Ixtoc Cartoons

This is from our old friend, Etta Hulme at the Fort Worth Star Telegram dated 1979 and the height of the Ixtoc blowout in the Bay of Campeche. When surface control was lost the well eventually caught fire and cratered, taking the BOP stack and casing with it. They burned as much of the oil as possible for 10 months but a total of 3.5MM barrels drifted NE with the Gulf Current and fouled South Padre Island and points north for over a year.

In late October 1979 had a small Cat 1 hurrican line up perfectly for some epic surf at S. Padre...I remember it being almost perfect one afternoon but that evening paddling in we were all almost covered in oil. We sorted out how to bathe in 55 gallon drums of diesel and then another drum of water and Dawn soap before getting back in the car. It was a mess.

This was Adairs job, though there was not much to be done with it because of the crater. He eventually dropped a fabricated steel dome over the well head with a riser to the surface to help capture more of the bubbling oil. The well eventually bridged but almost t destroyed Riddle turtle habitat and it took 25years from the tarpon population in the Gulf of Mexico to recover. At the time of bridging there were two relief wells attempting intersection.

Adair caught some flak for the iron dome contraption, but it did help contain a lot of oil volume.

Ixtoc; 1971

Interestingly, 30 years after Ixtoc, in the effort to capture oil from the Macondo blowout off Venice, Lousiana, a similar contraption was fabricated by Pat Campbell and other Wild Well engineers. It worked pretty well while the relief well was undertaken and plans were put into place for the top kill. The containment device, left, was called "top hat." It was connected to a riser assembly and positioned directly over the top of the BOP stack. Oil flowed into a bulk carrier ship at the surface.

Macondo; 2010