Today, BP released a report on its own internal investigation into the Deepwater oil spill, which continued uncontrolled for months following what the report calls “a complex and interlinked series” of error and failures. The report is one of a number in progress, performed by both the companies involved and various governmental agencies, and it’s not intended to be complete—there’s an entire section devoted to information the investigators would have liked to have access to, but didn’t. Nevertheless, it provides a detailed chronology of what went wrong, and why none of the safety equipment and procedures that were in place were effective.

The events that triggered the Deepwater failure started with the preparations for the departure of the ship that drilled the well, a process termed “abandonment.”  At this point, the well extended into what the report terms the “primary reservoir sands” from which hydrocarbons would be harvested. Since these are under pressure relative to the top of the well, the intent was to seal it using concrete. It was at this point that things started to go wrong.

Read the comments on this post

Read more from the original source:
BP’s oil spill report traces a cascade of epic fail