Oil Watchdog

5-18-10 by dugan

We know that federal regulators excused BP from filing a legally required detailed disaster plan on its ill-fated Gulf of Mexico oil rig. We know that BP’s assertions that it had such a plan were false–even though its own engineers warned three years ago about deficiencies in its blowout preventers. We know, thanks to the Center for Public Integrity, that BP refineries accounted for 97% of "willful, egregious" safety violations since 2007. We know BP is accused of seriously cutting safety corners at another deep-water rig in the Gulf. Now, with a broader Wall Street Journal story on deep-water driling,(subscription
barrier) we know that all of the energy companies are using their rig
employees and the environment as disposable lab rats. It gives new
meaning to "uncharted waters."

From the WSJ story:

A huge jolt convulsed an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. The pipe
down to the well on the ocean floor, more than a mile below, snapped in
two. Workers battled a toxic spill.

That was 2003—seven years
before last month’s Deepwater Horizon disaster, which killed 11 people
and sent crude spewing into the sea. And in 2004, managers of BP
PLC, the oil giant involved in both incidents, warned in a trade
journal that the company wasn’t prepared for the long-term,
round-the-clock task of dealing with a deep-sea spill.

It still isn’t, as Deepwater Horizon demonstrates and as BP’s chief executive, Tony Hayward
said recently. It’s "probably true" that BP didn’t do enough planning
in advance of the disaster, Mr. Hayward said. There are some
capabilities, he said, "that we could have available to deploy
instantly, rather than creating as we go."

It’s a problem that spans the industry, whose major players include Chevron Corp., Royal Dutch Shell
and Petróleo Brasileiro SA. Without adequately planning for trouble,
the oil business has focused on developing experimental equipment and
techniques to drill in ever deeper waters, according to a Wall Street
Journal examination of previous deepwater accidents. As drillers pushed
the boundaries, regulators didn’t always mandate preparation for
disaster recovery or perform independent monitoring.

The brief,
roughly two-decade history of deepwater drilling has seen serious
problems: fires, equipment failures, wells that collapsed, platforms
that nearly sank. Since last July, one brand-new deepwater rig—among
the 40 or so operating in at least 1,000 feet of water in the Gulf—was
swept by fire. Another lost power and started to drift, threatening to
detach from the wellhead. Poor maintenance at a third deepwater well
led to a serious gas leak, according to regulatory records.

…

Drilling in deeper water doesn’t change the fundamental process, but
it makes virtually everything harder. Rigs must be bigger so they can
hold more drilling pipe to stretch vast distances. The pipes themselves
must be stronger to withstand ocean currents. Equipment on the sea
floor must be sturdier to face extreme pressures at depth.

Drill
bits must be tougher so they don’t melt in the 400-degree temperatures
they encounter deep in the earth. And it is harder for drillers to
exert just the right amount of pressure down the well bore, enough to
keep oil and gas from spurting upwards—a blowout—but not so much that
they crack open the rocks beneath the surface, which could also lead to
a blowout.

The use of untested techniques has raised alarm bells
among some engineers. In a paper published in a trade journal last
year, three industry engineers in Denmark noted that many deepwater
projects are "dependent on prototype and novel technologies." They
said, "there is significant uncertainty related to the performance of
these systems," because they haven’t been tested in real-world
settings.

Testing in real-world settings–that’s expensive. And when it comes
to money vs. lives, BP has proven before that money comes first. Ask
the families of the 15 refinery workers killed by an explosion at BP’s
Texas City refinery in 2005, an accident later blamed entirely on
safety cost-cutting.

Other companies, notably including Chevron, have barely skirted disaster at their deep-water Gulf rigs. But BP is notably the leader in this safety-be-damned contest. If 11 rig workers died because BP willfully encouraged safety violations, isn’t that manslaughter, not an accident?