A little background on the BP oil spill
Here’s BP’s side of the story, presented by its CEO, Tony Hayward.
I’m not offering this because I believe it’s the truth, the whole truth,and nothing but the truth (hardly), but because it’s of interest in terms of some of the possible technical solutions. Equally interesting—or perhaps more so—are many of the comments, some of which detail BPs negligence prior to the spill, and some of which discuss the economics of the whole thing.
Neo, I am not surprised that you used the WSJ, as its reporting on the Macondo blowout has been first-rate.
Disclaimer: as an engineer in drilling rig services in a previous life , I supported more offshore drilling before the Macondo blowout. [How ironic that Macondo is also the name for the fictional home town in A Hundred Years of Solitude.] I still support more offshore drilling. I do not fault BP for its efforts to contain the spill. It isn’t easy to do, under a mile of ocean.
BP’s Hayward:
The BOPs were tested several days before the blowout, and were good (testimony of Transocean CEO before Congress.) The problem is that the BOPs are a last resort. This was NOT a case of ”We did everything by the book and S@#$ happened.” It was a case of “We tried to save time and money on a well that was already over budget, and S@@#$ happened.” Replacing the dense drilling mud with much lighter seawater before the bottom plug had been set was, as one commenter on a WSJ May 11 article put it, like popping the cork on abottle of champagne. This was not the only example of BP’s not following industry standard operating procedure/best practices. Blaming the blowout on the BOP is an avoidance of responsibility.
One recommendation: listen less to the bean-counters in the oil company onshore offices and listen more to the contractors at the rig site.
In summary: Hayward makes some good points about how to go forward, while avoiding responsibility for what happened. Sounds to me more like an attorney than an engineer.
For more detailed information. (I also highly recommend the Wall Street Journal, but to defeat the spam filter, I am keeping links condensed.)
http://www.desertsun.co.uk/blog/?m=201005 Tim Newman’s White Desert of the Sun (May archives) has some good discussion, some of it prompted by my participation in the following threads.
Fateful Decisions on the Deepwater Horizon
Back Pedalling over BP
Obama Talks Tough on Macondo Hearings(May 23)
(If you don’t like Neo’s spam filter, wait until you encounter Tim’s spam filter!)
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6493 The Oil Drum: “What caused the Deepwater Horizon disaster?” (May 21) has a good discussion.
Gringo: it’s White Sun of the Desert, not the other way around.
See the eponymous film.
[just saying, in the interests of accuracy]
Tatyana: correction noted.
Gringo: if you ever had a chance to see the movie, take it- highly recommended.
BTW, Tim’s filters just singled you out for some reason: I never ever had a problem, not on his current blog, nor – the previous incarnation.
“We tried to save time and money on a well that was already over budget, and S@@#$ happened.”
And that, ultimately, is the one of the main issues. The other is that until thier last attempt they never truly tried to stop the flow, they tried to do so in a way that wouldn’t impact future use of the site. Their containment also tried to keep the oil in a gather-able condition.
For your quote our govt allowed them too, nominally for campaign donations. IMO this has gone on since at least Carter (and probably before) and everyone was happy. Politicians got thier money, Oil companies got their oil, consumers never saw a disaster. However that is simply waiting for the inevitable.
I actually have some sympathy here for both BP and the govt simply because it had never really faced the consequences of those actions – touching the hot kettle is wholly different from knowing it it hot. I’m still angry – but then hey I have been over that for some while as it isn’t much of a secret, each side knows the other does it and trots it out when they are not in power yet doesn’t do anything because they know in a few years they too can reap the money.
The last ones are the ones that truly make me mad. You touched the kettle, found out the hard way it is hot, and then rubbed your finger in dung and watched it become infected and rot off before deciding it may be time to do something.
