Another Predictable Oil Spill Outrage Post

2010 May 2
by Dave

Lamar McKay, the president of BP America, gave a fascinating interview to ABC on Sunday.  McKay nailed the interview. He looked tired and unhappy, but not mad at the interviewer who asked several tough questions. The toughest question came towards the very end of the interview.

The interviewer referenced BP’s application to drill the well. The application claimed that BP had enough resources in the area to deal with a worst case scenario that was listed as a 300,000 gallon per day leak. That is more than is currently leaking. The document claimed that the 48 mile distance from shore would ensure that BP would be able to contain and mitigate environmental effects before the resulting slick could reach the shore. Oops.

Since those claims of ability to cope with disaster are obviously mistaken, I would not be surprised to see a lot of action challenging existing and future applications. Compounding the egg on BP’s face is the fact that last year’s Montara spill near Australia provided a very clear example to the industry of exactly what their current ability to stop this kind of incident was. A relief well was drilled, much like is now being done in the Gulf of Mexico. It took ten weeks to stop the oil from pumping out of the sea floor.

You would have thought that the offshore drilling industry might have taken the hint and readied a plan to stop future seabed leaks faster. You would be wrong. BP is currently finishing up work on a 74 ton steel and concrete dome and it’s attendant delivery mechanism. It should be finished in about a week. It’s a great idea. It’s also an obvious idea. If they were able to come up with it now, they probably could have come up with it last year after Montara. Unfortunately that would have meant that the industry actually put some effort into doing some lessons learned work after that accident.

This brings up another point. The industry cannot be trusted to increase it’s safety precautions in the wake of accidents without government and public prodding. The wonder with which we have viewed the ever increasing depths from which oil can be retrieved took for granted that the same level of technology had been focused on the obvious problem of what to do if something went wrong.

It looks like Haliburton is going to have to go into the business of building big domes and storing them around the world for swift deployment. Should be good business. I’m sure it would supplement the income from the cementing work that Haliburton did on both the Montara and Deepwater Horizon platforms right before their spills.

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