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Big Oil Fought Off New Safety Rules Before Rig Explosion
As families mourn the 11 workers thrown overboard in the worst oil rig disaster in decades and as the resulting spill continues to spread through the Gulf of Mexico, new questions are being raised about the training of the drill operators and about the oil company's commitment to safety.
NASA image of Oil slick in Gulf of Mexico seen from MODIS on Aqua Satellite. April 25, 2010 Deepwater Horizon, the giant technically-advanced rig which exploded
on April 20 and sank two days later, is leaking an estimated 42,000
gallons per day through a pipe about 5,000 feet below the surface. The
spill has spread across 1,800 square miles
-- an area larger than Rhode Island -- according to satellite images,
oozing its way toward the Louisiana coast and posing a threat to
wildlife, including a sperm whale spotted in the oil sheen.
The massive $600 million rig, which holds the record for boring the deepest oil and gas well in the world -- at 35,050 feet - had passed three recent federal inspections, the most recent on April 1, since it moved to its current location in January. The cause of the explosion has not been determined.
Yet relatives of workers who are presumed dead claim that the oil behemoth BP and rig owner TransOcean violated "numerous statutes and regulations" issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the U.S. Coast Guard, according to a lawsuit filed by Natalie Roshto, whose husband Shane, a deck floor hand, was thrown overboard by the force of the explosion and whose body has not yet been located.
Both companies failed to provide a competent crew, failed to properly supervise its employees and failed to provide Rushto with a safe place to work, according to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. The lawsuit also names oil-services giant Halliburton as a defendant, claiming that the company "prior to the explosion, was engaged in cementing operations of the well and well cap and, upon information and belief, improperly and negligently performed these duties, which was a cause of the explosion."
BP and TransOcean have also aggressively opposed new safety regulations proposed last year by a federal agency that oversees offshore drilling -- which were prompted by a study that found many accidents in the industry.
There were 41 deaths and 302 injuries out of 1,443 incidents from 2001 to 2007, according to the study conducted by the Minerals and Management Service of the Interior Department. In addition, the agency issued 150 reports over incidents of non-compliant production and drilling operations and determined there was "no discernible improvement by industry over the past 7 years."
As a result, the agency proposed taking a more proactive stance by requiring operators to have their safety program audited at least once every three years -- previously, the industry's self-managed safety program was voluntary for operators. The agency estimated that the proposed rule, which has yet to take effect, would cost operators about $4.59 million in startup costs and $8 million in annual recurring costs.
The industry has launched a coordinated campaign to attack those regulations, with over 100 letters objecting to the regulations -- in a September 14, 2009 letter to MMS, BP vice president for Gulf of Mexico production, Richard Morrison, wrote that "we are not supportive of the extensive, prescriptive regulations as proposed in this rule," arguing that the voluntary programs "have been and continue to be very successful," along with a list of very specific objections to the wording of the proposed regulations.
The next day, the American Petroleum Institute and the Offshore Operators Committee, in a joint letter to MMS, emphasized their preference for voluntary programs with "enough flexibility to suit the corporate culture of each company." Both trade groups also claimed that the industry's safety and environmental record has improved, citing MMS data to show that the number of lost workdays fell "from a 3.39 rate in 1996 to 0.64 in 2008, a reduction of over 80%."
The Offshore Operators Committee also submitted to MMS a September 2, 2009 PowerPoint presentation asking in bold letters, "What Do HURRICANES and New Rules Have in Common?" against a backdrop of hurricane activity in the Gulf of Mexico. On the next page, the answer appears: "Both are disruptive to Operations And are costly to Recover From".
The presentation also included the following statements:
"We are disappointed...
- MMS fails to understand that as operators, we can place expectations on contractors, but we cannot do the planning for them MMS adds a lot of prescriptive record keeping and documentation that does nothing to keep people safe"
In addition, TransOcean accountant George Frazer, without identifying his affiliation with the company, submitted a public comment on the proposed regulations stating, "I strongly disagree that a mandated program as proposed is needed," arguing that the proposed action "is a major paperwork-intensive, rulemaking that will significantly impact our business, both operationally and financially," calling it an "unnecessary burden."
"It does appear to be have been an orchestrated effort among most of major oil companies and drilling operators," says Defenders of Wildlife senior policy adviser Richard Charter.
"This event has called attention to fact that there is a long-standing safety problem in offshore industry," he says, noting that he gets phone calls from whistleblowers working on rigs who complain about the work conditions and the environmental damage caused by such operations."
