I wonder if mining oil shale might not be better relative to environmental risks than drilling for oil in deep water. The risks of oil shale are relatively well known; the real risks of deep water drilling not so much. Until now.

I am writing this not to put down oil shale but to point out that the issue was that BP ended up the way it did because it didn’t do things by the book. The issue was not unknown risks, but a company that bypassed standard procedures which put the well at risk. As a former engineer in oil drilling services, my take is that neither lack of better technology nor unknown risks were not the primary causes for the blowout: BP cut corners and paid the price. The WSJ’s excellent articles on the issue show that BP did not follow standard rig procedures. Moreover, they kept changing their plans. (No accident that Transocean hands were in a big disagreement with the BP company man, who apparently was following a change of plans from the home office.)

When rig safety is an issue, do not try to save time and money. When I read what BP had done, such as replacing heavy drilling mud with much lighter seawater BEFORE putting down the final bottom plug, I thought to myself: what were these IDIOTS thinking? As a commenter at one of the WSJ articles put it, that was like popping the cork on a bottle of champagne. Perhaps BP should have taken the money it contributed to the ∅bama campaign and used it for drilling safely.

It as if the decision maker went from an experienced engineering hand to a college freshman majoring in Outer Mongolian Gender Studies at San Francisco Community College, who got 300 on the Math SAT- and cheated to get that.- and whose only work experience was registering voters for ACORN.Whoever was making the decisions at BP kept passing the buck down the decision tree. Here is a review of the buckpassing, as best I recall.


1) Perhaps the most basic way to check on cement integrity is to call on Schlumberger to run a wireline test. Schlumberger has been the best in the world at wireline testing for a century, and they are not cheap. BP sent Schlumberger home that morning without running the test.
2) A less expensive way to check on the integrity of the cement is to run some pressure tests. BP at first said pressure tests were unsatisfactory and inconclusive. Then BP said the results were good. I conclude from all this that the results are murky.
3) Another way to check on cement integrity is to pump drilling mud down the drill pipe and then up the wellbore to check on gas at the bottom of the hole- called “bottoms up” in the oil field. BP stopped this test well short of completion.
4) If you have negative to inconclusive results on the above, you pump down the bottom plug with the high density mud behind it to keep the pressure in. If you are certain that there is cement integrity, you can speed things up and replace the heavier drilling mud with much lighter seawater, which ordinarily you wouldn’t do until the bottom plug is set. They weren’t certain, and they went ahead.
5) Kaboom.

In looking at how the decisions kept getting passed down the line, I can see how some think sabotage was involved. I don’t know any company man I worked with who would have been so stupid. Interesting that a big crowd of BP honchos visited the rig that day. Maybe decisions were made to try to look good to the big bosses. Who knows?

Tim Newman’s White Sun of the Desert has some good discussions on the issue- my comments included. Here are some of his postings on what transpired before the blowout. He has other good articles on post-blowout issues. The below articles also link to WSJ articles.

Fateful Decisions on the Deepwater Horizon
Back Pedalling over BP
Obama Talks Tough on Macondo Hearings
Macondo Failure Mechanisms Identified

The Oil Drum has a good discussion on what caused the blowout.