Blisters,
The difference between your and my points of view comes down to one this: Every single item of the drilling programme on every well drilled has to be assessed by the Contractor’s leading personnel. Why? Because we are the ones carrying out the work, not the Operator. There’s no point in trying to blame the Operator at a later date for something the Contractor performed. If we perform tests we better understand them and how to determine a pass versus fail. The Contractor polices the Operator by seeing if the plan of action is correct. We don’t do anything on our vessel which we don’t understand. We are often the barrier to failure in the well.
BP, offered the Horizon a very challenging well. Various failures and mistakes occurred in the planning and execution phase of the well. But, none of these failures threatened flow from the well or the vessel/personnel. The mistakes which threatened the vessel and personnel involved both BP and TO personnel on the vessel. They failed an elementary test. Then they ignored well volumes. If we over-engineer the failure to be more than it was by seekiing alternative reasons we risk missing the point.