Yeah, . . . the same way GW and Cheney presented the facts on Saddam's WMDS !!

OH I'm sure they'll be credible and accurate !!


NOT !!!

I do worry. Not too impressed with the "facts" they have presented so far.

It is absurd that big oil would be loving this story. Big oil concerns doing business in the Gulf are in the process of losing millions, maybe billions of dollars due to negligence on this rig and the now de facto moratorium. In fact, the opposite is true. The rest of the oil industry is livid about this incident and the pall it has cast on their industry as a whole. Not to mention how they feel about the loss of 11 lives of guys in their industry. Even if there is no love lost for BP, the crippling effect has now spread to evry company doing business in the Gulf and all the citizens along the Gulf Coast whose business also depends on the oil industry directly or indirectly.

btw, As far as I could find out by researching it myself, Samson has no business interest in the Gulf. Their critical analysis came from the POV of oil guys who try to do things safely. All I could find was onshore iterests, not off shore for Samson. And, their analysis was not an MSM story, again, afaik. I posted it here after finding it on an oil related website. The reason I posted it was because so many oilfield professionals have questioned what happened on the rig and how could so many warnings could be missed. That piece was the most concise synopsis available at the time. Normal, accepted safe practices could have prevented this disaster. It was not a freak occurrence. Many wells kick, most do not blow.

My reason for interest in these threads is not to villify BP or to exonerate any other company. Just to seek the truth of what really happened. I spent over 20 years as a supplier of safety equipment to oilfield companies in our locale and have a bit of knowledge about how they operate and an interest to learn more.

BP has made themselves an easy target by their reputation for cost cutting and previous known safety problems. If they had the corporate culture that Getty Oil had towards safety they would probably be receiving more benefit of the doubt now.

I am still awaiting more facts and testimony as to what happened before a final decision of negligence or blame for this incident can be logically or legally made. This is what I told km in a previous post:
"If there was negligence, will it be shared? If BP wanted TransOcean to do something potentially unsafe and TO went along with it, who is to blame? If BP wanted TO to proceed and TO did not have all the information to know that proceeding was unsafe, then who is to blame? This is a complex case, my opinions are only my opinions and don't mean squat. My opinions, such as they are, are based on the experience of industry people whose judgement I trust, but I will keep an open mind as more details and evidence comes out. Nobody knows how the legal wrangling will turn out for sure and it is likely to be going on for many years."

I'm not sure what is right or wrong with regards to deep water drilling. It probably depends on the POV of whomever you would speak with about it. As we have discussed before, the human error factor seems to rear its ugly head everywhere...

Chris

"The only person who has said anything in this thread to implicate the other parties is me. Everyone's changing their tune alright at the last minute because they suddenly realised they could be made to look like a complete arse when the hectoring stops and evidence and reason take over in a court of law. But the endless vindictive hounding of Tony Hayward from Obama downwards and the pass that everyone else gets because they happen to be American speaks for itself."

Obama has a sock here? Where does he find the time? I thought they took away his blackberry...

Tony Hayward's theme song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCSNGQpZXBI

You misrepresent what I think big oil is all jiggy about. Sure big oil would like no huge catastrophes as the Deep Water Horizon but once the inevitable happens there is containment. On the sea and in the news.

The story is: BP is at fault possibly a couple of middle managers freaked that their decisions could cost their boss a bonus, end of story.

You are correct that big oil would love this story. But stuff happens. Then they love the deflection that is occurring.

It is all BP's fault. End of story. Let's move on and drill deeper shall we? That is your story. I think it has as much credibility as Saddam's WMD so I am going to wait a tad.

Ok, I get what you're saying now.

But, I don't think what I'm saying is that we should get right back to deep water drilling. One of the biggest problems is that the pseudo-scientific cookie cutter cleanup plans sold to MMS to keep everybody happy that all parties signed off on have now been proven totally inadequate. Also, BOPs do not always properly prevent blow outs. What I have maintained all along was that if things had been done safely and properly on the rig we would not have this mess. BOPs are needed when everything else fails. Cleanup plans are only needed when everything fails. We all know the human factor will strike again. It is amazing that this has not happened more often.

So, the industry has some issues to address before resuming, imho. This quote from an experienced oil industry expert says it so much better than I can I will not try to paraphrase, rather will quote directly from a website I frequent:
---
"That's why I have to point a dirty finger at my own industry. BP et al have said they had considered the "worse case scenario". First, a simple fact: BOP fail about half the time. Period...that's the record. Second, wells blow out. Not that often but it does happen. Third, anyone ever develop a plan to deal with a failed BOP in 5,000' of water? No one has jumped up yet saying they did. So what's the obvious WCS: a failed BOP on a blow out in 5,000' of water. Didn't take much effort to figure that out, did it? Obviously every DW operator know what the WCS is now. So how many can stand in front of camera today and say they are ready to deal with the WCS? They may do everything human possible to reduce the risk of a blow out. But if it does happen at such a water depth they will be just as screwed as BP. Can’t argue differently."
---

Can't really be much more clear and honest than that. Even some folks who make their living from the oil industry who are honest enough to look at this issue realistically have doubts about resuming deep water drilling without major changes to regs, equipment and worst case scenarios. Honest big oil execs should sit up and take notice.

Cameron is probably redesigning their BOPs as we speak. Big oil is probably redrawing their designs and looking at all aspects and safety and cleanup. Our govt response will be endlessly evaluated, as it should be. The responsible parties acted as if this would never happen, but it did and likely will again.

Should we deep water drill again? Like I said before, it probably depends on who you ask as to what answer you get. To be honest, I'm not sure what my answer is. Maybe, if there are better contingency plans based on more realistic worst case scenarios and there is better safety equipment. Maybe.

People still have their thirst for oil, companies for their profits. We know the oil is there. Meanwhile nuclear power usage is declining. This disaster is a symptom of a larger problem.

Chris

Which ones?

km

Exactly. The heat should be on MMS and the deregulation that occurred. Republicans do not want to do that because it would show their small government deregulation philosophy is what is at fault here. MMS, Republicans who are blocking subpoena powers in the investigation, and tea baggers who just want to dispose of all government regulations should be under fire.

Focusing on BP and the simple freak accident theory is playing their game. As you said BOPs fail 50% of the time. No one knew what to do if one failed one mile below the ocean. So there might be a reason for having a regulation in there that says you can't do it. If regulations allow it big oil and BP is going to do it. That is not BP's fault. It is the lack of regulation by incompetent Bush cronies in MMS. At least that is where I would start to look for changes that would keep this catastrophe from happening again. Calling Tony evil does nothing. It is a distraction that will have devastating consequences if we are so distracted we don't fix the problem.

Shutting down drilling operations because one of your subcontractors raises a flag is a reasonable measure that was not taken.