Bravo Boots!
- Mike
- May 22
- 10 min read
Updated: May 24
The giant, Ekofisk oil field was discovered in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea in 1969, about 180 miles southwest of Norway, in 285 feet of water. Phillips Petroleum was the operator.
Ekofisk was the first commercial oil discovery in the North Sea. The field was initially delineated and developed from three well platforms, Alpha, Bravo and Charlie; in 1996-1998 addition wellhead platforms were installed. The field's wells are completed in over-pressured Cretaceous aged carbonates at vertical depths of 9,500 to 11,000 feet. Field production peaked in 1976 at 350K BOPD from 30 producing wells and 8 injections wells used for water flooding.
Ekofisk fluid production led to significant subsidence in the middle of the field in 1986 and well platforms and production facilities had to be jacked back up to above sea levels and a coffer dam built around processing facilities.
Phillips Petroleum, Ekofisk 2/4 Bravo B-14 rig floor, 1976. Photo by Helge Aarrestad, above and below; circ. 1969.
Phillips Petroleum Ekofisk 2/4 Bravo B-14; wrestling drill collars, 1976. Photo by Helge Aarrestad
Ekofisk had 6.4 G BO of OOIP and Conoco-Phillips expects to produce the field until 2045. in 2025 it produced 120,000 BOPD. Some parts of the field are now being injected with nitrogen. It remains today one of the most important fields in the North Sea.
In April 1977, a remedial workover on Bravo platform's producing well No. B-14 was undertaken to fish what was believed to be failed production packer. The well was killed with sea water, followed by appx. 200 bbls. of 12.1 lb./gal. freshwater mud. The calculated bottom hole pressure, however, required 13.6 mud and kill fluid volumes did not account for the tubing/casing annulus. While nippling down the production tree the well started to flow, first off the annulus, then off the tubing side. Additional mud was pumped to kill the well including a very heavy zinc bromide pill bullheaded down the tubing. The well stabilized and the production tree was nippled down and set aside.
With the tree off the well, the floor hands turned the workover pipe ram BOP upside down to make repairs on the bottom flange and ring groves before installation; the second blind ram component had not even been bolted to the pipe rams. The well kicked and several more attempts were made to kill the well with mud and some sort of pump down plug that seated in the downhole seating nipple. With the well still unloading an attempt was made to pick the tubing out of the hanger with a lift sub and TIW valve. At pick up full surface control was lost.
In a panic the rig crew attempted to land the tubing back in the hanger, backed out the lift sub and TIW valve and picked up the blind rams and tried to bolt them onto the 13 5/8ths casing head. They got four flange bolts in before admitting defeat, the well blowing out of the tubing and annulus. Closing the blinds failed, and flow was seen around the rams and thru the flange to flanged connection,
One hundred and eleven men made it to the lifeboats and two hands jumped into the water, all safe. It was 16:30 hrs. in the evening and getting dark.
Estimated flow rates were over 20,000-25,000 BOPD of 38 API oil and a lot of that was going into the North Sea
The well was making a lot of gas, and it was thought the probability of ignition very high, so the crew re-boarded the rig to attempt to shut the downhole safety valve, to no avail. All the pump, draw works and generator engines were shut down.
The next morning the crew re-boarded the rig to try and put more bolts in the BOP to casing head flange, but the well was blowing too hard.
On day two the Red Adair Company was called in Houston and plans for relief well were undertaken immediately.
The necessary rig move to facilitate the relief well was never realized because of heavy seas. Red was on another job at the time the call from Phillips came in so he sent Boots Hansen. Richard Hatteberg was on a small job in South Texas and volunteered to go with Boots; Richard was Norweigan and his grandfather still lived in to Stavanger.
They arrived on location on April 24, 1977. The fire risk was high on the Bravo platform, so the rig floor stayed deluged with sea water from the Seaway Falcon, seen in the photo above.
Upon arrival into Stavanger the press was all over Boots Hansen like white on rice wanting to know how long it was going to take to prevent or minimize this developing environmental catastrophe.
