Deepwater Horizon - Transocean Oil Rig Fire

You say “numerous overspeed trips didnt work”???

Overspeed trips in general really dont need maintenance, they get tested. How in the hell would numerous trips all fail at once? I would buy into the idea that the mains overspeeds pushed their racks to zero but their intakes were pulling in the natural gas from the well.

Edit- I mean the governors tried to hit zero… overspeeds stop all the fuel, but the gas is feeding through the intake.

[QUOTE=tengineer;37014]As an engineer who on occasion travels to rigs I’ve noticed and made my concerns known regarding some companies cutting back on personnel, especially on the engineering side. Transocean in particular doesn’t like to pay for licensed engineers, they prefer to have rig mechanics take care of all engineering tasks and preventive maintenance. If the flag state would allow it they wouldn’t have any licensed engineers on their rigs or drillships. It’s a money saving measure as a rig mechanic makes roughly what a second engineer would make and that eliminates the need for a first. Also, the rig mechanic in addition to his engine room responsibilities is required to repair and maintain drilling related equipment, he’s a very busy guy. Almost all the rig mechanics I’ve met are sharp individuals and well trained, they are just spread too thin. Transocean was complicit in the loss of the Horizon and the resulting disaster. I’m surprised only BP is getting all the press. I was called two hours after the rig caught fire and my first reaction was, “What happened to the BOP?” As it turns out there was a lot of maintenance not being done as the overspeed trips didn’t work among many other things.
The testimony of the mechanic at this link was not surprising to me but is indicative of the philosophy of TO and most drilling companies.
http://www.judiciary.house.gov/hearings/pdf/Brown100527.pdf[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=stratege;36996]In the long term Tony is toast. He will always be associated with DWH and BP’s apparent failure to establish a culture of safety before profit. That is after all his mantra and let’s face it despite all good intentions he has failed miserably. Orchestrated? Yes no doubt about that, although I would have given him another week or so.[/QUOTE]

This has been mentioned in the media for a little while too… You don’t get rid of your CEO in the middle of a crisis like this. If you do, your replacement inherits all of the issues of the old CEO. Wait until this disaster has run its course and then replace Tony. That way the new CEO gets off to a hopefully good start.

[QUOTE=Snowman03782;37013]Holy wow, got some time on your hands??? Nice play though- Bring some old school A-team into the story and I think you could write a movie.[/QUOTE]

Mixed with some Denzel Washington Training Day style…

Anadarko seeks divorce with BP over Macondo well.

Very nice positioning for the inevitable lawsuits, but hard to say if its going to work or not. Anadarko simply doesn’t have the money to stay in the game while BP is settling damage claims at the level being discussed.

[QUOTE=company man 1;36927]Can you do me a favor? On your way down, you can see the road to fourchon on your right. If you turn at that store & go straight down that road about two miles you will come to a bridge. When you go over the bridge the gulf is right there. That is Fourchon beach. Could you check it out for me. It is about 20-25 miles west of Grand Isle & I am wonderin how the water looks out there. There are always dolphins playing out by the jetties there & that is some of the best fishing, crabbing, & shrimping inthe world right out of those jetties. Could you check that out if you get time. It’s not far out of the way. You will notice the interactivity between the oilfield & the wild life there if all is well. At this timne of year you would see an armada of shrimp boats trawling right now. Traveling by Fourchon, you will understand why deepwater drilling is so improtant to Louisiana.
BTW, it might just be my imagination, but it appears as though the top of the stack & the containment cap are leaning pretty badly.[/QUOTE]

I stopped by Fourchon Beach this morning and Harbor Police had a pickup blocking the road going to the beach! So I couldn’t go there. There was definitely an oil smell there around 11:00. And I’m guessing that it wasn’t coming from Port Fourchon. When I went back there this evening, the smell had disappeared.

I drove quite a bit around the Port. This afternoon, I saw the Geodetic Surveyor headed out. (PDF info: http://www.fugro.com/showfile.aspx?type=vessels&id=GeodeticSurveyor2009&mode=download). It and the C-Commander were heading out at the same time but that may have been coincidence. I was very surprised as to the amount of oil and gas industry and people there.

