Open the pod bay doors HAL…
Sorry… off topic spillcam humor
[QUOTE=alvis;34383]But they were already far behind on this well…But the DWH was due to be moved the next day wasn’t it? If they weren’t able to start moving the DWH the next day, wouldn’t they have incurred costs around $1,000,000/day…?[/QUOTE]
If we can verify it alvis, you just identified the “root cause” in the “fishbone analysis” for all the poor judgment/“why did they do this” actions during the 48 hours leading up to the well blow out. Perry Mason would call it “The Smoking Gun.”
[QUOTE=alvis;34383]But they were already far behind on this well. They had to abandon the first well they were drilling in this reservoir and this was the second.
But the DWH was due to be moved the next day wasn’t it? If they weren’t able to start moving the DWH the next day, wouldn’t they have incurred costs around $1,000,000 ($500,000 for the rig and the other half for people)?[/QUOTE]
You are correct about the rig being behind schedule. That’s why these bonuses are not written into contracts. If a crew can make up time on a job the project manager has the ability to give a make up bonus. I have no doubt they wanted to see paperwork saying they were ready to spud off by midnight.
[QUOTE=TroubledByThis;34345]
In my experience over years I estimate 90% of corporate CEO’s were of such a character that they thrilled me when they left my vessel. I vividly remember only one as a truly nice guy. Sometimes people who are criminal minds are smart enough to skirt the letter of the law, pass the buck via plausible deniability. I love the Gulf and I want CEO’s (as I knew them) to learn a lesson from this episiode before it’s over. And if a man somewhere misuses a gun or boat or automobile, we do not outlaw guns, boats and cars … (opinion of an ex-sport fisherman capt)
[U]Profile of the Sociopath[/U]: http://www.mcafee.cc/Bin/sb.html This website summarizes some of the common features of descriptions of the behavior of sociopaths who are sometimes just too clever to end up in prison, but rather can become very “$uccessful” in business or politics today.[/QUOTE]
“… the whole atmosphere of every prison is an atmosphere of glorification of that sort of gambling in “clever strokes” which constitutes the very essence of theft, swindling and all sorts of similar anti-social deeds.” PKropotkin’s Memoirs, ca 1899
[QUOTE=alvis;34354]Let’s go with the opposite extreme then. If you have decisions to make regarding the construction of the well, with one choice being safer (but costing more), or another choice that is riskier (but costs less than the safer one), why wouldn’t you automatically choose the option that is safer?[/QUOTE]
How MUCH safer are you talking about?
You don’t buy new tires for your automobile every month instead of every 2 -3 years, even though that would obviously be the “safer” thing to do. You don’t do it because you are plenty safe with tires 2 years old — even with your very life (and even the life of your loved ones and children) riding on the decision, you don’t necessarily go with the “safest” option.
So I can’t answer your question without more knowledge of the specifics of the situation.
[QUOTE=bobetter;34355]Hmmmm, guess you never heard the story of The Emperor’s New Clothes’[/QUOTE]
Sure I’ve heard it. What does it have to do with the issue at hand?
[QUOTE=OldHondoHand;34359]Then what we have here is a consistently colassal failure of risk management by the people who make the decisions. However, since we usually see the bad decisions being driven by cost-saving measures, hence the greed motivation. It has already been proven that BP opted for “industry-acceptable” methodologies over “best practices.” What’s the difference? Bottom line: Saving costs. Another word for saving cost is profit.[/QUOTE]
Sure, there are trade-offs. But only a madman would try to add to profits by deliberately running any significant amount of risk of this kind of disaster.
If you want to accuse BP of incompetence, that’s one thing. But to accuse them of knowingly choosing to risk a multi-billion dollar loss to save a few bucks on safety measures is a whole different kind of accusation – one that just doesn’t make any kind of sense – and one that would carry a very high burden of proof to become convincing. So far, I haven’t seen any such proof.
