We’ve been posting lots of information about this accident since it happened. It’s now been over two months and the question I would like to ask is …
WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED?
Here’s a review of what’s been posted so far. Review it and then leave a comment with what you think we can learn so far.
APRIL
First Coverage on the TapRooT® Blog
Amazing New Root Cause on Oil Rigs: “Human Error”
First Estimates of Cost – $1.6 Billion
Slow Motion Disaster in the Gulf
New Idea: Consider Oil Company’s Environment and Safety Record When Leasing Drilling Rights
Cost of an Accident: Legislative Costs
MAY
TV News Coverage of the Oil Spill Off Louisiana
BP/Transocean Rig Explosion: Amazing Accident Pictures and Interview with Survivor
Blame Before the Investigation: Looking for Villians Before the Oil Stops Flowing
More Blame and Reprecussions: BP/Transocean Rig Explosion and Oil Spill
BP/Tranocean Rig BOP Failure: The Smoking Gun Paper
BP/Transocean Rig Explosion: Interview with Survivors on ABC
Very Critical Article of Offshore Drilling
Interesting Blog Article about BP/Transocean Rig Accident
BP “Culture of Incompetence” says Congressman Bart Stupack
Is This an Investigation Technique or a Liability Reduction Technique
First Congressional Hearings – McKay
60 Minutes Report on the BP/Transocean Deepwater Horizon Explosion
Newspaper Calls for Investigation of “Safety Culture” at BP
The Cost of an Accident: More Lawsuits for BP
Monday Accident & Lesson Learned: Either You Are Leading the Solution or You Are Part of the Problem
MSNBC Investigates Scandal of BP Deepwater Horizon Incident – Corporate Homicide?
Top Kills Fails – BP to Try New Plan
Bad News After an Accident: BP Can’t Get Much Worse Press Than This…
For Those Who Want to Know More About Cementing
JUNE
Interesting Analysis of Regulatory Process in the Off-Shore Oil Industry … What Do You Think?
CNN Reports on “Criminal” Conduct by BP in Story Titled: “Rig survivors: BP ordered shortcut on day of blast”
Great Letter to the Editor in the Wall Street Journal Lays Out Causal Factors Immediately Before the Well Blowout
How Long Must We Wait to Learn?
The Cost of an Accident – Your Reputation and $20 Billion Dollars
Well Design & Construction Causal Factors of the Deepwater Horizon Accident
More Bad PR for BP – CNN Story: “BP documents highlight PR strategy after deadly Texas blast”
Second Congressional hearings – Hayward
How Bad is the BP PR Impact? It Can’t Get Much Worse Than This…
Do Exxon and BP Take Different Approaches to Risk?
Cost of an Accident: Costs Sometimes Go Far Beyond the Company Involved
Are We Blaming BP Rather Than Learning From What Went Wrong?
CSB Press Release: CSB to Investigate Root Causes of BP Deepwater Horizon Blowout Accident
Joint Coast Guard & MMS Deepwater Horizon Joint Investigation Web Site
Lessons About Safety Culture from the BP Deepwater Horizon Accident that We Can Learn NOW
Columnist Laura Parker Comments on Multiple Deepwater Horizon Investigations
CBS News Reports: “BP’s Disaster: No Surprise to Folks in the Know”
The Wall Street Journal Reports: “Safety and Cost Drives Clashed As CEO Hayward Remade BP”
JULY
BP Investigation Presentation from the Deepwater Horizon Accident
BP Deepwater Horizon Fault Tree
Here’s a PDF of Robert Bea’s Preliminary Findings About the BP/Transocean Deepwater Horizon Accident
Anadarko Withholds Payment of BP Spill Bill
That catches us up with what is known so far.
Now tell me what we can learn by leaving your ideas as a comment here…
Take responsibility for their actions.
They put profit before risk – never works, eventually the risk will come back at you…..
Much has been learned. Obama’s Administration has opened the doors for all to see just what it is. It begans with Obama revealing that he’s an idiot and then further evidence became clear relating to that same idiot gene, when the release of Megrahi in return for a BP contract in Lybia was dished out.
I wasn’t that surpirsed when the Magrahi allegation came to light. It’s what I’ve come to expect from those idiots in the Whitehouse.
The first lesson for the British should be to distance themselves from the US. That special relationship is over as far as Joe Public is concerned.
Those idiots in the White House are still much smarter than the 3 Stooges (G.W. – Moe, Rummy – Larry and Curly – Cheney) that lied and deceived America into 2 endless wars after 9/11/2001. No, it wasn’t about oil? yeah right!
BP deserves to pay for the greed that led them to drilling that deep without safely testing for castrophic failures, before operating this well disaster.
Americans need to wake up and get past biased closed mind thinking from both of our vtwo predominant political parties.
OK – Lessons on politics wasn’t what I intended in this discussion.
Let’s look beyond politics … to things we can change at our companies.
Also, let’s try not to insult whole nations and treat everyone as individuals on this blog.
Thanks
Mark
Lets leave the politics out of it and get to the reasons why BP decided to cut corners to get the job done so this doesnt happen again
The System Safety engineering process is a priori engineering process designed to assess the safety inherent in any particular engineering design or function and characterize the safety risk associated with potential mishaps [or failures] of these system designs.
I wonder if anyone in the Government oversight business of Oil drilling is applying system safety engineering practices/principles to the oversight or proposed drilling operation design review process?
With all these and other incidents we can criticise why they occur (and with good reason), however, to take this to the next stage is to ask what we all are prepared to pay for our fuel and the security of supply. This is only one of many places where customer demands on ensuring there is sufficient fuel available (and in some cases, cheap) this can encourage companies to drill / recover oil in places previously thought not viable (risk, cost or politically expedient). The higher the risks (environment and availability of supply) then it follows that the end product cost will be higher. Me, I want my fuel to be available but I have a dilemma as to what cost can I afford (or feel I am prepared to pay to reduce the risks). I don’t know the answer to this
System safety as part of govermental oversight is only considered within the context of risk assessments or the NEPA env impact statement process, neither of which was prepared for the BP drilling rig. These kind of projects have been considered too insignificant to worry about, until now of course. I am not suggesting an EIS for every exploratory drilling project, but the NEPA process and agency application of NEPA needs to be reconsidered to make sure process is effective. Environmental Impact Statements could be specific to say a cluster of drilling projects, which might make more sense than the current process to prepare them on the lease sale basis, which could cover hundreds of tracts encompassing large regions. But again, oversight is key. I am not convinced that that MMS, or its cuccessor agency, will be sufficiently concerned or motivated to provide real oversight. For this to happen, they would need a new culture emphasizing environmental sustainability. Leave oil “promotion” to industry and environmental protection to government regulators, thereby also ensuring the viability of economic and social systems.