...Final Report on the Investigation of the Macondo Well Blowout Deepwater Horizon Study Group March 1, 2011 The Deepwater Horizon Study Group (DHSG) was formed by members of the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management (CCRM) in May 2010 in response to the blowout of the Macondo well on April 20, 2010. A fundamental premise in the DHSG work is: we look back to understand the why‘s and how‘s of this disaster so we can better understand how best to go forward. The goal of the DHSG work is defining how to best move forward – assessing what major steps are needed to develop our national oil and gas resources in a reliable, responsible, and accountable manner. Deepwater Horizon Study Group Investigation of the Macondo Well Blowout Disaster This Page Intentionally Left Blank Deepwater Horizon Study Group Investigation of the Macondo Well Blowout Disaster In Memoriam Jason Anderson Senior tool pusher Dewey Revette Driller Stephen Curtis Assistant driller Donald Clark Assistant driller Dale Burkeen Crane operator Karl Kleppinger Roughneck Adam Weise Roughneck Shane Roshto Roughneck Wyatt Kemp Derrick man Gordon Jones Mud engineer Blair Manuel Mud engineer 1 Deepwater Horizon Study Group Investigation of the Macondo Well Blowout Disaster In Memoriam The Environment 2 Deepwater Horizon Study Group Investigation of the Macondo Well Blowout Disaster Table of Contents In Memoriam....................................................................
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...Compare and contrast the way Transocean and BP describe the incident chronology of the actual events leading up to and immediately following the blow out and explosions on the Deepwater Horizon. Answer: My first thoughts after I read both incident chronology’s, to compare and contrast the way Transocean and BP describe the incidents, is that BP or Transocean do not take ownership of the incident nor do either want to not acknowledge wrongdoing of any aspect of event. Transocean points the finger at BP and BP’s chronology seems to minimize their part. Transocean chronology begins on 4/14/2013, and ends 4/20/2013, while BP’s chronology begins on 10/6/2009, and ends 5/5/2013. The obvious differences in the incident chronologies are the BP incident chronology is longer, but does not have as much finger pointing and is not as interesting as Transocean’s. BP makes up for this in their “Accident Analysis” sections, but their chronology sticks to logs and facts compared to Transocean’s more narrative approach. BP uses bullet points at the beginning of their chronology and a dressed up spreadsheet with short descriptions of each timeline event. Transocean chronology is more descriptive and colorful. They use their incident chronology as a sounding board for all of BP’s shortcomings during the entire project. The use this section to minimize their involvement in the project. They use the chronology express “BP’s direction” and “BP’s poor decisions” during their involvement...
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...Responsibility, Course 2016 FE1 EDHEC Nice Tutorial 3 BP, Deepwater and Sustainability Reporting The Deepwater Horizon oil rig fire and explosion on April 20, 2010, killed 11 men and caused one of the largest marine oil spills in history. The leak from the undersea well flowed for 87 days and polluted an estimated 68,000 square miles of the Gulf of Mexico waters and nearly 500 miles of coastline from Louisiana to Florida. At the moment of the accident BP was the leaseholder and operator of the Maconda well located off the coast of Louisiana. The company was ultimately responsible for conducting operations there safely and in respect of the environment. BP hired Transocean Ltd (the owner of the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon) to provide the vessel and drilling crew to implement BP’s operations of the Maconda well. 1 Investigations established that bad management on the Deepwater Horizon resulted in poor safety on the rig. The US chemical safety board concludes that a last-ditch safety device on the underwater well had multiple failures and wasn't tested properly. It found that the cause of the initial explosion involved multiple screw-ups with cement, drilling mud, fluid pressure, botched tests, management problems and poor decisions. The blowout preventer sealed the well temporarily, but then it failed and that caused the massive spill. 1 For a description of BP’s implication in the Deepwater Horizon accident you can also read Cherry and Sneirson (2011), p....
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...referred to as the British Petroleum (BP) oil spill or Deepwater Horizon oil spill, took place in the Gulf of Mexico and started due to “well integrity failure” on BP’s Deepwater Horizon oilrig. A “blowout preventer,” the device that seals the well in situations such as this, failed to engage. The failure led to hydrocarbons uncontrollably shooting up the well, triggering a chain of explosions. These explosions not only killed 11 BP personnel, but also unleashed over four million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico (Bryant 2011). The leak took three months to stop, despite a variety of attempts, before BP finally capped it off on July 15th, 2010 (Adams and Gabbert 2010). In response to the crisis BP launched a website to present itself and its responses in a positive manner. BP’s “Gulf of Mexico Restoration” website uses these three strategies to try to repair its reputation: BP uses vibrant images of beaches and aquatic habitats to visually demonstrate its progress toward restoring the environment affected by the Deepwater Horizon accident; chronicles its accomplishments of restoring the Gulf of Mexico using sizeable headliners and captions, and provides a timeline of expenditures to display its financial commitment to revamping the damaged region. BP uses stunning pictures of restored beaches and enhanced aquatic habitats to express its commitment to rectifying all damages the oil spill had on people and their communities. BP scattered pictures of gorgeous shorelines...
