Do you have the details? I’ve seen the statements that they were using procedures that skimped on safety, but you can always say this. Always! The ideal is never realized, so when the actual meets with failure, the ideal is trotted out as the innocent betrayed. This is myth as failure analysis, and I don’t buy it.
To me, they were just way wide of the mark here; Engineers, bean-counters and all. They got something that they just didn’t expect. Why not? That’s my question.
I think the blowout was caused by clathrate. The phase boundary for methane clathrate is right along the depth and temperature of the well head, so you had clathrate coming up and “evaporating” in a process much like a volcanic eruption. I don’t see why this should have been anything unknown to them, but it looks like they didn’t see it coming.
1. There was evidence that the BOP was not being properly maintained.
2. When a well is "kicking" on you, You DO NOT remove Drilling mud from the hole.
3. When you know you have had lost circulation trouble and are having cement trouble you run a CBL and probably a USIT log to determine where your trouble is and how bad it is.
4.You "Shoot for a squeeze" and try to repair the bad cement job. (done all the time on wells).
5. You rerun CBL and USIT wireline tools to verify you now have a good cement job.
6. If you still don't have a good cement job, repeat steps 4 and 5.
7. Once the cement job is proved good by wireline sonic equipment (CBL and USIT)run in your final plug (packer) with heavy mud still in the hole.
BP did none of this because those procedures would have taken a lot of rig time, and time is money on a rig.