SAN RAMON, Calif., January 17, 2012 – Chevron Corporation (NYSE: CVX) said that an extensive search and rescue effort continues for two contractors who remain missing after yesterday's fire aboard the K.S. Endeavor, a drilling rig offshore Nigeria operated by FODE Drilling Nigeria Limited. While Chevron's highest priority remains the rescue of the missing contractors, the company continues to devote the necessary resources to resolve the rig incident in a responsible and timely manner.

As previously reported, the K.S. Endeavor was drilling a natural gas exploration well for Chevron Nigeria Limited (CNL). The well is located in the Funiwa Field approximately six miles (10 kilometers) offshore and in approximately 40 feet (12 meters) of water.

Chevron reports that 152 workers on the rig and an associated barge were safely evacuated. They are now onshore and have been given medical examinations. Two remain hospitalized due to minor burns, while others are being held for further observation.

While a full investigation is still under way, Chevron said initial indications point to the possible failure of surface equipment during drilling operations that led to a loss of well control. The well continues to burn and the rig has partially collapsed. At this time, the company cannot estimate how long the fire will continue.

The implementation of an automatic dosing of the flocculants allows the customer to respect (24h a day, 365 days a year) the limit for phosphate in the outlet and save a lot of money: resulting in less chemicals and sludge production.

The results

• Saving of 26.000 €/year of flocculants (PAC)
• 2% reduction of sludge production
• Even with a big peak of phosphate in the inlet, the outlet was under the official limit each time

Customer challenge:

The inlet of this wastewater treatment plant is variable due to industrial high load wastewater. The manual dosing of flocculants was not enough to maintain the concentration of phosphate in the outlet under the official limit of 1 mg/l P total. The customer challenge is to respect the official outlet limit of Phosphate and manage the chemicals’ costs efficiently.

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exida has released a new white paper entitled: Comparing FMEDA Predicted Failure Rates to OREDA - Estimated Failure Rates for Sensor and Valve Assemblies.

Failure rates predicted by Failure Modes Effects and Diagnostic Analysis (FMEDA) are compared to failure rates estimated from the Offshore Reliability Data (OREDA) project for sensor and valve assemblies. Because the two methods of data analysis are fundamentally different in nature, it may be surprising that, when appropriately compared, the results from the two methods are generally quite similar. The nature of the published data for FMEDA and OREDA is explored. The relative merits of each method are discussed.

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Intrinsic Safety is the natural choice for all low voltage instrumentation problems. This application note looks at the design, installation, maintenance and repair of Intrinsically Safe equipment and also considers the risks associated with dust.

Intrinsic safety (IS) is a low-energy signalling technique that prevents explosions from occurring by ensuring that the energy transferred to a hazardous area is well below the energy required to initiate an explosion. The energy levels made available for signalling are small but useable and more than adequate for the majority of instrumentation systems. The two mechanisms being considered that could initiate an explosion are:

• A spark
• A hot surface

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