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...the way Transocean and BP describe the incidents, is that BP or Transocean do not take ownership of the incident nor do either want to not acknowledge wrongdoing of any aspect of event. Transocean points the finger at BP and BP’s chronology seems to minimize their part. Transocean chronology begins on 4/14/2013, and ends 4/20/2013, while BP’s chronology begins on 10/6/2009, and ends 5/5/2013. The obvious differences in the incident chronologies are the BP incident chronology is longer, but does not have as much finger pointing and is not as interesting as Transocean’s. BP makes up for this in their “Accident Analysis” sections, but their chronology sticks to logs and facts compared to Transocean’s more narrative approach. BP uses bullet points at the beginning of their chronology and a dressed up spreadsheet with short descriptions of each timeline event. Transocean chronology is more descriptive and colorful. They use their incident chronology as a sounding board for all of BP’s shortcomings during the entire project. The use this section to minimize their involvement in the project. They use the chronology express “BP’s direction” and “BP’s poor decisions” during their involvement with them during the project. The Deepwater Horizon, which was owned and operated by Transocean and had been under contract to BP, proves they were in this together, yet both want to distance themselves from the catastrophe. BP’s Deepwater Horizon Accident Report seems to get want...
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...BP & Deepwater Horizon C. Nelson BP & Deepwater Horizon Every business, in some way, is affected by public and private criticism. One industry that is never too far away from criticism is the oil and gas industry. Over the course of this essay, we will explore BP, its stakeholders, some of their criticisms, and BP’s response to those criticisms. BP, formerly British Petroleum, is the fourth largest oil and gas companies in the world in terms of revenue and sixth based on production. (Statista, 2015) (Forbes, 2015) Although BP doesn’t have an official mission statement, the company does have a few statements entitled “Our Values”, “Clear Priorities”, and “Our strategy and sustainability”. BP (2015) states, “We have five values that express our shared understanding of what we believe, how we aim to behave and what we aspire to be as an organization.” Those five values include safety, respect, excellence, courage, and one team. “Clear Priorities” (2015) details three main topics that top the company’s interests including: safe, reliable and compliant operations; disciplined financial choices; and competitive project execution. Thirdly, BP has a commitment to sustainability and states (2015), “We believe that the best way for BP to achieve sustainable success is by acting in the long-term interests of our shareholders, our partners and society.” The three pillars augment the lack of a mission statement and express BP’s commitments and responsibilities....
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...No. 55 High School BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Investigation Subject: Geography Level: High (HL) Name: Stephanie Chinese: 姜智旻 Homeroom: 10-5 Word count: 1088 Student number: 4192 Supervisor: Craig Hamilton On 20th of August 2010, the oil drilling rig Deepwater Horizon, operating in the Gulf of Mexico exploded then sunk resulting to 11 deaths. During the 87 days, about 4.9 billion barrels of oil had already spread. An estimation of 42,000 gallon of oil is oozing from underwater. From then 75,000km2 was not allowed for fishing. Apparently, the blowout preventer device had bad managements and operations, and failed. Investigators said, “The problems with this blowout preventer were worse than we understood.” (Seth, 2014) In addition, investigators have stated that the cause of this explosion was because of the screw ups with cement, drilling mud, fluid pressure, mismanaged tests, and poor decisions. Therefore, this device should be improved so it doesn’t happen again. They have discovered that it has been the device operator’s fault in view of the fact that the blowout preventer hasn’t been tested accurately, there were problems in the wiring and dead batteries. In order to clean the oil excess, they used powerful chemicals, which they don’t know the effects of on the environment. It was from 1.6km down to the bottom. After this cause, the British Petroleum (BP) went into investigation, negotiating with more than 50 expertise from within BP and industry. Not only...
