The Houston Chronicle reported on Tuesday about the ongoing investigation into BP’s well blowout that caused an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. At the time of the spill, there was a lot of dispute between the government and BP about the amount of oil spilling from the Macondo well. During the three months it took to cap the well, the government says nearly 5 million barrels of oil leaked. BP still disputes that figure, but has not publicly stated their own. The question is, have they not released a number because they don’t want to, or because they can’t?
“Knowing how fast the oil was flowing was a key to evaluating possible ways to stop it.” Clearly there was a lot of disagreement between higher and lower level staff at BP about how fast it actually was. Top level officials told the public it was 5,000 barrels a day, while others lower down named figures anywhere between 30,000 and 100,000 per day.
Said BP’s VP of the exploration and production technology division, Mike Mason, “[We] should be cautious about standing behind a 5,000 barrel per day figure.”
Key to this disaster was effect mitigation, and it is clear from BP and the government’s mismanagement of the efforts to cap the well that the right data was not available at the right time. Entrance has helped clients with the improve management of pipelines and the associated risk. You can read our case study here.
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