Big Oil, Big Bight Part Two: when catastrophe strikes
The world changed on April 20, 2010 when the Deep Water Horizon drilling platform exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. For the next 87 days oil and gas flowed from the Macondo well-head letting free the biggest accidental oil spill in history. There have been more spills in the Gulf since the BP disaster, most recently from a Shell platform, but as Dr Thomas Azwell tells us in the second episode of our series, there are oil spills every day.
These harsh realities bring into question the environmental risk for the proposed BP exploration project in the Great Australian Bight. Environment groups and ordinary citizens in South Australia, around the country and around the world are asking if the risk of catastrophe is too great.
Bob Bea began working with BP in the early 1970’s during their entry into offshore oil and gas in the central North Sea. He later worked for them in the US Arctic and then in 2000 he and one of his colleagues were brought to the company’s global headquarters at St James Square in London, to help the company advance its thinking about reliability based design.
This is a concept in which Bob, who’s sometimes known in the industry as the‘Master of Disaster’, has expert knowledge. It basically takes engineering approaches from high-risk industries such as nuclear power and aviation, where failure can be catastrophic, and applies them to offshore oil rigs.
He told us; “We watched the Deep Water Horizon drill rig catch on fire due to a blow out killing 11 people and almost killing many more, but then we watched in succeeding days, the drill rig sink and then we watched that awful flow of oil and gas coming from the sea floor for the next 87 days. I guess the pictures showed that BP were not prepared.”
Thanks to NPR in New York for additional reporting.