Wednesday, June 23, 2010
(photo: U.S. Coast Guard)
Known as the “blind shear ram,” this piece of equipment at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico was supposed to prevent the oil well that exploded from spewing out of control millions of gallons of oil. But the blind shear ram, which is meant to cut through the well pipe and seal off the flow of oil, failed to function properly. The possibility of just such a failure was raised by experts within the Minerals Management Service (MMS), the federal agency charged with overseeing the Deepwater Horizon and other offshore oil platforms. But MMS leaders ignored warnings from their own staff about the potential for blind shear rams to not work in critical blowouts deep beneath the sea.
These concerns also were raised in 2002 and again in 2004 in studies that MMS helped finance.
Agency officials further contributed to the environmental disaster by not enforcing their own rule, adopted in 2003, that required companies to show proof that their blind shear rams would work when needed. Last year, an MMS engineer in the New Orleans office approved BP’s drilling permit for the Deepwater Horizon without first demanding to see the company’s documentation on the performance of the well’s blowout preventer, which includes the blind shear ram.
When, three weeks before the Deepwater Horizon explosion, President Obama announced that he would open up large tracts of the ocean to oil drilling, he said that his advisors had spent a year studying the possible environmental dangers. Obama promised that “we'll employ new technologies that reduce the impact of oil exploration. We'll protect areas that are vital to tourism, the environment, and our national security. And we'll be guided not by political ideology, but by scientific evidence.” However, it turned out that when it came to blind shear rams and blowout preventers, Obama and his advisors did not challenge the promises made by the oil industry and did not make independent inquiries of their own.
-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky
Regulators Failed to Address Risks in Oil Rig Fail-Safe Device (by David Barstow, Laura Dodd, James Glanz, Stephanie Saul and Ian Urbina, New York Times)
Testimony of Mary L. Kendall Acting Inspector General for the Department of the Interior (House Committee on Natural Resources) (pdf)
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