Here are the names released by the White House:
Co-chairmen:
Bob Graham
William K. Reilly
Other Commission Members
Frances Beinecke, President of the Natural Resources Defense Council;
Donald Boesch, President of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science;
Terry Garcia, a Vice President of the National Geographic Society;
Cherry Murray, Dean of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences;
Frances Ulmer, Chancellor of the University of Alaska Anchorage.
Under their charter from the President, the panel has six-months to find out what led to the blowout of the Macondo Prospect (Deepwater Horizon) well and to make recommendations for future drilling practices.
Since the mission of this body is so important to the energy future of the US, I thought I’d dig deeper into the commission members backgrounds. I’ve written a short summary for each of the members of what I found on line…
- – -
Bob Graham, is a Democrat and former Florida Governor and Senator. He has a BA from the University of Florida and a Law Degree from Harvard. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the New Democrat Network,
As a Senator, Governor, and Presidential candidate, Bob Graham opposed offshore drilling. However, after he was appointed to the commission he is quoted as saying:
“I don’t think my designation sends any signal. We should be in a position to have good information about the situation and based on that, come to a solid judgment and conclusion.”
William K. Reilly was the head of the EPA during the Exxon Valdez spill cleanup. He has a BA in History and a Law Degree from Harvard and a Masters Degree in Urban Planning. Before becoming the head of the EPA, William Reilly’s main jobs were with environmental groups including The National Urban Coalition, The Conservation Foundation, and the World Wildlife Fund. He was also the lawyer for the President’s Council on Environmental Policy where he drafted environmental legislation. Now William Reilly is a board member at several large companies including Du Pont, ConocoPhillips, and Royal Caribbean Cruises. He is also an advisor to TPG Capital, an international investment firm where he was involved in the purchase of Texas Utilities (TXU) by TPG and KKR. He negotiated with TXU to reduce their plans for coal fired power plants from 11 to 3. He now serves on the Sustainable Energy Advisory Board for the company.
In a June 16 article in the Wall Street Journal, William Reilly is quoted as saying that the oil industry needs an organization like INPO (the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations) to help the industry improve operations the way the nuclear industry did after Three Mile Island.
Frances Beinecke, President of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), has an undergraduate degree from Yale, a Master’s Degree in Forestry and Environmental Studies from Yale. The NRDC web site says the following about Frances Beinecke:
“Under Frances’s leadership, the organization sharply focuses on curbing global warming, developing a clean energy future, reviving the world’s oceans, saving endangered wild places, stemming the tide of toxic chemicals and accelerating the greening of China. With Bob Deans, Frances recently co-authored the book Clean Energy Common Sense: An American Call to Action on Global Climate Change, which shows how we can secure a clean and sustainable energy future that will help put Americans back to work, reduce our reliance on foreign oil and create a healthier future for ourselves and our children.”
Also, back in May (after the spill started), she wrote an editorial that said:
“The best protection we have against offshore accidents is to end our dependence on oil. We simply don’t have to jeopardize our oceans, fishing industry, tourism business, and rich coastal ecosystems in order to fuel our cars and trucks. We can pass clean energy and climate legislation – legislation that will slash our oil reliance by spurring innovation in cleaner solutions – things like more efficient cars and plug-in hybrids.”
She went on to suggest a three point plan:
1. Impose a moratorium on all new offshore oil drilling activities.
2. Ensure rules for future drilling reflect the lessons of Deepwater Horizon.
3. Initiate an independent investigation.
She was also quoted by the New York Times as saying that the independent commission should determine:
“…whether, when, where and under what circumstances new offshore drilling operations should be allowed.”
Donald Boesch is President of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. He has a PhD in Marine Science from the College of William and Mary. He has a long career as an academic. The University of Maryland web site says:
“Dr. Boesch is a biological oceanographer who has conducted research in coastal and continental shelf environments along the Atlantic Coast and in the Gulf of Mexico, eastern Australia and the East China Sea. He has published two books and more than 85 papers on marine benthos, estuaries, wetlands, continental shelves, oil pollution, nutrient over-enrichment, environmental assessment and monitoring and science policy. Presently his research focuses on the use of science in ecosystem management.”
Terry Garcia is Vice President of Mission Programs at the National Geographic Society. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in International Relations and a Law Degree from The George Washington University.
Before becoming a VP at National Geographic, Garcia was an Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere, the Deputy Administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), General Council for NOAA (where he oversaw the implementation of the oil spill recovery efforts under the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Restoration Plan for the Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska), and a partner in the law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips in Los Angeles.
