Watched the testimony, Williams said this Operations Computer was running NT and they were in the process of updating the entire system, but were having program compatibility issues, which were being worked on.
The part of his testimony was when he explained the “double handfull of rubber”. This rubber was from the BOP and he said it was caught in the drilling fluid after an accidental raising the string while to BOP was closed some 15 feet. He was not sure if the computer raised the string or did some operator “bumping the stick”. It would sure seem that once the BOP was stipped of the annual orings, it could not work propererly in an emergency.
One incident shortly before the blowout was when the BP head guy told the rig supervisor to “kick it up” meaning drill faster which resulted in loss of circulation and probably ultimately the blowout.
It also sure seemed that a lot of “Southern Engineering” was going on regarding alarms, BOP and drilling in general.
If you can get a chance to catch a re-run of this on CSpan it was very enlightening.
Is that by any chance an infelicitous euphemism for "n****** engineering"?
As if that sort of jury-rigging was the norm in the South, and nobody had ever heard of, say, NASA, whose engineering is sometimes called "rocket science"?