Introduction:

If there were such a thing as the “drilling police”, what would be the wording on the citation issued for
the BP Macondo disaster, and who would receive it? Hopefully, this narrative will give the reader some
insight into that question, but it most certainly will not answer that question.

This will not be the definitive work on the BP Macondo disaster. Just like the sinking of the RMS Titanic
in 1912, stories and articles about this disaster will invariably be published for the rest of this century,
and beyond. But it is intended to de-complicate some of the incidents surrounding the event, from
someone who was “close” to
the industrial response to the
disaster. Historically, many of
the analyses to date have been
hyper-technical, dealing with
extremely focused aspects of
the well design and
construction, the rig, and parts
of the disaster response. There
have been multiple analyses of
the BOPs, the cement, the
number of casing centralizers
utilized, the formations, and
many other specific aspects of
the well and the rig. This
article hopes to deal with more
general concepts, in an
attempt to allow readers that
are not specifically “skilled in
the art” of oil well drilling to gain an insight into the cause(s) of the explosion.

To start with, the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) was one of two nearly identical, Semi-submersible drilling
vessels commissioned by the Reading and Bates Drilling Company in the late 1990s. The Deepwater
Nautilus (DWN) was it’s sister ship and was used in the filming of the movie because they are so similar
in appearance. A distinctive feature of these two ships is their angled leg geometry, which allowed the
pontoons to present a larger “footprint” to better resist sea motions of pitch, roll and heave. This
arrangement allowed the deck of the ship to be smaller than the pontoons, thereby saving thousands of
tons of steel in the construction of the ships while maintaining a fully capable main deck area.

In a way, this disaster is not dissimilar from average auto accidents that happen every day. At a critical
time, assumptions were made about the well’s condition that could not be verified by traditional testing
methods, so the regular well completion procedures continued until further discussions could identify if
there were any sort of problem downhole.

There is an abundance of safety equipment used on oil rigs that “could have” made a difference, just like
the safety equipment on automobiles. Modern vehicles have seat belts for occupant safety, engines for
acceleration, brakes for deceleration, and steering for changing direction. Logically, there is no reason
for any sort of collision, unless the vehicle is operated beyond the limits of it’s system’s controllability, or
there is some sort of “operator error”. Likewise, on an offshore drilling rig. Just like with vehicular
collisions, humans are the ultimate “control system”. But this is not an indictment of humanity, much
less any single company, person, or persons. Who hasn’t driven their car too fast on a wet road? And
after doing it once without adverse consequences, why not do it again, and again, to the point where it
becomes commonplace. Besides, you arrive at your destination sooner. What’s so bad about that? It is
basic human nature to strive for improvements, not only in our performance, but in the systems,
equipment, and processes that we use. This is more obvious in athletes than in everyday people, but
the desire to improve is visible everywhere, should one look in the right places. Perhaps “competition”
gets mixed into this psychological drive for constant improvement, especially since it can provide a
metric to compare almost any field of performance, whether it be a stop watch, a corporation’s stock
price, an annual financial statement, or national GDP. Everyone not only wants to do better than they
did last time, but they really want to beat the other guy who’s doing the same basic thing. Thus, every
company wants to be more profitable than every other company, and every oil rig wants to complete
their next well faster (aka: less expensively) than the last one. And they surely want to do it faster than
all of their competitors, be they internal to their company or external.

So, humans take shortcuts. And once a shortcut is used and nothing bad happens, it inherently becomes
Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), and the investigation for the next shortcut begins. Unfortunately,
we don’t make a roadmap of shortcuts to reflect the exact path taken from “safe operations” to “not so
much”. When something bad happens, it is almost never obvious how to get back to a safe mode of
operations.

But this is not the only aspect that drives the human psyche. As a species, we are not stupid, and we are
not usually daredevils. We take shortcuts that we have judged to be “safe”. But “safe” means different
things to different people. The famous auto racer, Carroll Shelby, is credited with saying “if you’re under
control, you’re not going fast enough”. This attitude would not make for a good elementary school bus
driver, but it won Mr. Shelby numerous races for a good many decades. “Different strokes…” as the
saying goes.

