It's with Mike Williams, who was a member of the Deepwater Horizon crew, and he barely escaped with his life when the explosion occurred.

Would that be in anyway due to the fact that Transocean employees had overriden and shut of the alarms that would have given Mike Williams a bit more notice of what was going on?

All the rest about the drilling actually reinforces what Don T, myself and others have been pointing out - The hole was drilled. it was completed therefore what subsequently happened had nothing to do with the speed at which drilling was done.

So with great reluctance and considerable apprehension, the crew obeyed the BP manager's demands. And what they were afraid might happen did. The hole split open, the drilling mud leaked out, and they lost their drilling tools in the hole.

But—their ultimate fear, a blow-out, did not happen.


I have a problem with the Reuters Timeline you detailed:

April 20, 2010 - Explosion and fire on Transocean Ltd's drilling rig Deepwater Horizon licensed to BP Plc; 11 workers are killed. The rig was drilling in BP's Macondo project 42 miles (68 km) southeast of Venice, Louisiana, in 5,000 feet (1,525 metres) of water and 13,000 feet (4 km) under the seabed.

April 22 - The Deepwater Horizon rig, valued at more than $560 million, sinks and a 5-mile (8-km) oil slick forms.

April 25 - The well's blowout preventer fails.

The Blow Out Preventer failed on April 20th that is why there was a fire and explosion on the rig.

How the hell could anybody have expected the BOP to work according to Reuter's timeline, your pal the SriLankan who has worked on rigs should have pointed that glaring obvious error to you.

Mud is pumped down through the drill string and through the bit whilst drilling to lubricate the drill bit and to balance the pressure. There are three cement plugs set, not just one, by the time the third is set the two previous ones are obviously in place, whether the last is set with counterbalancing mud or with seawater at pressure is irrelevant as after the third plug is set whatever mud is used is removed and replaced with - guess what - Yep you got it in one seawater under pressure.

According to Mike Williams, what happened was that they had been ordered to test the blow-out preventer when a crewman accidentally moved a joystick, applying hundreds of thousands of pounds of force, apparently damaging the "annular," a ring of rubber. Pieces of rubber were found in the drilling fluid, which he said indicated damage to a crucial seal.

But a supervisor declared the find to be "not a big deal," and to press on regardless.

Transocean employee fuck-up and it would be the Transocean Supervisor or the Cameron Supervisor who would declare it to be "no big deal". By the bye at this stage in the process they are beyond the point of no return, they can only proceed. Time to test BOP's is before you start not during drilling operations.

All the focus on the blowout preventer is a distraction from figuring out what went wrong with the well in the first place. Why was gas able to surge up from the well onto the platform, where it ignited into a fireball?

This is obviously based upon you buying into Reuters impossible timeline of events. Go and ask your Sri Lankan pal. The BOP operates automatically, or it should do, on a surge in pressure from below. Nobody has to operate it, but it does have to be connected to the surface, however if the driller on the drill floor notices a sharp and sudden rise in pressure he can in conjunction with the mud.man increase pressure on the column of mud in the hole or he can operate "Choke" lines which also seal the well.