Hurricane Katrina Pictures » BP Disaster in Gulf: Flawed Blowout Preventers Still Being Used

BP Disaster in Gulf: Flawed Blowout Preventers Still Being Used

Posted on April 19th, 2011 by Sherri

A lot of analysis has been done since last year, including a complete review of all procedures, and a forensic study of the blowout preventer that failed to close off the Macondo well. Ultimately, the last line of defense, the blowout preventer, failed, so there was nothing left to prevent the disaster.

Not many lessons that aren’t proprietary were learned, especially this one. The blowout preventers have a design flaw that causes them to fail about 45% of the time when a well blows out. The blowout can damage the blowout preventer to the point that it cannot function nearly half the time.

We don’t really have a handle on what has been learned because the oil industry claims those lessons are proprietary and won’t be made public. They’re saying “trust us”. I hope we can because it seems like we don’t have a choice.

Some things have changed, procedures have been reviewed, but not really that much. The main focus has been on training and stepped-up third-party inspection certification. New permits are now being approved by the Interior Department for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

The rub is, the same blowout preventer technology is still being used on all these newly approved drilling rigs as well as all the older wells that use them. The last line of defense is still the same flawed piece of equipment that failed to prevent the blowout of the Macondo well.

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Here is the link to the DNV report Forensic Examination Report of DeepWater Horizon Blowout Preventer (pdf)

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Here is a link to The MaddowBlog with all the links and video collected through March 30, 2011 about this story. Here is a link to Bob Cavnar’s blog, The Daily Hurricane with more video and analysis.

Investigative journalism wasn’t welcome by the government on their decision to start issuing drilling permits. The Rachel Maddow Show received considerable complaints by the Interior Department about their coverage of the story:

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They don’t seem to like it that news of the biggest change made is well containment after a blowout happens. They now have the containment “hat” thing built and ready to be deployed along with remote operational vehicles (ROVs) when a well blows out. Now they don’t have to hurry up and build them on the fly.

President Obama promised no drilling would resume until we are sure it can be done safely:

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I want to highlight why Rachel stopped the tape to explain about the world oil market. Any oil that is drilled anywhere on the globe goes onto the world market and is sold to whoever is buying. Oil is fungible. That means it doesn’t matter where the oil comes from. Oil is oil. What we get out of the Gulf of Mexico doesn’t necessarily stay in the United States.

Here’s another example that may make the definition of “fungible” more clear. Think of a twenty dollar bill. I can trade my twenty for a ten, a five and 5 ones. I still have twenty dollars. I can trade my twenty dollar bill for your twenty dollar bill, and we both still have twenty dollars. Money is fungible, and in today’s world, oil is fungible.

The whole notion of domestic oil is false. Anyone saying we have to reduce our dependence on foreign oil doesn’t understand how the market works. If we want to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, we have to reduce our dependence on oil period. In a world market, domestic and foreign oil are all the same thing. Oil is fungible.

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What happens when the blowout preventer fails? How about we improve drilling and design so that we don’t depend so much on blowout preventers or post-blowout containment?

And how about we redesign the blowout preventers to actually prevent blowouts, and deploy them throughout the industry? That sounds like a way to create a lot of good manufacturing jobs. There are a lot of oil rigs.