The beaches at Grand Isle State Park were closed but they were letting people walk out on the pier and up the observation tower. I walked out to the end of the pier and could see probably half a dozen dolphins surfacing while feeding (I think). There were also quite a few boats out appearing to either be skimming or assisting in the cleanup operations somehow.

[QUOTE=alvis;37024]Anadarko seeks divorce with BP over Macondo well.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37782377/ns/disaster_in_the_gulf/[/QUOTE]
Good for them. You have done the right thing. I have had the pleasure of working for them on several wells & can say they are good folks.

Listen up:

If there is anybody here who runs any kind of school, training, certification for well control, safety, technology, you best be burning the midnight oil to freshen up your courses and sell your seats.

If there is anybody here responsible for hands that are out of work by the no-drilling decree, then you best hop to it and find some schools to send those furloughed hands to. BP is gonna pay their wages for six months, and the last thing in the world you want is for them to lay around and get fat and lazy.

Everybody has a six month period to reset.

Furthermore, if there are any lawyers or lobbyists listening, then there needs to be some new legislation written to protect those exercise Stop Work Authority against reprisal.

Anybody who doesn’t finally get it that “Safety First” is the only sustainable and profitable way to operate needs go away. One “Oh Shit” wipes out Twenty Billion attaboys.

[QUOTE=alvis;37024]Anadarko seeks divorce with BP over Macondo well.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37782377/ns/disaster_in_the_gulf/[/QUOTE]

I’ve worked with BP back in '86. They were tops back then…like I mean way above the rest of the pack in terms of quality before quantity. The companymen BP used back then mostly rose from roustabout level over a period of 15 to 20 years before taking on such responsibilities. They constantly made sure every one knew what was expected of them. I’ve also worked with Anardarko not that long ago and they were a well run , well focused compact outfit and will work with them anytime if I get the opportunity in future. Sad to learn about the downgrading to junk stock but I think they will bounce back because they have been courageous enough to stand up and be counted. I do however wonder what say they had over approval of the Macondo 252 well plan ? Mom was right…never keep with bad company. Bad show Tony old chap, sorry you got run off and all the best to the guy who has to clean up your mess.

[QUOTE=bigmoose;36770]Thanks Alf and CM, got your erosion point. It would definately be high speed flow through the blown burst disk.

Another thought that I guess depends upon the ductility of the base steel in the casing/coupling where these burst disks were installed. The stress concentration caused by the hole in the high hoop stressed casing/coupling member could make a perfect fracture initiation site, small hole with sharp threads… would need to know the fracture toughness of the specified steel.[/QUOTE]

You need to move away from the idea of a “hole” (which would have been the initial case) and now visualise it more as a split or tear. The 16" was set in tension ie under tensile load. The continued flowrates thru’ that split, no doubt combined with stress concentrations as you say, will by now have caused that 16" to fail ie a break/failure all around it’s circumference in the area of either 1 or 3 rupture disks.

This is only one likely scenario… no one knows for sure, but it’s also possible the 16" may have been damaged elsewhere from the huge flow thru’ it and even from the bending of the Wellhead… the BOP is leaning/tilting.

The rupture disks could even have been damaged when they were installed when the 16" was first run? (as someone else has recently posted)

CM1 has already pointed out that if there is a flowpath thru’ the 16" steel casing, then outside of that is a direct flowpath to formation and then to seabed.

During Hafle’s testimony, the lawyer for TO (Kohnke) had a document +/-200pages which I believe was the well programme for this Macondo well. I don’t know if the USCG accepted the document later as evidence??
If so, then that would provide a lot of answers re the design of the well, and in particular it should also contain the full casing design.

[QUOTE=OldHondoHand;37028]Listen up:
Furthermore, if there are any lawyers or lobbyists listening, then there needs to be some new legislation written to protect those exercise Stop Work Authority against reprisal.
[/QUOTE]

ABSOLUTELY ! and penalties must be made severe enough to deter reprisal of such people with legal aid provided on a state sponsored probono basis.

