Thompkin’s22 you are the only one that is speaking with even a semblance of knowledge on the subject, and it is good to have a roughneck on board here.
People don’t understand the enormity of the situation, and the complexity of the failure that took place. It is easy to look at this like Valdez and shake fingers at this company, that administration, ext. However in the case of Valdez you had human error, a gross error that changed the largest, most profitable corporation on the planets entire operating structure as a result. In the case of the Horizon you had an extraordinary failure, that like you mentioned caused all of the fail safes to go out at the same time, not to mention the accident itself, the depth of the well.
People on here are complaining about how BP and the feds weren’t prepared for this, and that ext. But what they are failing to see is that they were prepared, but their preparations failed due to unseen variables at the time. How then, is this human error beyond a lack of experience? You can’t plan for something you can not, given all of your collective knowledge as an industry, foresee happening.
The fact that people are reacting in such a way shows that they can’t even understand the complexity of the situation.
I have read after action reports from this published by the largest drillers in the world. Every company is thinking, every company is working towards solving this right now. And to tell you the truth, cutting ANY of them out, especially BP would be the biggest folly this country could do in this situation. As you stated it will cut out massive amounts of money, time, and most importantly experts from the process. But also, and this is the most important thing for the nay sayers here: it will also give BP a legal argument to attempt to walk away from any lawsuits, or fines that will result. Even if negligence is found on the part of BP, or Halliburton, their argument to avoid lawsuits could simply be: We had a plausible solution in place to deal with the fall out, and then the government cut us out of the equation, therefore we are not liable, and it is ultimately the governments fault that the spill got so bad.
No one wants that.
Such action would also cut out BP’s competitors from contributing to the clean up of this spill, and would ultimately make the entire industry more brazen if they know the government is going to bail them out and take over the clean up. Most people out of the industry don’t realize that some of the largest innovations in regards to oil spill clean up came as a result of Valdez. This was due to the pressure placed on Exxon by the government, and the combined efforts of government and business to solve the problem. While Valdez was ugly, several spills since have been less so, AND the Horizon spill would be far worse if the steps made with Valdez never took place.
On that note, I would like to say that the industry is well aware of the ramifications of this spill, and many companies are pooling resources. Clean up on this magnitude can’t happen over night, and the last thing we need are knee jerk reactions that stop people or slow people from doing their job. Here is a for release published statement from BP’s largest competitor (please be respectful with this):
The following statement was released today:
Statement by ExxonMobil Regarding the BP-Deepwater Horizon
Incident - April 30, 2010
ExxonMobil is providing assistance in the form of personnel and equipment
to support efforts in the Gulf of Mexico.
“We are all reminded of the need to be ever vigilant in the area of safety
and environmental protection as a result of this tragic incident,” said Rex
W. Tillerson, chairman and chief executive officer.
“Our thoughts go out to the workers and their families and to people in the
impacted areas. We will work with industry and government to help mitigate
the impacts of this incident. We stand ready to support efforts to
determine how such an incident can be prevented from happening again."
ExxonMobil has offered the use of a drilling rig as a staging base, two
supply vessels, an underwater vehicle and support vessel and has provided
experts to respond to BP’s request for technical advice on blowout
preventers, dispersant injection, well construction and containment
options.
The company also continues to support the work of Tier 3 spill response and
cleanup cooperatives, such as Marine Spill Response Corporation, Clean
Gulf, and Oil Spill Response Ltd., to provide personnel and equipment, such
as dispersants, fire boom and radios. ExxonMobil is also identifying,
procuring and manufacturing additional supplies of dispersant for potential
use.
I know how hard this is for all of us, I lived through Valdez and it directly effected my family. All the emotions we feel now were felt then. That clean up didn’t happen over night, and this one wont either. But the clean up will happen.
And if you have true deep seated emotions that fill you with nothing more then anger and loathing towards the government and these companies, then DONT DRIVE, don’t heat your house with gas, don’t use plastic anything, don’t go to a hospital, and sell your M4 and all of your PMAGS, because you provided the market that drove for this exploration. Because of this market 11 families lost loved ones, and a million others were effected by the fallout.
