BP Ignored Safety Modeling Software To Save Time

DMandPenfold writes "BP ignored the advice of safety modeling software in an attempt to save time before the disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil spill, according to a presentation slide (PDF) prepared by US investigators. The slide in question briefly appeared on the Oil Spill Commission's website in error, but was quickly retracted. Advanced cement modeling software, provided by BP's cement contractor Halliburton, had highlighted serious stability concerns with the well."

Comments

This is seriousely not a suprise

[xQuarkDS9x]

This seriousely does not suprise me at all. In a recent issue of Popular Mechanics magazine (October 2010 issue) they had an excellent article on just how bad BP blew it in the gulf of mexico. Everything from turning off and disabling safety systems and alarms, to rushing the drilling process, using wrong materials, ignoring advice and warnings from others that they were going to fast and ignoring safety, and more.

Re:Easy peasy

[DNS-and-BIND]

Uh...typical ignorant response. You do know that BP doesn't actually make anything that you can buy? Unless you're in the business of buying supertanker loads, of course.

Depends on whose ox is getting gored

[RogueWarrior65]

I find it fascinating that people were willing to blame Halliburton (and Dick Cheney who hasn't been its CEO for 10 years) when they had computer modeling software for the cement that pointed out problems. I wonder if these same people are going to dismiss this fact as junk science while blindly accepting computer models of weather forecasts for the next 100 years all because they prefer one flavor of politics over another.

Re:Depends on whose ox is getting gored

[lennier]

I wonder if these same people are going to dismiss this fact as junk science while blindly accepting computer models of weather forecasts for the next 100 years all because they prefer one flavor of politics over another.

What does belief in anthropogenic global warming have to do with politics? Whether you prefer left-wing or right-wing economics as a solution to a global crisis, politics should define your response to a problem, not the problem itself.

But if your preferred political-economic model can't cope with a particular crisis scenario, and has to resort to denying that that crisis could ever occur... then perhaps that model isn't as robust as its supporters would like to think?

One of The Strangest Aspect of this Story

[Greyfox]

Halliburton is everyone's favorite whipping boy and the media has tried to place some blame on them, but they're really coming off looking like some of the good guys in this story. From all the coverage, it sounds like the entire thing was the result of several very poor decisions made by the BP manager of the platform. The scary thing is, it really didn't sound like they were doing all that much differently than how all the other oil rigs are run. It kind of sounds to me like this hasn't happened before now (at least not at this scale) out of pure luck.

Re:they made their bed

[Jeremy Erwin]

Your answer is overly simplistic and ignores history. If East Germany hadn't been set up as a Soviet puppet state, the allies might well have gone further, but there was a Cold War, and an rei-ndustrialized, reinvigorated West Germany was prioritized over imprisoning 90,000 Nazis and restricting the work of 1.7 million others. wikipedia's entry on Denazification

Of course, the Nazi party was disbanded, and what assets it had were used for other purposes. Perhaps BP should suffer the same fate. Stockholders would lose money, of course, but their losses would be limited to what they put in. Officers could be prosecuted and fined, as they bear personal responsibility.

Re:And this is a surprise?

[sjames]

Well, let's see, replace the income of the fishermen, the lost income of Gulf coast resorts, subsidize the cost of seafood for all since it got more expensive due to reduced fishing, etc.

Then, of course there's completing the cleanup of what can be cleaned up. We don't have the technology to extract all that oil from the water (yes, oil naturally seeps into the water, but the oil from the blowout is a significant increase in that amount). That will just about cover the actual damages.

Of course, the standard for willful or negligent acts is treble damages, so we should all expect a nice check for that (no, I'm not holding my breath).

On to the criminal aspects. BP execs owe us a perp walk, embarrassing trial, followed by a lifetime of menial jobs and living next to a crack house since ex-cons are not terribly employable.