Brian Beckom, a personal-injury attorney who has sued TransOcean several times on behalf of workers, says that "the industry preaches safety, that's what comes out of their corporate mouths, but I know for a fact that is not always the way things go," though he concedes that the company is better than most in the industry, especially some of the smaller "fly-by-night operators". With newer expensive rigs -- BP was paying $500,000 a day to use Deepwater Horizon -- Beckom says "there is tremendous pressure to put production first" and safety issues fall by the wayside.
Industry officials seem to be aware of safety concerns -- in the minutes of a July 2009 meeting of the Health Safety Environment Committee of the International Association of Drilling Contractors trade group, one section is titled, "Stuck on the Plateau." At the meeting, members discussed the difficulty of lowering the number of safety incidents, how to "rock over from the incident plateau" especially in light of a shrinking workforce.
In the current case, the spill's damage has been exacerbated by the depth of the drilling, causing the oil to spread across a wider area and impeding clean-up efforts. On Monday morning, response teams failed to seal off the wellhead with a remote vehicle about a mile under the surface of the water -- an effort akin to "putting a lid on a peanut jar from thousands of feet away," explains Charter.
That threatens to make the spill the most damaging since the Exxon Valdez accident off the coast of Alaska in 1989. It is already the worst oil rig disaster since a blowout on the Union Oil platform off the coast of California in 1969 -- the public outrage over that 11-day oil spill helped spawn the modern environmental movement.
BP and TransOcean did not return calls for comment. Halliburton could not be reached for comment on Monday night.
Here is the proposed rule from the Interior Department's MMS:
Here is the letter from BP objecting to the proposed rule:
35 Comments so far
Show AllBP got what it wanted.
Legaleze...all their are worried about
Lets see, a mining disaster and
a platform disaster
because for the last thirty years adminstrations have let
industry run OSHA
I doubt much will change, even with these two disasters.
We are ever so close to Sinclair's Jungle
OSHA is A corrupt, incompetent JOKE....I will elaborate on this remark soon....
B.P. Exploration-B.P. EXPLOITATION!!!
OSHA is hardly corrupt or incompetent. They are, hovever, badly underfunded and understaffed.
The excerpt below is from the Wikipedia article on the 1988 Piper Alpha disaster. The oil rig was operating in British waters, and the British government investigated (my capitals):
“The second phase of the enquiry made 106 recommendations for changes to North Sea safety procedures, ALL OF WHICH WERE ACCEPTED BY INDUSTRY. Most significant of these recommendations was that the responsibility for enforcing safety in the North Sea should be moved from the Department of Energy to the Health and Safety Executive, as having both production and safety overseen by the same agency was a conflict of interest.”
The proposed MMA rules discussed by Marcus Baram would still allow US oil companies to regulate themselves. According to other commenters, giving the job to OSHA wouldn’t work either. Ronald Reagan lives. We could require all would-be oil company executives to strip naked and step into a 3000F gas fire before they are allowed to assume their duties.
Take a good look at the eco-dysfunction, because the Obama Admin will soon make this the norm by his authorization to open the Eastern Seaboard to drilling without accountability or safety. Yes we can destroy fragil eco-systems! More change we can believe in!
Marcus Baram: "BP and TransOcean have also aggressively opposed new safety regulations proposed last year by a federal agency that oversees offshore drilling -- which were prompted by a study that found many accidents in the industry."
Well, it's certainly no surprise that these corporations, that value profits more than people, would object to anything that would deter them from their sole purpose--making MORE MONEY.
When is someone going to be charged with murder in the deaths of these 11 workers?
Are you kidding?
About the same time they charge Obama for authorizing the murder of non combatants in Afghanistan and Pakistan with his drone strikes.
Of course, Obama's crimes will never be punished. Obama's crimes include violations of human rights and crimes against humanity. His criminal actions are on a much greater scale than even the criminal corporations that benefit from the fascist Amerikkkan government.
Which is why, of course, to the confusion of those (D) party automatons who voted for this Wall St-approved candidate, he made sure that GWB and his cronies were not prosecuted. He knew he'd suffer the same fate.
"no gods, no masters" --m. sanger
And will the penalty fit the conviction? I think that we know how the Chinese dealt with some big biz people charged with just that. We'll be lucky if these people are even called to account at a public trial!
