Thanks for the link to the Bhopal Gas Leak incident, it does indeed put things into perspective.

Barack Obama in his grandstanding performances recently has compared the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico as as serious an attack on the US as 9/11, utterly ridiculous of course as the former was an accident and 9/11 was a deliberate action of intent.

With regard to 9/11 around 3,000 people lost their lives. The culprits were known and their extradition to answer for their crimes was sought. Those sheltering Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda refused to hand him over, the US intervened in the ongoing civil war in Afghanistan and drove the Taleban from power forcing the Al-Qaeda leadership to flee Afghanistan. Since October 2001 43 countries have been engaged in the conflict in Afghanistan all because of 3000 lives lost in the 9/11 attacks.

The Bhopal incident killed 15,000, the culprits were known and their extradition was sought. Those sheltering the culprits refused to hand them over. Anybody see any double standard in operation here?

Q, as for this:

On June 22, 2009, e. g., "BP engineers expressed concerns that the metal well casing the company wanted to use might collapse under high pressure. "This would certainly be a worst case scenario," warned Mark E. Hafle, a senior drilling engineer at BP in an internal report. "However, I have seen it happen, so know it can occur."

I would like to know the full context of this cherry-picked "concern". Look at the date, June 22, 2009 one year ago. Has the "casing collapsed under pressure"? No it has not. Once installed and cemented in place the casing sections are like an extended telescope inserted into the seabed. The well casing only supports the top end of the hole that has been drilled, it does not extend the full length of the well. Knowing how casing is assembled and constructed, I find the language incongruous particularly the use of word collapse. At the time were they talking about shallow gas pockets? On what has been "presented" by Q we have no idea.


Function and operation of the BOP would be the responsibility of Transocean subsea engineers and Cameron as equipment supplier. Again I would like to know exactly what was leaking - another piece of half information presented without context.

It would appear that at all points MMS were kept in the loop the reduction in test pressure for the BOP could only have come about with MMS sanction and a case would have been presented to them for review, comment and verification before that decision was made.