The National Geographic web site says:
“Executive Vice President, Mission Programs, National Geographic Society
Terry D. Garcia is responsible for the Society’s core mission programs: the Committee for Research and Exploration, the Geographic Education Outreach program, the Education Foundation, and the Society’s Development Office, Explorers Hall museum, and lecture program.”
Cherry Murray is the Dean of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. She has a BS, Masters, and PhD in Physics from MIT.
Before becoming a Dean at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, she was the Principal Associate Director for Science and Technology at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. She also worked at Bell Labs.
This is how the Harvard web site describes her research:
“A celebrated experimentalist, Murray is well-known for her scientific accomplishments using light scattering, an experimental technique where photons are fired at a target of interest. Scientists can then gather insights into surface physics and photonic behavior by analyzing the spray of photons in various directions from such collisions.”
“She is also a leader in the study of soft condensed matter and complex fluids, hybrid materials that show properties of different phases of matter. The control of suspensions, foams, and emulsions has application for the development of everything from novel drug delivery systems to “lab-on-a-chip” devices.”
“Among other diverse topics in condensed matter physics, Murray has studied semiconductors’ optical phenomena, nanostructures, phase transitions, and controlled self-assembly of optical materials — all critical for the advancement of quantum optics, engineered semiconductors, and tools such as optical tweezers.”
Frances Ulmer is Chancellor of the University of Alaska Anchorage. She has a BA in Political Science and a Law Degree from the University of Wisconsin.
Before becoming the Chancellor of the University of Alaska Anchorage, Frances was a Democrat elected to a variety of offices in the state of Alaska as well as appointed governmental positions that include: Director of Policy Development for the State of Alaska (managing diverse programs, including coastal management, intergovernmental coordination, and public participation initiatives); serving as a member of the North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission; the Federal Communications Commission’s State and Local Advisory Committee; and the Federal Elections Commissions Committee. She also has held academic positions including being a Fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Public Policy at the Institute of Social and Economic Research.
Currently, she serves on the Board of Trustees of the National Parks Conservation Association, the Advisory Board of the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the Alaska Nature Conservancy Board.
- – -
That’s it.
What did I notice?
Not an engineer among them.
No petroleum engineers. No geologists.
No one with any real oil drilling experience (unless you count being on the Board of Directors of ConocoPhillips as oil drilling experience).
Has any of the commission members even slept on an offshore rig overnight?
Also, no one with any experience investigating accidents (at least no experience that I can find in their publicly available bios).
Also, no one with any “high reliability” organization experience.
What do they have?
Lots of law degrees
Time at Harvard or Yale
Lots of “government” experience
Environmentalist backgrounds
To me it seems they are most qualified to investigate the problems with the spill response.
But they don’t seem qualified to investigate why a well blowout occurred.
I’m not trying to imply that any of the commission members aren’t highly qualified for their current jobs or aren’t wonderful people. They just aren’t the folks I would go see if I wanted to find out why BP drilled a bad oil well that killed 11 people and started an environmental disaster.
What do you think? Is this Bipartisan, Independent, Blue Ribbon, Presidential Commission qualified to do it’s job?
Dig some more into the commission member’s backgrounds and let me know by leaving a comment here.
Firstly – this is not a “spill”. The technical jargon for this event is- UNCONTROLLED RELEASE OF HYDROCARBONS TO THE ENVIRONMENT -
Reviewing the qualifications of the panel is enough to tell us that they will come up with blame and regulations but not likely a true “root cause”.
Agree with the bog and also the comments left by Darryl. Forwarded the link and discussion to Senator Wyden’s staff in hopes that someone will read and react. This is too important an event to not get to the “root cause.” Certainly there are political issues that must be addressed, but the immediate imperative is to fully understand the root issues of the technical failures.
OK – for simplicity sake from now on I have a new acronym for a UNCONTROLLED RELEASE OF HYDROCARBONS TO THE ENVIRONMENT for use on this blog. It is …. spill.
Excellent points, Mark.
Only two–Boesch and Murray–have technical experience and none appear to have oil drilling, oil S.P.I.L.L. cleanup, or safety investigation experience.
