8 ms·
BP Knew of Deepwater Horizon Problems 11 Months Ago
- jared314 16y agoAll of this is hindsight. Every piece of equipment has "problems". It is just a matter of how many failures happen at once. A bit like airliners.
- jameskilton 16y agoA valid point, but I would hesitate to agree with this until someone can put together the numbers of how many rigs fall under this "it's a problem, but it's not a risk so go ahead anyway" In terms of the Horizon, the reports I'm hearing basically state that every single major safety device on the well fit this category.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- jquery 16y agoWhile I can't speak specifically to the Horizon, almost every major disaster is the result of multiple major events chained together. To illustrate this point I recommend watching the documentaries Mayday, Air crash investigation, and Seconds from disaster.
- ars 16y agoI have a few numbers. Almost 1 billion wells have been drilled, and about 100,000 offshore wells.
- anigbrowl 16y agoI saw you mention this yesterday. Can you cite your source for this? I find it a little hard to believe there is (or has been) one oil well drilled for every ~6 people on earth.
- prosa 16y agoWhich is why airline engines are stripped and rebuilt practically from scratch on a federally regulated schedule. There is a federal agency that exists solely to maintain safety in air travel, and maintenance of aircraft is very highly regulated. Law of large numbers, sure -- there are bound to be incidents. But in industries like air travel there are checks against machines operating for 11 months in unsafe conditions.
- seldo 16y agoThis article was posted (and extensively discussed) yesterday in the comments on the other Deepwater Horizon story: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1389647 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1389647 The WSJ also has a lot more detail on how the rig was being run prior to the accident: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704026204575266560930780190.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870402620457526...
- binspace 16y agoI just hope for all of our sakes that this is the final nail in the coffin of industry self-regulation. It does not work when it is against your interests to be safe; after all, we love to take risks. I also hope that America begins to realize that large corporations rarely have the interests of the population in mind. There needs to be checks and balances here.
- waterlesscloud 16y agoExcellent. So let's talk about regulating all these dot com companies...
- silentOpen 16y agoName a dot-com with $1bn+ in liability and we can talk about regulating it.
- waterlesscloud 16y agoI see. It's all those other people that need to be regulated. Got it.
- CamperBob 16y agoNo, just the ones who have the ability to destroy vast amounts of resources they don't own.
- Vivtek 16y agoThis is a pretty straw-mannish argument. It's clear to me that if a company is big enough that its irresponsible actions can cause this much harm, it should be regulated. (I note you haven't actually named a dot-com with more than a billion in liability.) Capitalism is not a suicide pact.
- waterlesscloud 16y agoI see nothing here that explains why dot coms should not be regulated.
- ck2 16y agoJust wait until their deepwater Atlantis fails, it will make the Horizon failure look like a puddle. http://www.propublica.org/article/whistleblower-sues-to-stop-atlantis-bp-rig-from-operating http://www.propublica.org/article/whistleblower-sues-to-stop... Half of it's critical systems that were installed were not reviewed or tested.
- retube 16y agoI posted this yesterday, but it didn't get picked up on. It appears that the Niger Delta experience a Deepwater Horizon every single year.... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1390246 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1390246 Direct link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/30/oil-spills-nigeria-niger-delta-shell http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/30/oil-spills-niger...