[QUOTE=tengineer;34362]True you don’t maximize profits by increasing risks but you do maximize profits by not spending any more money or time than absolutely needed to get a job done. When you get away with taking shortcuts a few times with no adverse consequences you get complacent and wonder why the rule or regulation was put in place in the first place. It’s kinda like easing thru that stop sign on your way home without coming to a complete stop. You do it for years and then one day some fool comes down the street at 100 mph and kills you because you didn’t stop like the sign said. This is why traffic cops give tickets for not coming to a complete stop, to protect people from themselves and other morons. Trouble is the police in the offshore drilling industry have long been considered an inconvenience that could be taken care of with a phone call to the right people. Couple that with pressure from the CEO all the way down to the drilling supervisor to get things done quickly and cheaply PLUS pay a large bonus for doing so and you have a formula for disaster. Not too many people have the courage to risk a high paying job by saying NO, neither do executives want to lower the quarterly stock performance by spending money or having delays, serious bonus money is involved. When thinking short term the average high bonus earning person will often think that IF they can get away with a few shortcuts for a few years they’ll be set and then it’ll be someone else’s problem. We’ve all been in offices, rigs or ships after that sort of person has moved on up the ladder [or out the door].
It was just a matter of time until hubris, greed and corruption came to their inevitable conclusion.[/QUOTE]
Well, that’s one possible scenario. Do you have any evidence that such is, in fact, what happened? And if this is such a recipe for disaster, why is the industry’s overall safety record good?
All you’ve provided is speculation – please give us some facts to back it up.
[QUOTE=Carroll;34363]If I may disagree with this concept, I don’t think BP makes things better or worse than anyone else, is more or less irresponsable than other O.C…
The point is the human attitute to gamble with these resources; deepwater oil drilling is as threatening as nuclear power. What happened with the BP’s DWH is the same thing that happended with Tschernobyl PP! Nuclear plants are “very safe” and don’t explode every day (…); so oil rigs; but if it happens it is an irrimediable catastrophe to the Earth and to anyone/everything that LIVES on it. That’s a gambling and that’s the human being handling with stuff bigger than him (i.e. NATURE) and that he cannot and will never be able to control.[/QUOTE]
Nonsense. Chernobyl was a disaster because the incompetent Russians built a plant without a containment dome. Three Mile Island experienced a total meltdown failure – yet its containment dome limited the damage and no one was harmed. Why, then, do you suggest that disaster is inevitable?
And why do you say this accident is an “irrimediable catastrophe to the Earth”? Ixtoc was not even an “irrimediable catastrophe to the Gulf of Mexico” – and yet you are ready to pronounce this as being the end of the world? Please get a grip.
[QUOTE=MichaelWSmith;34392]Well, that’s one possible scenario. Do you have any evidence that such is, in fact, what happened? And if this is such a recipe for disaster, why is the industry’s overall safety record good?
All you’ve provided is speculation – please give us some facts to back it up.[/QUOTE]
You are kidding, right? Is the fact that the GOM is filling up with crude enough?
[QUOTE=bigmoose;34378]I’m continuing to analyize the BP report. Current point: They decided to pipe the displaced drilling fluid directly to the support boat instead of displacing to the DWH mud pits/tanks. I guess this would save, what 4 or 5 hours pumping the mud off board? To save this time they lost the ability to monitor mud returns by bypassing the mud return flow meters on the DWH. Seems a critical piece of data to loose for 4 or 5 hours of work considering the history of this well.
So my current question that I am pondering, I wonder if there was an “Early Completion” bonus structure for the Company Man and key personnel… perhaps for all personnel? Anyone willing to share their remuneration contract structure? Haven’t heard any poking around the low level financial motivators to “speed up the work.”[/QUOTE]
Stunning if true! Deliberate neglect to monitor for mud volumes…despite established data that indicated marginal well control in a WellOfMassDestruction? Who made that decision…and forwarded it to company-rep Vidrine for implementation? Were all principals tested for drugs post incident? Alcohol consumed aboard rig during "celebration?