The workers were killed by a "blow out" of the well head caused by a rush of natural gas which is a natural event that happens quite often. There are devices at the well head designed to prevent most blow outs, but they don't have an unlimited capacity. There's also a device that's supposed to "shut-in" the well so it doesn't leak which has also failed. Mining anything is always risky, and oil mining isn't any different. Lots of truckers die doing their jobs, but nobody calls their deaths murders. Willful negligence is another matter, however. Next to nuclear reactors, the big deepwater oil rigs are the most complex machines used by humans, and the deepwater environments are very new and have their own unique risks and challenges. I don't think any safety device could have prevented the blow out.
Clearly, you're very knowledgeable about this issue. You cite at least two "safety" devices that failed. It seems suspicious to me that both of these failed during the same event. Are there regulations and scheduled safety checks that might not have been followed?
Also, it seems to me, that comparing trucking accidents to an explosion of a huge drilling platform in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico doesn't fit. I guess it boils down to the issue you mentioned about "willful neglect." I would like to see an investigation of the matter. On the heels of the mining disaster in West Virginia a few weeks ago, I don't think it's out of the question that someone decided it was more important to make profits despite the safety issues that caused fatalities.
I have worked in the oil field as a mudlogger - one of our jobs being to collect drilling parameter data in order to predict formation pressures in order to assure blow outs don't happen.
Blow-outs (called "gushers" - if they didn't catch fire - in the old days) are hardly "common" in modern drilling. And, they are almost never a "natural event". They are due to human errors in use of formation pressure control techniques. These include typically mis-management of mud density in the borehole during the various parts of the drilling cycle, and not noticing the signs of of the well "kicking" and closing the BOP in time to prevent the kick from progressing to a blowout. These human errors ARE often caused by drilling-production pressures on the tool-pusher (rig superintendant) from his bosses above him.
I don't know at what stage of drilling or development they were at during this accident, but the BOP stack is supposed to be equipped with all the tools needed to shut the well in any part of the drilling operation - including shear rams that can shear through the heaviest drilling steel. In the case of this rig, the BOP and presumably the hydraulic equipment to accutuate it, was 5000 feet down on the sea bed, so there were technical challenges, but since human lives depend on the BOP working this simply means that they should not have been drilling unless they could verify the operation of the BOP by some kind of daily test.
There is a very advanced, sophisticated discussion of this accident that's been ongoing since its occurance at theoildrum.com, some of which was relayed in my comment. Why the BOP failed is a mystery, but the consensus is that the ultra-deepwater drilling environment's physics are the likely culprit, which means the BOP wasn't engineered and/or manufactured well enough.
I suspect we will see further problems related to the new ultra-deepsea environment becase of the physical and technical challenges. If anyone wonders why oil and gasoline are pricey, all they need to do is look at the cost to build and operate an ultra-deepsea oil rig at either Transocean, Diamond Offshore, Seadrill, or some other rig operator's website. Virtually all of future non-OPEC oil extraction will come from the deep and ultra-deepwater regions, and the flow rate is not expected to fully negate the rate of depletion from already existing wells--Peak Oil. Just because a country or company says it has extra production capacity doesn't mean it has enough resouce to use it at 100%. The key metric we at ASPO watch is crude oil production versus all liquids, which are displayed at this Oil Watch Monthly URL, http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/6403 Figure 5 there shows that non-OPEC oil production peaked on late 2003; figure 6 shows well OPEC's response to the rise in oil price as it produced more than it likely ever will again--Peak Oil.
Peak Oil has many implications, almost all of them unwelcome. For a financially instable country not producing a lot of domestic oil, like the UK, the implications are dire. The USA is extremely lucky to produce quite a lot of its own gluttonous consumption, although the badly needed diet has commenced for reasons unrelated to altruism. Contrary to the Conventional Wisdom, the US citizenry has very little oil, natural gas, or coal to its name--It's all privatized except for the Strategic Oil Reserve, and that's released to private refiners and private distribution networks. Look what happened in the USA when diesel almost hit $5. That will happen again. By 2020, $5 diesel will be a dream, yet the USA is not doing anything to prepare itself for Peak Oil's consequences. The end of the infintite growth paradigm is nigh; for the countries addicted to it, most are standing like deer caught in headlights. Those desperate for work will count themselves lucky to land a job on an oil rig, at least until that oil's gone too.
Their excuses are the same as Donald Blakenship's who operates the Massy mine.
The same excuses the Banksters use.... regulation is a form of socialism, you can look it up.
That is always what THEY mean by socialism.... regulation of big business.
In Pennsylvania, we had our first Marcelllus gas well worker fatality (plus a serious injury) yesterday. They were struck by a broken high pressure hydraulic hose. The victims were, like all these reverse-capetbag oil workers, Texans. For all the water pollution, noise and disruption, the drilling produces no new local jobs - they are all brought up from TX and OK.
