Muse Droppings
By:
C.C. Youngren

Gulf Goo

I nominate the use of “spill,” when used as the operative noun describing the increasingly catastrophic Deepwater Horizon event in the Gulf, for “Euphemism of the Century.”  I’ve spilled a beer at a ball game, and wonder what amplification factor I should apply to my momentary embarrassment when injecting those pangs of guilt into the heart of your typical BP exec.  Infinite, I would hope.

“Accidents happen” was the analysis of the latest political meteor, Rand Paul.  What fries my beans about that statement is the implied shrug.  On the other hand, in the bowels of the Upper Big Branch mine in WV, the proverb “Accidents don’t happen; they are caused” was posted in profusion.  A truer statement to be sure, but unfortunately more epitaph than operational guidance; and one, you would think, suitable for every Massey Energy management cubicle.  On second thought, an “Accidents Eat Profits” poster may have been more effective there.

We use accident to describe a host of circumstantial confluences, but “industrial accident” has a special place in this firmament.  It conjures up images of carnage—and negligence.  Yet even in this subset there is a spectrum of cause and effect that deserves some contemplation.

The disaster at hand is being most often categorized in the genre of the Exxon Valdez grounding.  The comparison is understandable.  In terms the images of slicks, soiled beaches & wetlands, incapacitated fowl, furloughed fishermen and easily identifiable corporate villains with their black comedy of excuses, a sense of déjà vu is warranted.  If we are to learn anything useful from this calamity, however, there are other analogies to explore for insight and prophylaxis. 

The Valdez grounding was due 100% to human error—near continuous and total neglect over a period of hours preceding impact.  Not a reflex-stunted drunken driver as some myths would have it, but a perfectly sober 3rd Mate, blabbing on the bridge wing with his erstwhile lookout as his vessel, drastically off-course, passes from southbound lane, across separation lane, then northbound lane and open water onto Bligh Reef.  In terms of cause, obviously not effect, the Northwest Airlines overflight of Minneapolis reminded me of the Exxon Valdez: no misinterpreted data or mechanical failure, and in human terms, livelihoods were lost, lives were not.

Deepwater Horizon’s demise brings to mind the space shuttle disasters.  There’s the complicated trajectory of cause in mechanical failure, in design flaw, in misread or overlooked warning symptoms and a cascade of events too rapid for human intervention.  And there is the horrific agony of the victims (in similar number) at the flash point that I can’t bear to imagine.

When evaluating risk it is the product of event probability times the event’s ramifications that yield the Penalty we need to examine.  Thus you can compare the Penalty for employing a procedure more likely to fail but with modest consequences with one of high improbability and associated calamitous results.  Making failure impossible and/or consequences nil can theoretically eliminate the Penalty, but any confidence in this eventuality is foolish.  Murphy was no fool.

We can reduce risk by reducing the probability of failure or moderating the consequences.  Both need exerted effort in this arena.  Well blow out probability was to be minimized by an optimistically named Blow Out Preventer (BOP) with built in redundancies in the closing mechanisms and the triggering system.  Obviously the failure probability was not reduced to zero,

There has been much hand-wringing over an Acoustic Control System (ACS) utilized in many North Sea installations and elsewhere.  While this is a redundancy that should be required universally, it would not have made a difference in this case.  The ACS is an alternate means to activate the BOP installed.  It is not another valve.  The idea is that if the cable-connected triggering capability is compromised, a sonic signal can be transmitted to activate the BOP.  In this case even manual triggering via an external hydraulic source (“hot stabs”) by submersible robots failed to crimp the pipe.

The issue not addressed heretofore is a robust post-rupture containment technology—one that could be employed in this (and any future!) massive release. The on-the-fly design and construction of domes, “top hats” and siphons obviously suffer from neglect of the consequences factor in computing the risk penalty.

Or we can abandon the activity altogether.  A worthy goal, but decades—maybe a dozen decades—away I’m afraid.  A long range energy policy, if by some miracle the political will could be summoned, would certainly include offsetting coal with natural gas as we wean ourselves off fossil fuels altogether.  That means off-shore recovery and that requires attention to “spill” containment technology much more advanced than floating booms & chemical dispersants.  And BTW, such assets will come in handy for the unimaginable release from an undersea seismic event (which will happen someday—more likely off California than in the Gulf).
 
My five-year-old granddaughter was vectored to me for explanation of the “goo in the Gulf.”   We took a cereal bowl, water, and some used 10W30 (recovered from the last oil change) and played.  We stirred, skimmed, added a pinch of detergent (minimally successful as a dispersant), and took note of the scum-ring displayed on the side of the bowl as we sloshed the mixture about.  “Icky,” we agreed was the descriptive adjective.  The teaching moment was only partially successful as her recap was, “the pipe, that goes from a hole in the ground under water to our cars, broke.”  Yet her reflection, “Why don’t they just fix the pipe?” mirrors the exasperation and oversimplification (of the task) residing in us all.

 

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