Natural Resources Committee on June 17th, 2010

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Regan; your time is up.

We go now to the Bloc Québécois. Please go ahead, Madame Brunelle. You have up to seven minutes.

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Good morning, madam. Good morning, sir. Thank you for being here.

Mr. Roche, you have extensive experience in drilling, and it is important that I understand. You said it was hard to understand how experienced people could have let a situation like the Deepwater Horizon accident happen, in the Gulf of Mexico.

In addition, you said that Canada has an excellent regulatory system. What is your opinion of our regulatory system based on?

[Kevin Roche]

I can't tell you for sure exactly what went wrong in the incident in the Gulf of Mexico, but we're all gleaning little bits and pieces. One of the critical elements of failure, we suspect, was with the two-barrier system.

The basic concept of well control maintenance is that you always have two means of keeping the oil and gas pressure contained. One of them is with the drilling fluid; the other is with casing and cement. In the case of the Gulf of Mexico incident, we understand that in the first case, the cement job and the casing job and the bonding of the cement to the wall to give pressure integrity were suspect. While that suspicion existed, they then proceeded to remove--displace--the heavy hydraulic fluid that would contain the pressure as a second barrier. The removal of that second pressure barrier is what prompted the uncontrolled flow.

We don't understand how that could happen, because the drilling program approvals that we have in Canada require that you always maintain two barriers. In Canada, with every daily report and every casing running report, the regulator gets to see and observe the operation that is being carried out on the rig. If you got to the stage of eliminating that second barrier, there would be intervention, from our perspective, from both the crew members who had been trained in basic well control and from the regulator to say that you can't do that.

There's a much closer intervention and a much closer observation with the regulatory bodies, in my experience.

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

For a number of weeks, we have been talking a lot about relief wells in Canada. People are saying they have to be part of a safety plan. However, I understand they do not have to be drilled before extraction begins. Could a relief well be drilled before extraction begins? Could that be an appropriate safety measure to prevent disasters?

[Kevin Roche]

The purpose of a relief well is to intersect the original well bore and provide an alternate route to let the pressure bleed back so that you can control or correct the damage in the original well. In order to be able to drill a relief well, you have to know the exact trajectory and orientation of the first well. There is an advantage to drilling both of them simultaneously, but you're still going to lose time by having to find the exact trajectory. Relief wells are not always successful in finding that exact trajectory.

If you picture it, you've got a conduit that's 12,000 or 18,000 feet long, with a diameter of 8.5 inches; you're a mile away, or a kilometre away, and you're trying to drill another 18,000-foot hole to find that line. You have to do a lot of pre-work first to plot out that trajectory. It's not always as effective to do them together; they have to be staggered in order to do the analysis.

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

This situation bothers me a bit. The people at Chevron want to drill wells 2,500 metres deep off the coast of Newfoundland. That would be the deepest well. That is 1,000 metres deeper than the Deepwater Horizon well.

I was wondering whether it was really possible to establish a credible contingency plan, when we see how impossible it is to fix the situation in the Gulf of Mexico. If it is that deep, are we not just flying blind?

[Kevin Roche]

No, I don't think we're proceeding blindly. A water depth of 2,600 metres is not uncommon these days. That same drilling unit just finished a well in 1,900 metres of water south of Newfoundland. The technology exists for up to 10,000 feet of water depth, and the equipment, if it's used properly, should contain well bore fluids. Our primary focus as a drilling contractor--and I'm sure other presenters who have been here have said the same--is to make sure you do not lose control of that pressure. By having two barriers, if you manage that plan correctly, you should never, ever, have uncontrolled release of fluids at surface.

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Good morning, Ms. Fraser.

I would like to know whether you have been able to carry out a more in-depth analysis of the marine ecosystem in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, as part of your studies. There will be drilling off the coast of the Magdalen Islands. The fishermen in the Quebec islands are worried.

Do they have reason to be? Do you have any data on that?

[Dr. Gail Fraser]

I'm not a fisheries expert. I can't speak directly to that, but I do know that drilling can impact fish populations. One interesting study shows that seismic testing can negatively affect fish larvae, but I'm really wandering outside my expertise. I can't really speak to fish populations.

[Paule Brunelle, Bloc, Trois-Rivières, QC]

You said something that worried me. You said that five of your requests for environmental data were denied. That lack of transparency gives rise to questions. Why do you think there is a lack of transparency? What do they have to hide?

[Dr. Gail Fraser]

That's certainly my question as well.

I think the general public would think that the types of information we're asking for should not be proprietary information. It's oil pollutant data. It's somewhat like letting the fox guard the henhouse. With the Atlantic accord, we've essentially let the operators--the oil and gas companies--decide what they want to disclose, but that doesn't seem to me to be a very effective system. To really be able to understand what's going on so that the public and the academic community can try to get at the environmental effects of these offshore oil and gas installations, we need those data.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Ms. Brunelle.

Your time is up.

Mr. Cullen is next, for up to seven minutes. Go ahead, please.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First I have a small point of order for the committee. Through you to the clerk, I believe that after 37 years on the Hill, this might be Mrs. Chafe's last day. Is that correct?

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

I was going to mention that at the end of the meeting, Mr. Cullen.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

For putting up with MPs like us and chairs like yourself for 37 years, I think she deserves our undying gratitude. I wanted to make sure that was acknowledged.

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear!

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you for that, Mr. Cullen.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I'm sorry, Chair. I didn't want to ruin your announcement of it; I just wanted to make sure it got on the record.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Lord knows the people she has to put up with day after day, and I'm not talking about the witnesses. Let's be clear.

Go ahead, Mr. Cullen.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you for your testimony today.

I suppose what the committee is seized with, and what I think many Canadians are asking, is whether what happened in the Gulf of Mexico could happen in Canada.

The two primary places we're looking at are the east coast, where drilling is going on at depths that are greater than those drilled by the Deepwater Horizon, and the Arctic, where exploratory leases are being granted, which one would presume leads to drilling in Arctic conditions. That is the overall question we're facing today.

I have a specific question for Mr. Roche. When you start to get down to depths of 5,000, 8,000, or 10,000 feet, is the geology at the subsurface level any different from what it is in a 50- or 100-foot well? By that I mean the subsurface. Once the drill goes in, is there anything different about what comes up, the types of pressures you're dealing with, or the types of materials you're dealing with as drillers?

[Kevin Roche]

In Atlantic Canada, the answer is definitely yes. The deeper you get, the harder the formations are.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

The actual structure you're drilling through is harder. The pressures, which we've talked about already, are different in terms of what's coming out of the ground itself.

[Kevin Roche]

The pattern we've discovered over the last 40 years or so is that the Atlantic region is not over pressure. But the deeper you go, the heavier the mud weight you need to restrain that force. Typically, there are no hydrocarbons in the shallow section.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Since there are no hydrocarbons in the shallower sections, having to deal with those hydrocarbons as a driller-operator changes the game a bit in terms of how you compensate for different things.

[Kevin Roche]

Right, but that's not much different anywhere, really. I'm not very familiar with the Arctic, but typically, in the Hibernia formation, I encounter hydrocarbons at the 12,000-foot vertical level from the mud line.