Posted on 06/14/2010 5:23:23 PM PDT by Rational Thought
NEW YORK (CBS NEWS) -- BP hoped to drill the well in 51 days for $96 million. But things ran way behind schedule and over budget, reports CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson.
Leasing the Deepwater Horizon cost BP a million dollars every two days. The day of the explosion, the rig was already 43 days late for its next job.
Investigators say that may be why BP took so many risks. Like choosing a cheaper well casing over a safer option that would have cost $7 to $10 million more.
One BP colleague emailed another: "This has been [a] nightmare well which has everyone all over the place."
On going the cheaper route, internal BP emails read: "saves a lot of time … saves a good deal of time/money."
BP also rejected advice from Halliburton, the contractor hired to finish out the well. Halliburton recommended using 21 so-called "centralizers" to keep the well casing centered.
A BP official, John Guide, worried that would "take 10 hours ... I do not like this."
Instead of 21, BP decided to use just six. Halliburton warned that would mean a well with "a severe gas flow problem."
Of the risk, one BP Engineer, Brett Cocales, wrote: "who cares, it's done, end of story, will probably be fine."
The Obama Spin Machine is hard at work.
Instead of 21, BP decided to use just six. Halliburton warned that would mean a well with “a severe gas flow problem.”
I’ll bet there are Cheney bashers all over the country who just burst into tears.
BO won’t mention the part about Halliburton.
Turns out it’s better to do it right than to do it on time, and on budget.
Someone might ask how Obama’s inspectors missed all these safety violations.
ping
Words that will haunt them
I believe that was covered by the Safety Exemptions and Waivers the administration gave, or extended, to BP last year.
There is indication that there were disputes over procedures on the Deepwater Horizon hours before the explosion. The disagreement was between employees of rig operator Transocean Ltd. and oil giant BP PLC. Deepwater Horizon drilling crews had fought a multitude of troubles from this well for months. One thing was the alarming gas pressures coming out of this well.
Key representatives from both companies had a heated argument in an 11 a.m. meeting on April 20th, less than 11 hours before the platform exploded. It ultimately ended with a BP official deciding to remove heavy drilling fluid from the well and replacing it with lighter-weight sea water that was unable to prevent gas from surging to the surface and exploding. This was the fatal mistake that set the chain of events to follow.
Employees and experts testified that in the hours before the explosion, they witnessed a power struggle over the lighter sea water decision. It was typically the kind of argument among the different parties that lease and run complicated offshore drilling operations, but this time it had deadly consequences.
One employee who worked for the rig owner, Transocean, was so mad after the fight he warned they’d be relying on the rig’s blowout preventer if they proceeded the way BP wanted.
“He pretty much grumbled, ‘Well, I guess that’s what we have those pinchers for,’” the rig’s chief mechanic, Doug Brown, said of Jimmy Harrell, the top Transocean official on the rig. “Pinchers” was likely Harrell’s reference to the shear rams in the blowout preventers, the final means of stopping an explosion.
It’s not clear to me that these are violations. You can do the job with gold plating, and know that it’s as safe as can be, or you can do the job at a minimal level that just barely is within the letter of the law. I’m not in a position to say, but it’s not clear to me that BP really made a mistake. Stuff happens.
I'd call their enthusiastic financial suppot of the Obama campaign a huge mistake.
The way this administration operates, it would not surprise me in the least to find that they looked the other way while BP cut corners.
So, were the guys that made this decision killed in the explosion, or are they around to face the consequences?
The ones who actually made those decisions are still around as they wouldn’t be caught dead anywhere near actual work being done!
A motto I’ve tried to apply too all my activities is one I learned in my first job:
“There’s never enough time to do it right the first time but always plenty of time to do it over.”
Not specific to this instance, but in general, the willingness to take risks in the field is inversely proportional to the proximity to the wellbore.
I have heard more than one company hand tell someone in an office, “If you want to run this thing, I’ll go home and leave the keys in it.” The Company Hands often prevail. It is their job to evaluate what needs to be done, and if they err on the side of safety and get canned for it, they would likely tell you they didn’t want to work for that company anyway if they would run things like that.
It is not a position for the timid, you gotta have the balls to resist pressure and do the right thing.
(Now anyone want to tell me how well the average politician would do in that job?)
well, look at all the money they saved. /s Now, about that escrow account ...
Huh??? What about fiduciary responsibility to the stockholders?
Here is a much expanded synopsis of the well from the first attempt in Oct. 09 until the explosion on Apr. 20, 2010.
A few excerpts:
BP started working on the well in October, using a different rig. After three weeks natural gas got into the well, called a "kick." That's not uncommon. But two weeks later a hurricane damaged the rig and it had to be towed to port for repairs.
BP started again in January, this time with Transocean's Deepwater Horizon, a warhorse rig that had worked for BP for years. BP filed a new drilling permit with federal regulators ......
March 8, 2010.......
That day, workers discovered that gas was seeping into the well, according to drilling reports from the rig reviewed by the Journal. Workers lowered a measuring device to determine what was happening, but when they tried to pull it back up, it wouldn't budge. Engineers eventually told them to plug the last 2,000 feet of the then-13,000-foot hole with cement and continue the well by drilling off in a different direction.......
Other problems arose. The rock was so brittle drilling mud cracked it open and escaped. One person familiar with the matter estimates BP lost at least $15 million worth of the fluid......
end excerpts.....
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