Wired | BP“s ˜Nightmare“ Well: Internal Documents Uncover Negligence
In addition to BP“s decision not to use a liner, the committee“s letter describes four other examples of risky negligence.
Five big corners were cut. But, “accidents happen,” right?
They weren’t kidding about the MC252 well being a nightmare. The ship that was collecting oil via the LMRP caught fire, presumably due to lightning. Collection operations have been suspended until they get this latest development sorted out. What next? I’m trying very hard not to let the word “snake-bitten” enter my vernacular.
Incidentally, lightning also struck and burned down Touchdown Jesus south of here.
I don’t know what all of this means.
Ummm…2012 is coming early?
What it means is that the type of contingency planning that the military uses to anticipate problems needs to become standard in other areas. It costs to do fault tree analysis and establish contingency plans, but the cost of NOT planning is getting too high. I worry that governments are reactive in nature and will never get ahead of the situation. Government CAN require industry to have plans in place before they proceed with potentially risky activity.
Planning will not eliminate accidents but planning will mitigate the effects.
I agree 100%, Blair. As we saw in the cases of 9/11 and Katrina/Flood, disasters have two aspects: the incident itself and recovery. Our government and corporations place so much emphasis on Safety, and in such a useless, bureaucratic manner, that when something untoward happens, they don’t know how to react and quickly recover. In the case of BP, they dropped the ball even on the Safety/Prevention side (FIVE counts of negligence), and didn’t plan for the outcome of such an oversight. As you say, no amount of planning can prevent a disaster, but the current “recovery,” thanks to not planning for it, is only prolonging the disaster.
So, who wants to tell the government to require BP to start drilling two more relief wells now? Analysis shows that a high probability of success (a term with which the oil industry is extremely familiar) is achieved only with more than 2 relief wells.
So, who wants to tell the government to require BP to start drilling two more relief wells now? Analysis shows that a high probability of success (a term with which the oil industry is extremely familiar) is achieved only with more than 2 relief wells.
*raises hand*
*waves it frantically in the air*