[QUOTE=company man 1;34381]No doubt, you make excellent points. And the way you see the cozy relationship going between Coast Guard officials & the top BP dogs & the sorry way these guys are responding to the oil coming ashore & the fact that BP has not kept the Coast Guard in the loop, they could esily end up in the net before it’s over. But there is one central theme pushing this engine. Money. BP put pressure on TO. TO put pressure on their hands. The hands let their sups know they were bypassing things, their sups let the TO rig manager & Co. man know. TO’s office let BP’s office know. BP says put speed ahead of safety. They proceed on. You know that’s how it works. That’s how it worked with the casing order. That’s how it worked with the cement job. That’s how it worked with the premature displacement. That’s how it worked with the testing. That’s how it worked with the decision not to log the cement. That’s how we all got here & that’s how it will continue to work until we stop it.[/QUOTE]
Are you sure they did it thata way? When BP signed the rig contract were they promised a rig in good working condition? If T.O. has to shut down to do rig maintenance does BP pay for that time? I’m thinking T.O. eats the downtime. But look, I see what look like mistakes BP made operationally, but I doubt they knew the engines, the bop, or anything else had unsafe modifications. Yes, it looks like some BP decisions led to the need for the safety features to function, but it was Transocean that was given the rig safety award, not BP, BP thought the rig’s safety features were operational.
Do I know that? No. Why is it my gut feeling? 35 years ago I was rough necking on a triple standard and we had just gotten out with 24,000’ of D.P. in time for shift change when a rotten egg smell started to come at us from a rig a mile away and we could see the cloud, we did a double because the roads were blocked and the relief crew turned around, so we had to get in with as much pipe as possible before we had to evacuate because of poison gas, that operator had tried to reach T.D. without mudding up to save money. Operator error.
Now, I own my own rigs and operate my own wells, and once in awhile I deal with a bizarre ingrained attitude, in that no matter how much I stress taking time and doing things the safe way, and doing proper maintenance, a rare hand will think I’m just talking and that what I really want is to do it quickest and cheapest, and my theory is that attitude comes from a previous ingrained work experience under a previous employer. So yeah, it is complicated, and it is interwoven, but in my role as rig owner unless that guy can relearn and do it my way, it’s the highway. In my role as well operator I’m expected to implement safe procedures. True, I’m not talking about anywhere near the costs BP and TO work with, but I’m not talking about anywhere near the profit either.
I think those crews should demand a backup surface bop, from everything I’ve read so far they would have had had the two minutes to get it closed, they should have a 4 way blooey so they can choose a downwind direction. I’m thinking Reading and Bates designed it to TO specs, did they wrongly think they’d never have an issue with a company man and gas would never get into a 5,000’ riser that the 500 psi diverter couldn’t handle? And as Monday morning quarterbacks we can say TO had the right to stop work.
It all seems very clear to you, but this for me is more complicated. There is no innocent bystanders.
[QUOTE=bigmoose;34385]If we can verify it alvis, you just identified the “root cause” in the “fishbone analysis” for all the poor judgment/“why did they do this” actions during the 48 hours leading up to the well blow out. Perry Mason would call it “The Smoking Gun.”[/QUOTE]
Below is a transcript of an interview with Mike Williams by 60 Minutes. There should be a transcript of this on the cbsnews.com site but I couldn’t quickly locate it. They also have video of his interview. He talks of the first well they drilled and costs incurred.
http://www.sunherald.com/2010/05/16/2185053_p2/60-minutes-transcript-from-blowout.html
They were six weeks behind schedule and the rig day rate was $533,000.
It mentions that the rig was being detached from the well to be moved to another location as soon as the next day. This is under the ‘It wasn’t an ordinary day’ section.
Looking for a reference for the million dollar a day rig costs (rig + people).
