Quote:
Originally Posted by Happy Monkey
These decisions are made by a beaurocracy. In the best of situations for political appointments, Obama wouldn't have had a new MMS in place in a month.
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Considering that Congressional Republicans were obstructing something like 70 Obama appointments, it was difficult to get any agency cleaned up.
MMS knew BOPs failed about 45% of the time. That BOPs were not designed for operation at these depths. That BOPs had numerous single point failures. And that now standards existed to verify BOP operation.
When Obama's people asked MMS for evaluation on deep water drilling, the 200+ page report barely even mentioned BOPs - when that was virtually the only protection for a blow out. The report never once mentioned what was well known in MMS - BOPS were a disaster waiting to happen. Those same MMS people knew BOPs were ineffective in 2003.
It takes time to reeducate people to work for America - not for a political agenda. A problems being addressed in many other agencies beyond MMS. MMS was used to lying even about facts known in 2003. That was the attitude from that White House. Therefore reports in 2009 could not bother to report how dangerous deep water drilling really was. That BOPs routinely failed.
BOPs have only one blind shear. If a pipe joint is at that shear, the pipe cannot be cut and sealed. It happened previously. MMS people knew this had caused previous failures during the 2000s. But the attitude throughout 2000s was, well, Saddam also had WMDs. Honesty was not encouraged when it contradicted the political agenda. White House lawyers even rewrote science papers to agree with their reality.
Cleaning house is required all through government now that we have learned what happens when the political agenda is more important than working for America. When an administration even all but protected bin Laden for a political agenda. MMS is simply the next in a long list of government agencies subverted in the name of their deregulation. Always tell the president only what he wants to hear (right out of Sec of Treasury Paul O’Neill’s book. Conclusions routinely changed by Cheney. One could get fired for telling the truth. MMS knew all through the 2000s that two blind shears were necessary for every BOP. Tests suggested even those would not operate reliable in deep water. So MMS did the administration policy. Stay quiet. Don't create waves.
I was wondering why the deep water drilling was halted for six month. Now I understand. Virtually all BOPs provide ineffective protection. These things have numerous potential single point failures - no redundancy. (Same problem brought down a MN highway bridge.) Throughout the 2000s, MMS never reviewed any of these designs. Now virtually every BOP must be significantly redesigned or scrapped on an emergency basis.
Any BOP that does not have at least two blind shears is virtually useless. About half do not have even that simplest requirement. And almost none are tested at these extreme depths and temperatures.
The industry must redesign everything in six months to fix what should have been corrected and what could not happen for seven years.
But as any good MBA president understands, that was good because profits were higher. Then the economy looked better. Nothing partisan. Just an engineer with contempt for those whose politics all but encourage disaster. They could not even demand a second blind shear - because that contradicted a White House political agenda.
Blind shears. Another smoking gun example of why George Jr administration thought nothing of MMS having sexting parties paid for by the industry.