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It does seem like they could have done a better job at having tools like submarines and containment devices nearby and ready to go for cases like these. They sh

It does seem like they could have done a better job at having tools like submarines and containment devices nearby and ready to go for cases like these. They should consider it a cost of doing business, to be ready to move quickly when the need arises. It does seem like one of the most critical factors effecting how much damage is going to be done to the environment and to their balance sheet is how fast or slow they get the spill contained or stopped. Stopping it within a day or two after it started would yield a huge improvement over letting it go a month like this. Surely, from a dollar standpoint, better preparation makes sense, not even taking into account the ethics of it. I also don't buy into the excuse about the physical constraints they're under in trying to stop it. Those physical constraints should have been known to them before they built the platform in the first place. They had plenty of time to analyze, prepare and invest in solutions for a failure scenario like this. Deep water? Yep, that was pretty obvious before they built the thing. Oil would come out at high pressure? Yep, that was knowable beforehand too. Divers can't operate at that depth, only machines? Ditto.

jacquesm 16y ago
Scapegoating is really easy in cases like this, after the fact everybody, including BP knows how it should have been done instead, but we are where we are. Every time something like this happens we learn, and this time it may well prove a lesson so expensive that there will be a moratorium on this kind of operation in the future, simply because the cost of any failure is higher than what we as a species, and as stewards of the planet can afford. Even the drilling of the relief well is not 100% sure to work, the timescale on which it is happening is slow enough that significant damage to the ecology around that leak, and possibly much more than that will occur. I hesitate to even speculate about how bad this could get. But given the fact that there always was a risk the only question you can ask is how much difference any of that would have made and the answer is probably not very much. This is uncharted territory, and as much as I'm pissed off that this happened (because I don't think they should be drilling there in the first place!) I'm not going to point the finger and say they could have done that much better. Anybody that thinks they could have done better should start a deep sea drilling company tomorrow.
- mkramlich 16y ago
  The folks that built the well and platform, who made the mistake that caused the explosion, and the folks who failed to quickly seal/stop/contain the leak are clearly at fault. I think the issue is whether if a company thinks it is smart enough to start a deep sea oil drilling operation (BP/Transocean/Halliburton) that it should also be smart enough to have a tested plan in place to quickly seal a leak -- at any depth they operate it. The argument being if they want to build a well that would be too deep to stop a leak like this, and yet, somehow not too deep enough to build the well in the first place, that they should not build the well there, period. For example, one of my assumptions based on the physics/engineering I do know is that it should be possible to build a simulated leak contraption, at that depth. And then they could run experiments where they try to stop the leak. Since it would be a controlled experiment they could have control valves to turn on/off the flow of oil (or whatever alternate liquid they use), but the key element is that the contraption has a part where it just gushes out thousands of barrels of the oil-like substance, under conditions as close to a real leak as possible. Test, measure, do post-mortems, tweak and fine-tune their plans and gadgets. Then, disseminate a plan, train people, have tools and gadgets cached reasonably nearby all such wells they operate, and be able to move in and take decisive action to seal the leak within the first few days. "Go big" if necessary to seal it. Just do it, quickly, because time is of the essence. Have backup procedures also in place, ready to go, with all necessary gadgets and trained folks nearby and ready to go quickly. I do also assume that a company that makes billions in profit each quarter would have enough money to do all of this. I'm mad at them and I am willing to point a finger because I find it really hard to believe they could not have done much better. The combination of brainstorming failure scenarios, testing, planning and having billions of dollars to spend on tech and people should have taken them a lot farther, I think. I just don't buy this "we have enough brains and money to build this thing, but not enough brains and money to fix it when it goes bad" argument. The first buys the second, as a general rule. And they've had plenty of time to prepare for the second.

jacquesm 16y ago

Scapegoating is really easy in cases like this, after the fact everybody, including BP knows how it should have been done instead, but we are where we are. Every time something like this happens we learn, and this time it may well prove a lesson so expensive that there will be a moratorium on this kind of operation in the future, simply because the cost of any failure is higher than what we as a species, and as stewards of the planet can afford. Even the drilling of the relief well is not 100% sure to work, the timescale on which it is happening is slow enough that significant damage to the ecology around that leak, and possibly much more than that will occur. I hesitate to even speculate about how bad this could get. But given the fact that there always was a risk the only question you can ask is how much difference any of that would have made and the answer is probably not very much. This is uncharted territory, and as much as I'm pissed off that this happened (because I don't think they should be drilling there in the first place!) I'm not going to point the finger and say they could have done that much better. Anybody that thinks they could have done better should start a deep sea drilling company tomorrow.

mkramlich 16y ago
The folks that built the well and platform, who made the mistake that caused the explosion, and the folks who failed to quickly seal/stop/contain the leak are clearly at fault. I think the issue is whether if a company thinks it is smart enough to start a deep sea oil drilling operation (BP/Transocean/Halliburton) that it should also be smart enough to have a tested plan in place to quickly seal a leak -- at any depth they operate it. The argument being if they want to build a well that would be too deep to stop a leak like this, and yet, somehow not too deep enough to build the well in the first place, that they should not build the well there, period. For example, one of my assumptions based on the physics/engineering I do know is that it should be possible to build a simulated leak contraption, at that depth. And then they could run experiments where they try to stop the leak. Since it would be a controlled experiment they could have control valves to turn on/off the flow of oil (or whatever alternate liquid they use), but the key element is that the contraption has a part where it just gushes out thousands of barrels of the oil-like substance, under conditions as close to a real leak as possible. Test, measure, do post-mortems, tweak and fine-tune their plans and gadgets. Then, disseminate a plan, train people, have tools and gadgets cached reasonably nearby all such wells they operate, and be able to move in and take decisive action to seal the leak within the first few days. "Go big" if necessary to seal it. Just do it, quickly, because time is of the essence. Have backup procedures also in place, ready to go, with all necessary gadgets and trained folks nearby and ready to go quickly. I do also assume that a company that makes billions in profit each quarter would have enough money to do all of this. I'm mad at them and I am willing to point a finger because I find it really hard to believe they could not have done much better. The combination of brainstorming failure scenarios, testing, planning and having billions of dollars to spend on tech and people should have taken them a lot farther, I think. I just don't buy this "we have enough brains and money to build this thing, but not enough brains and money to fix it when it goes bad" argument. The first buys the second, as a general rule. And they've had plenty of time to prepare for the second.