On 05/20/2010 06:31 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote: > This report is excellent. It is amazing how quickly they got to the > heart of the matter. See: > > http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/05/16/60minutes/main6490197.shtml > > In common with other major industrial accidents such as Three Mile > Island, this was fundamentally caused by incompetence and by an > unfortunate combination of factors.
That's not what the 60 Minutes report concludes. The problems with the blowout preventer could possibly be laid to incompetence, but that would have been recoverable if BP hadn't been pushing for speed all the way down the line. As I read it, there was some bad luck, there were some things that didn't work out right, but it was the overarching demand to go faster that exacerbated everything and ultimately blew it up into a disaster. And it was BP pushing for speed, all the way, at the cost of everything else. As far as I can tell from the article, the final accident happened when one of the cement plugs placed by Halliburton failed. But that wouldn't have happened if the pressure had been lower, or if the drilling mud had been left in the hole before the last plug was placed. BP wanted the mud out, despite the fact that their pressure readings were not reliable, because it would speed things up. In short, BP *gambled* that it would be OK to suck the mud out despite the problems with the gasket and the blowout preventer controls, because they value speed over safety -- that is apparent in their behavior in other situations. They surely knew it was a gamble. The fact that they took the gamble, and lost, doesn't imply they're incompetent. Financially, it may still have been the right move (not all "financially correct" moves work out). The fact that they took the gamble at all, on the other hand, could be said to indicate that they're *evil*, because they put much more than their own profits at risk. > (Three Mile Island was blamed on the > operators, but the real incompetence was in the design and Federal Gov't > oversight, in my opinion.) > > This has again triggered a series of soul searching articles in the mass > media questioning whether we can afford fossil fuels, and advocating > alternative energy. Unfortunately, I cannot get any of the authors, > commentators or pundits to look at cold fusion. > > - Jed