It's just like in "There will be blood", based on Sinclair's book "Oil!"
Yup. I live in Arkansas, in the Fayetteville Shale region. When they found the gas, they came in telling people how it would improve the economy, provide jobs, etc., etc.
Well, all we've gotten is roads trashed by the equipment haulers, noise and light pollution, lots of increase in traffic, rents going up, and more. Our water used to be some of the best in the state, and now is not. It leaves pink stains, and never did before.
And no jobs, either. You're right, they're all Mexicans, Texans and Oklahomans. Some property owners - already well off - with hundreds of acres, have made money on the leases, but most of us get about $25 a year. But the big gas/oil companies are making tons of money. (So is WalMart, taking care of the influx of workers, most of whom live in RVs.) And the kicker is, you can't refuse to lease to them. It's like it isn't your land. If they want it, they take it.
I think we've only had one fatality so far, in an explosion/fire, but there will probably be more.
This is the best documented story I have seen on CD.
Has this capability to post pdf files always been on CD?
Thanks for pointing that out.
See: the capacity to form and issue The Argument just took a little jump.
"Has this capability to post pdf files always been on CD?"
Initially, the comment software allowed usage of some HTML tags so the commentator could link to pdf files, but that software was discontinued for unknown reasons. Now, only the article itself has inbedded links, and commentators can no longer use HTML tags.
"That threatens to make the spill the most damaging since the Exxon Valdez accident off the coast of Alaska in 1989. It is already the worst oil rig disaster since a blowout on the Union Oil platform off the coast of California in 1969 -- the public outrage over that 11-day oil spill helped spawn the modern environmental movement.
BP and TransOcean did not return calls for comment. Halliburton could not be reached for comment on Monday night."
This is the sentiment I'm grabbing on to: sprinkle with a bit of DU Baby Pic, a dash of Chemical Ali(same day 1/25/10) season well with the 10-15 Bil/Mo Thing, mix in body bag cadence, set to PTSDronning and candle light all the opportunity costs -- is that a fabulously set Tipping Point meal or what? It's on the menu somewhere, and the fact that the usual culprits keep showing up to the world wide disaster in the same car is making it easier to focus The Argument with a larger number of people.
And showing up with the same answers, as the first statement I heard from Global Corp's Sceintific Expert was that the pollution fallout would be minimal because the fire was burning most of the discharge.
Your mention of the Union Oil spill in 1969 reminded me of my experience with that event. I had recently been hired as an engineer by Union Oil at that time, and was working at their LA refinery. I recall top management being in total panic when the spill happened, realizing the implications. What struck me then was that no one in the company had any earthly idea what to do to contain the growing spill. Our whole engineering department, even though we had nothing to do with the division causing the spill, and we had no experience with oil spills, was put on the task of trying to figure out what might work to contain the spill. Of course, by the time anything resembling an effective system was designed and built by the company, massive environmental damage had already taken place. At least it did result in major prohibition of further drilling in that area for many years.
It appears that again a company has no idea how to deal with the current deep water well leak, and we will live with the ensuing massive damage to our coastal environment. Maybe the plan to expand our offshore deep water drilling needs some further thought?
This is an effect of corporate structure:
That is, structured as it is, the corporation acts as it must. With regulation, the company would have had to pay for safety measures. Without regulation, when the catastrophe does happen, the company need not and cannot shoulder much of the burden for the damage.
Judging only the money that comes and goes, as corporate executives are enjoined to do by law as their legal responsibility to stockholders, psychopathic irresponsibility to labor, Gulf residents, and future generations is their only technically legal option besides resignation.
And it pays.
Same old unruly, unregulated, lawless, reckless, selfish, greedy, sociopathic corporate behavior -- the subprime episode, the collapse of the banks, Wall Street's insider trading, the coal mining industry's hundreds of violations, and now the oil industry's downright criminal actions...
I just heard, (Tues. PM), that the oil spill is now hundreds of square miles, is out of control, heading for three or four states, threatening fragile coasts and ecosystems, AND may take as long as three months to contain.
A slow motion major catastrophe is occurring in the gulf and where is the MSM? The foreign press is covering it but mostly silence is heard from the Empire Press.
Also this is a very deep water well, 5000 feet, and apparently, according to a company spokesperson, "we've never dealt with this problem in such deep water, it posses many challenges".
Nice.
"we've never dealt with this problem in such deep water..." A remarkable avowal of the sort of short-term attitude that prevails in the corporate world: "let's drill first, make big bucks, and we'll worry about the consequences when something happens." As if oil spills were a novel occurrence.