Boots was cordial, but only up to a point, and made a quick end to his "press conference." You'd have to know Boots to understand the level of "patience" he had with this sort of stuff. Some of the Noreweigan press referred to Boots as a chubby, wise guy; when asked if controlling the well might take as long as 35 days he quipped, "hell, I don't work 35 days in a year."
The first part of the clip shows the Bravo blowout underway; the audio does not commence until Boots and Richard get off the Phillips company jet.
As one might expect with Boots in charge, it did not take very long for folks on the Bravo platform, most of them Americans, to start fessing up to some bad "pilot" error regarding failure to attempt shutting the down hole saftey valve and finally, the biggest mistake made, the BOP being picked up, stabbed over the flow and partially bolted up...upside down.
A blind ram BOP can go on upside down and still theoretically seal the well; something else was messed up.
Boots and Richard tried to reseat the tubing in the hanger, adjusted the ram blocks, opened the windows and turned the ram blocks upside down, or right side up, depending on how you viewed the situation, tried to kill the well down the annulus below the casing head by pump down efforts and otherwise sweated bullets for three days working on an enclosed rig floor the size of a bedroom in a hotel. Nothing worked. Work had to be stopped on more than one occasion because of 60 MPH winds and heavy seas.
Boots finally ordered blind ram blocks that would close in the upside-down BOP and kinked tubing hanger and fabrication of those blocks began, post haste, back in California. They were sent to Aberdeen within 30 hours. The well blew for 5 days while surface control efforts were undertaken and the new blocks are being made. While they waited Boots & Richard rigged down the blind rams and installed a new bonnet and spool to the casing head.
Red and Boots; 1977 Bravo Blowout
On the day the new blocks arrived from Aberdeen to the work barge along side the Bravo platform, Red showed up from Texas.
In their respective biographies written years later, Red and Boots had different accounts of what happened from this point on in the Bravo blowout; Red took full credit for the ram block alterations and controlling the well. Boots said that Red yacked to the press while he and Richard unbolted the ram windows a fourth time in the BOP body, installed the new blocks, began the closing process while manipulating the choke manifold and eventually pumping the well dead. A new production type tree was bolted on the blind ram BOPs as a capping stack and half the North Sea was pumped into the well.
Red on the beach with the Norwegian press, left. The New York Times showed up in Stavanger and Mr. Adair spent a lot of time with them.
Sto Lærdal, information manager in Phillips at the time, maintains:
“Adair arrived towards the end of the operation. It was a real PR coup. All he did was assist. But his arrival helped to shift attention towards him. He flew out to Bravo on Friday afternoon and by about 11.00 on Saturday the oil flow had been halted.”
With the well dead Boots went back to Houston and Richard got to go see his grandpa. The production tubing was eventually pulled by Phillips with the guts of the DHSV completely missing. Those guts were found intact a few days later under one of the mud pumps and having been blown out of the tubing string when the well came in.
I asked Boots once about this Bravo well after the release of Red's book in 1991. I believe Boot' account s of the ram block fabrication had to have been accurate given the timeline of events. The entire job lasted eight days and Red did not show up until day six or seven. Boots frowned the entire time he was telling me the story. It bothered him. A lot. Other conversations with Coots Matthews would suggest that things changed within the Adair Company after the Bravo event.
Boots Hansen, Bravo Platform, April 1977
In any case, the first blowout of any kind in the North Sea was over. In very heavy seas and 60 MPH winds most of the oil from the blowout disbursed and disappeared; roughly 40% of the oil lost during the event as actually recovered.
Years of hearings and meetings occurred over the incident in Norway, lots of blame passed around. The bottom line was inadequate mud density used to kill the well initially, failure to circulate kill fluid up the annulus and laying down the production tree while screwing around with the workover BOPS, the well completely open. Amazingly little environmental harm occurred to the Norwegian shoreline from the estimated 200,000 bbl. loss of oil.
The DHSV got blamed but with its guts blown out, whose fault was that? and if you want to blame some floor hands for putting the BOP on upside down, working in a small closet enclosure with stuff blowing everywhere, thinking the entire thing was going to catch fire any second and send everybody to heaven...knock yourself out. Anybody that stays on the rig floor after a loss of surface control should always get the benefit of the doubt.
