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Article Source: The Washington PostBP released a long-awaited report Wednesday on an internal investigation into the causes of its Gulf of Mexico oil well blowout, blaming multiple failures by BP and other firms but absolving its much-criticized well design.
The BP report stressed that "no single factor" caused the April 20 blowout that killed 11 workers, sank the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and led to the largest oil spill in U.S. history.
The other companies involved have yet to give their version of events, and Transocean has pointedly complained that BP hasn't turned over data that would help Transocean with its own internal investigation.
Now why would BP do that?
Transocean and Haliburton should not have complied meekly to BP's orders if those orders had been unprofessional and outright risky under circumstances that were already on the brink. They should have stood up to BP. Now when the @!$%# hits the fan, the blame game starts.
This happens all the time. Sigh......
#1 - Wed Sep 8, 2010 11:30 AM EDTMonths ago, a professor friend of mine, who has a friend at Haliburton, told me that his friend said that BP would not order the expensive sealant that is mixed with the concrete to really seal the pores of the concrete-- a substance that really binds concrete together... I wonder if that is going to be a factor.
Most subs can make recommendations, but unless they can demonstrate that it will cause a disaster, their pleas will likely go unheard. And no one is going to spend the money to do it the right way, if you can't prove that doing it the wrong way can lead to disaster.
I'm not defending anyone here-- that is just the way it goes... I agree with you-- they should have insisted. But, perhaps they didn't feel that they had enough evidence to insist-- and they were certainly not going to spend the money themselves.
This is going to be one legal mess.
Great article!
Dowser
I am just expressing my frustration here. Hope I am not offending anyone.
Been in this situation before. Probably the expensive sealant will help. In one project years ago, there was a memo ordering the use of cheaper cement to cut down drilling costs as they were losing too much cement in drilling the wells (trajectories from a single platform). They had a blowout on the 5th because of all these inconsiderate cost cutting measures, instead of determing the root causes of the problem. Sounds very familiar to BP's case.
In the case of the spacer, BP asked Haliburton to redesign using less no of spacers. Now they are pulling in Haliburton as part of the cause. But it is difficult being the contractor and wanting to please the Client. Well there are good and bad clients. Sigh...
I took a taxi once in Bahrain. The taxi driver was reckless, speeding in a narrow road. Told him to slow down as I was not even in a hurry. He knocked another car. Parked by the side and haggled with the other party. Then came back to me to ask for some Dinars to pay as compensation for knocking the other party's car. It was then that I noticed his own taxi was full of dents. It was (and still is) the reasoning that goes like this ... I was responsible for his accident since I was the client. He would not had been at the accident scene if I had not ordered the taxi to my destination.
Should this apply to BP and Haliburton?
Golly, I bet you were mad!
I don't know, BK Lim. I think that Haliburton was doing what they were told, even though I'm sure they strongly disagreed. BP, unscrupulous as they are, will do anything to lesson their liability. So, once again, I'm glad I'm not the judge in this case. But perhaps BP should have to prove negligence and malicious intent on the part of Haliburton. I'm sure that Haliburton has tons of memos, letters, etc., that told BP to use the better cement.
This happened to me once, too, on a much smaller scale, of course. The city needed a new well field. Property was available near the river, but their raw water line was up the hill by the road. I kept telling them and telling them, in person, via letter, via memo, that to find water in the quantities that they needed, they should drill closer to the river, in the thalweg of the river bed. Would they do it? Nope. They drilled up the hill by the road, and it couldn't make the water they needed. Somehow, it was "all that geologist's fault". If I could have put the water where I wanted it to be, I would have been a zillionaire. :-)
So, unless BP can prove willful negligence on Haliburton's part, they were just doing what they were told to do, and I dont' see how it can be their fault. Perhaps I am biased, based on my own experience!
Take care--
PS, I wasn't at all offended. I think most of us agree with you wholeheartedly!
Dowser, I did not think you were offended but in case others who are reading this.
