Discussion:
Describe some of the mistakes you believe were made leading up to and in response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. What actions do you believe BP could have taken to prevent the spill or minimize the effects of it?
PLEASE EXPLAIN WHY YOU AGREE WITH MY CLASSMATE RESPONSE TO THE ABOVE QUESTIONS? (A MINIMUM OF 125 WORDS)
The blowout and oil spill on the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico was caused by a flawed well plan that did not include enough cement between the 7-inch production casing and the 9 7/8-inch protection casing. The presumed blowout preventer (BOP) failure is an important but secondary issue. Much information has surfaced since the accident through congressional and Mineral Management Service (MMS) hearings, public statements from the companies involved and, on May 16, a feature report on CBS Television's Sixty Minutes program. Most of this information comes from eye-witness accounts by people on or near the Deepwater Horizon at the time of the blowout. The destruction of the Deepwater Horizon had been building for weeks in a series of mishaps.
The tension in every drilling operation is between doing things safely and doing them fast; time is money and this job was costing BP a million dollars a day. Mike Williams was the chief electronics technician in charge of the rig's computers and electrical systems. With the schedule slipping, Williams says a BP manager ordered a faster pace. Williams says, during a test, they closed the gasket. But while it was shut tight, a crewman on deck accidentally nudged a joystick, applying hundreds of thousands of pounds of force, and moving 15 feet of drill pipe through the closed blowout preventer. Later, a man monitoring drilling fluid rising to the top made a troubling find. Chunks of rubber were found in the drilling fluid. It was reported but ignored. Another contributing factor is the cement job on the rig. Several investigators say the company may have completed the job before knowing its cement formula was stable. The cement contained a nitrogen additive to make it lighter so that it would flow more easily and better fill the area between the casing and the lost circulation-washout zone. This also may have decreased its sealing effectiveness. Gas from the reservoir may have further diluted the viscosity of the cement. The list goes on and on.
The sad fact is that this was an entirely preventable disaster. Poor decisions by management were the real cause. Ironically, on the day of the accident, several BP managers were on the Deepwater Horizon for a ceremony to congratulate the crew for seven years without an injury. There were engineers available for consultation but never utilized also.