BP's Gulf Fuckup: Just another Challenger Disaster?
What BP and NASA Have In Common
guest post by Becca Kastl
In 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff. Following the disaster, a lengthy investigation ensued. It was known almost immediately that the cause of the disaster was due to failure of the "O" ring in the solid rocket booster. However, it wasn't until the completion of the investigation that the full scope and cause of the disaster was actually understood.
We can apply many of the same lessons of causation to understanding the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Challenger disaster can be boiled down to the complexities of aerospace engineering and materials design. But the overarching cause of the Challenger disaster was due to NASA's approach to managing risk within a complex environment.
From the Wikipedia entry:
The Rogers Commission found that NASA's organizational culture and decision-making processes had been a key contributing factor to the accident. NASA managers had known that contractor Morton Thiokol's design of the SRBs contained a potentially catastrophic flaw in the O-rings since 1977, but they failed to address it properly. They also disregarded warnings from engineers about the dangers of launching posed by the low temperatures of that morning and had failed to adequately report these technical concerns to their superiors.
The Rogers Report noted among its findings the risk management approach taken by NASA:
3. NASA and Thiokol accepted escalating risk apparently because they "got away with it last time." As Commissioner Feynman observed, the decision making was:
"a kind of Russian roulette …
[The Shuttle] flies [with O-ring erosion] and nothing happens. Then it is suggested, therefore, that the risk is no longer so high for the next flights. We can lower our standards a little bit because we got away with it last time…. You got away with it but it shouldn't be done over and over again like that."
…
6. A careful analysis of the flight history of O-ring performance would have revealed the correlation of O-ring damage and low temperature. Neither NASA nor Thiokol carried out such an analysis; consequently, they were unprepared to properly evaluate the risks of launching the 51-L mission in conditions more extreme than they had encountered before.
Looking at the highlighted findings of the Challenger disaster, how can we say that BP did not use the exact same risk management approach on the Deepwater Horizon.
The list of issues with the Deepwater Horizon disaster are numerous:
- Non-existent or substandard testing of the well-head seal.
- Failed batteries on the BOP.
- Lack of remote control or acoustic trigger mechanism on the BOP.
- Failed complete testing of the BOP.
- Prior accident in which the BOP was damaged.
- Lack of comprehensive response plan for a blowout at the operating depths.
- Evidence of extraordinary gas pressures.
- Evidence of gas pressure and leakage shortly before the blowout.
… and there are many more.
Each one of the issues should have been a warning sign in an industry where failed controls usually mean catastrophic disaster and death (e.g., Piper Alpha). But BP took risks and "got away with it." And just like NASA in the Challenger disaster, they "got away with it" over and over again, which let them take on more and more risk. And when they didn't get away with it in an extraordinary set of circumstances, they were so far out on the proverbial limb that the magnitude of the disaster was compounded over and over again.
How so? BP was partly able to get the permit to drill based on the likelihood of a spill and the distance from shore. The reasoning by MMS and BP was that undersea drilling did not entail extreme risks–after all, it had been going on for decades with precious few major incidents. Moreover, MMS and BP reasoned that if there was a spill, the rig was so far from shore that the spill would not threaten the environment.
But what didn't occur to them was that a spill significant enough to reach the shoreline would be of such size as to devastate a much wider swath of the environment than a spill from a rig closer to shore.
And to be clear, the focus of poor risk management is not solely on BP. MMS and the EPA continued to let BP get away with their shoddy risk management practices. There was the pipeline spill in Prudhoe Bay, AK. There was the refinery explosion in Texas. Each time, BP promised to increase safety. Each time, the EPA, MMS, and DoJ let them off with minimal penalties. MMS, the EPA, and the DoJ aided and abetted BP's poor risk management by letting them "get away with it."
I work in risk management, myself, so I know how difficult it can sometimes be to manage risk in a complex environment. Competing interests, probability tables, risk matrices, and even risk quantification all create a very ambiguous mix within which to make critical decisions.