[QUOTE=Jones the Fish;36987]Thanks [B]stratege[/B], a voice of reason along with Alcor.

There has been far too much BS on here recently, to the point I finally registered rather than continuing to lurk in happy anonymity.

BP was #4 on the Global 500 in 2009. I suspect that Tony Hayward made a PR mistake in being too visible in the Gulf, albeit for the right motives. As a result, he presented a target as being ‘informed about the disaster’, when in fact he was running a company with 92,000 employees and there is no way in heck that he had clue one about the DWH before things went bang aside from being told about the discovery. The company he runs is BP Plc BTW, not the American Exploration and Production group.

Anyone who thinks otherwise is a troll at best, or is simply not paying attention. Also BTW, I think yesterdays hearings, complete with the lack of due process and shrill grandstanding were a complete disgrace and embarrassment. Read the Cullen Report on Piper Alpha for how to do this properly and actually come out of it with something to help both people in the industry and the American public at large!!!

[B]stratege[/B], I can’t believe you mentioned Bhopal. Good for you. Compare Tony Hayward to the CEO of Union Carbide…

Do we have a clear idea that Tony is toast, or is this the planned execution of the announcement a week or so ago that the front line presence would devolve to the American operations group? I have a feeling that the latter is true, but don’t trust the media reporting. I suspect that BP has this orchestrated pretty well behind the scenes. Take the hit now, get over it and move forward…

Also consider that Carl-Henric Svanberg has Swedish as his first language. Yes, using ‘little people’ was bad news, but I guarantee I have made far worse gaffes in Farsi, Arabic and Pashtun, not to mention any one of a half-dozen European languages. I also don’t speak ‘good old boy’ as well as I used to…

Regardless, Tony is going to fall on his sword over this mess eventually, just a matter of the right timing. Personally, I think BP is now doing a reasonable job considering the enormity of the circumstances. No one has ever had to do this before on this scale, and they are improvising as they go. Hopefully its going to get a lot better fast. That is no excuse, but it does recognize reality.

By the way, CM1, before you get going about me working for BP, I lost a lot of close friends on Piper Alpha and have been through this kind of mess up close and personal and have the deepest sympathy for ALL those involved in this disaster. If you want to compare pedigrees, you may be very surprised!!

I come from the days when a Drilling Supervisor was the boss, not a ‘Well Site Team Leader’. We knew who the Drilling Supervisor was, and onshore we knew who the Drilling Superintendent was.

Perhaps being the sole operator representative on board, and dead on your feet after 72 hours fighting the well wasn’t such a bad deal after all, at least we all knew who was running the shop…

I also come from the days when the OIM (a TO position in this case) had the ultimate safety of the platform on his plate. No ifs, no buts, no maybes. In a SOLAS situation, the operator was invited to sit the hell down and shut the hell up. This disaster seems to be surrounded by ‘maybes’ as to who was in charge.[/QUOTE]
I knew where this post was going when I saw the two people you congratulated at the beginning as voices of reasoning. They certainly are voices of reason. They have reasoned that one company which has had single handedly 97% of all saftey violations for all refineries in the United States is no more guilty than any other business operating in the United States & we’re all of a sudden English haters who are picking on them because they are victims of bad luck or bad enforcement. They reason how its everyone’s fault that an outlaw organiztion killed elevn people, made 6 more jump 80’ into the water in the middle of the night, & caused the greatest environmental disaster in US history. They reason that the House of Represntatives of the United States is nothing more than a dog and pony show for the small people of the United States. They reason that somehow there will actually be less damage done to BP by continuing to deny, deny, deny than coming clean & striving to regain the trust of someone in this country. They reason that the other industry leaders have insufficiently accused BP of not folleoing industry guidelines. I am sure tomorrow they will reason why one of their own partners has abandoned BP due to their systematic lack of respect for industry guidelines & gross negligence leading up to & since this occurance. Continue to reason because you will be busy for a while reasoning the unreasonable.
As far as your pedigree goes, if you can justify in any way the irresponsible actions of BP before or since this disaster started then you seriously need to get out of the game. The only shameless thing about the house hearings yesterday was the disrespect shown by the CEO of BP in denying the total disregard for safety by his company. Here’s a little lesson in responsibility for guys like you. The first step in being responsible is when even the local librarian knows you were grossly negligent & you don’t confess to it then you don’t know what responsibility is & are proving no one should ever trust you again. If that doesn’t resonate with you then I pitty you & would say I’m glad if I never worked with you either. The problem with this business is there are too many of you still left in it.

