{"id":589,"date":"2010-05-29T10:33:31","date_gmt":"2010-05-29T06:33:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=589"},"modified":"2010-05-31T00:25:33","modified_gmt":"2010-05-30T20:25:33","slug":"fateful-decisions-on-the-deepwater-horizon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/589\/","title":{"rendered":"Fateful Decisions on the Deepwater Horizon<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

For all my dismissal of the mainstream media in their coverage of the Macondo disaster, it appears (thanks to Gringo in the comments) that the Wall Street Journal<\/em> is doing a pretty fine job of it.\u00a0 This article<\/a> is probably the most comprehensive and technically accurate account of what happened before the well blowout, and they have achieved something of a scoop by managing to interview not only people who know what they are talking about but those who were actually there.<\/p>\n

All the signs are pointing towards corners being cut at the behest of BP representatives to complete work on the well which was already behind schedule and over budget.\u00a0 I highly recommend reading the article in full, because I am only going to quote certain parts of it here.<\/p>\n

Firstly, a brief summary of what they did wrong:<\/p>\n

BP, for instance, cut short a procedure involving drilling fluid that is designed to detect gas in the well and remove it before it becomes a problem, according to documents belonging to BP and to the drilling rig’s owner and operator, Transocean Ltd.<\/p>\n

BP also skipped a quality test of the cement around the pipe\u2014another buffer against gas\u2014despite what BP now says were signs of problems with the cement job and despite a warning from cement contractor Halliburton Co.<\/p>\n

Once gas was rising, the design and procedures BP had chosen for the well likely gave this perilous gas an easier path up and out, say well-control experts. There was little keeping the gas from rushing up to the surface after workers, pushing to finish the job, removed a critical safeguard, the heavy drilling fluid known as “mud.” BP has admitted a possible “fundamental mistake” in concluding that it was safe to proceed with mud removal, according to a memo from two Congressmen released Tuesday night.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This speaks for itself.\u00a0 Industry best practice and the advice of the specialist contractors were not followed and warnings were ignored with disastrous results.\u00a0 This is not looking good for BP.<\/p>\n

Nor is this:<\/p>\n

Some saw indications that managers wanted to wrap up quickly. Kevin Senegal, a subcontractor employee who cleaned tanks, said he was told to be ready to clean two tanks on a coming shift instead of the usual one. “To me it looked like they were trying to rush everything,” he said.<\/p>\n

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A disagreement broke out on the rig on April 20 over the procedures to be followed. At 11 a.m., workers for the half-dozen contractors working on the rig gathered for a meeting. Douglas Brown, Transocean’s chief mechanic on the rig, testified Wednesday at a hearing in Louisiana that a top BP official had a “skirmish” with top Transocean officials.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The Transocean workers, including offshore installation manager Jimmy Wayne Harrell, disagreed with a decision by BP’s top manager about how to remove drilling mud and replace it with lighter seawater. Mr. Brown said he heard Mr. Harrell say, “I guess that is what we have those pinchers for,” referring to a part of the blowout preventer that would shut off the well in case of an emergency.<\/p>\n

BP won the argument, said Mr. Brown, who is a plaintiff in a suit against BP and Transocean. Mr. Harrell declined Journal requests for comment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nobody mentioned this argument in their testimonies in front of congress, probably sensibly.\u00a0 But if this is an accurate description of what happened, we have a situation where the specialist contractors are being overruled by a client.\u00a0 This situation is as common as seawater in the oil and gas business, but the perogative of the client to do this is very much a double-edged sword: he who makes the final decision must also take the responsibility for what happens, and in this case what happened was an unmitigated disaster.\u00a0 It will be interesting to see what is made of this argument during the investigation, which will call witnesses to determine who said what and when, as it may be crucial in deciding where the utlimate blame lies.<\/p>\n

