The media has been ablaze as of late with reports about BP's lax safety standards, their cutting of corners, their operating on the cheap, and on and on and on. As someone who has worked in the oil industry for years and who's company does business with BP on a regular basis, I would like to attempt to set the record straight.
Don't get me wrong - I am not writing this diary to exonerate British Petroleum nor to get them off the hook, but a little insight into what kind of company they actually are, how they operate on a daily basis, and the dangers of offshore drilling in general can't hurt at this point.
If you are interested in the truth - please bear with me and follow below.
I work for a medium sized oil field services company. We operate in a number of states including the gulf region, and our company furnishes oil field drilling mud and drilling fluids as well as a number of other services required for daily oil field operations.
Since I am writing an honest heart felt diary about BP and the oil industry in general - I will not include the name of our company. Am I a coward? Perhaps, but jobs are a little hard to find nowadays and I would really like to keep mine.
British Petroleum has operations all across the continental United States, and they do a lot of drilling and exploration in the Texas/Oklahoma area where I am located. Everyone in our company hates to work for BP. Their safety requirements are considered by most workers to be rediculous and a real pain in the ass. Some employees actually refuse to go on their drilling locations because of BP's safety rules and regs.
The strict regs and procedures I am listing here are only required by BP, Conoco Phillips, and a couple of other Oil companies. Ninety percent of the companies we deal with have safety regs that are much more lax resulting in these companies being a lot easier to work for and a lot more profitable for us in the long run.
First off, everyone must be certified and qualified to go on to a BP location. This means that all workers who will be entering a BP drilling site must complete a safety seminar and have a sticker on their hard hat and documentation stating such or they can't enter the site. Then there are the FR's - Fire Retardant clothing. Everyone who enters a BP site has to wear them and they are hot and they are miserable.
Upon entering a BP drilling site everyone has to stop at a designated point and enter the safety trailer. Here a safety representative checks you out and then you are required to sign in on the log - stating your company, time of arrival, and time of departure. You must remove all rings, watches, cigarette lighters, pocket knives, and turn off cell phones at this time. Only a select few companies have safety regs this extreme - Thank God!
Then, if you are a truck driver, you must chock your wheels every time you leave the truck - for any reason - a real pain in the ass - oh, but it gets much much worse. Next, everyone who has a job to perform on the site has to fill out a JSA (job safety analysis). This is another real pain in the butt as you have to list everything you can think of that might cause a hazard by your presence and the job you are to perform then list the precautions that should be taken.
Next are those damned safety meetings. Everybody in the industry bitches about BP's safety meetings. They are attended by the safety man, the company man, and anyone who has a part in what ever operation you are performing on the location. The JSA you have filled out is reviewed and discussed and a plan of operations is formulated with all safety concerns covered. Even a company coming on location to repair a flat truck tire must to go through these same procedures.
Finally, if your lucky, you get to go about your business, complete your job, and get the hell off their location at which time you say "Thank God I am getting the Hell out of here." It takes BP a year to drill a well when other companies would do the same job in a matter of a few months - entirely because of BP's safety regs and requirements. Many of us peons have wondered how they make any damned money at all.
DON'T LEAVE YET - BEAR WITH ME!
Now let's go to the subject of the current gulf oil disaster. I have been on numerous oil well blowouts. They are fairly common and can be caused by a number of things, but the main thing is that you never know what devils you are going to unleash when you drill into the bowels of the earth. Exploratory wells and their results basically run the gamut. The oil companies do not know and have no way of knowing exactly what they are going to hit as they drill through any particular zone. Our company's whole business is built on Murphy's law. In the oil field - Shit Happens!
They will hit a zone and lose circulation and call for thousands of barrels of heavily weighted drilling mud ASAP only to cancel the order a few hours later. Or, they will call for a thousand barrels of weighted mud at the outset that turns into a month's long marathon of trying to get the well under control. On the continental USA this is not that much of a problem. Mud can be weighted up to 14, 15, 0r 16# and a well can be completely killed. Everything can be hastily controlled and attended to, but a mile under the ocean surface - they are just shit out of luck. How are you going to force mud into a well and kill it 5000' below the ocean surface?
What has happened to BP is nothing new. A zone has been hit that is producing much more than expected with geothermic pressures much more than expected - a common occurrence in the oil field. The problem lies with the fact that when you are a mile under the ocean you have no way to control it. If there is a blowout, an equipment failure, or human error (imagine that) you are just shit out of luck and so are the thousands who live along the coastal regions.
Is BP responsible for damages to America? Hell yes - they're supposed to be smarter than I am and as such should have known the risks and dangers. They have screwed up a significant part of America's coastal region and have destroyed countless jobs and livelihoods. They are a big dog and have been off the porch for a long time - they must pay for their greed for the bottom line and for their destruction of a large part of our great Nation.
In my personal opinion, as someone who has been in the oilfield for more years than I care to reveal, we have absolutely no business drilling offshore. Shit happens and things go wrong on an hourly basis in the oilfield. Nothing is going to change that - ever! A well might be nothing more than a sputter and few belches or it might be equivalent to the Eakly Oklahoma, Ports of Call Tomcat that blew out in the 80's and was spewing out 150 million cubic feet of natural gas per day. - Trust me - this is a lot.
If the reports are true and the BP well is blowing 50,000 bbls of oil per day then this is a very unique well. Most wells are actually in the 100 - 5000 bbl range. 50,000 bbls per day is a monster of a well and being a mile under the ocean and being blown out - well - good luck.
What I am trying to say here in this diary - and I know I probably haven't followed the right diary protocols and etc. - is that BP is not a negligent company. But, they are an oil company and all oil companies are liars. They lie to the land owners and mineral owners. They lie to control any environmental damages they might have caused. Bottom line - they cover the bottom line and their own asses. But. at this point in time, we still have to have oil and gas. And, quite frankly we need to produce our continental oil and gas reserves fervently and get away from foreign suppliers as a matter of national security, but we don't need to be drilling in the gulf or anywhere offshore.
The reason? Not because BP is not safety conscious - quite the contrary, but because in the oilfield as with every other industry - shit happens and a mile under the ocean surface - once it happens - there's not a damned thing anybody can do about it.