From the New York Times: "Concern Grows About Impact of Gulf Oil Spill"
By LESLIE KAUFMAN
Published: April 27, 2010
[Admiral Landry said a final decision had not been made yet about whether to burn the oil.
“We fully understand there are benefits and tradeoffs,” she said. But she also noted that with the spill moving toward land the impact on the shoreline had to be considered. That part of Louisiana contains some 40 percent of the nation’s wetlands and is spawning grounds for countless fish and birds.
Controlled burns have been done and tested before, Admiral Landry said, and had been shown to be “effective in burning 50 to 95 percent of oil collected in a fire boom.” The downside, she said, was a “black plume” of smoke that would put soot and other particulates into the air.
The consideration of burning was raised as the spill seemed to enter a more dire phase. Short-term fixes have been unsuccessful, and political reaction has intensified.]
_______________________________________________________
I just wanted to emphasize the possible environmental impact: "contains 40 percent of the nation’s wetlands" We are going from bad to worse to oh fuck, what have we done. NO end in sight and NO immediate solution except to burn the stuff. And to think they want to drill in the Arctic. Whose brains are running this show????
When I do a Google search, the newest mainstream news stories about this are from April 23 - four days ago. ther seems to be a complete blackout of any news since the "wellhead is not leaking" story. Has the corporate media even reached the point of censoring even news like this?
I found something - NO thanks to the corporate media whicd is deliberately blacking the story out.
A technical report from a "unified command' comprising various gov. agencies the drilling company and BP is here:
http://www.piersystem.com/go/doctype/2931/52419/
It is funny how the corporate media is being more evasive than the oil corporations themselves. Talk about Orwell's really-well-trained circus dogs!
I happen to have a suspicion here that this was a covert operation by high ranking Government officials to have an excuse to shut down ALL off shore drilling. I believe the CIA blew it up.
Note the logo of British Petroleum. Their new mission statement is "Beyond Petroleum". The logo was intended to show that they saw themselves as a source of "Green Energy" and were a Corporation concerned with the enviroment.
The sun surrounded by a "Green Shield". I can all but hear the calls of sea gulls, feel the cool breeze through a forest canopy and hear the waves of a nearby ocean wash up on a sandy shoreline.
If you want to stand by and see their wrists get slapped for destroying this planet for their profit, you go right ahead. Myself, I demand that the entire Board of Directors and CEO, along with the rest of the executives of British Petroleum be unceremoniously given the death penalty. Have you seen the as yet unfinished clean up of Prince William Sound in Alaska? It is simply astounding that the oil company is still operating. I have hitherto been against the death penalty as I see it as murder by the state. But now, in the case of a corporation murdering the entire planet, I've gone beyond that consideration. Somebody must stop these creeps who are so well protected by the Republican Party. Come to think of it I 'd like to see those Republican protectors go to jail as well.
They need to pay at least one hundred billion in penalties AND go to jail and then be tried for crimes against humanity. One hundred billion barely scratches the surface of a single year's profit for these scum sucking sociopaths.
Drill, Baby, Drill!
Not!
The media blackout of a disaster of this magnitude is typical of the degenerate Main Stream Media. Also, predictably, Rachel Maddow launched right into the catastrophe which now is a oil slick the size of West Virginia. Rachel interviewed a Coast Guard Commander. He said they would burn it off. But when she asked how they would stop the leak from throwing a thousand barrels a day into the hitherto clean ocean waters he looked like a cornered rat. They don't have the technology to turn it off. As Ms. Maddow pointed out they went and drilled before they had the technology to fix whatever might go wrong. Irresponsible haste. Also, typical behavior of GREED based conservatives. This is the same Republican type of corporation as the mining disaster. These companies need to be put in jail and then executed in a big public death on Television. Maybe that would slow down the irresponsible behavior.
peacekeepertwo:Large Corporations Hire Subcontractors,to allow them legal Protection from lawsuits. Corporations Know they will be required to put human lives, at Risks if they want to remain profitable. The public needs to be aware of the True cost of Cheap Oil.
Hey Marcus, the Exxon Valdez was not an accident. It was incompetence. Just like Obama giving the OK for more offshore drilling.
How many wind turbines could have been built for the cost of building the Deepwater Horizon? How many solar panels could of been installed on how many American homes for the price of the Deepwater Horizon? Plus the cost of cleaning up after this travesty? In the case of an accident how many gallons of oil would be leaked from these wind turbines and solar collectors?