If we go down the rabbit hole of any particular issue with the Deepwater Horizon, there are failures in the individual risk management processes. Typically, in identifying risk, the final risk assessment contains caveats or mitigating provisions relevant to the risk identified and the treatment prescribed. But compartmentalized risk assessments tend to shed the caveats and provisions of the risk treatment when the overall risk is bubbled up to the larger risk management view. And because the overall risk (catastrophic failure and disaster) is the compilation of many smaller threads of risk management, the overall risk is rarely (if ever) understood in proper context. We could likely apply the same failed risk management of BP and NASA to the White Star Line and the Titanic, or the implosion of the real estate market in the last few years.
But what gets me about this is not so much the risk management, or lack thereof. What gets me is that we have many, many disasters and catastrophes from which to learn. And almost all of them are the result of the same set of circumstances which brought us the Titanic and Challenger disasters or the seemingly endless economic crashes.
The lessons of disasters and their impact on risk management processes tend to be contained within a specific industry. The lessons of Titanic were applied to the ship-building industry and transoceanic navigation. The lessons of the Challenger disaster were applied to NASA's shuttle program. The lessons of financial meltdowns are rarely applied anywhere. We repeatedly fail to apply the larger lessons which are universal in scope. It is because of this that our focus on how to respond to the Deepwater Horizon disaster must also be universal.
The resulting reforms must not be limited to the oil and gas industry, the MMS, or the EPA. They must be applied universally, as overriding risk management principles.
In the end, business will always grouse about regulations which take decisions regarding risk management (and risk acceptance) away from them. They will complain loudly that government is intruding into private enterprise and "tinkering" with the markets. They will argue that government is overstepping its bounds. Until, that is, there is a disaster or catastrophe of massive proportions. No person or organization should be allowed to accept risk on its own when the impact will be shared by all of society. While the financial calculus of BP may make a decision an acceptable risk, they are in no position to address the financial calculus of those who would be impacted by their poor risk management.
And just in time for this article, we have this from The Economist:
"BP already had a miserable safety record in America. In 2005 an explosion at one of its refineries in Texas killed 15 people. In 2006 corrosion in its pipelines led to a sizeable spill on Alaska’s North Slope. Since then, regulators have often fined it for breaking safety standards. There are indications that BP’s approach to the drilling of the Macondo well was similarly slapdash. Engineering measures that might have prevented the calamity were not carried out, tests of safety equipment delayed."
I'm particularly gleeful hearing them state that BP's fuckup is degenerating into a wider attack on capitalism and business. "Due process"? Yes. Fealty to corporate interests ahead of ours? Hell no.
18th June 2010 at 3:17 pm | permalink |Yeah, their North Slope operation is apparently not too well-regarded by their own employees: Documents, Employees Reveal BP’s Alaska Oilfield Plagued By Major Safety Issues
Fucking pathetic, soulless, greedy, inhuman cunts. Or maybe that's stating it too mildly?
18th June 2010 at 3:39 pm | permalink |yes it appears that the BOP valve was defective …
But its even more odd why the US and BP doesn't ask for the help of foreign dredging companies to help.
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/obama-blocks-louisiana-foreign-allies-from-oil-spill-clean-up
19th June 2010 at 2:46 am | permalink |you donkey fucking shit eating hore u are a funking slut u uncle fucker
19th June 2010 at 7:25 pm | permalink |@baley: Good question… since we're obviously doing a shit job of containing it, or cleaning it well enough to prevent massive damage to beaches and marshes, one does wonder why we don't ask anyone for help.
@roiloando: Congrats, not only does that make no sense whatsoever in context of the post or the following comments, you also can't spell or use punctuation. I'm sure your parents are really proud of you.
19th June 2010 at 9:31 pm | permalink |yeah and note though that this is actually something that could have happened to any company really.
The actual exploration rig owners is not BP but transocean which is the ship operator but its much more complex you might want to read this to understand better how contracts are managed. I didn't even know much about it even though I work in that field.
Basically BP pays the contractors (transocean) to drill there:
http://gcaptain.com/forum/offshore/4962-deepwater-horizon-congressional-testimony.html
20th June 2010 at 8:31 am | permalink |@ baley: What you note about Transocean and BP is really the crux of the problem here. Multiple companies, each with a share of responsibility, each deferring to the other. It's what led to the Congressional testimony where they each blamed the other. And in this scenario, I'd still look at BP first—they were the ones making the decisions on the platform, while Transocean was (more or less) carrying out BP's orders.