@CM_1
In a 2 dimensional world you will only find 2 colors namely black and white. Accordingly it’s easy to find the guilty if somebody made a catastrophic mistake, they either are guilty or innocent. Unfortunately in the real world it doesn’t work that way and that’s my point in case.

My original posting opened with quote 'Lets summarize [B]beyond[/B] the technical details’
It’s the whole framework of operational and regulatory decisions that’s needs to be analyzed before coming to final conclusions. Once again BP is responsible, no question about that, but who else is partly to blame too? And what happened that this accident could evolve the way it did?
Reducing this matter to BP only and asking it’s CEO questions like ‘could you provide us with the names of the responsible individuals’ sounds to me like a lynch mob out looking for the highest tree available. We reduce this to a 2 dimensional black and white scenario and afterwards everything will be fine. Right? > Wrong!
If anything good should come out of this accident and it’s subsequent dealings then we should broaden our horizon and start formulating questions like who else was in charge and why didn’t the top down ‘safety before cost’ approach that BP apparently started didn’t kick in the way it was supposed to do.
Yes BP’s got a bad rep, and yes they messed this thing up major big time. But that’s nothing new in a world that is driven by vested interests and shareholder value. Do you honestly think that you can just change the system by finding the perpetrators?
Reason dictates that we should look beyond technical details. Frankly I don’t care what false decisions were made with respect to operating this drilling procedure. That’s after all for the engineers to decide and I am sure that every qualified expert will come to his own conclusion. What makes me shiver is the way in which other competitors in the oil field blatantly state ‘we wouldn’t have done it that way, that’s highly risky’ The immediate question that first pops up in my mind is 'O do you. How’s that?'
What makes the chain of command in the rest of the oil industry apparently that different from BP’s? They all work with the same subcontractors, operate in the same surroundings, and are overlooked by the same governing bodies. Yet until this accident occurred nobody has stepped in and said ‘Look BP that’s not how it’s done on our turf, the ball stops right here’ Why?
Take Transocean for instance. Greenhorn formulated it expertly in post 3085, quote:
'The DWH and its crewmembers were the sole responsibilty of the USCG licensed OIM on board at the time. He could and should have saved the DWH and [B]his[/B] crew by just saying NO WAY IN HELL I’M DOING THAT! '
That’s not letting BP getting of the hook, it’s just sensible thinking.

The same sensible thinking also dictates that is it time to rethink the standard practice of subcontractors flagging out their drill rigs in other countries. If a rig and it’s crew are mission critical with respect to safety then they should all adhere to the same high standards, which is at present certainly not the case. It is all to easy to circumvent US regulation by registering your ships elsewhere and thus reduce overall cost be it tax wise or staff wise.
So yes, I am trying to get a better understanding off the way this business works by re- framing the whole concept. If you still think that that is a way of letting BP of the hook then that is something for you to decide.