Taking the taxi scenario, it was BP in this case asking the taxi to speed up (enough evidence to prove this). Haliburton and Transocean should take this up as the main argument. BP as the battle commander cannot blame his lieutenants for losing the war. For this disaster (after 2 warnings from 2 out-of-control wells) at the 3rd well, I am afraid BP has to be fully responsible. Even with the best well design the blow-out would have occurred. BP admitted to this but blamed the eight failures of equipment. But the truth is even without the 8 equipment failures the blow-out would have occurred.
If the 8 equipment failures had been a factor in the blow-out, why did they abort the other 2 wells? If the 8 equipment failures are really a big factor why did BP not order them to be rectified before the blow-out?
Yet the report absolves BP's widely criticized well design. It says the path that oil and gas followed as they escaped from the well meant that the well's casing and design - matters that could otherwise implicate BP - were not factors in the disaster. Instead, it says that if any one of eight failures of equipment or decision-making had not taken place, the blowout would not have happened.
AS I said in my first article on the newsvine, the-root-causes-of-bps-oil-spill-the-imminent-threat-of-more-oil-related-disasters-part-1
If the oversights, misjudgment and the long list of cut-corners are to be blamed for well blowouts, it stands to reason that wells drilled by less advanced smaller oil companies with even more appalling safety and quality standards in less regulated countries, would have blown more frequently before the recent Macondo blowout.
Thus while corporate oversights, cut corners and safety lapses in the field might be the “straws that broke the camel’s back”, there is absolutely nothing the field crew can do if the Macondo well was a disaster waiting to happen.
Not only is BP to be held fully responsible, the top BP executives who had insisted for the wells to be drilled no matter what despite all the warning signs should be prosecuted for the crime of mass destruction. Root causes of the disaster are not the equipment failures or well design, but the failure to heed the warnings and the choice of the wrong location.
Just to qualify (before everyone jumps on me) I am not saying Haliburton and Transocean are angels, as I am sure they have their faults. If Haliburton and Transocean did something out of line (against BP's instructions) BP can go after them for disobedience or insubordination. I understand this predicament myself being in it on almost every well. The nature of feedback is equally important.
You make a very strong case, and I wish you could be there, testifying! Go and get 'em!
:-)
Unfortunately I am in the far east, Dowser. But wherever we are, we should not let these mindless crooks get away with their loots. To much has been destroyed. Now Tony Hayward is heading to Russia, Sakhalin. God knows what he will destroy next.
South-east Asia is also in danger of another oil disaster as well. If you look at all the exploration areas, they are in the deep waters - shelf edge zones. Australia has had it Montara Oil Spill. So SE Asia and Russia is next, I suppose.
Wow! You Are There!
Why would anyone hire him? I don't understand... He certainly wasn't a 'success', so why would the Russians hire him?
No Not the Russians. BP. Just like before when they sent Tony to the Gulf. Wait for another 2 to 3 years before something else happens over there.
Who does this man know? And what has he "got" on someone else? Ridiculous! 2-3 years may be too long-- I would imagine that their equipment, etc., is not quite as good, etc. What a shame!
Thank you for the clarification.
With his GULF OIL SPILL credentials, the Russians or any other country should be smart enough to bar him working in their countries. Would you invite Bernie Madoff to be your financial planner? He created a GULF of Mess and "getting his life back" was al he could think of. He is not even sorry.
If he had any conscience, he would have donated his salary for the next 10 years to the Gulf victims' fund or something like that. Did he come up with even 1 cent donation?
I feel the exact same way... I'm surprised that he hasn't been, uh, "offed". Not that I am advocating that in any way. But, it wouldn't surprise me one bit.
I figure there's a 50/50 chance that the government report reads very closely to this one. Change a few words, gin up a new executive summary with government versus corporate jargon and swap out letterheads.
#2 - Thu Sep 9, 2010 6:36 AM EDTTim
It is more like 70/30 the report will be accepted wholesale. If we do not learn from this disaster then the seeds of destruction for the next one have just been sown.
BK Lim
I am just expressing my frustration here. Hope I am not offending anyone.