(Incidentally, I note with interest that Mr Brown has already launched a suit against BP and his employers Transocean.\u00a0 They don’t give any details on what exactly he is suing them for, but the article identifies another person – one of the ROV operators on the Deepwater Horizon<\/em> – who is suing both companies for physical injury and mental anguish.\u00a0 I know the Americans are litigious folk and and I’m sure lawyers were licking their lips with relish within seconds of them hearing a major oil company had had an accident, but isn’t this a bit early for employees to be launching lawsuits?\u00a0 Or is this some kind of defence against being sued oneself later on?\u00a0 A bit like the old rugby adage of getting your retaliation in first.)<\/p>\n

So who’s going to carry the can for the fateful decisions BP made in defiance of their contractors’ concerns?\u00a0 Hopefully not this guy:<\/p>\n

[A] BP manager overseeing final well tests apparently had scant experience in deep-water drilling. He told investigators he was on the rig to “learn about deep water,” according to notes of an interview with him seen by the Journal.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

A little after 5 p.m., to check the well’s integrity and whether gas was seeping in, rig workers did what is called a “negative pressure test.” It was supervised by a BP well-site leader, Robert Kaluza. His experience was largely in land drilling, and he told investigators he was on the rig to “learn about deep water,” according to Coast Guard notes of an interview with him. BP declined to comment on his experience.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh dear.\u00a0 How many times have I heard that before?\u00a0 An oil company staffer plonked into a senior position, where he must make crucial decisions, in order to gain experience.\u00a0 This happens far more often than it should, although the degree to which it happens does vary between the companies.\u00a0 I’ve seen former drilling engineers in charge of the construction of onshore facilities, and reservoir engineers heading the commissioning of major new facilities.\u00a0 In an environment where career progression is considered paramount (indeed, they deliberately recruit people right out of university who are ruthlessly ambitious, often delusionally so) and seemingly everyone encouraged to aim to be a future CEO, high-flyers are whisked from one unsuitable posting to the next in order to give them the broad experience somebody has told them they need to reach the top.\u00a0 The situation with Mr Kaluza is somewhat tempered by the fact that he had at least come from a drilling background, albeit on land rigs.\u00a0 We’re fortunate he didn’t get transferred from Head of Procurement at BP Azerbaijan.\u00a0 Some oil companies commendably don’t do this, and are happy to leave good, experienced people in the same position for years, ensuring they are paid well and their career advances in line with what they would otherwise have if they were hopping about.\u00a0 Going onto a site for the first time and finding your construction manager is a grizzled Texan who has held that position since 1981 across three continents and over a dozen major facilities is comforting in a way that a highly intelligent, multi-lingual, well presented, ambitious but utterly inexeperienced oil company prodigy isn’t.<\/p>\n

The problem is, I think, a matter of egos.\u00a0 Like I said, some oil companies deliberately recruit little Napoleans with egos bigger than your average offshore platform.\u00a0 The interviews and selection process favour the born leaders and weed out the compliant team players, with the result that you have a generation of natural leaders – who have been told since joining that they are the very best, the cream of the crop – and nobody who just wants to settle down to the drudgery of getting the job done.\u00a0 Which is why half the damned industry is made up of contractors, nobody else wants to do any actual work.\u00a0 I exaggerate, but not a lot.\u00a0 Anyway, if you have a bright, young, energetic high-flyer who you want to develop and gain experience in another area, then you put him in charge but you assign him a lieutenant.\u00a0 And that lieutenant should be a grizzled old dog who has been around the block a dozen times and then some, knows everything and everybody, is as cynical as hell, but just doesn’t have the drive or energy or career desires to lead any more.\u00a0 The old dog would ensure the young pup stays on the straight and narrow and doesn’t do anything stupid and remains on call should he need to offer advice drawn from his considerable experience.\u00a0 The oil industry is chock-full of these blokes, and they’re being laid off by the thousand when they should be doing everything they can to keep them.\u00a0 Instead, the egos of the high-flyers and the management, who are effectively promoting somebody just like themselves, won’t allow him to be told he’s wrong, about to make a stupid mistake, knows sod all, and really needs to start listening and wise up a bit.\u00a0 All young engineers, myself included (on more than one occasion), have had a slap down like this from some old hand when we’ve stuck our neck out and thought we knew it all.\u00a0 You feel pretty hurt afterwards, but it’s a vital process in learning what your limitations are and how to respect and listen to those around you.\u00a0 When it happens, boy do you learn.\u00a0 Sadly, I sometimes get the impression that some oil company staff are taught that by default they know more than the contractors and everybody else and they should not be cowed into listening to them, hence you find experienced hands being second-guessed and shouted down by some arrogant git who has no idea what he’s talking about, and you find it far more often than is healthy for the industry.<\/p>\n