Three years later, in 1980, the floater, Alexander L. Kielland, also working in Ekofisk and under contract with Phillips, sunk when tension anchors to the sea floor broke. Tragically, one hundred and twenty-three men died.
On the left, two thirds of A-Team, the Red Adair Company giving a post Bravo capping press conference in 1977. Red is likely taking most of the credit but Boots knows the real deal. The other third of the A-Team, Coots, is in Wyoming on his own battling a fire near Casper.
I suspect those are empty glasses of bourbon; who else in the world could do that but Red Adair, Boots Hansen and Coots Matthews.
In December of 1977, seven months after the Bravo blowout, and a few days before Christmas, Red fired Boots Hansen and Coots Matthews. In Red's book, An American Hero, Red said they quit but I actually have a copy of the letter Red wrote to Boots and Coots giving them the axe. The following year Boots and Coots went into business for themselves and their first year had more than four million dollars of revenue in the well control business. In 1979 Red made history once again when he was involved in the Ixtoc blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.
Firing Boots and Coots, after 19 years together, created many years of very hard feelings between Boots and Red. Coots and Red sort of made up after some time had past, however, and were always friendly to each other.
As late as 1995 Red, Coots, David Thompson and I had lunch together one afternoon at a steakhouse on the Katy Freeway. We had a drink or two and I was spell bound as Red and Coots told stories for two hours. Neither one of them could hear worth a shit from all the blowouts they were on over the decades so they were hollering at each other at the table, the volume cranked way up, telling the most unbelievable stories you could possibly imagine. The entire restaurant sat there in disbelief and listened, silently, like an E.F. Hutton commercial was underway. When we left the steakhouse a lot of people stood and applauded Red and Coots. Personally, I'll never forget that as long as I live. It was fantastic.
The rift between Red and Boots never healed entirely. It was a struggle for me to even get them to agree to be in the same History Channel documentary together regarding well control history in 2003. Red and Coots have now, of course, both passed away and since this piece was written Boots, too, passed away in 2019; he was 93 years old.
After the documentary was aired in 2004, Red and Boots seem to tolerate each other again and both could often be seen with Coots at Offshore Technology Conferences in Houston. One year at OTC, the last time they were all three together, they signed 10-15 black and white photographs of them on the set of Hellfighters, with John Wayne, and my friend David Thompson snagged me an original. I have that on the wall in my office with a number of other blowout photographs.
Boots Hansen went to work for Myron Kinley in 1957 on the recommendation of Red, who knew Boots from stock car racing. When Red left Myron in 1958 to form the Red Adair Company, he took Coots with him; Boots stayed behind with Myron for another 8 months before joining the Red Adair Company himself. He was with Red Adair and Coots Matthews in Algeria in 1963.
Boots was a hard, very intense, but incredibly resourceful man. In my research regarding the history of the well control profession and the study of some of the wells that Boots Hansen was on over his long career I came to decide he was as tough as anyone, maybe tougher, and had very keen, almost brilliant engineering skills.
Boot's career will always take a back seat to Red Adair's but I think that is very unfortunate. He was one the very best, ever, in his chosen profession and the worldwide oil and natural gas industry owes Boots Hansen a great deal of respect and admiration.
References
[1] An American Hero;
the Biography of Red Adair
[2] Just Having Fun;
the Biography of Boots Hansen
[3] New York Times Digital Archives
[4] Norske Oljemuseum
[5] World Oil Magazine
[6 ]Society of Petroleum Engineers
[7] Personal Conversations with Boots & Coots, 1992-1997
[8] The Opening Photo is Boots Hansen in Algeria, 1962; Maurice Jarnoux, Photographer
[9] Bravo Report, Norwegian Official Reports (NOU) 1977-47;43
[10] Egil Berle interviewed bu Kristin Ove Gjerde, 20 June 2003
[11] Bjorn Stale Laerdal interviewed by Susan Box, 26 September 1995
[12] Phillips Ekofisk Bravo Incident Reports
[13]...
[14] Ekofisk Complex in 2025
