BP Knew of Deepwater Horizon Problems 11 Months Ago

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/us/30rig.html?pagewanted=all

by tessro • 16 years ago

41 40 16 years ago

jared314• 16 years ago

All 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• 16 years ago

A 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.

jquery2• 16 years ago

While 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.

ars2• 16 years ago

I have a few numbers. Almost 1 billion wells have been drilled, and about 100,000 offshore wells.

tessro• 16 years ago

Which 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• 16 years ago

This article was posted (and extensively discussed) yesterday in the comments on the other Deepwater Horizon story:

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/SB1000142405274870402620457526...

binspace4• 16 years ago

I 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.

waterlesscloud6• 16 years ago

Excellent. So let's talk about regulating all these dot com companies...

silentOpen4• 16 years ago

Name a dot-com with $1bn+ in liability and we can talk about regulating it.

binspace4• 16 years ago

Against oil spills? Yeah, the .com I work for will not cause an oil spill.

Data security, that's a different manner. Yes, companies should be secure if they claim to be, especially if they store data about their customers. Litigation and bad press, in these cases, seem to cover things well, since there tends to be more competition in the .com space. Fortunately most .com's do not need to keep sensitive information. Some do however. Sucks for them.

In the case of a player in an oligopoly for a critical industry (Energy), it's a bit different. In safety-critical industries, there is strong regulation. Why not in industries which can wreak severe environmental havoc?

The environmental damage BP caused may be worth more than the company itself. Like Exxon, I don't see them having to pay the full cost.

hga• 16 years ago

One of these days people like us are going to be grilled by a Congressional committee of people who have never actually done anything in their lives but politics, and just like in this article we're going to be asked:

"You knew there were bugs in your software and you shipped/deployed it anyway?"

What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

jquery2• 16 years ago

> I also hope that America begins to realize that large corporations rarely have the interests of the population in mind

Agreed. I also hope that America begins to realize that government and politicians rarely have the interests of the population in mind.

binspace4• 16 years ago

I have been hearing that senators do listen to their constituents, especially if there is a massive email/letter campaign. Yes, this is at best inefficient.

I just hope there's a discussion for more of a direct democracy. We have the technology...

Of course we also need more transparency.

bwhite2• 16 years ago

The oil spill goes on the list of recent events in which the government isolated an industry from downside and encouraged risk-taking. BP's legal liability is capped at $75 million by Federal law.

In the case in which an industry makes lots of money and/or that money is concentrated in the hands of a relatively small handful of players, the nearly inevitable result is regulatory capture. All the regulations in the world don't help when the legislature rubber-stamps laws written and endorsed by the industry. And enforcement is worthless when the regulators do not have sufficient experience to truly determine culpability.

dantheman2• 16 years ago

Once again the problem is not government regulation -- if the corporation was exposed to the full liability of their actions they would make damn sure that they were insured to cover the damages. The insurance agency would make damn sure that they followed the rules and that appropriate risk mitigation was taking place, and the corporation would follow this since if they tried to sidestep or sneak by then the insurance agency would not cover the risk.

These problems have long been worked out, and yes disasters would still happen, but at least in those cases the victims would be compensated.

Remember the EPA and all sorts regulations on pollution are the government saying it's ok to pollute your land and water by X amount without compensating you. Your property rights are violated by government regulation not protected.

loewenskind• 16 years ago

Well, if BP were exposed to the full liability here they would simply go out of business. I don't know about you, but personally I would rather people are prevented from killing me. Punishing them after the fact doesn't do me any good.

Your solution actually still seems to still call for regulation, just by a private company instead of the government. I would submit that there isn't a problem having government do the regulation, the problem would simply be having the US government doing them.

ck2• 16 years ago

Just 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...

Half of it's critical systems that were installed were not reviewed or tested.

retube• 16 years ago

I 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

Direct link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/30/oil-spills-niger...

BP Knew of Deepwater Horizon Problems 11 Months Ago

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