I can't even begin to say how... irked? flabbergasted? aggravated? or like you, frustrated? I am concerning this whole thing. I can't imagine, no matter how much empathy I think I have, what the emotional, financial, and physical toll all this is having on those people in the gulf region... and not just because of BP's BS and our government's complicity (what with the EPA, FDA, NOAA, MSM, and any other government agency that have been BP's @!$%#es or whores, not to mention Obama himself) and main stream media's lack of a backbone, but because, as you have stated and as the late Matt Simmons kept talking about, that hole is still puking oil, right? At a rate of somewhere between 60- 120 thousand barrels a day?
I mean unless we the people can get our own ROV down there to show the world the puking hole it will keep fading from people's thoughts and collective consciousness, or until a hurricane stirs it all up for the world to see...
So what can be done about that part of the problem? And not to offend anyone, please, but the debates and discussions really are just academic.
#3 - Thu Sep 9, 2010 10:32 AM EDTyknotpot
With the evidence at hand, there should be enough to hang BP's Tony Hayward and his bunch of musketeers. Remove the heads and the tails will follow. Otherwise they still think they can play footsie with the system.
There has been some talk lately of drilling multiple production wells (from safe locations - my addition) to deplete the reservoir faster instead of letting it all flow out. I think it is a better idea than to nuke it or to kill it (without success). Once the oil is out of the reservoir into the upper fractured and faulted formation, it is uncontrollable. The longer the well is allowed to flow uncontrolled, the damage becomes more extensive.
BK Lim, please, no disrespect as it is impossible to gauge intent or tone in ppl's posts, but thank you for your pledged support, yes, that IS sarcastic but not meant in anger or bitterness, if anything maybe sadness as I thought you were an upstanding person... peace.
#4 - Sat Sep 11, 2010 2:34 PM EDTyknotpot
Oh dear, I hope I had not stepped on anybody's toe. Perhaps you can elaborate.
hhmmm, guess you don't remember what you said in an email...
yknotpot
I was so caught up in rushing off the latest posting on the conclusive evidence of Well A being not the well that reached reservoir; a day late.
I have dedicated it as a tribute to 911 victim. I was not aware of your published articles at your column till now. Sorry. Have seeded the latest to my column and others.
BK Lim,
I had thought about that over the weekend, I thought perhaps you didn't know I had written anything, so apologies, I had also wondered if the issue (of 9-11) was "out there" in your mind cause as you may or may not know, during the days of my activism I was even cussed out by church leaders, literally, to bring such a notion as our government's complicity and even involvement in such a horrific tragedy... thanks for seeding the links, it's amazing to me that even today, people have never heard about this side of the issue...
I'm telling you, have you ever felt like the boy with his finger in the dike? What ever happened to that kid, I don't remember the rest of that story, did that dike finally fail and kill him? I think given what we are up against, the oligarchy responsible for all this, I sometimes feel like it really is hopeless... but I also think this is the means towards the end as outlined in biblical prophesies, now that's a whole 'nother ball of wax for people to mull over, eh?
In answer to your question, I grew up in the area and remember the things being built, I've been inside them as a tourist. My older brother was a first responder who was there in the immediate aftermath but I don't know if he's developed any of those pulmonary ailments and cancer that have developed in those people breathing that toxic dust (my family and I have been estranged for decades). I just couldn't believe it when I saw those things coming down that day and I believed the governments stories for a few years... then my sister in law showed me an on-line video (www.zeitgeist the movie... but part 1 I can refute, parts 2 and 3 are informative, you can fast forward to the 40 minute mark, I also disagree with it's conclusion, that's a secular view in my opinion) that just killed me, for two or three days I was just a shell of a person for dis-belief (I'm a disabled vet too, no I didn't fight in any wars, just wanted to serve my country so you can understand where my mind was at)
Anyhow, I'm digressing... so thanks again, and keep up the good fight, I don't think an armed revolution is the answer, it's just WAKING the people the f*ck up and getting the right people to overcome their cowardice and do the right thing. Peace.
#5 - Mon Sep 13, 2010 9:46 AM EDTPeople came to help him and he saved Holland from a flood. I thought your article was excellent-- and I watched all the videos. If I forgot to vote, I'll go back and make sure that I do.
Take care!
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