Source:
Mother JonesBP Disaster was "Avoidable"
Dear BP: You're busted. Yours, the Oil Spill Commission.— By Kate Sheppard
Wed Jan. 5, 2011 3:46 PM PST
The April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon that claimed 11 lives and unleashed 4.9 million barrels of oil on the Gulf of Mexico was caused by "a failure of management," and the risk that resulted from a series of bad decisions
"was both unreasonably large and avoidable," concludes the National Oil Spill Commission in its final report.
The complete version of the much-awaited report isn't due out until next Tuesday—but
late Wednesday, the commission released one chapter of it that focuses on the causes of the blowout. It also released a list of the decisions made by rig operator BP, rig owner Transocean, and cement-provider Halliburton that could have contributed to the disaster. From the report:
https://motherjones.com/files/chapter_4.pdf *****
The well blew out because a number of separate risk factors, oversights, and outright mistakes combined to overwhelm the safeguards meant to prevent just such an event from happening. But most of the mistakes and oversights at Macondo can be traced back to a single overarching failure—a failure of management. Better management by BP, Halliburton, and Transocean would almost certainly have prevented the blowout by improving the ability of individuals involved to identify the risks they faced, and to properly evaluate, communicate, and address them. A blowout in deepwater was not a statistical inevitability.
............
But the final report does make it clear that the commission has concluded that BP, Halliburton, and Transocean all made decisions that saved time when there were less risky (and more time-consuming) alternatives available. Of those nine critical decisions that the report lists, seven saved the drillers time. The report doesn't assess motivations, however, and declines to state whether there was a conscious decision to cut corners: "Whether purposeful or not, many of the decisions that BP, Halliburton, and Transocean made that increased the risk of the Macondo blowout clearly saved those companies significant time (and money)."Read more:
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/01/oil-spill-commission-report
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