[ale] [OT] cartoon on BP spill blame

[Greg Freemyer]

On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 11:50 AM, Lightner, Jeff <jlightner at water.com> wrote:
<snip>
> Now if you want to say that folks who drive off from gas pumps with the
> pump head still in there care are a problem then that's clearly a
> consumer issue.   Oddly enough that did generate safety features so that
> the pump doesn't get yanked along with the car and in fact shuts off the
> flow of gas so the part of the hose remaining after the detachment
> doesn't spew gas.   Imagine if they'd put this kind of safety thinking
> into play for the BP rig (or even if they'd adhered to their own
> procedures).

That's effectively what the BOP is. The issue as I've read is that BOP
started a process of failing that lasted days, but the crew ignored
the issues and proceeded on.

The final straw was when they evacuated all the heavy drilling mud so
they could let oil out to the surface.  The BOP was already
compromised and finally failed catastrophically at the end of that
process.

There seem to have been lots of indications of impending disaster in
the final hours that the drilling crew just blew past. They apparently
had ample opportunities to shutdown the process and re-evaluate.
Worst case they would have had to drill a new hole.  (I think that's a
$50M to $100M statement, but none the less they should have aborted
the operation and got experts in to decide how to proceed.)

Greg