Now I am not saying that this is the case with Mr Kaluza, who incidentally has claimed the fifth amendment.\u00a0 I know nothing about his character and he might well have been highly sympathetic to his contractors’ concerns but unable to take their advice due to contradictory orders from above.\u00a0 Indeed, one person who I met in Sakhalin was a high-flyer who was put in an utterly unsuitable senior role in which he had no experience but was one of the most pleasant, charming, and highly-competent people I had the pleasure of meeting: he was simply inexperienced.\u00a0 In fact, I am probably quite sympathetic towards Mr Kaluza.\u00a0 He has been knowingly put in a position in which he is not familiar, seemingly without adequate support, and found himself at the centre of the blame for causing the worst oil disaster in decades.\u00a0 He was not the senior BP man on the rig, and I fervently hope that he will not be hung out to dry over this.\u00a0 Even if he acted like the most arrogant, jumped-up little Hitler in BP’s arguments with their contractors, it was the BP management who put him in that position in the first place and so it is they who should take the partial responsibility of any mistakes he might have made.<\/p>\n

So attention will turn to the senior BP man on the rig, Donald Vidrine.\u00a0 If Mr Kaluza was inexperienced, Mr Vidrine should have known the job inside out and upside down, and he is therefore responsible for the BP decisions on the rig regardless of who actually made them.\u00a0 I expect Mr Vidrine to cop an enormous amount of flak for the decisions either he or his subordinates made that day.\u00a0 But to be honest, I also have a lot of sympathy for Mr Vidrine too.\u00a0 Whatever mistakes he made in ignoring the advice of his contractors and despite any wrong decisions he might have made, Mr Vidrine did not think “Sod the safety and the environment, I don’t care if there’s an accident, I’m going to do what I want because I’m right and I’m in charge.”<\/em> Contrary to what much of the media is saying, people in the western oil and gas companies are not that irresponsible, and he would almost certainly have had a valid reason for taking his own course of action before which he would have weighed up various competing factors.\u00a0 He would have been under enormous pressure to finish the job and move on, the project being behind schedule and over budget.\u00a0 Every single rig operator and company representative in the world is expected to make decisions under enormous pressure, often with no clear indication as to which is the right way to go.\u00a0 Almost all decisions at this end of the oil and gas business are a compromise between competing factors.\u00a0 When there is a shortage of information or conflicting signals, the decision maker must make a judgement call, and this also characterises most decisions in the upstream oil and gas business.<\/p>\n

It is easy to make a clear decision to shut down a motor which is running at 1,000rpm when the manufacturer recommends a maximum speed of 900rpm.\u00a0 This is a decision which does not require any judgement, and a trained monkey can make those.\u00a0 Now say the motor is driving a pump which is propelling a coolant through a heat exhanger and a warning goes off that the temperature in the heat exchanger is too high.\u00a0 The correct course of action would be to increase the flow of coolant by increasing the speed of the motor.\u00a0 But what if something has gone wrong and the motor is already at 900rpm?\u00a0 Do you risk damaging the motor by running it too fast or the heat exchanger by running it too hot?\u00a0 That is a judgement call, in which you must weigh up several factors and assess the relative risk of each course of action.\u00a0 Now that example is for illustrative purposes only and there are a dozen reasons why that situation should not arise and procedures to deal with it even if it does, but anybody at the sharp end of the oil business is expected to make judgement calls of this nature, albeit far more complex.\u00a0 Being able to make decisions under these circumstances requires a certain type of person, one who is not risk-averse.\u00a0 You have to be able to shoulder a certain degree of risk and accept personal responsibility for the decisions you make, because you usually don’t have the luxury of time or information to be able to eliminate the inherent risk in your decision.\u00a0 If you cannot accept that you are taking on a degree of personal risk and responsibility with the decisions you make you have no business being in such a position that you are required to make them.<\/p>\n

