[Zarquon]

IIRC the 500+ page response plan for the Deepwater Horizon included the names of experts who died years before, as well as protection plans for walruses. Turned out that pretty much every oil company had their disaster response plans for offshore GOM drilling written (read: photocopied) by the same small planning service company outside of Houston. Expect response plans for Arctic drilling to include a chapter on the protection of alligators. Nobody ever reads these things.

[ROCKMAN]

Z - So true. Much of the govt compliance requirements are nothing more then massive "make work" paper shuffling. Which is why I recommended fully INDEPENDENT safety officers on board with full govt authority to shut down operations if there's a safety concern. Which isn't as big a deal as it sounds: that's the same authority little ole Rockman has on every one of his wells. Authority AND responsibility.

[Zarquon]

Wasn't there some sort of scandal at the federal Mineral Management Service a few years ago, involving ladies of the night and certain controlled substances, all paid for by you your colleagues? Seems they found a way to keep the inspectors busy, or too exhausted for a long day on the rigs.

[ROCKMAN]

Z - Not sure why you think we would try to bribe MMS rig inspectors. They have almost nothing to do with drilling safety since 99% of the time they aren't on the rig while we're drilling. Mostly they just check for the proper safety equipment is on hand.

But let's look at the Mother of All F*uck Ups: BP at the Macondo blowout. As described many times the primary reason for the blowout was BP using what I consider an extremely unsafe procedure to temporarily abandon a well. A procedure I've never seen done first hand in 41 years. Nor have I ever heard of another company doing it though it may have happened.

But it was a procedure approved by the govt. And I've searched and have yet to find any indication that the govt prohibits it now. Maybe they do and just don't want to advertise their stupidity of allowing in the first place.

BP intentionally put the well bore in an underbalanced condition that could lead to a blow out if the cement failed...which it did. And while BP tested the cement that effort proved ineffective and incorrectly interpreted...but they did follow the methodology required by the govt. There was an argument among the crew about the validity of the test. Maybe had the MMS had an inspector on the rig at the time he might have rejected the test, shut down ops and prevented the blow out. But the govt regs DID NOT REQUIRE an inspector to be there so one wasn't on the rig.

And then there was still the possibility of preventing the blow out had the crew monitored the well properly (as required by govt regs). They would have seen the oil/NG flowing up at them in time to shut the well in and prevented the explosion, fire and oil spill. But, once more, there was no MMS inspector on the rig monitoring the crew to make sure they were following the proper safety procedure. And we're not talking high tech: my 16 yo daughter could have sounded the alarm when she saw the drill mud rushing out the return line when the mud pumps were off. And an MMS would have easily seen that the crew wasn't monitoring the mud returns AS REQUIRED by standard safety procedure AND govt regs.

If you haven't seen this explanation before you might not believe the blow out could have easily been avoided by what amounts to nothing more the applying common sense that required little effort. This was not a difficult well. The blow out occurred during a phase of ops when such an event has very rarely ever happened.

The blow out had nothing to do with bribery or lobbying the MMS. It was purely the result of human error. My proposal for putting addition independent and authorized personnel on an Arctic drill is nothing more then adding one more layer of observation.