Scenario design of blowout accidents in deepwater drilling and emergency capacity assessment

Deepwater oil and gas development faces enormous risks and challenges. Especially when blowout out of control accident occurs in the development process, the emergency rescue will be very difficult. Scenario design approach for major accidents is used to build blowout scenarios in the drilling of a deepwater exploratory well in the South China Sea, covering the whole process from overflow to blowout out of control, fire and explosion of platform, platform overturn and sinking, underwater emergency well shut-in and relief well digging, spilled oil recycling and ecological restoration. The demands for engineering technology, equipment and staff for the emergency rescue are analyzed and evaluated and suggestions on the research of emergency rescue technology in the next stage in China are provided. The research results can be a reference for the independent building of emergency rescue engineering technique system in well control of deepwater drilling in China.