I think it will be easy to split the problem into the three stages: oil drilling, incident (oil/gas explosions>fires>cut-off system failure>spill), and spill cleanup. Safety needs to be part of all three problem-solving adventures, although one can see where other disciplines figure predominantly. One might even argue that the safety investigations revolve around only the first two, with the former being insightful for future ventures and the later being primarily concentrated on this event, hoping to tame the blame. Spill cleanup is a relatively static problem from the safety standpoint, that is, we can easily tell you how to do it safely and it appears that folks are doing this relatively safely.
So, what should we safety professionals do? Should we encourage ASSE or similar to issue a position statement that reflects the lack of safety professionals in the pale blue ribbon panel?
And the real question, who would you have put on the panel? The only person I can think of as a rock-solid person I would want on the panel is dead (and he was not a safety professional either, he was renowned for thinking).
One comment though, how did you reach the conclusion that “BP drilled a bad oil well”? I am not sure we are at that point yet. I think it is yet unclear who did what and which decisions might have been bad and who made those decisions and why. Not to mention that I doubt the well was bad…I have only met good oil well who made their parents proud!
I was under the impression that the US chemical Safety Board were investigating this incident, particularly in relation to BP’s safety culture. At least they have significant process safety investigation experience, and also investigated the BP Texas City incident.
I’m suprised more hasn’t been made in the media that BP killed 15 people at Texas City (and a few more since the major incident) and killed 11 people in this incident. All the focus seems to be on economic impact of the oil on the local tourism and fishing trades.
And from a non-US citizen point of view it seems highly hypocritical for the US president to so self-righteous about BP cleaning up this mess when there’s been no investigation and no-one fully knows what happened or whose fault it is, yet Union Carbide killed 25,000 people in Bhopal, the land is still contaminated and more peopel are dying there every day because of UC incident yet no-one is asking UC to go clean up it’s mess. That investigation is complete and there’s no shadow of a doubt who’s to blame.
As for the blue ribbon panel……..looks more like a political move to use this incident to shape energy policy in the US. This isn’t something I’m against, but I really don’t think these are the people to investigate the incident for root causes etc.
From a LinkedIn comment about are they qualified:
Absoutely not.
It’s impossible to avoid political machinations in any government inquiry, but rarely is it quite so blatantly one-sided. I’m sure all the indivduals are honest and decent and think themselves unbiased, however, it’s not possible to entirely put aside your own biases and when in a like-minded group, they are only ever stengthened. In the same way a group composed entirely of drilling engineers from major oil companies would be inappropriate.
One hopes they at least have the sense to bring in some engineers (with field experience, not academics) as expert witnesses and ask them objective questions. However if, as it appears, there is no investigation background between them, then perhaps even that is a pipe dream (excuse the pun).
Posted by Craig Marriott
Norman:
Your question was:
One comment though, how did you reach the conclusion that “BP drilled a bad oil well”?
Answer:
1. The blowout.
2. See the causal factors in this blog posting:
http://www.taproot.com/wordpress/2010/06/17/well-design-construction-causal-factors-of-the-deepwater-horizon-accident/
Maybe I should have said a dangerous well.
Thanks
Mark
Carole:
1. The CSB has not yet accepted the job of investigating the Deepwater Horizon accident.
2. I too think a lot about the 11 people who were killed. I think they are being overlooked.
From a LinkedIn comment:
I am very disappointed.
No members with functional knowledge of drilling in deep water.
No members with accident investigation expertise.
One with an outspoken anti-oil agenda.
I fear a waste of time and money unless they immediately assemble a knowledgeable staff and examine the facts in a totally objective manner.
Posted by Jeff Crawford
A LinkedIn comment:
As the blog points out, the lack of engineering experience is a clear weakness.
Posted by David Stephens
A LinkedIn comment:
As soon as I hear the words “blue ribbon panel,” I immediately become skeptical. A blue ribbon panel (by its definition) is supposed to be non-political, whose results will be used by those who have the power and authority to impose corrective actions.
Looking at the make-up of this panel, it seems to be the opposite of blue-ribbon. Many have an overt political bent. There is no real reason for most of these people to be on the panel. They certainly won’t be able to put their technical knowledge to the task of determining the adequacy of any of BP’s actions that lead up to the spill; this isn’t where their expertise lies. Instead, they seem more fitting to looking at the non-technical recovery actions after the fact.
Like anything that has large political overtones, it is important to figure out what the actual purpose of the panel will be. I haven’t discussed this with the President, but there are several possibilities…
Posted by Kenneth Reed
Another comment from LinkedIn on the Independent Commission’s qualification:
1. No
2. No
3. No
4. No
5. Absolutely no
1. No experience
2. No qualifications
3. No common sense
4. No impartiality
5. Absolutely no credibility outside the White House
Now sue me.
