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These videos of what happened are pretty eye-opening, and are probably some of the best technical info I've seen on the incident.


Deepwater Horizon's Blowout, Part 1

Deepwater Horizon's Blowout, Part 2

Mike Williams On Andrea's Rescue

I've been following it pretty closely for the last few weeks. I was glued to the live video today for over two hours, watching them trim the top with the saw. I actually saw them rip the blade off the motor at one point.

Very interesting vids.

While I am in now way excusing the numerous missteps and poor descions, I can help but wonder how many folks even realize that this is a risk we choose to accept everytime we choose to fill our tank.

The thing I took away from the vids?.....It has cost BP 500 million so far.....out of a total profit year to date of 7(?) billion. They are almost making money from thier other ventures as fast as this one is losing it.

The thing I'm not sure everyone realizes or takes to heart is that....no matter how dangerous or difficult the job, it can be done safely, or can be executed in a way to minimize risk. You may have noticed I used the word incident rather then accident. Incidents are preventable. This incident was preventable, and in almost all cases, a catastrophic failure of this magnitude usually only happens when a series of events or failures occurs. If any one of those series of events is stopped, the end catastrophic failure is stopped.

When it comes down to it, it's a company's safety culture and how they react under pressure that defines that company. In those videos it was mentioned that the BP company man said they were going to finish the well in a different way. That decision was ultimately part of the company's culture. Not to mention the workers on the rig. I had seen something on TV about the guy they interviewed and him hearing the engines racing. It was asked whether he could shut them down. He told the interviewers he did not have that authority. I'm sure there's probably more to it. But you need to empower your employees with the authority to stop an unsafe act, and not be penalized by it. If that guy could have shut the engines down, maybe it could have stopped the ignition source and explosion....who knows. Like I said, it's part of the safety culture in a company.

It's kind of ironic. BP is one of the toughest companies to get a contract with as a contractor due to their safety requirements. I've got a buddy who does inspection work, and he said their safety requirements are ridiculous. You almost have to have one guy to do all the safety stuff for a certain amount of people. Additionaly, you are supposed to observe your coworkers and fill a quota of unsafe acts each day. That does not promote a safe work place.

BP's safety record is pretty bad. They had a pretty big refinery expolsion in texas city back in 2005. It's about 50 miles away. The explosion/concusion was so great I felt the back windows of my house shake/rattle from 50 miles away! Again, that incident was a chain of events that caused the explosion.

The Chemical Safety Board (CSB) has a good video about the explosion and explores the anatomy of the disastor
http://www.csb.gov/videoroom/detail.aspx?VID=16

Here's the quick 5 min version
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9JY3eT4cdM

They've got other videos on youtube and their site if you're interested in this type of investigative forensics.
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=USCSB
http://www.csb.gov/videoroom/default.aspx

It makes one wonder how much worse it would've been had federal regulation not required them to drill so far offshore.

beatersubi wrote:It makes one wonder how much worse it would've been had federal regulation not required them to drill so far offshore.

Not sure I follow?

This was one of the further out rigs. Most of the rigs are closer to shore. At some spots you can see them off in the distance from the shore.

Please don't take my comments as the "drill baby drill texan". Proper inspection, procedures, policies, training, and company culture are far more important than federal regulations.

Regulations to some extent are like road signs, speed limit, yield, etc. Drivers should follow them, and most people follow them to a point, but they are not followed explicitly. Added regulation and oversite to a point is necessary. Too much however is conterproductive. Ultimately the decision to do the "right thing" needs to be made from the top down in a company, and is also a personal decision from each employee. Unfortunately, money, greed, laziness, apatheticness, etc tend to get in the way of doing the "right thing"....

I just watched the videos. And yes, these types of catastrophic events typically have several issues that compound, leading to something of this nature. I don't know if you ever watch the show called "Seconds From Disaster." It's on History or Discovery. I expect an episode on our bridge collapse we had here.


What really strikes me here is how the schedule ruled. Yes, the schedule is important, but at what cost? They were conducting operations and handling materials that are very sensitive in nature, and can have major repercussions is mishandled as we see with the ongoing leak, not to mention the lives lost.


Ultimately, I blame management. They are the ones who put the pressure on the employees, who in turn ignore warning signs that can domino into a major failure. Just the case of the manager changing a procedure on the fly like that (capping the well) should be a huge no-no, and the Transocean guys should have refused to deviate.


Who do I blame? The people who stood to make the most money from the rig's operation, which is BP. What I find weird is that one company can own the oil rig, yet another takes the oil? Granted the system is a convoluted scheme of in's, out's, and what-have-you's, but wtf.



Josh, I agree with your statement of empowering employees. If they feel there are negative consequences to raising a safety concern, they are not going to do it. Same thing goes with quality, which is what I saw first hand last summer. Company culture can be a difficult thing to change.



