I-beams in the sub-cellar. In spite of that, there was no serious loss of structural integrity on the rig, she said.
In recovering from Ivan, Chevron used lessons it previously had cataloged in recovering from hurricane Lili. Its priorities were to minimize time to full production and rig operations, to maintain incident-free operations, to maintain quality standards, and to take care of normal maintenance during the recovery operations.
The company used a four-step recovery plan: assess the damage, make the platform habitable, repair the damage and repair the drilling rig.
Shell found out the hurricane problems don't stop with moving people off platforms. Ivan also affected people and families living ashore in the path of the storm, said Frank Glaviano, vice president of production, Americas, for Shell Energy Resources Co. Katrina also left companies short of people and facilities for repair.
The company deferred production of 9 million net boe because of Ivan. The hurricane caused significant damage to three platforms, and pipeline damage deferred production of some 400,000 b/d of oil, said Frank Glaviano Sr., vice president of production, Americas, for Shell Energy Resources Co. Katrina caused major damage to Shell's Mars, Cognac and West Delta 143 platforms.
Planning
Shell already had a six-phase hurricane operations system in place. Planning for a hurricane is the first phase, he said, followed by hurricane warnings in the second phase. In the third, or alert, phase, the company evacuates non-essential people, and it secures production in the fourth. The fifth phase is final evacuation, and the sixth is a return to work and damage assessment
The damage to Ram-Powell, Main Pass 252 and Cognac from Ivan was significant, he said, but all three were back online in October, although some pipeline work continued into January.
Shell learned lessons that will translate to better rig integrity, mooring, pipeline systems and platform design. It also learned that a structured process for safe and systemic repair and restart is efficient.
Gordon Wilkinson, general manager, business development, Americas for
J. Ray McDermott, said hurricanes pose an ever-growing threat to US production as larger, more complex platforms in deeper water produce more hydrocarbons. Katrina proved he
was right.
At the same time, the industry uses fewer design engineers armed with more and better computers working on more complex systems. With safety of people and production as the paramount priorities, he said, design companies are looking more seriously at 100-year and even 1,000-year hurricanes and the design criteria they need to handle potential damage.
As the industry moves into deeper water, the logistics of moving people and equipment will become more critical. The availability of dynamically positioned construction vessels will become essential for hurricane repair and mooring, and riser inspections and repair will be increasingly expensive.

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