With winds reaching 165 mph, Hurricane Ivan became one of the most powerful and destructive hurricanes to strike the United States. In September 2004, Ivan brought down nearly everything in its path, costing an estimated $13 billion in damages to homes, office buildings, and even oil pipelines.
The power of the storm seriously damaged 31 oil and gas platforms. Several were toppled, and more than 10 percent of Gulf of Mexico production was interrupted for at least four months. A number of pipelines were also damaged, but with minimal loss of oil.
In an effort to learn from Ivan, industry, academic, and regulatory experts met in Houston last month for the Hurricane Readiness and Recovery Conference.
Attendees shared information to help improve future performance and reliability of the growing U.S. offshore industry, which currently accounts for a quarter of U.S. energy production.
Discussion included testimony on meteorological and oceanographic conditions, lessons learned, and issues associated with infrastructure performance of drilling rigs, production facilities and pipelines.
The pipeline session took an in-depth look at the U.S. Minerals Management Service’s pipeline performance data to see how the systems performed during the hurricane. Overall there was no predominate failure mode as pipelines experienced different types of damage.
New mud flow areas were identified as a result of Ivan, along with implications of disturbance and uplifting of sedimentation that occurred at the mouth of the river. These developments create a need for more geotechnical research (mudslides, silting, and seafloor mapping) and storm trajectory impact studies.
In spite of Ivan’s catastrophic nature, there was no loss of life and no significant pollution in the Gulf. The first priority was to protect the environment, and safely re-man, clean-up, repair and restore operations.
In less than a month after the hurricane, companies exceeded government forecasts and restored production of more than 250,000 barrels of oil per day.