[QUOTE=company man 1;37033]I knew where this post was going when I saw the two people you congratulated at the beginning as voices of reasoning. They certainly are voices of reason. They have reasoned that one company which has had single handedly 97% of all saftey violations for all refineries in the United States is no more guilty than any other business operating in the United States & we’re all of a sudden English haters who are picking on them because they are victims of bad luck or bad enforcement. They reason how its everyone’s fault that an outlaw organiztion killed elevn people, made 6 more jump 80’ into the water in the middle of the night, & caused the greatest environmental disaster in US history. They reason that the House of Represntatives of the United States is nothing more than a dog and pony show for the small people of the United States. They reason that somehow there will actually be less damage done to BP by continuing to deny, deny, deny than coming clean & striving to regain the trust of someone in this country. They reason that the other industry leaders have insufficiently accused BP of not folleoing industry guidelines. I am sure tomorrow they will reason why one of their own partners has abandoned BP due to their systematic lack of respect for industry guidelines & gross negligence leading up to & since this occurance. Continue to reason because you will be busy for a while reasoning the unreasonable.
As far as your pedigree goes, if you can justify in any way the irresponsible actions of BP before or since this disaster started then you seriously need to get out of the game. The only shameless thing about the house hearings yesterday was the disrespect shown by the CEO of BP in denying the total disregard for safety by his company. Here’s a little lesson in responsibility for guys like you. The first step in being responsible is when even the local librarian knows you were grossly negligent & you don’t confess to it then you don’t know what responsibility is & are proving no one should ever trust you again. If that doesn’t resonate with you then I pitty you & would say I’m glad if I never worked with you either. The problem with this business is there are too many of you still left in it.[/QUOTE]

I’d like to congratulate stratege and jones the fish for their illumination and considered thoughts. Both, have indicated quite clearly that BP have serious issues to answer within the full context of the investigation. Within that investigation, BP will be held responsible for its share of failings.

The role of TO in this failure has not been explored sufficiently due to our consideration for those who have lost loved ones. Considering, drilling contractors are our last line of defence in all wells we better have these defences in place, and we better be prepared to understand when to use them. In this case, TO failed to identify pressure and volume inconsistencies. I[B]f, they had recognised these issues all personnel would be alive today, and the DWH would be sitting on the surface of the the sea and not on the seabed. No-one can deny these are facts.[/B]

TO, will be held responsible for losing control of this well, I believe. This may not be the eventual truth!
But, the investigation continues, until we have all the details, and our speculation as to what we all feel are the failings of BP, TO and the MMS are fully analysed by better experts than us. Those experts do not exist on the Hearings committee who after 6 hours of inquisition showed themselves to be inadequately understanding of the industry. Their sole purpose was to get Hayward! And their behaviour wasn’t pretty to watch. He had no choice concerning BP’s failings but to say that the internal investigation continues.

We need the Whole picture. It will be available after internal investigations are concluded. No point in BP accepting all the blame when others have responsibilities too.

I wonder what the Senate Committee will be saying to the TO CEO. Is there a date for his attendance at the hearings?

[QUOTE=Corky;37016]Come on Alcor, You keep reassuring us that you do NOT work for BP. . . . . yet you expect us to believe you have keen insights into the way the organization’s management structure works. You say you work only in the North sea yet you expect us you believe you have keen insights into the way day to day operations and MMS oversight are carried out in the GoM. At one point in this thread you were a management-type according to your own post, then you were a company may by your own claims, now “I am Drill crew”. And you want to call out CM1 for asking a specific question regarding burst discs used in casing when he has repeatedly told us all that he is not a drilling guy. At least he has stuck to the same story & has been on the same side of the fence since this all began which we all know is certainly not a claim we can make about you.

Get a grip my friend, with each additional post you make it painfully clear that you are one of those gifted individuals whose self-professed expertise on most subjects is inversely proportional to his actual knowledge.[/QUOTE]

My position is constant.
All failings must be identified. All associated with those failings will be identified.
One thing I know to be true: The drilling contractor has ultimate responsibility for immediately identifying when the well is being compromised. This includes design. Just because BP say that it’s ok to change the use of the well from exploration to production, it doesn’t mean we have to believe it. If, TO contacted MMS with their concerns, and MMS still sanctioned it then we have real problems to deal with.