I understand untested methods and how hard this would be to test. I’ve worked in R&D projects most of my life and current work with disaster recovery for data centers – even in such an artificial environement (and one that we can supposedly replicate to our hearts content) until/unless the thing dies you just do not know if you fix is going to work. Sometimes everything works wonderfully, sometimes not so much, and sometimes two weeks a millions later you still aren’t back up and a team of 30 engineers and technicians have no idea what is happeneing. It happens, such is life.
However you do not try the weak solutions first, or at the least you give start them second. You do not wait 40 days to decide its time to stop it for now.
Our govt allowed it and is *still* allowing it – though apparently he is thinking about it all day long now. For money is bad enough, but f not for money then I shudder to think what – it is amusing hearing Obama supporters say it had nothing to do with money. Massive environmental damage for political gain? Idiocy? Dunno, no one offers anything as to why, just no bad reason is acceptable – there *must* be a good one as Obama is the Saint of all Saints.
Want to pay for Health care and stop this from happening again (and I bet see them cap the thing MUCH faster) – fine the crap out of BP every day it leaks. They do this because it is cheaper to bribe them and let it become big enough for a national emergency and the feds step in and pay for it. Make it cheaper to run the thing safely and you will not even need regulators.
“Our govt allowed it and is *still* allowing it – though apparently he is thinking about it all day long now.”
Yeah and OJ was going to dedicate his life to finding the real killers.
Gringo,
Thanks for the link to the Oil Drum site. Some worthwhile and straightforward information there.
Though my experience of the oil rigs is many years past and on land, I remember well completions as times of tension and differences of opinion between the driller and the oil company. If more than one oil company had a piece of the action that made things even more contentious. I was on one well that could have been successfully completed, but the major share holder thought it was an uneconomic well, so it was plugged and abandoned.
I do not doubt that completion costs were an issue. So, erroneous human judgment may well be the ultimate cause of the accident. In aviation we call it, “Pilot error.” In the fullness of time we will find out what happened. Deep water oil drilling is much like aviation or space shots. Many problems have been anticipated and safety margins have been constructed but things go wrong. Then investigations are done to analyze and correct the problems. That is what should take place here, but it may well be in a highly politicized atmosphere. That won’t help reach sound and practical conclusions and fixes.
This is stilll a two pronged problem. The first is to get the well capped. BP has every reason to do this as quickly as possible. Everyday causes it to bleed money and lose more of its reputation. I have no doubt they are doing all they can and have the top engineers and oil operators working on the problem. We know that the well will be brought under control in about three months by drilling an intercept well. However, that length of time will release an awful lot of oil into the Gulf. Thus their attempts at quicker solutions.
The second prong of the problem is containing and cleaning up the oil that is in the water and now hitting the shores. The Marine Spill Response Corporation, which the industry has put together is, it appears, too small to handle a spill of this magnitude. The Coast Guard is apparently the lead government agency involved in dealing with oil spills. Unfortunately, they have been too bogged down im following proper enevironmental laws and regulations, and have not been responsive enough to allow more sand berms and other activities to protect the beaches. This is where the government has been too bureaucratically leaden to respond with the vigor needed to get out ahead of the spill. One Coast Guard officer, CAPT Edwin Stanton, has kind of taken responsibility for delaying a decision on barrier islands. His explanation, “Well, I guess I’m kinda slow and dumb.” Calling Diogenes – We may have found an honest man!
President Obama’s denseness on this illustrates his inability to lead. Or could it be that his advisors thought this was a time to sit back and let the environmental damage be great enough that the public would demand no more offshore drilling. Naw, no one is that Machiavellian.
In the meantime, the litigation calender is growing by leaps and bounds. Many people see a chance to get a piece of the BP billion$. It is going to take an army of judges and years to process all the claims. As one well informed person remarked to me, “The coastal communities were all announcing their demise before any oil had even been sighted much less reached shore. I am not minimizing their plight, but neither would it be any great surprise to discover that there are claims being submitted north of Baton Rouge.”
And then their is the new moratorium on offshore drilling that is going to result in the loss of many good paying jobs in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Obama and company have no idea how many good paying jobs are generated by the oil industry. Sigh!