Posted by John Dalby
A comment from LinkedIn:
The US is no different from what I can see from other countries , we need to make the public aware that we are doing something . “an in depth investigation” , “leave no stone upturned” and so on.
What we really do, it is a whole different thing .
The Panel is like the comittee named to investigate the first shuttle accident , (the “o” rings and what about the telemetry , they never saw it , not even cared to do it. or in other context the infamous Warren Commission,
I am no expert , but is it true that they reported that Oswald’s rifle could handle different calibers of amunition and still hit a remote moving target several times , with different calibers ? one barrell , diferent calibers ? no training shots to adjust the curve, and accurately,
I lived far away, and was joung and naive at the time, and my memory might be playing tricks to me , but it was a difficult pill to swallow , you needed to want to believe …. and still… it served its purpose.
This new panel might serve the same purpose .
Marco
A comment from LinkedIn:
Lack of engineering knowledge perhaps, but are they American? American’s have super powers whereas the Brits are mere mortals capable of mistakes.
Seriously though, I think the panel is woefully under-experienced but it depends what Obama wants at the end of the day – which is Tony Hayward’s head on a block.
Just out of curiosity, whatevber happened to Union Carbide and Bhopal or the head of Exxon Mobil………?
Strange days are these……
Posted by David Robson
I think he already has Tony Hayward’s head on a block.
A comment from LinkedIn:
I agree with Craig.
Has any preliminary investigation report been released on the incident itself? Causes of the loss can only be determined (if at all) from a wide diverse team of qualified engineers and organizational/management specialist with the specific skills to work through the science of deep water drilling and the organizational structure that must manage such a complex process. Another political czar, academic group (unless they have real expertise/experience) is a smoke screen.
So far, it appears a case study on what not to do has developed – mainly as to the immediate and followup post loss crisis and recovery management. When an understanding of “root cause(s)” is know that can be added in the study.
The issue of having lessons learned implemented across all industry is also a perpetual problem.
Posted by Nathan Crutchfield
Pretty much agree with most of what others have said already. Definitely a group of lawyers/politicians/acedemics with absoutely no experience in conducting an investigation of this type. Is is just me and my general distrust of government these days, or is the 6 months quoted as the time to produce the report coincidentally the same as the drilling moratorium?? Probably just one of those coincidences.
From my experience in the oilfield and as a HSE professional (almost 30) if I told my boss that I needed 6 months to investigate a multiple fatality incident he’d have my replacement in my office in a few days.
I guarantee that BP, Transocean & Halliburton all have their internal investigations well under way already.
Interesting
There is now a House Bill (HR 5241) to set up the Independent Commission.
Unfortunately, the bills methods to appoint the commission aren’t the same processes that the President used.
See:
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h5241/text
“I guarantee that BP, Transocean & Halliburton all have their internal investigations well under way already.”
I do know Transocean does not have a trained and competent inhouse investigation team – I’ve read the Transocean prelim report, it isn’t impressive.
Don’t know about Haliburton
BP Global has an excellent team.
A comment from LinkedIn:
So, no-one with qualifications in, or demonstrated competence in, accident investigation or a parallel field of forensic investigation. No safety professional or risk manager. Several opponents of offshore drilling and one boardmember of a BP competitor.
Might be interesting to compare this set-up with that for the Pipe-Alpha disaster.
By Bob Couttie
So Mark, you made a logic error on the bad or dangerous well. As we know factor 1 is not relevant. A bad result is not indicative of a bad decision, just as a good result is not indicative of a good decision.
I think factor 2 is way too premature, but that is what we’ll need to determine if bad decisions were made.
We have to be careful (as you mention in a later blog posting), to not blame folks and also to not make logical errors. Those sorts of mistakes cost us our creditibility as safety professionals.
Saw this in one of my engineering news emails:
UC Berkeley Engineer Becomes Key Adviser In Deepwater Horizon Aftermath. The San Jose Mercury News (6/20, Bohan) reported on UC Berkeley engineering professor Robert Bea, who co-founded the school’s Center for Risk Mitigation and, following the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, “organized the Deepwater Horizon Study Group – a team of researchers now 65 members strong, all working pro bono.” Now, following an assessment of the spill from Bea in May, “a presidential commission on the oil spill wants monthly reports from Bea’s group to help pinpoint the failures, and the safest way forward to conduct offshore energy development.” The reports, Bea said, “will investigate the ‘hows, whens, wheres and whys of failures’ before, during and after the oil rig collapse.” Bea said “he strongly believes that with the right organization structures and safeguards, catastrophic failures such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill are readily prevented.”