My thing that really pisses me off is how a bunch of people think that the government should take over the operations of this incident. IF the federal government had the people and the resources to deal with this situation, I would say yes by all means. However, the feds do not have the equipment and expertise alone to tackle something like this. There is no way around it.



I think I read somewhere or heard on some TV program (so it could be BS) that in some other countries, oil rigs are required to have relief wells in place before they can begin production. That could be a good step to ensure this type on incident does not happen again.

It's all Obama's fault. Somehow. Yeah, I don't want the government with its larger screen of red tape, larger string of management approval, and COMPLETE LACK OF EXPERIENCE in there. Their job is to regulate and investigate and penalize when the regulations are ignored. Shooting the corrupt inspectors should be part of that, too.

Absolutely a management fault—the overpaid assholes in charge make up arbitrary schedules to impress bigger bosses/shareholders/make their dicks feel at least large enough to qualify as average with little to no concern for real world capability. "Oh, we did it in x months the last time." "Yeah, but the last one went perfectly and was much closer to our suppliers, and was half built when we started." "So, we can do it in x months, right?" "No. You're not listenin—" "OK, so I'll tell everyone we can get this done in x months. Do you want to work or not?"

In the end, it's like a dictatorship where everyone knows the decisions made at the top are wrong, but nobody dares speak up for fear of retribution.

93forestpearl wrote:I don't know if you ever watch the show called "Seconds From Disaster." It's on History or Discovery. I expect an episode on our bridge collapse we had here.

Yeah...I know the show. It's setup in the TiVo Engineering Disasters on Modern Marvels is also a favorite of mine as well.

93forestpearl wrote:Ultimately, I blame management. They are the ones who put the pressure on the employees, who in turn ignore warning signs that can domino into a major failure. Just the case of the manager changing a procedure on the fly like that (capping the well) should be a huge no-no, and the Transocean guys should have refused to deviate.

I agree whole-heartedly. Transocean should have pushed back. The issues with the BOP from previous issues should have been addressed as well. That one rubber seal was likely the critical piece that let all the other failures culminate into the final disaster.

93forestpearl wrote:Josh, I agree with your statement of empowering employees. If they feel there are negative consequences to raising a safety concern, they are not going to do it. Same thing goes with quality, which is what I saw first hand last summer. Company culture can be a difficult thing to change.

You are so right....company culture is very difficult to change and it has to be pushed from the top down, and it has to be supported consistently by every level of management. You can't tell an employee to things according to the safety manual one day, and then when work is tight, tell him to cut corners. That doesn't work, and is not a good culture to promote.

93forestpearl wrote:My thing that really pisses me off is how a bunch of people think that the government should take over the operations of this incident. IF the federal government had the people and the resources to deal with this situation, I would say yes by all means. However, the feds do not have the equipment and expertise alone to tackle something like this. There is no way around it.

Yup....it's ridiculous...the federal government does not have the expertese or resources to handle this situation. They may be able to provide additional support, but BP and/or other experts in the industry need to be leading the efforts.

Every is getting pissed at BP, which is understandable, but I don't think the general public understand the difficulty of performing the work they're performing. It's not like you can go down and just stick your finger over the well to keep it from leaking. The relief wells are the ONLY permenant solution to capping this well.

93forestpearl wrote:I think I read somewhere or heard on some TV program (so it could be BS) that in some other countries, oil rigs are required to have relief wells in place before they can begin production. That could be a good step to ensure this type on incident does not happen again.

Yeah....not sure about that. What I see happening as a result of this incident is the pendulum swinging far to the other side. I believe it may have been out of balance (too loose of restrictions/guidance), but it's going to swing to the complete opposite side now. You've got to have a balance. The technology is there to help reduce and prevent these types of incidents....but they only work to prevent these incidents if they themselves are working properly. In this incident, they were not. There needs to be more accountability at all levels of management and employees.

PhyrraM wrote:The thing I took away from the vids?.....It has cost BP 500 million so far.....out of a total profit year to date of 7(?) billion. They are almost making money from thier other ventures as fast as this one is losing it.

Correction... they made 6 billion dollars "In the first three months of the year" according to the video. not year to date.

Got this forwarded to me.....interesting.

http://www.wimp.com/solutionoil

That is interesting. I'm curious as to what happens to the oil after a couple weeks of being saturated by water, or if it even sticks to the hay.

Yeah I'm not sure. There's bound to be some below the surface....

I thought the more volatile components stayed on the surface and either evaporated or were eaten by algae while the heavier components sank. Whatever it is, the grass seems worth trying.

I was thinking about it for a while and oil would stick to any surface it came into contact with, like how it stuck to the side of the bowl he had it in. Straw would provide a lot of surface area to stick to, even if it was saturated with water.


I hope they sent that video to every address they could find for BP and the feds. There is plenty of hay, straw and grass that could be on it's way to the gulf tomorrow.

I did laugh at this....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt617zYAbng