Posted on 01/29/2011 9:52:48 AM PST by smokingfrog
President Obama's oil spill commission spent six months examining the "root causes" of the Gulf disaster, yet never inspected the failed blowout preventer -- the part of the well that could have, as its name suggests, prevented the explosion.
At a House Natural Resources Committee hearing this week, the co-chairman of the National Oil Spill Commission faced a barrage of questions from Republicans and Democrats about why their final report is long on regulatory recommendations but short on engineering explanations.
Lawmakers took issue with the commission’s apparent lack of effort to explain the failure of the blowout preventer. Republicans said it calls into question the commission’s recommendations -- and, more seriously, leaves the Gulf vulnerable to a similar malfunction in the future.
“Why should we take [the commission] seriously if [it] did not even make that modicum of effort to determine the actual cause of the disaster?” asked Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.). “We’ve never had a blowout failure like this one. Until we find out why it failed, it could happen again. It could happen anytime -- and the commission has not advanced our understanding of how to prevent that. …
(Excerpt) Read more at humanevents.com ...
From the linked article;
“Commission co-chairman William Reilly deflected criticism and defended the report. Reilly, a former Environmental Protection Agency administrator, drew an interesting analogy.”
EPA! There’s your problem right there!
Lets have a show of hands: Who’s surprised?
I think we pretty much know what the causes were at this point, with the possible exception of whether or not the BOP failed to do its’ job or not. It seems like they are just ignoring the facts and trying to string out the defacto drilling ban as long as possible.
With everything going on in the middle east, the EPA preventing further drilling and with the companies in the gulf sending their equipment to Brazil, I would no longer be suprised to find out this was done on purpose.
The revolution is on. Just imagine if Stuxnet didn’t happen.....
When the BOP was finally lifted from the floor of the gulf, they brought it close to the surface but stopped short of bringing it out of the water immediately. It hung there for a few hours if I recall correctly. I wondered if there were divers down there inspecting or tampering with it before it was brought onto the deck of the ship where the rest of the world could see it. /possible tin-foil hat time
Thanks for posting a much more comprehensive article on the BoP b
However, the fact of the matter is that if the humans making the decisions on that well are response for the blowout.
So,no matter how many mistakes were made, the failure of the safety device (BOP),was inconsequential to the accident and new regulations will keep the BOP from failing in the future.These socialist bureaucrats talk in circles and always lie.
The committee's conclusions have an apparent result of negating the need for the blowout preventer. Not addressing the causes of the failure of this last ditch safety feature is negligent at best and criminal at worst.
I guess it remains to be seen, but I don’t think the BOP actually failed to operate. It may have been activated too late or might have been damaged when the rig sank. It’s really kind of amazing that the BOP survived the initial blow-out, as well as 3 months of high pressure oil shooting through it.
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