Montara Oilspill

This is the pipelaying cranevessel Sapura 3000. You can read some more details here. When I spoke to her captain this morning, he told me they were bound for the Australian Montara field. Somewhere an alarmbell sounded but I did not know for what reason. A quick check on the Internet showed why I had heard this name before.

The Montara oil spill was an oil and gas leak and subsequent slick that took place in the Montara oil field in the Timor Sea, off the northern coast of Western Australia. It is considered one of Australia's worst oil disasters. The slick was released following a blowout from the Montara wellhead platform on 21 August 2009, and continued leaking until 3 November 2009 (in total 74 days), when the leak was stopped by pumping mud into the well and the wellbore cemented thus "capping" the blowout. The Montara field is located off the Kimberley coast, 430 miles west of Darwin. Sixty-nine workers were safely evacuated from the West Atlas jackup drilling rig when the blowout occurred.

The first four attempts to plug the oil leak failed, but the fifth attempt succeeded on 3 November 2009, when 3,400 barrels (540 m3) of mud were pumped into a relief well to stop the leak.
The operation later in November 2009 to finally plug the well after the leak was stopped involved pumping a 1,400 metre cement plug down the relief well to the bottom of the 2.5 kilometre well.