SMI Seminar Series

Event Details

Date:

Tuesday, 11 November 2014

Time:

2:00 pm - 3:00 pm

Room:

Level 7 Vis Lab

UQ Location:

Sir James Foots Building (St Lucia)

Event category(s):

Full Description:: Professor Brian Towler is presenting a seminar on 'The Deepwater Horizon accident, Gulf of Mexico, April 2010'. The Deepwater Horizon accident and blowout on the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico was arguably the most serious accident in the US upstream oil and gas industry, leading to the loss of 11 lives, a billion dollar drilling platform, the evacuation of 115 personnel and the release of five million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The well’s owner, BP, has paid out more than US$20 billion in damages and the litigation is on-going. In accidents like these, there are always a series of causes that line up to compound the damage. Professor Towler examines these causes without attempting to assign blame to particular parties. He provides some insight into what changes must be made to prevent such accidents from occurring in the future. Brian F Towler joined the University of Queensland as the Chair as Professor of Petroleum Engineering in the School of Chemical Engineering and the Centre for Coal Seam Gas at the University of Queensland in May 2014. Previously he was Professor and CEAS Fellow for Hydrocarbon Energy Resources in the Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Wyoming in the USA, where he taught for 26 years. He has been retained as an expert witness in the Deepwater Horizon accident.