So, the big names with no credentials might be getting good info from risk and engineering grunts. That is good news.
curious Rod, boss would replace you because
1) he thnks 6 mos is too long?
or
2) he thinks 6 mos is too short?
I am guessing 1, but think 2 is a better answer…I am not sure I would trust a report that folks slapped together just to meet a timeline.
I think Tony H was right to tell Congress he would take as long as needed to complete his investigation and would not be boxed into a timeframe that is arbitrary like some Congress-person suggested in his infinite ignorance.
Norm
Can’t find “factor 1″ or “factor 2″ – are you talking about a different post?
Mark
If you watch the interview on Sky TV with BP’s Chairman, I don’t think Tony will be there when the investigation is finished if he doesn’t hurry up. Six months may be beyond his term as CEO. See:
http://www.taproot.com/wordpress/2010/06/18/sky-news-reports-bp-chairman-says-embattled-chief-executive-tony-hayward-is-to-have-a-changed-role-in-dealing-with-the-oil-spill/
The BP Chairman doesn’t defend the BP CEO’s performance when asked directly.
With mid-term elections coming up in a few months time, it seems more important for the politicians to be “seen to be doing something” than actually doing the right thing .. perhaps a root cause for this disaster may be the fact that the industry regulators had done nothing to shut BP down before the incident, despite knowing that they had 761 safety violations in the previous two years (as stated by one of the committee grilling Tony Hayward last week).
It appears that they were happy to impose fines on BP for violations without taking steps to prevent them from continuing to break the rules.
It sound like the same mentality as authorities who continue to fine motorists for speeding in the name of road safety, but allow them to continue driving !
BP and other companies drilling in the gulf and anywhere else are pushed by both the insatiable demand for hydrocarbons, and shareholder greed to “boldly drill where no-one has boldy drilled before” and it is not really surprising to hear that they did not forsee the risk of well pressure exceeding their blow out protectors, and were thus unable to shut down the “renegade well head”
The “blame” for this incident rests primarily with BP’s Directors and Executives, but also with those who drove and allowed them to push technology and operations to the limits and beyond to satisfy the demand for crude.
Will the committe achieve anything beyong “drilling” BP and focring them to pay up for the consequences – only time will tell.
To answer the question whether this group is qualified, you first need to understand the scope of what they will be investigating. If they are tasked with investigating the release itself and all the associated technical issues and protective systems, then as you and the previous posters have stated, this group does not have the technical expertise. The first rule of conducting a good investigation is to develop a scope for the investigation. From comments made by the investigation team members, it appears to me they do not have a clear scope and each seems to have their own preconceived agenda, some completely political and unrelated to the actual event.
When one reads the comments from the proposed investigation group, you see a wide range of expected deliverables including proposals for moratoriums on drilling, when to allow off shore drilling, and to ‘come to a solid judgement and conclusion’ (this last from the politican). Based on these comments it appears to me they are not even experienced in the simplest basics of incident investigation and root cause analysis. Sadly, this group appears to have been formed more for political purposes and media appearances rather than for getting to the real root causes.
From LinkedIn Group: Maritime Accident Investigation
Subject: New comment (5) on “Blog Archive » President Names Blue Ribbon Panel to Investigate Gulf Oil Spill – Are They Qualified?”
Third parties neutral bodies??
Groups of diverse activities formed??
As said John …No..no no…
Posted by felix martin de loeches martin
I was a contractor on one of the NRC teams that investigated the three-mile island accident in 1979. The head of the commission under which we worked was Mitchell Rogovin. Rogovin was a lawyer with the IRS and the CIA, before heading the commission. He also defended one of the NYTimes reporters involved in the release of the Pentagon Papers.
Whether this group is competent to oversee the evaluation of this current catastrophe will depend more on their integrity, problem solving skills and BS detectors, than on their pedigrees. As always, the problem with these sorts of commissions is that the people who are truly qualified to conduct them are also heavily invested in the status quo.
Ultimately, the success of the commission will depend on the quality of the people who are actually going to be doing the work and whether they have unobstructed access to the facts.
As has been frequently pointed out, none on the panel appears to have the technical or practical expertise to understand enough to produce a meaningful report.