Regardless of these facts, TO were responsible to shut in the well at any time. That means from the first casing run to the last one. The loss of well control while displacing is TO’s fault. They did not have volume and pressure control in place, despite the fact that they advised BP to set plugs before displacement. In effect, they completely failed to observe the volumes of the well whilst displacing. Any other drilling contractor that behaves in the same way may end up in the same situation.

This has been the biggest contribution to the eventual demise of the DWH and the enormous spill associated with it. The Casing would not have been thrust up from the WH if volumes were known and the working BOP closed in time.

I work for a drilling contractor and know my responsibilities. Volume and pressure control.
I suggest to you that anyone who thinks the well is secure before officially lifting off the BOP are living in cloud cookoo land.

[QUOTE=company man 1;37033]Here’s a little lesson in responsibility for guys like you. The first step in being responsible is when even the local librarian knows you were grossly negligent & you don’t confess to it then you don’t know what responsibility is & are proving no one should ever trust you again. If that doesn’t resonate with you then I pitty you & would say I’m glad if I never worked with you either. The problem with this business is there are too many of you still left in it.[/QUOTE] Much sound and fury signifying nothing. Again and again. I don’t appreciate the continuous ad hom, you don’t know me and you haven’t earned the right. As a result you sound silly.

I’m sure that buried under your BS are some good ideas. Trying getting those out instead of foaming at the mouth constantly.

Here’s a few thoughts for starters. The pipeline and refining business are not the same as the drilling and production businesses. 92,000 employees, remember? We already know the pipeline and refining business has a horrible safety record, but its less than relevant in this context.

How was BP doing in the exploration business in the Gulf? Let’s talk about written up incidents. What are the MMS violation stats for the DWH? What are the MMS violation stats for BP Exploration in the Gulf generally? How do BP compare to their peers in the Gulf for violations?

We know the DWH got a safety award from MMS in 2009, http://www.beaconmag.com/gomrigteamswinmm.html

We know BP was due to get a safety award for their work on the OCS shortly. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/05/03/interior-dept-postpones-luncheon-honoring-safety-measures-offshore-oil-gas/

How about the same data from the Coast Guard side?

Of course Anadarko was going to throw BP under the bus. Establishing gross negligence is likely the only chance they have of saving their company.

Of course the other majors are going to throw BP under the bus. What else are they going to say? Our stuff is as bad as their stuff? Expect another spill from us next week? Yeah, right.

As far as issues identified to date, there are a number of things I not comfortable with.

The casing design feels weird, but that’s not unusual on an exploration well that’s being converted for production use, but it still feels weird. Would have been better tying the 13 5/8 back to the mud line first for instance to get better intermediate protection.

Expecting a tiny 70 bbl cement job to perform properly after traveling 18,000’ through a tapered string feels overly optimistic. I expect significant contamination and delayed and/or reduced compressive strength as a result.

Don’t like CBLs much, too much experience where the info they provided was crap. Would have been nice to have a temperature survey though to know where the TOC was. That would have provided excellent info on channeling too.

Would like more info on the centralizer decision too. This feels like there is a back-channel conversation somewhere about getting the string stuck so keep the jewelry to a minimum and squeeze later if the cement job goes bad. They had enough hole problems that MUST have been a consideration.

Can’t understand why no lock-down ring in the wellhead. Its not like this was an un-cemented liner tie-back that they might want to retrieve later, so I don’t get it.

That’s just for starters. There is also some human factors stuff about who was where, doing what, when the well started to kick that I haven’t heard explained yet…

Anadarko’s full statement here: http://www.anadarko.com/Investor/Pages/NewsReleases/NewsReleases.aspx?release-id=1439839. They clearly have an axe to grind, and are laying the groundwork, preparing the battlefield to establish “gross negligence/willful misconduct”, which they must to avoid financial responsibility for the clean-up. OTOH, this statement has some real bite to it, in a way that has been excised over successive edits in most corporate releases. I get the feeling that there are [I]a lot[/I] of highly P.O.'d senior executives in the industry; Tuesday started to show that.

WSJ has a long, above-the-fold page 1 article ripping BP for using the long string method on Macondo 1, in preference to liner - tieback. Can’t link to it, it’s behind the Murdoch paywall.

