Thanks for the good sources of information. Reading through things it looks to me like this will end up reading like a typical aviation accident report, lots of indicators and opportunities to prevent the accident upstream of the final critical bit of bad luck/decision making. If I followed everything, they were actually done drilling and getting things ready to move on so in theory they were actually past the most dangerous part. Capping things off sounds risky but less dangerous than the actual drilling.

Hopefully those in the industry will look for effective ways to brake the chain of events that lead to the accident in a couple of places. Usually you would try to break the chain as early as possible. Adding backups to backups and more last ditch fail safes usually just adds complication and cost with little real benefit.

Based on the experiences in my industry, I would be willing to bet that the press (and lawmakers) will find a couple of big newsworthy things to focus on and demand "fixes" for those things, regardless of cost/benefit or any real effectiveness.

That last bit is more cynical sounding and broad brushed than I meant it to be but I will let it stand.

- Eric

I have comforted myself a bit by falling back into my natural cynicism and fatalism. My ability to "embrace the horror" is wide and deep but it isn't limitless. The apparent overall level of technical incompetence and carelessness is still maddening. Brain dead levels of stupidity, protected by arrogance, is nothing new, it has been with us seemingly since we climbed out of the trees. But at least back then the ones who got careless just got themselves and their family lunched.

The stakes are higher now. Not just the lives of oil workers and corporations. We are talking about the lives and well being of the populations of thousands of miles of coast. That and a good chunk of the US ecology and economy.

In that light the pursuit of quarterly profits and stock prices seems trivial. Which makes the numerous errors and carelessness unforgivable. This is made all the worse because corporations, and the people who run them, have no shame. The lack of empathy and shame are the defining characteristics of a sociopath.

I could go into detail what it might mean that the largest corporations and the people who run them are sociopaths but I'll leave it for your imagination.

I posted it on another thread but there are some interesting, and frequently updated maps of the situation at:

http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/go/doctype/2931/53979/

Indeed - change a few words and it's going to look like an NTSB report.

There were two or three tests in the morning indicating a leak and (maybe) one late in the day saying no leak. Then they went ahead anyway. Why?

Maybe they were extraordinarily dumb - but maybe just "ordinarily dumb". Perhaps that's standard practice to test until you get the answer you want.

Or is that test so unreliable that experience has taught them that when other (unmentioned in the reports) tests in the days before are good that false positives are that common? Are false negatives rare compared to false positives?

Oilfield workers are not renowned for broad strategic thinking. Who made the decision to go ahead? Was there proper supervision? Was there a designated "safety officer" and firm criteria for referring decisions back to shore?

Finally it's important not to hang BP until we're sure this isn't business-as-usual across the entire industry. Nothing in the reports I've seen so far suggests their procedures were out of the ordinary.

Looking at the Lodgepole and Ixtoc 1 incidents, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill looks to have the potential to even surpass the worlds worst oil spill in the Persian Gulf during the first Gulf war in 1991. I don't think they will be able to cap the well before the start of the Hurricane Season. Estimates are that the well is spewing around $5 Million per day (a little dent in the $75 million a day profit) or about one third of one percent of US daily consumption. Basically the oil spill is peanuts in terms of actual cost liabilities for BP or any other of the big four Cartel, which control the worlds oil supply. Look at what the company is doing in the Canadian oil sands in north-eastern Alberta. Its not even on the RADAR in terms of public opinion. Cheap petrol is what they are concerned about.

^^^ There isn't nearly that much oil under the well. Supposedly it's got "tens of millions of barrels". If that's correct, it won't even be the biggest spill in the gulf even if it all leaks out.

Weather will not help the siphoning scheme at all but I _think_ that most years the weather doesn't get bad for another couple of months.

I don't understand...

"No global corporate business structure today with stock holders is immune..."

The second excuse trotted out (the first: "It wasn't our fault") after some costly stupidity is that the stockholders wouldn't put up with the cost of doing something correctly and safely. Is erroneously 'betting' on cheap parts and poor design cheaper than paying for the cleanup?

If the 'fear' of the stockholders really is behind all these decisions, let's let the stockholders pay the resulting bills.

"The prospect of an extended leak has intensified concerns over what compensation BP is willing to pay, since a law passed after the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill requires companies to pay for cleanup costs but no more than $75 million for other damage." From an article from the Washington Post

This is cute. Who is responsible?

What about the eleven dead people? What about the prospective loss of $660 million from the damaged seafood industry (per year)? What about the loss of $757 million from the recreational fishing (per year)? What about the loss of $517 million from the wildlife tourism industry (per year)? What about all the lives and jobs affected for the next several years?

How far will the oil spread, in the end? What happens if it gets into the Atlantic?

The bottom line is this: As long as We the People allow thinking and laws like this to continue, the problems will be continuing. If we just keep shaking our heads and saying to each other, "Isn't this awful", nothing is going to change.

Sue

Corporation, n., An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.
Ambrose Bierce 1842-1914, American columnist and writer of horror stories, The Devil's Dictionary 1906

The overview:
http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2010/05/only_the_ducks_are_dead.php

In a snapshot of what I fear we can expect Transocean, the operator of the Deepwater Horizon drill rig has filed suit to limit their liability to about $27 million:



The rig was, before the fire and sinking, worth about $650 million. But due to wear and tear its price has been marked down to about $27 million. Which, under this law, may be all they are on the hook for.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704635204575241852606380696.html?mod=wsj_india_main

On the happy side, at least for Tranocean, they have been paid by their insurance company the $401 million for the inconvenience of loosing of the rig.
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=10567273

A slightly less charitable take on the situation:
http://www.cityam.com/news-and-analysis/...urance-payments

Nice to know that it doesn't take much effort to see how Transocean made a very nice profit off the blowout. If I was a cynical sort I might use the potential for a windfall profit from insurance as a logical reason why safety and best practices were not topmost in their mind. If you squint your eyes just right you might just make out how there might have been no down side for them. Good thing I'm not a cynical sort.

Congress is responsible.

Clearly, in the context of that time, the concern in Congress was that nobody would ever drill again. You can't buy insurance for an unlimited loss and you can't get investors without some way of limiting risk. And in a capitalist society, no investors means it doesn't get done.

After Valdez the "cleanup" costs looked horrific but the compensation limited to the lost income of a few fisherman - much lower. To Congress at that time it probably made sense to leave oil companies with what seemed to be the big problem and limit the lawsuit lottery risk (and fraud) that comes with lost income claims. However it appears that Congress, uh, didn't do a good job on the lost income side of things.

The purpose of a corporation is to make expensive projects possible.

A corporation places an upper limit on an investor's loss. You'd never get a nickel of investment or funding from anyone for anything if every transaction had a risk of wiping out the investor. And as I said, in a capitalist society, no funding means it ain't gonna happen.

Without corporations the economy would look like medieval Europe, where a project didn't happen unless some wealthy individual sponsored it (which also means there would be no class mobility).


If the insurance payout was $401M then that establishes the value of the platform at the time of loss. The $27M estimate became meaningless the instant the insurance company put a value on the rig. Indeed I'd think tax authorities and the SEC might be interested in asking why an asset worth $401M was booked at only $27M.

With all due respect I think you missed it. Insurance was paid on some proportion of the value immediately before the explosion and fire, $401M. Whereas the Limitation of Liability Act of 1851 limits liability to the value after the explosion and fire, $27M.

Help keeping up with the nightmare in the gulf. A fine collection of links, articles and collected information:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6463