[QUOTE=MichaelWSmith;34352]Yes, that’s the popular belief – that companies routinely cut all sorts of corners on safety to improve profits, consequences be damned.
Trouble is, it makes no sense at all. You don’t maximize profits by increasing the risks of catastrophic, disastrous failures. If that were the path to profits, then catastrophic, disastrous failures like this one would be commonplace. But they aren’t – they are quite rare. Out of some 5000 deepwater oil wells put into production so far, we have this one catastrophic failure. 1 in 5000 is not evidence of widespread “corner cutting” of safety rules.
Any possible savings from “corner cutting” pale into complete insignificance in comparison to the costs of this disaster. BP has already spent a billion dollars on this problem – and they will doubtless spend more billions on it. The notion that they deliberately decided to risk this catastrophe just to save some money on safety is utterly ridiculous.[/QUOTE]
I strongly urge others to take note of this sensible arguement. BP is not operating in a less safe way than other companies. Corner cutting? They were paying $500,000 per day to a state of the art drilling rig. Their intentions were to use the best in the industry to successfully drill complex deepwater wells.
mistakes were made, and this will become apparent in time. One thing I can offer is this: My responsibilities as a Driller, Tourpusher or Toolpusher are quite clear. I am responsible for identifying well problems by applying my knowledge and training, and to then act on this training and make decisive decisions. And I don’t care which Operator thinks it’s a good idea or bad. Personally, I feel that Operators would prefer to have confident Drillers rather than the harrassed nervous wrecks that sometimes fill these positions. If you want genuine confidence from Drillers you have to be there for them, train them up and encourage them to make decisions based on good understanding of what’s going on in the well.
This will involve much theoretical study, including maths and Physics, in order to really understand the ‘science’ involved in the oil industry.
Senior personnel have to be changed out. We need educated Drillers and Toolpushers to run the rigs. And we need to replace the Company Men.