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Modeling Software Showed BP Cement As Unstable
DMandPenfold writes "Advanced modeling software analyzed the cementing conditions for BP's Deepwater Horizon oil well as unstable, days before the blast that killed 11 oil rig workers and let millions of barrels of oil spill into the Gulf of Mexico. Halliburton, the company that carried out the cement job, used its own modeling software called OptiCem, to support arguments that more stability was needed for the piping and cement. ... An OptiCem test on 15 April, five days before the blast, stipulated that from Halliburton’s point of view, 21 ‘centralizers’ needed to be added to the well bore. The centralizers are used to provide space around the oil pipe casing within the well, as cement is poured around it, and are a vital part of safe drilling. BP initially adhered to the OptiCem software test and ordered 15 extra centralizers. But when technicians on the rig received the extra centralizers they mistakenly decided the new centralizers were the incorrect type. At this point BP proceeded with the drilling anyway, with the six centralizers, deciding another known technique of injecting cement in other places would work."
Actually I do believe
"Thank you Captain Hindsight", is more appropriate of a comment here.
"Sherlock, we could find a place to put the blame if only we knew what kind of rock they were drilling through."
"Sedimentary, my dear Watson, sedimentary."
What I don't understand, with these "Corporation that doesn't give a fuck and has more politicians in its pocket than you ever will fucks over some more luckless saps" stories is why there isn't more extralegal violence associated with them.
Obviously, subjecting large corporations to serious penalties under law would be unamerican, and we generally avoid it; but America is crawling with angry and well armed people, many without too much to lose, and spree-killing is something we start practicing in high school.
Why isn't there an enraged ex-fisherman with an AR-15 lurking outside the window of every BP C-level whose name is publicly known? People get killed all the time over petty shit, why not the big stuff?
Obviously, the rational thing is to fatalistically suck it up and try to move on
That depends.
Sometimes, the most rational course of action requires doing what little you can to send a simple, clear, and potentially bloody message of "don't do this again". In particular, when you have almost nothing left to lose, and those who destroyed you have almost no risk of seeing any meaningful penalties.
A handful of BP execs dead at the hands of the fishermen they ruined would do a whole heap more to prevent another such catastrophe, than any monetary penalties ever could. "Companies" behave like complete sociopaths, abusing both convention and law to maximize profits; the humans running companies, however, can experience real fear.
The issue isn't "omg they ignored the modeling - those bastards!"
The issues are:
1) Was their mistaken belief that the stabilizers were the wrong size reasonable under the circumstances, was it due to an understandable human error, or was it due to gross incompetence?
2) Was the backup plan based on sound engineering and sound industry practices, or was it a "we think this will be okay, let's cross our fingers and drill?"
If the mistake on the stabilizers was reasonable under the circumstances and the backup plan was based on sound engineering and sound industry practices, I don't see any blame as it relates to this particular decision.
On the other hand, if either decision was based on incompetence, then it's easy to pin blame. If the mistake was based on something less than incompetence - say, a competent person demonstrating the reality that good human beings occasionally make mistakes and making a bad or careless decision at what would turn out to be the worst possible time - then there is blame but the punishment for that person should not be as severe as that of incompetence.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
For what, you ask? Negligent homicide. Because somebody decided to drill in a situation they knew to be unsafe, putting the lives of everyone on the rig, including those with no choice in the matter, at risk for the sake of profits. A few criminal prosecutions would change that culture quickly, otherwise it's just a cost of doing business.
I am officially gone from
So what? BP has massive amounts of money, as well as political connections out the ass.
Something did get done. Look at the graph of BP stock. Zoom to 1 year and notice the huge dip following april 20th. They (and their stockholders) did lose money over this...
Beside that they also (temporarily) lost political connections, to them it's all fine when it's deals in the dark, but when the spotlight is on BP no politician wants to support them.
So their irresponsibilty caused them to lose some of the two powers they care about, money and connections. It will make them think twice before fucking up on this scale ever again, they may not care about the environment or the fishermen, but they care about losing money and connections.
..BP didn't do the cementing. Halliburton did. So, if Halliburton's model showed that more centralizers were required but they decided to go ahead with the cementing anyway, seems to me that they were negligent.
It's like a builder telling the developer "We should use beams and girders in this wall to make it stronger" and the developer saying "Hmmm. We haven't got any steel beams to hand. Can you use reinforced concrete instead and maybe make the wall thicker?". If the builder says "Yeah, sure!" and goes ahead, he can't blame the developer if the wall later collapses.
I sense desperate attempts at ass-covering on Halliburton's part. Probably worried about all their lucrative no-competition Pentagon contracts.
It'd be a start if the blame was even being spread fairly. This US obsession with blaming BP entirely largely started by Obama as he needed to deflect political attention away from his own incompetence, but BP was only one of a few companies who deserve blame. BP was certainly the majority stakeholder, but whilst BP has from the start accepted it's fair share of the blame - it never once said it'd pay anything less than the full costs of cleanup and compensation. You can't even claim that BP were the ones raking the profits from the well and hence the ones that deserve to pay because other companies including the US oil company Anadarko, and Japanese company Mitsui also had a share in the well but to date have dodged all responsibility, and then there's the fact that companies like Transocean and Halliburton still profited from the well by being contracted to play the part they did in the first place.
I'm amazed that so little criticism is being pushed towards Halliburton, when it seems they were in fact guilty of at least some degree of negligence - even the US panel investigating the spill is beginning to accept that now-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11648354
It's incredible that Americans seem to feel the need for a foreign bogeyman in incidents like this, that despite Halliburton's record in it's dealings regarding the Iraq war all blame is deflected away from it, and companies like Anadarko, Mitsui, and Transocean.
Sure BP fucked up, sure they were getting the biggest slice of profits, but at least they're the one company out of all those involved who has from the start been willing to pay for the fuckup, even though it seems pretty now that BP might actually have been the company that least screwed up compared to it's partner Transocean, and compared ot Halliburton:
http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/u-s-spill-panel-examines-causes-of-bp-oil-spill-reuters_molt-7a2344c54e1b.html;_ylt=Atte73PsYsywCFWErVA85UrBXGwF;_ylu=X3oDMTE2MTRia2tlBHBvcwMxMgRzZWMDdG9wc3RvcmllcwRzbGsDdXNzcGlsbHBhbmVs?x=0
It's sad that the one company that takes responsibility and offers to pay full costs from the outset gets demonised, whilst those others who are responsible keep getting given a free ride by the press and public and are still to this day refusing to accept blame, or pay their share of the costs despite the mounting evidence that they were in fact more responsible for fucking up than BP themselves.
Yeah, I can't figure it out. People on the street shoot each other over liquor store robberies for a $100, but when your livelihood is affected to the tune of tens of thousands, people sit in their sofas watching American Idol.
Never mind some fisherman picking off BP execs, I'm shocked no one has been picking off mortgage brokers, bankers, and other high-ups that handed us the Great Depression, that will essentially, last for the remainer of our lives (all indicators point to things getting worse, not better, unless you're already in the top 1%).
Even more amsuing is that that south is filled with gun-nuts, you'd think that at least one of them would get riled up enough to do something. Amazing that they'll shoot at each other about a scratch on the pickup truck, but when it comes down to REAL things, they act like they have no power.
Maybe there's something to those chemtrails after all, as the populace is handing the country over to a few elite, with no fight whatsoever. John Carpenter's "They Live" is starting to look like a documentary. Where's the Hoffman lenses when you need them?
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.