Whether any of them have the integrity to deal with the technical and practical aspects, or to get meaningful answers from knowledgeable sources remains to be seen.
What no one seems to have addressed is the proposed panel’s apparent lack of adequate formal training in the Marxist-socialist principles that will further liberate the US from dependence on energy other than wind and solar. Perhaps bankrupting BP will be sufficient, though. To get to these root causes, the President could do better.
It is a bunch of inside the beltway, ivy league, no real world experience puppets, and they will set back oil drilling about the same amount of time the same people set back nuclear after TMI.
I still want to see the list of top scientists called on “day 1″ No one has asked to see that. I wonder who they could have been
Mark:
see you June 18 0845 post where you made the errors noted in my post…
Norman
From LinkedIn Group: US Naval Nuclear Power School Alumni
Subject: New comment (6) on “Comment on President Names Blue Ribbon Panel to Investigate Gulf Oil Spill – Are They Qualified?
All politics aside, they appear to be a little light on engineering expertise. A little light on science as well. They need people involved in oil exploration who actually DO this work, not just people who may have taught or administered it.
I’d like to hear that they’ve formed a ballanced commission (with credible engineers and scientists as well as lawers) to invstigate this spill, and develop a realistic response plan FOR THE NEXT TIME. I’d like to hear it but I won’t.
Posted by Rory Litonjua
From LinkedIn Group: Human Factors
Subject: New comment (4) on “Blog Archive » Are We Blaming BP Rather Than Learning From What Went Wrong?”
What do you mean by blaming?
They need to fix the leak. Period.
Posted by Beatriz Monteiro
From LinkedIn Group: People, Safety and Culture
Subject: New comment (3) on “Blog Archive » President Names Blue Ribbon Panel to Investigate Gulf Oil Spill – Are They Qualified?”
This panel appears to have no experience in either
1) the technical engineering aspects, enabling them to understand how and why such a blowout can occur, including the organizational technical expertise to understand how the chain of command might work in drilling and completions and
2) the cultural aspects that will almost certainly have led to the rig-site supervisors (the company men, 7 of them I understand) and probably the ‘Beach” drilling superintendents over-ruling the rig OIM in the interests of closing out the well and moving on as quickly as possible to the next well site.
The latter shows how BP Americas safety culture may not have moved on at all despite the Mogford report, the Baker Panel report and finally the most critical Chemical Safety Board report, all of which pointed to the safety culture as THE Issue. BP, nevertheless, proceeded to concentrate its efforts on developing a new Operational Management System (OMS) to replace the earlier gHHSEr system that had patently failed at Texas City. What we saw was a classic process accident and we also saw the culture trumping the management system.
I fear that the new commission will be a bit like Baker (who personally had little if no input), and restrict itself to its preset terms of reference. If they had approached me, Bob Bea and/or Andrew Hopkins I might have had a bit more faith in the independence and competence of the panel. What I see fails to impress.
If all else fails I will be writing a book about this incident, but I will be inviting Andrew Hopkins to join me first (“If you’ve really screwed up, Andrew will write a book about it”), to add to the list of Moura (BHP), Longford (Exxon-Mobil) and Texas City (BP).
Posted by Patrick Hudson
From LinkedIn Group: People, Safety and Culture
Subject: New comment (4) on “Blog Archive » President Names Blue Ribbon Panel to Investigate Gulf Oil Spill – Are They Qualified?”
The CSB are now to do an investigation too but I agree with Patrick, this commission needs to get some expert input to be credible, though I have lost count at the number of so called ‘investigations’ underway!
Posted by Andy Evans
Here’s a story about a Republican objecting to the Commissions make up:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/06/25/96571/california-lawmaker-calls-gulf.html
This is one of those classic political moves by Obama. There is so much public outrage over this spill and animosity towards BP, that the few who stand up and say this commission has potential bias and doesn’t have the proper makeup will then be spun into those in opposition want more drilling like Deepwater and are friends of BP. Nobody wants to be seen as a friend of BP and that is how they will be characterized in the media.
Not finding the proper root cause of this incident will be detrimental to the industry and really, the world over, but it appears that is the direction it is headed.
It has been my observation over the years that when political entities appoint such “blue ribbon: panels, it is always an exercise in political science, not science.
I think it is also fair to say that if you ask engineers to solve a problem you will get an engineering solution, if you ask politicians to solve the same problem you will get a political solution, and if you ask lawyers, you will get……….kindling!
Mike
Don’t forget … Most politicians are lawyers.
Mark