Let the finger pointing begin

[westin]

Meh. Gates can afford it.

It seems like Windows used to ship with a disclaimer stating that it wasn't for use with missile defense systems, life support, autopilot, etc. I looked for it, but can't seem to find it online. I think I have it in a book at home.

[nihil]

It seems like Windows used to ship with a disclaimer stating that it wasn't for use with missile defense systems, life support, autopilot, etc.

I remember that, but I think it was "air traffic control" rather than autopilot

I wonder how many other oil rigs have the same issue or if it was one off....that in itself would point to hardware or third party app IMHO

I hear that turning off safety equipment when it hinders operations is quite common. The operators just pay the fine

Transocean certainly turned off the main alarm on all their rigs at night before this happened, so I guess false alarms are fairly common? There are at least two guys in the drilling deck control room who are monitoring the sensors and can activate the Blow-Out Prevention mechanism and set off the alarms.

Basically the BOP unit failed, even though there is a failsafe device and a dead man's switch as well as hydraulic and electrical activators.

I don't think that the drilling control computer would have anything to do with that.

BP were having problems with the BOP months before, and were aware of 390 important maintenance tasks that were outstanding on the rig.

Worst of all, there are two tests you do before pumping out the drilling mud from the shaft, to test the integrity of the concrete plug. It failed one of those tests, and the only person who could authorise them to continue operations would be a BP manager. I understand that the FEDs are interested in two of them.

To just ignore and let it crash\seize up is just bad practice.....

It doesn't make much commercial sense either.........if the drilling control computer is playing up then that must be slowing your operations down. That rig was costing BP $1,000,000 a day, and they were 42 days behind schedule?

EDIT:

More information can be found here, also check out the DrillingAhead and NakedCapitalism links

http://learningfromdogs.com/2010/05/...water-horizon/