Blowout

Today, the Justice Department arrested a former BP engineer for allegedly destroying hundreds of text messages that included details of flow rate calculations of their blown out Macondo well in the days immediately following the Gulf disaster on April 20, 2010, just over two years ago.

Crossposted with TheGreenGrok. Déjà vu? Not quite, but certainly some echoes of BP's Deepwater Horizon incident from two years ago. On March 25, the...

Today, the Joint Investigation Team issued its final report on it's investigation of BP's Macondo Well Blowout and subsequent oil spill that occurred on April 20, 2010.

Over the last several weeks, many have become concerned based on reports of oil on the surface of the water near BP's now P&A'd (plugged and abandoned) Macondo Well, and concern has been growing that the well is now leaking oil.

Today marks the first anniversary of the worst environmental catastrophe in the history of the US. But, unfortunately, most Americans, including our politicians, are suffering from collective amnesia about that tragic event.

Besides the obvious weaknesses in subsea BOPs, and hence well control, I am concerned about having competing groups doing subsea containment.

The US government is currently issuing permits to drill knowing full well that operators are using blowout preventers that are insufficiently designed to shut in blown out deepwater wells.

If BP gets away with reducing the flow estimate to half of the current estimate in the Gulf spill, it will be a masterful manipulation of government regulators and inexperienced administration officials.

Because the administration made little more than a token effort to include influential industry representatives on the oil spill commission, the results are predictable. The industry will reject the report's important conclusions.

The presidential oil spill commission's conclusions, though not completely off base, are tainted by politics, lack of industry experience on the panel, and what I believe to be its effort to spread blame, not pinpoint it.

Earmarks were not the only government spending plans that died when Harry Reid pulled the Senate omnibus spending bill this week.  So, too, did f...

You'll recall that all during the summer I talked about BP's number one goal with its blowout well: getting it shut in without measuring the flow.&nbs...

I understand Obama shutting down new area drilling, since the BP disaster proved that the industry really can't handle a catastrophic blowout and subsequent spill. But allowing Shell to go ahead offshore in Alaska? Bewildering.

A common theme in a new report on Deepwater Horizon is that poor decision making, complacency and over confidence in BP's organization created an environment for an increasingly dangerous oil well.

The change of control of the House of Representatives yesterday changed the political landscape in Washington and diminished the chance for meaningful progress on comprehensive energy policy any time soon.

This disaster was certainly preventable and caused by poor design, poor decision making, and rushing to get the well completed. The tragic consequences should be a lesson to the entire industry, but I'm not holding my breath.

The crucible of the Gulf provides a harrowing example of the insanity we now consider normal.

As opposed to the National Academy Engineering panel, the president's panel continues to focus on investigating what happened environmentally after the blowout as opposed to seeking out the actual causes of the blowout.

Oh, I know, I know...the mainstream media moved on from this story in early August just after NOAA's Oil Budget report was issued, accompanied by...

The long awaited internal report on the blowout of Mississippi Canyon Block 252 well from BP was released this week, a 200 plus page treatise with pag...

Admiral Allen announced today that BP's fishing job being undertaken on their Mississippi Canyon Block 252 well has been called off due to total failu...

It seems that Steve Chu, the Nobel Prizing-winning Secretary of Energy and his staff of advisors have been exercising what I consider to be questionable risk management with regard to the BP oil gusher.

In his presser this morning, Adm. Allen announced that they are still trying to decide what to do about the relief well. Dithering seems a strong word, but I'm going to use it now.