BTW, it remains to be seen if Hayward is losing his job or any real responsibilities or any real $$. See http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a088e02c-7b0e-11df-8935-00144feabdc0.html. It looks more like the Svanberg or the BP board pulled Hayward out of the U.S., sent him back to 1 St. James Square, and is now going to be shoving Bob Dudley (who looks to be in charge of the response already) in front of the camera, with stern instructions to avoid comments about small people, short people or little people. The good news, from: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/19/us/19spill.html?dbk is that Carl-Henric says “…that is why you will now see more of me.”

[QUOTE=company man 1;37033] Here’s a little lesson in responsibility for guys like you. The first step in being responsible is when even the local librarian knows you were grossly negligent & you don’t confess to it then you don’t know what responsibility is & are proving no one should ever trust you again. If that doesn’t resonate with you then I pitty you & would say I’m glad if I never worked with you either. The problem with this business is there are too many of you still left in it.[/QUOTE]

I’m not sure how the local librarian will ever understand the failings without having 10 years experience in the industry. But, she may listen to people like you and enjoy the sensationalist conclusions. Thank God we have courts in place with technical experts at hand to analyse and identify what has gone wrong. When the story is complete, we can vent our spleen.

Regarding the environmental disaster, I can fully understand your anger. We’re all angry. But, anger has no place in a court of law where all events have to be analysed with a fine tooth comb.

[QUOTE=alcor;37039]My position is constant.
All failings must be identified. All associated with those failings will be identified.
One thing I know to be true: The drilling contractor has ultimate responsibility for immediately identifying when the well is being compromised. This includes design. Just because BP say that it’s ok to change the use of the well from exploration to production, it doesn’t mean we have to believe it. If, TO contacted MMS with their concerns, and MMS still sanctioned it then we have real problems to deal with.

Regardless of these facts, TO were responsible to shut in the well at any time. That means from the first casing run to the last one. The loss of well control while displacing is TO’s fault. They did not have volume and pressure control in place, despite the fact that they advised BP to set plugs before displacement. In effect, they completely failed to observe the volumes of the well whilst displacing. Any other drilling contractor that behaves in the same way may end up in the same situation.

This has been the biggest contribution to the eventual demise of the DWH and the enormous spill associated with it. The Casing would not have been thrust up from the WH if volumes were known and the working BOP closed in time.

I work for a drilling contractor and know my responsibilities. Volume and pressure control.
I suggest to you that anyone who thinks the well is secure before officially lifting off the BOP are living in cloud cookoo land.[/QUOTE]

I have to congratulate you. You are nothing if not dogged in deflecting any blame from bp. It was all Halliburton’s fault for letting bp get by with a shitty cement job and allowing bp to skimp on millions of dollars worth of centralizers. Then, it was TO’s fault for not refusing to install multi-billion dollar bp’s shitty well construction completion. Then it was TO’s fault for now closing the BOP in time.* That said, how was closing the BOP going to keep the casing below it from failing? Got any bright answers for that? Oh, yeah, that’s the governments fault for ‘forcing’ bp to top kill which (supposedly) destroyed the well casing. But oh! isn’t the pressure they were pumping to overcome reservoir pressure just about the same as reservoir pressure? Bright answers for that? All MMS’s fault! They were the ones who allowed bp to be criminally negligent in their well design.

If this were a ship, in Alcor’s world, everybody EXCEPT the captain would be responsible, from the deckhands to the Coast Guard.

Why oh why can’t they be kinder to poor Tony Hayward? The big, fat, American cowboy meanies.

  • None of which to say that TO has NO fault. Those are words you are putting in everybody else’s fault because you need a strawman in your argument that nothing was bp’s fault.

Alcor,

re your #3119: Your view of courts may be as unwarrantedly high as my view of, say, drilling engineering had been. Justice and the American court system in its current state of evolution aren’t close companions. Example: is all of the Exxon Valdez litigation disposed of yet?