Vladimir's Energy Blog

As many of you know, your humble correspondent is a veteran of 32 years of service in the oil and gas industry, currently serving as the operations manager for a small Gulf of Mexico exploration and production company. This week, the President’s Oil Spill Commission published its 380-page report on the BP blowout and spill on the Deepwater Horizon. I won’t pretend to have read the thing, but there are a few recommendations and outcomes worth commenting upon.

Panel: More reform needed to prevent future spills

When asked about the likelihood Congress would enact some of its suggestions, especially with a Republican majority in Congress looking to curb government regulation and spending, panel co-chair and former Florida Democratic Senator Bob Graham said that the magnitude of the disaster “would override an ideological preference for less government, less government intrusion, less government cost.” …

The panel said Congress should draft legislation to create within the Interior Department an independent safety agency and a separate environmental office to evaluate the risks of oil drilling to natural resources. Such a change would not require any additional funding.

Two new bureaucracies, eh? Color me unsurprised.

Reading these government reports, one gets the impression that the oil and gas business would conduct itself like the Seventh Fleet on shore leave, were it not for the stalwart defenders of safety and the environment embodied in the Department of the Interior’s inspectors.

In the wake of the BP Spill, we’ve seen a raft of new regulatory initiatives from the BOEMRE, the Interior agency which has oversight responsibilities for offshore oil and gas operations. Many of the new regs have nothing to do with addressing the problems of BP or Transocean at Macondo. Some of the new requirements for drilling wells arguably don’t add a margin of safety and may even increase the risk of a well’s failure. Industry’s attempts to convince the regulators of this, however, have fallen upon deaf ears. There’s a new sheriff in town, and he aims to let everyone know who’s boss.

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When it comes to straight news reporting on the oil and gas industry, nobody outshines the New York Times.

The featured front page story in the Sunday Times (12/26) was a deep investigative piece on the Deepwater Horizon blowout. Reporters David Barstow, David Rohde and Stephanie Saul interviewed 21 survivors and pieced together the nine harrowing minutes between the mud flow at the surface of the Macondo well and the catastrophic explosion and fire.

Nearly 400 feet long, the Horizon had formidable and redundant defenses against even the worst blowout. It was equipped to divert surging oil and gas safely away from the rig. It had devices to quickly seal off a well blowout or to break free from it. It had systems to prevent gas from exploding and sophisticated alarms that would quickly warn the crew at the slightest trace of gas. The crew itself routinely practiced responding to alarms, fires and blowouts, and it was blessed with experienced leaders who clearly cared about safety.

On paper, experts and investigators agree, the Deepwater Horizon should have weathered this blowout.

This is the story of how and why it didn’t.

In the video and slideshow sidebars, you hear several of the survivors stories in their own words, along with an animation that shows the escape route taken by two of the luckiest survivors.

This is the story from the rig workers’ viewpoint. It is told with dignity and respect for the fallen.

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Is it a convenient memory, selective amnesia, or a tacit admission by The Old Grey Lady that they don’t expect anyone to read and actually remember the dreck that they print?

From an article datelined October 23, St. Pete Beach, Florida:

Should BP’s Money Go Where the Oil Didn’t?

Actually, there wasn’t a drop of oil anywhere in sight. Not then, not in the months that followed and not now. This barrier-island city and snowbird haven is hundreds of miles from the nearest land befouled by the collapse of the Deepwater Horizon platform and the epic gusher it left behind….

Of course, anyone who bothered to look at a map would have known that St. Pete Beach — and hundreds of other vacation spots throughout the Sunshine State — would have pristine beachfronts through the summer, even under the worst of the worst-case scenarios.  [emphasis added]

How’s that again?

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