Posted on 06/19/2010 10:08:15 AM PDT by worst-case scenario
This is a guest post by William Semple. Mr. Semple is a drilling engineer and independent drilling consultant with 37 years of experience in the oil and gas industry. He worked for 16 years with a major oil company and has 24 years of experience as a drilling supervisor.
Mississippi Canyon 252 Macondo Well 24th April 2010 at approximately 21:49 hrs
I have summarized the information to try and keep it to the salient facts. The following information is from reliable sources. Most is public record and the remainder is from confidential reviews carried out by other major oil companies. I have interpreted the reports and made some conclusions with caveats where necessary. As such, these are only opinions and no inference of blame can be inferred as a result of these statements.
More detail will emerge when further investigations take place, especially with regard to the last few hours leading up to the explosion. However, I am confident the fundamentals are identified in this article and, most importantly, the crucial lessons learned so none of us repeat the same mistakes.
Much is being made of the water depth as a factor in this disaster. However, many of the mistakes made would have been equally serious in shallow-water drilling or even on land, and lessons learned apply to almost all drilling operations.
(Excerpt) Read more at theoildrum.com ...
Don’t worry. Even BP isn’t sure where all the leaks are, or exactly what caused the Rig to explode, or the BOP to not operate.
There is more going on here than environmentalists disliking Big Oil. I don’t think that there is any shortage of environmentalists who claim that the auto industry is evil. Other factors are in play.
The big difference here is that the finance and auto companies were *American* corporations. BP is a British one.
American taxpayers are not going to bail out a foreign corporation that is in financial trouble because it’s ruined its P & L statement due to its own chicanery.
No but one time both my boys puked within 5 seconds of each other. I thought I was in the center of the perfect storm.
BTW, my understanding of how to write them to jerk people around arose out of my concern that nothing like that should ever happen to rules I was writing. It's amazing how many people reviewing a regulation for purposes of required approval will recommend a disastrous but otherwise minor seeming change.
That's what I'm seeing here with EPA. The "no dumping" rule has popped up repeatedly in every effort made to contain the blowout or mitigate the flow of oil into the Gulf biological systems.
I don't think it's an accident. BTW, I don't have to hate EPA to come to that conclusion either. It's long overdue for EPA to INVESTIGATE the folks who write and approve their rules and track the subtle changes in interpretation that have given this result.
Hey, you even had EPA cited as the authority that decided that building temporary barriers between barrier islands to keep out the oil from further out in the Gulf might damage the environment ~ LIKE WORSE THAN BEING COVERED IN OIL?
There are dozens and dozens of these pronunciamentos allegedly issued like fatwahs by EPA mullahs that sound NUTS.
I’m a GoGo - Good Government. It’s an absolute necessity. Captured regulatory agenciess, rules written in ways that damage instead of helping, bloated bureaucracies, people that don’t do their jobs ...they all are the burr under my saddle.
We need government, in my opinion. But we can’t afford it if it doesn’t do its job and protect the public.
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