For although recklessness and irresponsibility have no place in the oil business, there is equally little room in some quarters for those who won’t make a decision.\u00a0 Indecision can kill a project dead, and at some point somebody has to decide to move on.\u00a0 Perhaps surprisingly, indecision in the oil business is probably more common than decisive leadership.\u00a0 Going back to the environment where career progression is considered paramount, people are afraid of making a mistake, of making the wrong decision, so they sit on a problem in the hope that it will resolve itself.\u00a0 I worked with one chap employed in a position where making big decisions is vital who would email virtually the entire company for their approval and hold umpteen meetings to ensure the risk was spread sufficiently that should anything go wrong his arse would be covered.\u00a0 Unfortunately, it took up to three weeks for a decision related to $200 of expenditure to get made.\u00a0 Another chap was so risk-averse he was incapable of making a judgement call.\u00a0 Although knowledgeable enough on any subject, he would refuse to endorse any decision until he was 100% satisfied that every last objection had been thought of and countered and every imaginable study into the problem had been carried out, completed, and a clear, unambigous conclusion found.\u00a0 This process would sometimes take months, when one of the old hands could have looked at it for an hour and made a decision there and then.\u00a0 No old dogs about, y’see.<\/p>\n

So, my point is that many of the decisions made in oil and gas are judgement calls, and those who have to make them are expected to shoulder a degree of risk and responsibility.\u00a0 For this reason they are handsomely rewarded, which is why it is so frustrating when you encounter somebody who won’t make a decision but is happy enough to draw the salary for doing so.\u00a0 Mr Vidrine would have been perfectly aware of the personal responsibility he was taking on himself in making the decision, and he will have to explain to the investigators the process by which he made his judgement.\u00a0 If he can convince the investigators that his judgement process was sound and each competing factor was adequately assessed he stands to come out of this all right.\u00a0 Not exactly smelling of roses, but all right.<\/p>\n

Which under the circumstances based on the evidence presented in the article, is going to be a pretty tall order.\u00a0 You might be forgiven for thinking that there was little judgement required once various warnings started coming in, and it was startlingly obvious what the course of action should have been, and the investigation may well prove that this was the case.\u00a0 But to establish this they are going to have to look at any operational precedents which might have been set in the weeks, months, and years prior to the accident.\u00a0 The operational records of BP and Transocean will have to be examined to see if the circumstances prior to the blowout occurred previously and what the subsequent course of action was then.\u00a0 This is pure speculation on my part, but we might find that several similar warning flags had been raised in times previously and safely ignored.\u00a0 One of the many dangers in the oil and gas business is doing something wrong several times without consequence, and eventually so many times you get used to doing it that way.\u00a0 And then one day it catches you out.\u00a0 Maybe we’ll learn that Mr Vidrine had made similar judgement calls previously that paid off, saved the project a few million each time, and earned him a hearty slap on the back and a Leatherman from his bosses?\u00a0 If so, it’s going to be hard to put the entire blame on him personally.<\/p>\n

And finally, make no bones about it, Mr Vidrine’s job was a damned hard one.\u00a0 I for one don’t want to see any individual being hung out to dry if he did his job as conscienciously as he could and genuinely thought he was doing the right thing.<\/p>\n

That could be me next time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For all my dismissal of the mainstream media in their coverage of the Macondo disaster, it appears (thanks to Gringo in the comments) that the Wall Street Journal is doing a pretty fine job of it.\u00a0 This article is probably … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[63,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=589"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":608,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589\/revisions\/608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}