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...A Behavioural Finance view of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster of 2010 INTRODUCTION The Deepwater Horizon disaster of 2010 was the largest accidental marine oil spill the oil industry has ever seen. It claimed 11 lives and caused huge environmental damage on the shoreline of the Gulf of Mexico by discharging circa 4.9 million barrels of oil. There have been numerous enquiries and studies into the accident to try to understand what happened, the goal of the enquiries was to establish where the fault and therefore guilt lay in order to ascertain compensation. This report attempts to apply key concepts from behavioural finance with a view to understanding the thought processes behind the decisions that were made. In the last decades there have been a lot of studies documenting the impact of psychological traits on the decisions made by managers. This report while touching on them, will not go into detail regarding the various technical difficulties encountered on the Deepwater Horizon and will instead focus on understanding the thought process of the various players involved. We will also briefly cover BP’s historical safety record as this will help us understand some of the behavioural factors in play within the organization. While BP was the principal on the Deepwater Horizon rig there were also other parties like Transocean , the rig operator, Halliburton, who operated in a consultancy position, Anadarko and Schlumberger. These companies played a part in the crisis and their...
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...Deep Water Horizon Oil Spill Letonya Rossi MGMT/1115 Post University 1). Name the organizations which had a stake in the drilling operation. The organizations’ that had stake in the drilling operations were BP Exploration & Production Inc., (were the lease operator of Mississippi canyon block 252, contains Macondo Well), Trans-ocean (chief contractors), Halliburton, (responsible for cementing operations). 2). Should responsibility for the accident be shared among the organizations? Why or why not? Absolutely, there is a huge relationship between safety and production. Most organizations are practically interested in staying ahead of their competitors and making huge turn over, this is often seen in shift from safety of personnel and environment to a more profit oriented goal. Hazards or risk as regards to safety of personals, equipment or environments while producing Should be reduced as reasonably practice in a work environment by planning. 3). “what is more important than safety”? Why is safety so important? Safety is the utmost impertinence for any organization, over the years in almost every industry involving production of any sort, where safety regulations, procedures and processes have to be followed, there has been a perceived conflict between safety and production. And processes have to be followed, there has been a perceived conflict between safety and production. The energy sector is no exception to the growth of this...
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...oil spills in history. A well control event allowed hydrocarbons to escape from the Macondo Well onto Transocean’s Deepwaster Horizon, resulting in explosions and fire on the rig. The fire, which was fed by hydrocarbons from the well continued to burn for 36 hours until the rig sank to bottom of the ocean. “Hydrocarbons continued to flow from the reservoir through the wellbore and the blowout preventer for 87 days, causing a spill of national significance” (Crisis Watch). The operations were controlled by BP Exploration & Production Inc., in which they held the lease contract as operators of Mississippi Canyon Block 252, which contains the Macondo Well. Deepwater Horizon exploration was to collect crude oil, one of the leading fuels in the world. After the explosion that shocked the nation, BP formed an investigation team that was in charge of gathering the facts surrounding the accident, analyzing available information and to identify possible causes and making recommendations to enable prevention of similar accidents in the future. The BP investigation Team began its work immediately in the aftermath of the accident, since gathering information directly from the explosion site was slightly out of the question immediately due to the horrendous events and lack of testimonies and vital facts, BP investigation team worked independently from other BP spill response activities and organizations collecting data directly from the rigs computer system which stores its information...
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...BP bears brunt of blame for the deepwater horizon catastrophe for Report says oil company is 'ultimately responsible' for oil spill but rig contractors also implicated in some areas BP’s share prices rose almost 5% but fell back after report was published Photograph: Molly Riley/REUTERS A key US federal report has focused the blame for the worst offshore oil spill in US history on BP, but criticised its contractors sufficiently for the markets to push BP's share price up. Amid a string of failures, BP's "cost or time-saving decisions… were contributing causes of the blowout," the report concluded. Assigning ultimate responsibility for the disaster – and the billions of dollars of clean-up and compensation costs – will take years of legal action, but Wednesday's investigation report was seen as a significant indicator as it was conducted by the regulator responsible for offshore activities. The blowout at the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010 killed 11 people and led to almost 5 million barrels of oil being spilt into the ocean. BP's share price rose almost 5% in London on rumours the report would help avert the company being found grossly negligent in future, which would increase its financial liabilities hugely. But it fell back after the report was published, finishing the day up 3.5% at 395.1p. The investigation, jointly conducted by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (Boemre) and the US Coast Guard, stated that a...
