BP rig worker told father about Series of Bad & Reckless Decisions ... Died in the Rig Fire

[abduLMaria]

I have developed the opinion that the Gulf Disaster was not an accident because of the repeated reporting about BP's reckless culture and the extra-reckless moves pushed through by management on the Deepwater Horizon rig.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= ... FfM&pos=15

I suggest saving that article before Bloomberg takes it down.  Excerpted below.


Interviews with Matt Simmons, one of the most knowledgeable geologists & oil industry insiders in the world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDGAoU1H ... r_embedded
"Theres another leak, much bigger, 5 to 6 miles away" - screen capture of Matt Simmons on the Dylan Ratigan show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4whiKQgn ... r_embedded

In these 2 Youtube's, and in the webcast at Financial Sense, Simmons talks about the oil disaster, and compares BP's reckless culture to a much more careful culture at Petrobras, the Brazilian oil company

http://www.financialsensenewshour.com/b ... 0529-2.mp3


I will add something from my experience as an engineer - there are some jobs where the cost of recklessness is minimal.  I have an acquaintance who works for the city as a programmer in the IT department - one of the Jewish guys I know from the gym.  If he fucks up, nobody dies.

I have worked on high voltage power supplies for radar systems.  They ranged in voltage from 12,000 volts to 30,000 volts - and some of them were high power.  Since I didn't like my official desk, I moved to a lab bench in the production area.  So I was surrounded by people who were working safely with voltages that could kill you very quickly.  I had a co-worker who got zapped by 3000 volts one day; he lived; it was a big deal.

The point being, there are times when you can not be reckless - and any and every professional in those fields knows it.  Deep water drilling is one such field.

What comes out about the Deepwater Horizon disaster is not that there was one safety guideline breach.  There were 4 to 6 instances where the Transocean & BP teams deviated  from standard safety guidelines ( for deep-water drilling ) - at the instructions of management.

That is asking & planning for disaster.


The oil reservoir they were drilling in to was sitting at 70,000 psi.  To give you an idea of 70,000 psi, check out an industrial waterjet abrasive slurry system.  They use thin streams of water about 1/16 inch in diameter to cut leather - and steel.

If you walked in front of a waterjet that was a little bigger, e.g. 70,000 psi and 1/4 inch across, it would cut you in half.

The point being - this is an industrial situation where you have to be extra fucking careful and even then people die.  But - on the Deepwater Horizon rig - they broke one safety rule after another, on purpose.


It takes a while to put the pieces of the puzzle together, but I am realizing that this was not an accident.


"" May 28 (Bloomberg) -- The highest-ranking crew member to perish aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig warned his family that BP Plc was pressuring him to sacrifice safety for the sake of time and money, his father said.

Jason Anderson, one of 11 rig workers presumed dead after an April 20 explosion and fire sank the Deepwater Horizon and triggered the worst oil spill in U.S. history, told relatives in February and March that BP was urging him to accelerate work on the Macondo well off the Louisiana coast, said his father, Billy Anderson.

On previous wells drilled with the same rig, Jason Anderson, a 35-year-old employee of vessel owner Transocean Ltd., had been able to convince BP representatives to eschew shortcuts that he believed would compromise safety, his father said. But in the eight weeks preceding the disaster, BP stepped up the pressure and overruled safety objections, Billy Anderson, 66, said.

"My Jason told me he had argued BP down a few times on previous wells when they wanted him to speed things up and make changes that were unsafe," Billy Anderson said yesterday in an interview at his home near Blessing, Texas, about 110 miles southwest of Houston. "But the last two times he was home he said they were putting more and more pressure on him and he was worried."

[scorpio]

Excellent article and collection of videos. I really appreciated the sharing of your experiences from real life.
This 'accident' is the most catastrophic environmental disaster in modern history. We have yet to see the full impact of this on the gulf region, our economy, and the world, for that matter. The $20 billion fund that BP has set up  is but a drop in the bucket.

I lived a good part of my life in Louisiana and the Gulf region of Florida and have scuba dived and surfed all over that region. It is a place of incredible beauty. To watch it be destroyed by reckless engineering and 'bottom line' decision making both disgusts me and breaks my heart.
Numerous BP officials should be facing criminal charges.

The scope of this disaster is so enormous, that it might force the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people....maybe even millions.
What happens when a hurricane or just a strong storm rolls through there? It will spread the oil and toxic dispersant all over that region, possibly leaving parts of it uninhabitable.
I lived in the gulf region during several major hurricanes. The force of those winds is incredible.

I really wish this topic would get more attention here at tiu.

[jai_mann]

The scope of this disaster is so enormous, that it might force the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people....maybe even millions.
What happens when a hurricane or just a strong storm rolls through there? It will spread the oil and toxic dispersant all over that region, possibly leaving parts of it uninhabitable.

I think that's one of the goals. If they have designated certain cities to be the places that they want the population to inhabit, while other regions are de-populated as per agenda 21, this would fit the bill. It's distinctly possible the feds could force evacuation at gun point with the side effects of the spill as the excuse. It works a lot better than moving people at gun point just because of "social engineering". Gotta have that excuse or the masses might resist and go nuts...Even if this thing is a real accident they'll use it for this purpose.