You don't have to be a Nostradamus to see it coming:
"Board: Oil drilling risks remain from device woes" Associated Press June 06, 2014
WASHINGTON — The key last-ditch safety device that failed to prevent the 2010 BP oil spill remains a potentially catastrophic problem today for some offshore drilling, according to a federal safety board investigation.
And yet the U.S. started handing out the contracts anyway!
Gotta keep that war machine fueled up.
The report issued Thursday by the Chemical Safety Board details multiple failures and improper testing of the blowout preventer, and blames bad management and operations for the breakdown. They found faulty wiring, a dead battery, and a bent pipe in the device.
‘‘The problems with this blowout preventer were worse than we understood,’’ safety board managing director Daniel Horowitz said in an interview. ‘‘And there are still hazards out there that need to be improved if we are to prevent this from happening again.’’
The safety board, like the National Transportation Safety Board, can investigate but has no regulatory power. It recommended new safety standards and regulations in its report.
If the industry doesn’t adopt them and regulators don’t tighten up oversight, it ‘‘opens the possibility of another catastrophic accident,’’ lead investigator Cheryl MacKenzie said at a news conference Thursday.
Investigators also noted that the industry is working on new designs that could fix many of the problems the board outlined. And the American Petroleum Institute issued a statement saying the report ‘‘ignores the tremendous strides made to enhance the safety of offshore operations.’’
Good enough for me.
Drill, baby, drill!
The nation’s worst offshore oil spill followed an explosion that killed 11 workers at the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, about 50 miles off the Louisiana coast. The blowout preventer should have stopped the leak.
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