looks like BP has given up on the 2nd blow off preventer until they can get relief wells drilled edit.........now they are saying those reports are false. time will tell.
The bottoming out of the global economy and the strength of the dollar has kept oil prices fairly low. They are still hovering in the 70s despite Europe going bankrupt and the dollar being the strongest its been in years. Imagine if we were in a strong economy how high oil prices would be right now.
the overwhelming factor in the price of oil coming down is the euro/dollar relationship. nothing has changed about the outlook of the us economy, not even with the situation in europe
Your 1st paragraph pretty much invalidates your 2nd. Of course I can have an accident but if my car hits another car or even 2, 3 other cars, it'd stop there. This case is like an 18 wheeler running over a car and another and another and it does not stop ... No one can say if they can apply the brake on this 18 wheeler, one of the better guesses says 3 months (when they finish with the relief well) . I don't think that is very good practice.
I disagree. The organization decides what it values and what it wants to ignore. There are reports of a number of people having stop work authority on the rig, but they didn't act or they consulted with the hierarchy before doing anything. That's an organization that chose failure. I bet there a bunch of engineering firms and related business and organizations that trust their people more and value expertise and are sensitive to operations. You can choose mindfulness over mindlessness.
In my experience, this is not the case. In fact, it's a serious symptom of corporate evolution - the details of which are an entirely separate discussion not germane to this thread... suffice to say that engineers are, by and large, neutered in the work environment.
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That may be true... if so, it's a choice the organization has made to neuter their engineers. We are not perfect, we will make mistakes, but we don't have to be complete slaves to human nature.
I think we are agreeing here, just with different phrases. We don't have to be slaves to our natural predelictions, I agree - but it can be very hard in the corporate work environment to "plead your case" so to speak, when the operation in question has ceased to be categorically considered risky or dangerous - regardless of whether or not that opinion has merit. Take for example Columbia: engineers noticed the impact on the WLE during routine reviews of liftoff imagery and communicated concerns to management. Management had long since decided that foam impacts were not hazardous. But there was no data to support this mindset; in fact, there was considerable evidence that foam strikes could cause significant damage. The engineers that dealt with those areas had taken such impacts as routine and "swept them under the rug" - indeed, they were some of the primary opponenents of any investigation into the impact (to be fair - management decided from the get-go that any concern was politically unacceptable, further requests for imagery were denied). When your ego becomes attached to a certain mindset, even one founded upon apathetic complacency (or worse, intentional ignorance) you defend unsubstantiated viewpoints. You take for granted how lucky you've been. I can see this in the BP disaster. So far, replacement of drilling mud with seawater had not been an issue. Up to this point, the cement casing has always maintained integrity. Up to this point, we could rely on the BOPs if any of the other operations were poorly performed... It happens. It shouldn't have to happen, but it does. Is it inevitable? I don't think so - but I think it demands constant vigilence, and fresh attitudes. The "old guard" types are particularly prone to these lapses in judgement. I'd argue too, that it requires failures to drive the point home. Having worked with Dow a few times, for example, they still remember Bhopal and the demise of Union Carbide. It's permanently etched into how they handle process design.
The more and more the oil flows, the more sick to my stomach I get...definitely a huge travesty to our environment and to people's livelyhood..They have BP gas stations here, and I never thought of boycotting but people around here are...to me, buying BP is my small contribution to them continuing to fight the oil spill...crazy times...
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/06/02/gulf.oil.spill/index.html?hpt=T2 Explains the next step in the attempt to cap the well.
Let's be clear... there is no chance they cap it until the relief wells get drilled. What we're talking about now is an attempt at capturing some (most of?) the oil.
The good thing is you can just grill em on the barbecue without even having to worry about any charcoal or lighter fluid
They had a 5 billion profit last quarter and their warchest is in the tens of millions. Your patronage isn't necessary.
Is it too big to fail? As the tort claims and fines can be in the trillions. There is certainly the risk of bankruptcy.
