We know it is going to happen. With greed-driven speed and lax supervision, the conditions that produced the Deepwater Horizon disaster have not been eliminated. Charles Perrow, a sociologist and organizational theorist at Yale, says the industry is "ill-prepared at the least" in drilling deepwater safely, and in containing a spill should it, inevitably, happen.
"I have seen no evidence that they have marshaled containment efforts that are sufficient to deal with another major spill. I don't think they have found ways to change the corporate culture sufficiently to prevent future accidents."
He added: "There are so many opportunities for things to go wrong that major spills are unavoidable."
As opportunities for shallow-water drilling diminish (see last story in this diary) with the most easily accessible fields depleted - in US waters and around the world - deepwater production becomes the virtually the only source for petroleum. Even as the government tightens regulation with new, and supposedly more stringent, oversight, drilling more than a mile below the ocean's surface remains a risk-filled endeavor.
The effectiveness of the much-touted containment system is being questioned because it hasn't been tested on the sea floor. A design flaw in the blowout preventers widely used across the industry has been identified but not corrected. And regulators are allowing companies to obtain drilling permits before approving their updated oil-spill response plans.
BP says it is poised to become a much safer company. It ousted several key figures during the disaster -- including CEO Tony Hayward -- and created a powerful unit to police company safety. BP spokesman Daren Beaudo said that because of advances made during the crisis, "the capability exists to respond to a deep-water well blowout." Similarly, Chevron spokesman Russell A. Johnson said his company is "confident of our ability to prevent an incident similar" to the Gulf oil spill.
Perrow says that even if all the regulation works as advertised, there will most likely be another major spill within a five-year span.
"I'm not an oddsmaker, but I would say in the next five years we should have at least one major blowout," Perrow said. "Even if everybody tries very hard, there is going to be an accident caused by cost-cutting and pressure on workers. These are moneymaking machines and they make money by pushing things to the limit."
Several of the big oil companies are waiting for their disaster plans to be approved. The BOEMRE says it is still operating under 2002 regulation protocols, which allows drilling permits to be granted, but a two-year time frame for the blowout plans to be approved - if they certify in writing they can handle a blowout, says agency spokeswoman Eileen Angelico.
But the "we can handle it" attitude is not going over well with environmentalists and others.
The agency "is taking the oil companies' word for it that they can handle a spill," said David Pettit, a senior attorney for the National Resources Defense Council, one of the nation's leading environmental groups. "This is the same kind of deference to claimed oil company expertise that led directly to the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster."
Oil companies say the "new system"can contain a blowout, even in deep water...and where have we heard that before?
Oil companies say the system is capable of quickly containing a blowout 8,000 feet under water and capturing as much as 60,000 barrels of oil per day. By comparison, at the height of the Gulf spill in mid-June, BP's well was spewing some 57,000 barrels a day at a depth of 5,000 feet.
Michael Bromwich, recently acknowledged that the system was not tested in a dynamic situation -- meaning in the ocean or during blowout conditions. He said such testing would be ideal, but he was still confident the system would work.
Martin W. Massey, CEO of the Marine Well Containment Co., the consortium of companies that built the system, told the AP that components of the system were tested on land in Houston in a controlled environment, with government officials monitoring and approving it. He suggested that ocean testing was not necessary.
"We're quite confident," he said. "We're ready to respond. The system is ready to go."
The consortium has said an expanded network capable of plugging a well at more than 10,000 feet below the surface and collecting 100,000 barrels of oil per day won't be ready until early 2012.
Bromwich has said that the oil companies continue to tell BOEMRE that the Deepwater Horizon disaster was totally BP's fault, and that such a blowout just could not happen to them.
"In my judgment, this is as disappointing as it is shortsighted," Bromwich said. "Our view is this was a broad problem."
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