Not being an engineer, my choice of phrase was unfortunate. My meaning was that it might not have been accidental. I’m sure there are many things that can be messed with on a rig to cause an accident, but then it isn’t an accident, is it?
Are you a roughneck?
No - I’m a guy who puts the “X” on the map and says drill here but I’ve spent a lot of time offshore around the globe wanting to see firsthand if my educated guess paid off...
A “insider” report in “plain english” that I received including a bunch of photos you haven’t seen on the news and I can’t post:
“The rig had apparently just finished cementing steel casing in place at depths exceeding 18,000 ft. The next operation was to suspend the
well so that the rig could move to its next drilling location, the idea being that a rig would return to this well later in order to complete the
work necessary to bring the well into production.
It is thought that somehow formation fluids – oil /gas – got into the wellbore and were undetected until it was too late to take action. With a
floating drilling rig setup, because it moves with the waves, currents, and winds, all of the main pressure control equipment sits on the
seabed – the uppermost unmoving point in the well. This pressure control equipment – the Blowout Preventers, or ‘BOP’s” as they’re
called, are controlled with redundant systems from the rig. In the event of a serious emergency, there are multiple Panic Buttons to hit,
and even fail-safe Deadman systems that should be automatically engaged when something of this proportion breaks out. None of them
were aparently activated, suggesting that the blowout was especially swift to escalate at the surface. The flames were visible up to about
35 miles away. Not the glow – the flames. They were 200 – 300 ft high.”