Off Shore Drilling Now Requires Extensive PE Oversight
Off Shore Drilling Now Requires Extensive PE Oversight
(OP)
NSPE achieved a victory when the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement issued a final rule that makes permanent the additional safety measures authorized in the wake of the 2010 BP oil spill. The rule requires professional engineers to be more involved in the design and certification of offshore oil wells.
NSPE has been working toward this ruling for over two years. NSPE Deputy Executive Director and General Counsel Arthur Schwartz commented before the Chemical Safety Board in 2010 that professional engineers should supervise all engineering design, operations, and maintenance of offshore oil wells.
Specifically, the new rule stipulates that:
PEs must be involved in the well casing and cementing design process;
PEs must certify that well casings and cementing are appropriate for expected wellbore conditions;
PEs must certify well abandonment designs and procedures; and
PEs must certify that well designs include two independent barriers in the center wellbore and all annuli.
The rule also requires independent third parties to conduct blowout preventer inspections. These third parties must be licensed professional engineers, professional engineering firms, or technical classification societies.
NSPE has been working toward this ruling for over two years. NSPE Deputy Executive Director and General Counsel Arthur Schwartz commented before the Chemical Safety Board in 2010 that professional engineers should supervise all engineering design, operations, and maintenance of offshore oil wells.
Specifically, the new rule stipulates that:
PEs must be involved in the well casing and cementing design process;
PEs must certify that well casings and cementing are appropriate for expected wellbore conditions;
PEs must certify well abandonment designs and procedures; and
PEs must certify that well designs include two independent barriers in the center wellbore and all annuli.
The rule also requires independent third parties to conduct blowout preventer inspections. These third parties must be licensed professional engineers, professional engineering firms, or technical classification societies.
Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC





RE: Off Shore Drilling Now Requires Extensive PE Oversight
For example, on SPCC a PE has to sign off that the site inventories are accurate and complete. I signed one that had 2800 sites. I had people visit them all. I picked 10% of each of their sites and audited them. 6 people were doing the inventories and only one of them had a site that didn't match the inventory. I did 10% more of her sites and didn't find a second problem. Does that mean that I can say with assurance that there wasn't another bust? No, but the SPCC regulation requires me to sign and stamp the form. I would had preferred language saying that I certify "that controls are in place to minimize the risk of human error" or something like that. But I signed off that all 2800 sites were accurate and complete. If there is a spill at one of them and the inventory was wrong then I guess EPA will bring charges and I'll fight them on the basis that the requirement is unenforceable.
My bet is that the new S&EE regulation has just as many holes and stupidities.
Thing is that I only know one PE P.E. and he asked me to serve on the P.E. test prep committee because they can't find enough PE P.E.'s to fill the committee slots. This is going to get ugly.
David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering
"Belief" is the acceptance of an hypotheses in the absence of data.
"Prejudice" is having an opinion not supported by the preponderance of the data.
"Knowledge" is only found through the accumulation and analysis of data.
RE: Off Shore Drilling Now Requires Extensive PE Oversight
There are large corporations that are bowing to these regulations. If they want to fight it, they can and they have the resources, individually and collectively, to do so. If they aren't, shame on them unless they're in agreement.
There are lots of engineers who aren't engineers regardless of licensure status. There are lots of engineers who are engineers regardless of licensure status.
I don't think it's going to get ugly. I think it's been ugly for a long time in a lot of ways. But that, dear sir, is human nature.
Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC
RE: Off Shore Drilling Now Requires Extensive PE Oversight
David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering
"Belief" is the acceptance of an hypotheses in the absence of data.
"Prejudice" is having an opinion not supported by the preponderance of the data.
"Knowledge" is only found through the accumulation and analysis of data.
RE: Off Shore Drilling Now Requires Extensive PE Oversight
Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East - http://www.campbellcivil.com
RE: Off Shore Drilling Now Requires Extensive PE Oversight
Well casing design has components of ME, but the codes are VERY different than I use for pipeline, cementing seems to be pretty clearly a CE function. In short is must be a Petroleum Engineering (PE) function.
Abandonment design is probably more Environmental Engineering than anything else, but forces and fluids involved leave they typical EnvE quivering. Again PE.
The independent barrier is similar to what I do in pipes, but I don't recognize the equipment that is typically used (the gate in an API gate valve has a hole in it for gods sake). I would lean toward a PE.
While you probably shouldn't believe anything you see on the Interwebz, I just looked at A Brief Guide to Engineering Majors and found:
Which lists 10 disciplines that make up less than 10% of the graduate engineers. So say 1% of the engineers in the world are PE. I found a link that said in 2000 there were 1.7 million people working as Engineers in the U.S. Of those, 450,000 were licensed. Extrapolating from the statistics above, the number or PE P.E.'s should be less than 8,000.
If we were only talking about the sexy deepwater projects then that should probably be plenty. Most of the offshore activity is "small" shelf stuff that is a bunch of wells and not many PE P.E.'s to do it.
David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering
"Belief" is the acceptance of an hypotheses in the absence of data.
"Prejudice" is having an opinion not supported by the preponderance of the data.
"Knowledge" is only found through the accumulation and analysis of data.
RE: Off Shore Drilling Now Requires Extensive PE Oversight
Pamela K. Quillin, P.E.
Quillin Engineering, LLC
RE: Off Shore Drilling Now Requires Extensive PE Oversight
We hire EE's, then have to train them in power engineering. Send them to classes, etc. Because of a shortage of power engineers.
The problem is most EE training is more of a micro-electronics area, and lesser in the actual computer, radio, or analog areas.
I suspect the same is true for some of the less attended engineering areas.
RE: Off Shore Drilling Now Requires Extensive PE Oversight
RE: Off Shore Drilling Now Requires Extensive PE Oversight
The feds don't even require PE's in their own organization (well they do but only a signature and no stamp) but its a state license so don't make much sense.