[QUOTE=company man 1;34364]I made a promise just two hous ago to dig through BPs internal investigation & dissiminate all the unanswered questions or show the design & procedural flaws that could/ would have led to this accident. I will not be able to keep that promise. I am so overwhelmed by the evidence that has come forth & even backed up by BP’s own internal investigation (even though they don’t realize it) that I do not have to proceed any further to know beyond a shadow of a doubt of the gross negligence of BP’s operating officers which systematically caused this disaster.
I’m a safety professional in another industry based in Europe. I’ve been waiting for the paper trail to be laid out and expecting something like this entry to pop into view. Whenever a Risk Assessment (RA) is done the safety professional lists the risks and potential controls. Then (in a perfect world) these controls are introduced into the task, with the risks ameliorated until they are “ALARP” i.e. As Low As Reasonably Practicable. In a costly operation, and with the RA delivered, the safety professional has to step back because “Management” will decide exactly how much amelioration they can afford. I wonder how much risk BP self insure? Any highly profitable organisation could decide to adopt a position. I’d better not say more, I don’t want to end up in a European court! I wonder if the BP RA’s for this drilling operation are in the public domain?
Thanks for your memory and detective work alvis! Please know that I never questioned your veracity. It’s good to have the references documented. Sadly the picture begins to come together.
[QUOTE=bigmoose;34400]Thanks for your memory and detective work alvis! Please know that I never questioned your veracity. It’s good to have the references documented. Sadly the picture begins to come together.[/QUOTE]
Not a problem! I knew where you were coming from…
Some Greenpeace folks referred to the boom laying effort in the early days as “disaster response theater” and that concept has really stuck with me since.
BP seems to have been criminally negligent from start to finish, and so duplicity at this point just follows night/day logically.
I’m thinking that we need an administrative (or legislative or judicial, I don’t care) decision that neither BP nor anyone else can “develop” this lease block (thus this tract’s access to whatever oil is left down there) ever. Ever. I say “nor anyone else” because that’s how it would have to work.
If we or the powers that be are going to continue to allow BP to have all the say, or any say at all, this ought to help orient Tony Hayward’s et al’s thinking. They are still going to worry about limiting their liability, stock price fall, reputation trashing etc etc. but not about preserving the access to the oil for a later date.
Otherwise his fiduciary duty (ugh ugh ugh) is always going to surely be to weigh both halves of the equation and try to have it both ways.
Yes? No? I’m perfectly happy with having BP’s assets seized but this “asset” needs to be put out of bounds.
Sorry if this is very dumb or beside the point.
[QUOTE=alvis;34397]Below is a transcript of an interview with Mike Williams by 60 Minutes. There should be a transcript of this on the cbsnews.com site but I couldn’t quickly locate it. They also have video of his interview. He talks of the first well they drilled and costs incurred.
http://www.sunherald.com/2010/05/16/2185053_p2/60-minutes-transcript-from-blowout.html
They were six weeks behind schedule and the rig day rate was $533,000.
It mentions that the rig was being detached from the well to be moved to another location as soon as the next day. This is under the ‘It wasn’t an ordinary day’ section.
Looking for a reference for the million dollar a day rig costs (rig + people).[/QUOTE]
Actually, in the Mike Williams 60 Minutes interview, he mentions the million a day cost.
“The tension in every drilling operation is between doing things safely and doing them fast. Time is money and this job was costing BP a million dollars a day. But Williams says there was trouble from the start—getting to the oil was taking too long.”
http://www.sunherald.com/2010/05/16/2185053_p2/60-minutes-transcript-from-blowout.html
“I’m thinking that we need an administrative (or legislative or judicial, I don’t care) decision that neither BP nor anyone else can “develop” this lease block (thus this tract’s access to whatever oil is left down there) ever. Ever. I say “nor anyone else” because that’s how it would have to work.”
I understand why BP would be kicked out, but why should no one else have access to this deposit and why would it “have” to work that way? This doesn’t make sense to me.
I pretty much agree with most of what you said, but Greenpeace and theater in the same sentence while saying they had accused someone else of it about made me drown my keyboard.
Oh! the irony!
Criminal probe of Gulf oil spill seen inevitable