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Posted in BP British Petroleum,Deepwater Horizon,Government,Transocean,World Maritime News on August 30, 2010
On the last day of the fourth week of the Deepwater Horizon Joint Investigation Task Force hearings, Mr. Brett Cocales, a BP Operations Drilling Engineer that was in the line of authority on the Macondo well, revealed that Sperry sends real-time data from all of BP’s Gulf of Mexico projects to the BP home office Operations Center in Houston, Texas. However, there is a problem…no one monitors it.
BP drilling engineeraAttorney Philip Hilder (L) covers the microphone to consult with his client BP drilling engineer Brett Cocales (R) during the Deepwater Horizon hearings being conducted by the U.S. Coast Guard and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEM) in Houston August 27, 2010. REUTERS/Pat Sullivan/Pool (UNITED STATES)
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So far, the evidence at the hearings reveals that, as early as 9:00pm the night of April 20th, there was noted “flow” of mud and hydrocarbons from the Macondo well. This data was sent electronically and real-time to the Houston BP office. Unfortunately, since no one is hired by BP to monitor this data, no one was in the “Data” room to notice it. Additionally, BP has no computer program that monitors the data to automatically alert someone when there is aberration from the normal data one would expect to receive. The Board was most interested in this testimony elicited from Houston maritime lawyer Steve Gordon and we can expect to see, as one of its many recommendations to avoid this type of disaster in the future, regulations that will require this data to be monitored and to have a 24/7 emergency method of contact to the drilling platform to verify they are detecting the same data and acting upon it appropriately.
As the Board faces many different issues that are potential areas that can be altered to protect workers and the environment, none is as simple as this “real time data monitoring” to put in place. Obviously, this type of alert is when the situation has gotten bad enough to have actual “flow” but, nevertheless, it would make sure that the workers on the well are alerted to the situation. Had this occurred on April 20th at 9:05pm, this event would probably not have happened, or certainly would not have resulted in the deaths of eleven good men.