BP’s AGM tomorrow is set to be a tumultuous affair with the oil giant having to absorb criticism over the legacy of the it’s catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, its investment in the dirty Canadian tar sands and its dodgy deal with the Russian Rosneft to drill in the Arctic. Throw in … Read More
Gulf of Mexico
BP: Back in the Gulf
With a haste that many will regard as reckless and a disregard for those who died in the Deepwater accident, BP will resume drilling in the Gulf of Mexico as early as July this year. So fifteen months after Deepwater, the concept of the disaster being some kind of game-changer that shifted the US towards … Read More
Safety of Blow-Out Preventers “Just Hot Air”
One of the final puzzles of the Deepwater Horizon disaster has been solved. It is a mystery no more. A question that continues to haunt many in BP and in the oil industry is why did the supposed fail-safe mechanism to prevent a blowout, called the blowout preventer (BOP), actually fail. And fail so spectacularly. … Read More
BP Spill: 50% of Residents Suffered Adverse Health Effects
One of the most unreported legacies of the Exxon Valdez oil spill was the devastating long-term health impact of many of the clean-up workers and communities. Thousands of people suffered short-term and long-term effects from the spill. An unknown number have died. It was in part this lethal legacy that was a shadow of fear … Read More
Drilling Resumes, but Doubts Remain
Yesterday the US Interior Department approved the first new deepwater drilling permit since BP’s Deepwater disaster last April. The permit for Noble Energy to drill about 70 miles southeast of Venice, Florida, comes more than four months after the Interior Department lifted its deep-water drilling moratorium, and nearly a year after the disaster. “This permit … Read More
API is “Compromised” Says Deepwater Report
We know that BP was to blame for the Deepwater Horizon. So too was Transocean and Halliburton. So too was the failed regulatory regime, which was tasked with maximising revenues for drilling at the same time as being responsible for oversight of the operations. You can’t do both, and that is the reason that former … Read More
“A Failure of Management”
When ex-BP boss, Tony Hayward said last year that “This was not our accident … This was not our drilling rig. This was not our equipment. It was not our people, our systems or our processes,” you know that history would prove him to be wrong. This was BP’s accident. Today, the Official Report into … Read More
Deepwater’s Forgotten Villain
When you think of the Deepwater disaster earlier this year, of course the main company responsible for the spill that springs to mind is BP, the operator of the rig. The next villain in the story is Transocean, the owner of the rig. One name that does not automatically jump out is Anadarko, the minority … Read More
“Insufficient Consideration of Risk” on BP Rig
If the oil industry is about one thing and one thing only it is not really about oil, it is about risk. How a company manages the geological, technical, safety and financial risk of its daily decisions determines whether the company stays ahead of its cut-throat competitors. Oil just happens to be the commodity that … Read More
Spillcam Enters the Psyche
In another signal of the legacy of BP’s spill, it has emerged that “Spillcam” was one of the top words of 2010, reflecting the impact the spill had around the globe. Along with words such as “vuvuzela”and Sarah Palin’s “Refudiate” — a morph of refute and repudiate – Spillcam made the annual Global Language Monitor … Read More