You could draw a similar analogy to the relationship between NASA and Morton Thiokol in the Challenger disaster.
Trust me, BP is going to try and ride out the whole criminal investigation and trial by pointing to Transocean (and/or Halliburton), but BP was giving the orders and should ultimately be held responsible.
20th June 2010 at 12:23 pm | permalink |@ roilando: Are you a profanity bot?
20th June 2010 at 12:24 pm | permalink |@baley: As Becca said, since BP was the owner & "foreman" of the project, I'd say the blame still lies with them… but indeed, I would not be at all surprised to see the contractor/contractee relationship(s) provide legal fodder to derail court proceedings for years to come.
@Beccca: Could be a bot, or could be just another dipshit figuring swearing was the A #1 thing to do around here… it was random enough I approved the comment either way. lol
20th June 2010 at 2:46 pm | permalink |Another topic that could be brought up is the lack of planning by oil companies. This is not the first spill that has taken place. Although the largest, certainly not the first. And, what is primarily being used to protect the estuaries…. plastic f@$king boom!!! Oil companies use some of the most advanced technology available and this is what they come up with.
I live in south Louisiana and have been working on projects aimed at protecting the marshes. I can tell you that the clean up effort/prevention is a major cluster f@#k!!!
13th August 2010 at 10:09 pm | permalink |Definitely… And after the spill, it was inexcusable for the government to not let foreign nations with ready cleanup equipment come in & help. (Although, back to the lack of planning thing, why didn't WE have the same equipment ready here?!)
14th August 2010 at 4:29 pm | permalink |After a little research, I found this site with the following information:
http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-the-real-reason-america-refused-international-help-on-the-oil-spill-2010-6
"The Merchant Marine Act of 1920 is a United States Federal statute that regulates maritime commerce in U.S. waters and between U.S. ports. Section 27, also known as the Jones Act, deals with coastal shipping; and requires that all goods transported by water between U.S. ports be carried in U.S.-flag ships, constructed in the United States, owned by U.S. citizens, and crewed by U.S. citizens and U.S. permanent residents.
The purpose of the law is to support the U.S. merchant marine industry. Critics said that the legislation results in increased costs moving cargoes between U.S. ports, and in essence, is protectionism, Supporters of the Act maintain that the legislation is of strategic economic and wartime interest to the United States."
I'm sure there could have been ways around this but it does bring up the point you made… "why didn't WE have the same equipment ready here?!" I believe it's simple economics. Why spend billions on machinery and technology that will only be used once every few decades. Those questions also bring up another point… MMS! The federal organization that is intended to oversee offshore drilling and it's apparent lapse in oversight. And, it is absolutely assinine to just rename an organization and appoint a new director and we're suppose to believe that everything will be okay from now on.
On another note… How about the moratorium?!? I've heard this before and I think it's the best way to equate the situation. "When an airplane crashes, you don't see the federal government grounding all airlines!" This is the first mishap to occur in the gulf in four decades. So, let's ban all exploratory drill because of one business. The souther states were one of the areas not affected by the recession because of the oil and gas industry. Don't get me wrong… I believe in oversight to make sure this doesn't happen again. But, was it necessary to punish the entire industry?!?
I read a figure that the oil and gas industry employ roughly 400,000 in the souther states. The two main occupations in souther Louisiana… Fishing and the oil industry. One was affected by the disaster and the other by the administration.
These are all topics that can be discussed for days.
14th August 2010 at 6:04 pm | permalink |@adam: Bush superceded the Jones Act after Hurricane Katrina… there is NO legal reason why we could not have used other nation's equipment and expertise after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, if the government had the balls to ask for help.
And as for why not have the equipment on hand here? Yes, it is simple greed, err… economics. If the government doesn't require offshore drilling operations to have cleanup and recovery equipment on hand, of COURSE they won't spend the money to do it. Which is just one small example of why Libertarians and Free-Marketeers are delusional, evil bastards.
The moratorium? A drilling moratorium is a goddamn good idea until the oil companies come up with an effective emergency plan for shit like this. If a plane crashes, it does not destroy a major economic foundation of an entire region of the continent, does it?
16th August 2010 at 8:44 pm | permalink |