Big Oil & Greed: BP Doing What Mother Nature Could Not
In the fateful hours before the Deepwater Horizon exploded about 50 miles off the Louisiana shore...
a safety test was supposedly performed to detect if explosive gas was leaking from the mile-deep well.
While some data were being transmitted to shore for safekeeping right up until the blast, officials from Transocean, the rig owner, told Congress that...
the last seven hours of its information are missing and that all written logs were lost in the explosion.
Earlier tests that suggested explosive gas was leaking were preserved.
The gap poses a mystery for investigators: What decisions were made — and what warnings might have been ignored?
In the hours leading up to the explosion, workers finished pumping cement into the exploratory well to bolster and seal it against leaks until a later production phase.
After the tests that indicated leakage, workers debated the next step and eventually decided to resume work, for reasons that remain unclear.
At the same time, heavy drilling fluid — or mud — was being pumped out of a pipe rising to the surface from the wellhead, further whittling the well's defenses.
It was replaced with lighter seawater in preparation for dropping a final blob of cement into the well as a temporary plug for the pipe.
When underground gas surged up uncontrollably through the well, desperate rig workers tried to cap it with a set of supersized emergency cutoff valves known as a blowout preventer.
However, the device was leaking hydraulic fluid and missing at least one battery, and one of its valves had been swapped with a useless testing part.
The BP oil spill threatens New Orleans and the entire Gulf Coast in a way that's more insidious than Hurricane Katrina.
The failure of the levees and the response from the previous administration, widely criticized for incompetence and indifference...
followed an act of nature: the destruction, immediate; the impact, obvious; and the pain and suffering, visible to all.
The BP disaster has only one cause: human greed, and the almost inevitable result, negligence.
Was it an accident? Only if we define "accident" as negligence.
The failure of the "shear ram," the set of steel blades intended to slash through a pipe at the top of a well and close off the flow of crude, should not have surprised BP or the corporations that work for it.
Eight years ago, the Minerals Management Service found that 50% of the shear rams tested failed.
Calling the failure of the "last resort device" an accident is like calling the damage caused by a drunken driver an accident.
The Nattering One muses... Failure to take the proper precautions is not an accident; it's negligence.
One should not lose sight of the role of companies like Halliburton...
under investigation because it was responsible for the cement seal that apparently leaked...
Cameron International, which supplied the rig's blowout prevention system; or Transocean, which manufactured the rig.
Hat tip to Donna Brazile at CNN
and AP writers Jeffrey Collins in Hammond, La., Jeff Donn in Boston, Chris Kahn in New York, Justin Pritchard in Los Angeles, Garance Burke in Fresno, Calif., and Fred Frommer and Seth Borenstein in Washington.
a safety test was supposedly performed to detect if explosive gas was leaking from the mile-deep well.
While some data were being transmitted to shore for safekeeping right up until the blast, officials from Transocean, the rig owner, told Congress that...
the last seven hours of its information are missing and that all written logs were lost in the explosion.
Earlier tests that suggested explosive gas was leaking were preserved.
The gap poses a mystery for investigators: What decisions were made — and what warnings might have been ignored?
In the hours leading up to the explosion, workers finished pumping cement into the exploratory well to bolster and seal it against leaks until a later production phase.
After the tests that indicated leakage, workers debated the next step and eventually decided to resume work, for reasons that remain unclear.
At the same time, heavy drilling fluid — or mud — was being pumped out of a pipe rising to the surface from the wellhead, further whittling the well's defenses.
It was replaced with lighter seawater in preparation for dropping a final blob of cement into the well as a temporary plug for the pipe.
When underground gas surged up uncontrollably through the well, desperate rig workers tried to cap it with a set of supersized emergency cutoff valves known as a blowout preventer.
However, the device was leaking hydraulic fluid and missing at least one battery, and one of its valves had been swapped with a useless testing part.
The BP oil spill threatens New Orleans and the entire Gulf Coast in a way that's more insidious than Hurricane Katrina.
The failure of the levees and the response from the previous administration, widely criticized for incompetence and indifference...
followed an act of nature: the destruction, immediate; the impact, obvious; and the pain and suffering, visible to all.
The BP disaster has only one cause: human greed, and the almost inevitable result, negligence.
Was it an accident? Only if we define "accident" as negligence.
The failure of the "shear ram," the set of steel blades intended to slash through a pipe at the top of a well and close off the flow of crude, should not have surprised BP or the corporations that work for it.
Eight years ago, the Minerals Management Service found that 50% of the shear rams tested failed.
Calling the failure of the "last resort device" an accident is like calling the damage caused by a drunken driver an accident.
The Nattering One muses... Failure to take the proper precautions is not an accident; it's negligence.
One should not lose sight of the role of companies like Halliburton...
under investigation because it was responsible for the cement seal that apparently leaked...
Cameron International, which supplied the rig's blowout prevention system; or Transocean, which manufactured the rig.
Hat tip to Donna Brazile at CNN
and AP writers Jeffrey Collins in Hammond, La., Jeff Donn in Boston, Chris Kahn in New York, Justin Pritchard in Los Angeles, Garance Burke in Fresno, Calif., and Fred Frommer and Seth Borenstein in Washington.
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