Slashdot Mirror
BP Knew of Deepwater Horizon Problems 11 Months Ago
jkinney3 was one of several readers to send in news of recently discovered internal documents from BP which indicate the company knew "there were serious problems and safety concerns with the Deepwater Horizon rig far earlier than those the company described to Congress last week." According to the New York Times, "The documents show that in March, after several weeks of problems on the rig, BP was struggling with a loss of 'well control.' And as far back as 11 months ago, it was concerned about the well casing and the blowout preventer." Reader bezenek points out this troubling quote about BP's inconsistent risk assessments: "In April of this year, BP engineers concluded that the casing was 'unlikely to be a successful cement job,' according to a document, referring to how the casing would be sealed to prevent gases from escaping up the well. The document also says that the plan for casing the well is 'unable to fulfill M.M.S. regulations,' referring to the Minerals Management Service. A second version of the same document says 'It is possible to obtain a successful cement job' and 'It is possible to fulfill M.M.S. regulations.'"
Did they not honestly believe that a disaster could occur? Did the right people not talk to each other? Or was the urge to cut corners simply so great that people ignored the risk?
From the ABC interview with one of the survivors, the BP people were arguing with the Transocean people, insisting that it would be ok to skip some phases of sealing the well because they wanted to move the schedule up. I wonder what that BP manager was thinking.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
blahblahblah. More Libertarian nonsense.
When I'm out of town and don't know the area, and my car nearly dies running out of gas, I really don't have a choice about what the next gas station is. Whether BP, Citgo, 76, Gulf, etc.
Speaking oil and monopolies, yes, Standard Oil became a monopoly with out the Government's interference. So did many other monopolies.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
While the top guys are often not engineers, what you're saying isn't entirely true. They have very rationally considered the options. Here's a nice link to a technical briefing from last week where they outline their options and the current situation.
In addition Tony Hayward is a geologist with a PhD.
Read what I mean, not what I wrote.
The really interesting stuff is after 1:30
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6ZN6r5-1QE
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
That is called populism, and while it might make people feel good, it doesn't have a basis in law or the constitution. Holding them financially responsible is an obvious point, but you can't seize assets of the employees (4th Amendment) nor hold them personally responsible unless you can show criminal negligence or that they broke some other law. That is entirely possible for some.
What we can't do is knee jerk react and create new laws because of this. The problem isn't that we don't have enough laws, the problem is that the current system of laws and regulations wasn't followed. Politicians love to pass new laws when the shit hits the fan, because it makes it look like are doing something, when in fact it is a useless gesture.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Oh, like this.
First of all, the sections of pipe are joined mechanically, and sealed with O-rings. The O-rings are specified for shallow water pressures (and temperatures), and rather than use adequate deep water parts, the shallow water parts were continued to avoid mandatory Federal oversight and testing.
On top of that, deadlines for completion were already tight, as no schedule variability was provided for unforeseen events, such as severe weather, that might hamper drilling and well conversion efforts. The conversion from an exploratory/research structure into a production well was a hard deadline, and pressure was on internally from the otherwise stagnant middle managers clamoring for achievement. There was no room for failure with a project named Deepwater Horizon.
As engineers' warnings flowed up the chain of command, the wording changed from "grave concern" to "concern" to "noted comment" to eventually "thumbs up!". Inter-hierarchical presentations followed a strict time schedule, so power point mentality and "no bad news up" reigned.
"HP *WILL NOT* come out of this unscathed,"
Exxon did. Their fine was a drop in the bucket.
--
BMO
What color is the sky on your planet? BP is subject to the federal Oil Pollution Act, which has an infinite limit for cleanup damages: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/usc.cgi?ACTION=RETRIEVE&FILE=$$xa$$busc33.wais&start=4683182&SIZE=13816&TYPE=TEXT What is limited by the OPA is Federal claims: The $75M is the easy money where plaintiffs don't have to prove that BP was careless or negligent in order to collect their money. The OPA DOES NOT preempt state laws, where there is no limit to what BP will have to pay. The only bar for plaintiffs in state court is that they have to prove that BP was careless or negligent.
Like Nigeria. From that article,
.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Anyone who has had any experience with drilling opreations in the gulf will know that loss of drilling fluids, kicks and other well control events are common, expected and routine. Dressing them up to be problems with the well design is pure horsepuckey. If you don't know what you're talking about then STFU. Even so-called "underground blowouts" are common and can be insured by lloyds. Furthermore the phrase 'casing was unlikely to be a successful cement job' makes no sense. The article is poorly written by people who do not have a grasp of oilfield equipment and procedures and obviously could not be bothered consulting with someone who was in the rush to attempt to smear Pulitzer all over themselves. Now, this statement has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual issues which were: failure on BP and Transoceans part to identify excessive fluid flows following the cementation of the production liner AND failure (or so it seems from public information) to maintain the BOP- quite a difficult task given its located at the sea floor but any indication that it has problems should call for immediate halt and repair work. When drilling any well, your BOP is all that stands between you, catastrophe and death. /rant
You note that as satite, but that's basically exactly what happened with the Challenger. The engineers had reliability reports and lots of testing data that showed launching in the cold was a Bad IDea... however, poorly constructed presentations didn't highlight THAT aspect of the data, and their warnings were generally misunderstood or ignored.
Oil != Gasoline.
Oil is a commodity traded on the open market at a price that people will pay for it. Also all crude oils are not the same. The gulf of mexico mainly supplies sour crudes which are traded far more cheaply than the west Texas intermediate crudes (the price quoted in the news). Yet some refineries are especially kitted out to process sour crudes, and some only process sweet crudes. As such a price rise by BP for oil from the Gulf of Mexico will ultimately still lead to it being sold in the open market. Thus the market price will rise slightly. In several key places around the world (depending on the local economics and refining capacity) the refineries of ALL companies running this type of crude will have to absorb these costs. This leads to a higher cost of gasoline coming out of the refineries. Local economics will then lead to the costs ultimately being passed on to consumers who have to gasoline from these refineries.
The free market approach of competition breaks down due to barriers caused by different crudes, different refining capacities, geographical locations, cost of transport of goods, and the general convoluted screwyness of how oil and petrol are traded on the open market. If your competition idea worked flawlessly with none of these barriers there wouldn't be any refineries in Australia for instance because all the refining capacity here is less than 1/5th of one of the reliance petroleum refineries in India who can produce stuff far cheaper. Fortunately they can't run much sour crude.