OIL SPILL - Example of Bottom-Line Before Safety

"Workers on Doomed Rig Voiced Concern About Safety" by IAN URBINA, New York Times 7/21/2010

Excerpt

A confidential survey of workers on the Deepwater Horizon in the weeks before the oil rig exploded showed that many of them were concerned about safety practices and feared reprisals if they reported mistakes or other problems.

In the survey, commissioned by the rig’s owner, Transocean, workers said that company plans were not carried out properly and that they “often saw unsafe behaviors on the rig.”

Some workers also voiced concerns about poor equipment reliability, “which they believed was as a result of drilling priorities taking precedence over planned maintenance,” according to the survey, one of two Transocean reports obtained by The New York Times.

“At nine years old, Deepwater Horizon has never been in dry dock,” one worker told investigators. “We can only work around so much.”

“Run it, break it, fix it,” another worker said. “That’s how they work.”

According to a separate 112-page equipment assessment also commissioned by Transocean, many key components — including the blowout preventer rams and failsafe valves — had not been fully inspected since 2000, even though guidelines require its inspection every three to five years.

The report cited at least 26 components and systems on the rig that were in “bad” or “poor” condition.

A spokesman for Transocean, who confirmed the existence of the reports, wrote in an e-mail message that most of the 26 components on the rig found to be in poor condition were minor and that all elements of the blowout preventer had been inspected within the required time frame by its original manufacturer, Cameron. The spokesman, Lou Colasuonno, commenting on the 33-page report about workers’ safety concerns, noted that the Deepwater Horizon had seven consecutive years without a single lost-time incident or major environmental event.

Humm... "Most of the 26 components on the rig found to be in poor condition were minor." We have to wonder what their definition of "minor" is. I suspect it's tied to their bottom-line ($) in fixing "minor" problems.

"Deepwater Horizon had seven consecutive years without a single lost-time incident" = did NOT have to stop drilling = continued to make money, BUT that does not mean that there were no "incidents" that SHOULD have stopped drilling.

From this, and other reports in the past, the modus operandi of ALL companies involved with Deepwater Horizon = any shortcut, any delay (inspections, maintenance, etc), anything so they can continue drilling and making money.