Contractor: BP Pumped Unusual Chemicals Into Well Before Explosion | TPMMuckraker

They are keeping quiet because BP's practices are not the exception but the norm. More is yet to come. You will be surprised that smaller oil companies get pushed around by the big international contractors instead of the other way round. Big fish eats small fishes. Tough luck if you are at the bottom of the food chain.

Alex, I have no idea as well. Good that you ask. Hopefully someone knows.

It would easily take more than 2 years from the time the well was proposed, approved, geohazards assessment in particular to gas blowouts before the well is finally drilled. It would not be difficult to find the many faults along the way if you know how. Anardako has to be careful pointing fingers at BP since it may bounce back on them (currently at other wells or in the future should the same happen to them).

But really I do not see why the Oil Companies should take 100% of the blame as they obviously have the geohazards site assessment (insurance policy as I call them) to take the fall. If the well location was a "blowout waiting to happen" the geohazards report should have been more affirmative, giving clear No-NO's and boundaries on the safety risks involved. I have not seen their geohazards reports but I am willing to bet that all the observed gas seeps are only being reported now as natural because BP says so. Even if they had been reported the gas seeps would have been watered down to "minor occasional seeps" with "caution advised" but still safe to proceed.

In my time, I fought tooth and nail with the oil companies rather than expediently follow their wishes and predetermined plan before any geohazards surveys had been done. I am sure there are many professionals who would rather resign than to put people, environment & wildlife at risk.

In the last one (1994), I resigned rather than change my unsafe assessment. Shell drilled against my recommendations and blew not once but twice and lost more than 30 million USD. Finally they had to recall me to choose a safe location.

Even though drilling is risky business, some locations are more risky than others. Fig 3 is a picture of the seabed where one well had blown before in 1974, and another in 2007 saw massive gas discharges and a near-disaster. See previous article. Yet a 3rd hole in a worst possible location is being chosen for the platform location. There are available prevention measures but are the oil companies willing to take them. It will be like trying to stop a speeding train on a collision course. It ain't happen yet.

The analogy is like lighting up your gas stove everyday without any problem if there is no gas leak in your kitchen. Even with a gas leak, there would be no explosion if the kitchen is well-ventilated. Thus, while a gas leak does not necessarily lead to an explosion, it would if the escaping gas is allowed to accumulate till the air-gas mixture is just right for an explosion to occur on ignition.

You get a fire inspector to assess the fire hazards in your house, and you get a generalised report that states you have a 50% of fire breaking out because you are using gas. You get the idea?

heard on Bloomberg that clean up costs may exceed 1 trillion?

I have seen worse. It is the small but lethal safety violations at ground level that really shook you up. I would have been killed in my cabin sound asleep when the aircon unexpectedly burst in flames and filled the room with smoke. I am not a light sleeper but some "strange voices" woke me up. Guess what? No one was aware of the fire as the smoke detectors were not working. Post incident check, 50% of smoke alarms all had dead batteries.

It was an American registered vessel, operated by American International company with American crew with full compliance with all international safety regulations. But at least the American are honest enough to admit their faults. British operating outside UK are the worst liars as shown by this disaster.

There are simple eco-friendly geo-engineering solutions which can prevent flooding (not after it floods), water arid land far into the interior to prevent annual fires and generate hydro-electric power at the same time. Southern Australia and California can certainly use it to prevent damaging forest fires. The world is full of geological structures we can make use of to balance nature - on the basis of Ying & Yang. It is a pity we are not making full use of it.

Stay tune - will be coming out with the posting shortly.