re: #221 reine.de.tout

I understand your concern and skepticism.
All I know is what my husband tells me, plus I know that he’s worked deepwater for 25 years, since the mid-80’s, and has drilled over 100 wells, and never had anything close to this happen, nor has anyone in his company. So that’s all I’ve got to go on. I think 25 years is a good historical record on which to make a judgement. Others don’t, and that’s OK.

He’s a mud engineer right? We probably know some of the same people. I agree, from what I’ve seen the oil industry now is one of the safest industries going. I’ve seen official spill reports (and subsequent fines levied) because some cooking oil went over the side of a rig. I’ve done the helicopter bail out course. I’d hop on a ‘copter today and head out to a rig if I was given the job.

Which is why Deep Horizon scares the beejesus out of me. This is an industry where “everything going wrong” is suppose to a relic of things like Piper Alpha. Everyone involved with this blow out should have said “Stop!” and no one did.

Maybe this type of thing could only occur at BP. Maybe Exxon et all have the proper internal controls to keep something like this from happening. But, clearly the regulation and enforcement is not there to keep “destroying the gulf” from being nothing more than a corporate motto. That’s really bad. The other thing is, BP clearly didn’t have a damn clue how to deal with a blow out. I believe the plan they submitted said they could deal with about to 60k barrels/day. Clearly that was bullshit. But no one else’s response plans have been tested either. So I really can’t say if Exxon or anyone else is ready to deal with a situation like this.

Its bad safety engineering to say “Well, if we do everything right, we don’t need to deal with situation X”. That’s not a plan, that’s a prayer.