That is a politician's speaking and should be taken as such. Still...

There are three main parties here: BP is not alone. It's not clear to me precisely who is responsible for what part. Also, most of these changes and deviations were both inspected and approved by the federal government.

From an engineer's perspective this isn't a problem at all:

Quote:
Procedures for the use of BSR’s must therefore ensure that there is no tool joint opposite the ram prior to shearing


You just put in two rams spaced so that one is guaranteed to have good cutting pipe. The question is if they did so.

What interests me most, and has at least a token "Preparedness" angle to appease the Sheriff, is this:

Quote:
What this means that while some functions on the BOP may have been tested in the weeks before the explosion, the emergency systems, including the deadman system and the leaking emergency hydraulic system, were unlikely to have been tested.


How good is this testing? Is the preventer designed to rely only on testable devices or on one-use-only mechanisms? If all of the testing is performed correctly and thoroughly with no errors, are there still known ways the device might fail? Is the gear testing merely cursory (is there a flashlight in my kit?) or functional (does the flashlight actually work?) Design-for-testability is not easy but it's not far from the design-for-repairability most engineers already know to do.

It doesn't do any good to have a complicated mechanism in your kit if you can't be sure it will work when needed.