To augment our “judgement”, we have learned to depend on specialists in various fields, such as
Engineering, Geophysics,
Electronics, Manufacturing,
Construction and Naval
Architecture, just to name a few.
The basic process is that an action
is conceptualized, and then
analyzed by the appropriate
specialists who then issue a studied
opinion, or perhaps a step-by-step
procedure relating to the viability
of the proposed action. This
analysis is often a formal process
that follows established company
policies and procedures but can
also be extremely informal such as
a discussion over lunch, drinks, a
golf game, or even a shotgun skeet or trap shooting session. Regardless of the specific process, a plan-
of-action is agreed upon and implemented. In spite of a good or bad outcome of the implemented plan,
there will be a follow-up analysis that will establish the action as a success, a qualified success that still
needs work, or an abject failure. Surprisingly, many of the abject failures generate further thoughtful
discussions that eventually lead to a new, successful, action plan.

In the early days of the drilling industry, the specialists were often closely affiliated with the rig
operators and the above described process was carried out rather quickly with little documentation.
Sometimes the entire process took place in the mind of a single person, a pair of people, or a very small
group. During this time, failures were often spectacular, though mostly unreported. History books are
full of bios about people like Howard Hughes, H. L. Hunt, Hugh Roy Cullen, James Abercrombie and
Harry Cameron, the Schlumberger brothers, Red Adair, and many, many more. All these industry
pioneers were highly intelligent, unusually resourceful, and none were risk averse or afraid of hard work.
They all took chances on new equipment and processes that may seem absolutely reckless by today’s
standards. Keep in mind that they were starting an industry from it’s infancy, with no industry
guidelines, codes or standards to base their designs and analyses upon. Yet they fully understood the
risks, as well as the potential rewards of everything they did. Many of these oilfield trailblazers went
through repeated boom/bust cycles before they finally learned the fiscal frugality required to temper
the booms and minimize the busts from their business experiences.

And, yes, some of these pioneering people even died in the process. Their genius and their sacrifices
built an industry. But more than that, they built an industry with an attitude for getting things done, in
spite of limited resources, short time frames, and equipment not quite optimized for their specific
applications. Because of this attitude, we have rich stories of successes like Howard Hughes, who
became so successful and wealthy the U.S. Government came to him to build the original Glomar
Explorer Drillship to covertly recover the wreckage of a sunken Russian submarine in the 1960s. It was
then converted to a conventional drilling rig configuration in the late 1990s and led a successful oil
drilling career for Hughes’ original Global Marine (Glomar) and their subsequent owners.

In today’s corporate oilfield environment, different companies take different approaches to running
their business. Exxon, for example, is known to take a conservative approach whereby they use
processes,
procedures and
equipment that
have been proven
to be able to
handle the work
they need
completed.
Conversely, other
companies, such
as Total,
Chevron/Texaco,
BP and Royal
Dutch Shell are
quite active
researching and implementing new strategies, processes, and equipment combinations in a search for a
competitive advantage in an extremely competitive industry. Which approach works best? Who can say
with any degree of accuracy? Each approach has advantages and disadvantages, and each company
remains comfortable with their choices. All these companies are successful by most conventional
measurements. Unlike contemporary politicians, oil companies constantly evaluate the quantitative
results of their past efforts, and adjust future endeavors based on successful past experience in an effort
to not only repeat but improve upon positive past operations. They do this while minimizing, or,
hopefully, eliminating future negative results by learning from past failures. In other words,
corporations actually try to learn from history, rather than simply assuming that “good intentions”
always come true… which is almost never the case. Just like Babe Ruth, every time we step up to the
plate, we’re more likely to strike out than hit a home run.

So, exactly how would our hypothetical Drilling Citation for the Macondo disaster read? Before we get
to that, we need a little technical background.