Well control hands don't take a lot of photographs, sadly, and no video. They're all too busy working. And most companies having the problems don't want the publicity or anything that might be used against them down the road somehow. We're often told, no photographs and no talking about it.

Sometimes rig hands and personal on location that had a lot to do with the blowout in the first place take a few photos, but it's always from a quarter mile away where they won't get hurt.

Kuwait was an exception to that and a lot of good photos of production wells on fire are floating around. The great Algerian fire in North Africa in 1964 had a professional photographer that shot black and white stuff that was breathtaking but now owned by Getty and prints can cost up to $5000 each, and more. If you steal one off the internet and remove the watermark, you're going to get your ass sued.

Here's a job in South Texas in 1994 that I snapped a few photos from, an Amoco event, and everybody in the world then pirated the photos:

Below the drill pipe cut with sand line, the rig has been skidded away with two D-8s and the most awesome block and tackle system you've ever seen. The BOP stack is damaged. It was heavy enough to unbolt at the spool until the crane was set up and the lift yoke all made up. The last of the flange bolts knocked off and the stack picked straight up to be set aside.

At lift off I snapped this photo and low and behold, happened to catch the ring gasket getting launched into outer space. This photo got published in a lot of places and a lot of smart asses said it was fabricated, fake...the ring gasket not real. It was real alrighty, but nobody ever found it. AI did not exist back in those days; the intelligence that good oilfield hands all had was not artificial. There were still a lot of know-it-all asses around, however.

Below the BOP is off and the well is belching OBM. Next step, rig snub lines will be threaded thru the spool flange to pull the capping stack over the flow and down to the spool, bolted up, and the well put on diverter. A new ring gasket is tacked into the ring groove on the bottom of the capping stack to keep it from getting hurled far, far away.

This well, I recall, required one set of ear plugs, cotton balls and Vaseline, stuffed not necessarily in that order. It was a gettin' it.