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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
You will hear old hands carping about the d@mn computers being screwed up again, and it does happen, but usually it is a bad sensor in the system not tracking depth or the sample lagging program getting dumped and a couple of cuttings samples not getting caught as a result. These, while aggravating can be worked around by correcting depth and having someone paying attention to what is going on.

Looking at the wrong data is pretty bad, and the BSOD should never be tolerated in a rig data package.

Still, 'older' hands would likely rely on gauges and pit levels by eyeball rather than believe a computer which tells them something different than their observations, just because they don't trust the computers anyway.

This might have led to the disagreements which were alleged to have occurred between crews and BP management, and I can see where someone might be inclined to blow off readings which indicated adverse conditions in the wellbore as a computer error or miscalibration.

The critical error would be in not verifying that either the computer readouts were in error or that the readings were indeed correct before proceeding, especially when considering the potential for disaster. While the driller's console is an important one, there should be multiple redundencies onsite (or on the rig), not just that one display.

I wonder whose program they were running?

75 posted on 07/24/2010 11:38:15 AM PDT by Smokin' Joe (How often God must weep at humans' folly. Stand fast. God knows what He is doing.)
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To: Smokin' Joe
Thanks for the observations....I don't like Windows for a computer for browsing on the Web because of it's affliction to Malware easily getting aboard.
82 posted on 07/24/2010 11:52:04 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach ( Support Geert Wilders)
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