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...High School BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Investigation Subject: Geography Level: High (HL) Name: Stephanie Chinese: 姜智旻 Homeroom: 10-5 Word count: 1088 Student number: 4192 Supervisor: Craig Hamilton   On 20th of August 2010, the oil drilling rig Deepwater Horizon, operating in the Gulf of Mexico exploded then sunk resulting to 11 deaths. During the 87 days, about 4.9 billion barrels of oil had already spread. An estimation of 42,000 gallon of oil is oozing from underwater. From then 75,000km2 was not allowed for fishing.  Apparently, the blowout preventer device had bad managements and operations, and failed. Investigators said, “The problems with this blowout preventer were worse than we understood.†(Seth, 2014) In addition, investigators have stated that the cause of this explosion was because of the screw ups with cement, drilling mud, fluid pressure, mismanaged tests, and poor decisions. Therefore, this device should be improved so it doesn’t happen again. They have discovered that it has been the device operator’s fault in view of the fact that the blowout preventer hasn’t been tested accurately, there were problems in the wiring and dead batteries. In order to clean the oil excess, they used powerful chemicals, which they don’t know the effects of on the environment. It was from 1.6km down to the bottom. After this cause, the British Petroleum (BP) went into investigation, negotiating with more than 50 expertise from within BP and industry...
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...BP Oil Spill Introduction The United States consumes 19.5 million barrels of oil each day. (Rahman,K. Sabeel, 2011) This demonstrates how dependent the American society is on fossil fuel. This need for large amount of oil to keep the economy moving is having serious environmental impact, particularly in areas where large off shore drilling platforms are located. Each year, approximately one billion gallons of oil is spilled in the ocean. The BP oil spill accident is just of the many oil spills that have occurred in the Gulf of Mexico. There are several events that led to this accident. Firstly was the last of control over the pressure in the well. This followed by the failure of the well blowout preventer. This is a valve which was designed to maintain consistent conditions of the well. Then the slurry cement which was used at the bottom of the well failed to contain hydrocarbon within the reservoir, which allows gas and liquids to flow up the production casing. At the same time BP and Tranocean accepted a negative pressure test which was incorrect and so integrity of the well was not established. Where there was supposed to be a separation of the mud and gas, this was not working, causing gas to vent directly on to the rig instead of being diverted overboard. The gas then flowed in to the engine room through the ventilation system which then created a potential for ignition, which was suppose to have been prevented by the rig’s fire and gas system. ( Durando. Jessica...
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...BP’s Deepwater Horizon Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill: What Went Wrong Elizabeth D. Jones Southern New Hampshire University Student: 0811981 Abstract On April 20th 2010 the Deepwater Horizon rig, operated by BP, exploded unleashing millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico resulting in the largest marine oil spill in history. What makes this spill so significant is the fact that the spill continued unabated for three months causing the declaration of a state of emergency across several states (Bozeman, 2011). The purpose of this study is to highlight the significant issues of management and leadership within BP and point out how the poor decisions surrounding the spill deeply hindered their corporate reputation. Additionally, the paper will offer ways in which BP and those involved could have possibly prevented this disaster or have better mitigated the impact had the catastrophe still occurred. Managing risks, monitoring safety, effective communication and ownership of faults are all solutions that if implemented can help BP restore their reputation and prevent misfortunes like this from happening in the future. BP’s Deepwater Horizon Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill: What Went Wrong British Petroleum (BP), In the early evening of April 20th, 2010 uncontrolled hydrocarbons escaped causing an explosion on the oil-drilling platform Deepwater Horizon resulting in one of the worst environmental disasters in world history. Within 36 hours the massive oil rig, approximately...
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...British Petroleum Communication Problems inside BP Submitted by: Date: December 4, 2014 Memo 12/4/14 Jeff Lewis Metropolitan State University of Denver 890 Auraria Parkway Denver, CO 80204 Dear Jeff: Enclosed is my report on British Petroleum and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. This report shows how BP cut corners to expedite construction and save millions of dollars. As a result, the biggest oil spill in United States occurred. Due to the reckless conduct of BP, the corners cut by the people in charge ended up costing them billions of dollars as well as endangering the habitat and wildlife in the area. After reading this report you will realize BP’s CEO Tony Hayward, all the way down to the engineers in charge of everyday operations were to blame for the worse oil tragedy in our history. Sincerely, Executive Summary This is a report on how British Petroleum has failed in many areas of business communications. It’s going to include 3 main points that will explain in detail on how British Petroleum had bad communication and how it ended up creating history’s biggest oil spill in the United States in the Gulf of Mexico. The 3 main points include: 1. Pre-Event Planning a. Anticipate, Prepare, Practice b. “Safety” Not a Core Value c. Responsibility of Employees 2. Expressing Concern and Wrongful Focus a. Slow in Expressing Concern b. Lack of Sympathy to...
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