In 2004, Richard Posner published a book length essay entitled “Catastrophe: Risk and Response.” In the book he limited his range of discussion to those possible future events which could threaten the existence of mankind. His thesis is that there are some risks that might be very unlikely to ever occur but whose consequences are so grave as to be unacceptable no matter the corresponding potential benefit.
Are there consequences of such magnitude, but less than global annihilation, whose implications for disaster, maybe involving a negative life's outcome for 10's of thousands of humans, entire eco-systems and a plethora of species of animals and plants, such that taking that risk to achieve a benefit is not acceptable?
Imagine what will happen to the Lousiana, Mississippi, Florida and Alabama coastal area as the oil inundates each plant root system, soaks far into the soft soil, seeps into the smallest aveolae of the lungs of birds and the gills of fish and the lives of so many people who live and love in that special area. Imagine the even more hideous possibility that this oil spill could find its way around Florida and up the coast of the United States towards the mid-Atlantic and out in the ocean towards Europe. Is there any risk worth taking for any reason that could allow even the remote possibility of such an occurrence?
Yet British Petroleum took this risk, a risk which BP and its subcontractors, Transocean and others could have minimized but simply failed to test batteries, interlocking overrides and fail / safe activators on the Blow Out Preventer (BOP) which they knew or should have known was the final link in the risk analysis which could have kept this catastrophe from occurring. Simple mechancial failures and shobby cost centered lazy management judgments may have global consequences which last decades.
Can mankind ever again afford taking what seem like infinitesimally minute risks but which have infinitely large negative consequences? A risk management analysis which perceives such consequences as tangible possibilities is no longer a viable criteria for decision making.
Business judgment must therefore be restrained by the magnitude of possible consequence.
Who should apply the restraints? Who should decide that an acceptable risk is no risk at all? Is it now necessary to eliminate the remotely possible? Has the impossible become necessary?
In 2010 Southern Louisiana and other Gulf of Mexico contiguous states are threatened by a seemingly unstoppable regurgitation of the earth’s past, an uncapped deep sea oil well which is spewing forth 5,000 to 19,000 barrels of oil per day. There is even a live cam situated somewhere a mile below the surface, sending back continuous color pictures of the flow.
This “catastrophe” has been ongoing for 45 days as of this writing and ingenious efforts to stop the leak have been unsuccessful. Even the personal attention of the President of the United States, at the urging of his daughter, has not quelled the flow. Where is Superman or Iron Man or Doc Savage or Dr. Who (he ought to be involved as it is British Petroleum that is the lead villain in this story, though there are many henchmen who are claiming not to have been involved)?
Recently, I was fortunate to have had a full day in the swamps of Louisiana taking photographs with my son. We were guided by Captain Rae Donaldson, who lives near Houma, and has significant knowledge of the area both as a fishing guide and as an environmental expert.
We learned that the giant platforms out in the Gulf of Mexico are actually floating ships, kept in position by engines turned on an off by computerized gyroscopic devices which are a lot like the vibration reduction mechanisms in the most modern camera lenses. This precise positioning is necessary because the platform, after the oil well has been drilled, is the top of a sometimes mile long pipe that connects the top of the well on the ocean floor with the platform which then connects the output to either a tanker or a pipeline to take the oil to the refinery.
Imagine a mile long straw, flexible enough and strong enough to withstand the sea currents, the movement of the “ship” to which it is tethered above. This straw is filled with oil, being driven upward by the immense internal pressure on this pool of liquid under the surface of the sea floor. The connection must be designed for rough seas, of which, during hurricane season, there are a plenty. The possibility of some incident occurring which snaps the pipe is quite real; neither remote nor unimagined. When the hole is made in the sea floor, a huge device, a Blow Out Preventer (BOP), is placed between the well and the pipe. The device has massive steel rods, much like the lock on a massive bank vault, which are snapped into place if the connection between the well and the rig is broken or the device is activated by either affirmative decision from the platform or any of several possible fail / safe circumstances.
A picture of a much smaller form of the same type device is pictured here. The one in the picture is about 12 feet high and is used on stationary rigs where the platform is actually secured by pylons sunk into the sea floor in locations where the water is not too deep. Much of downtown New Orleans’s buildings are anchored into the soft delta earth in the same way.
So it is a given possibility that an event where the pipe between the platform and well is broken could occur. In fact it is even a planned for event, so one could not ever claim that it is an event of remote or infinitesimal possibility. The odds are real. The event which initiated the horror that now floats towards our Southern coast and beyond was a contemplated risk.
However, the sudden explosion and collapse into the water of the platform must not have been considered or at least not considered in conjunction with the failure of the device which was to immediately cap the hole into the well. Plus, there are some disturbing elements to add to the analysis.
First, the collapse of the platform was not an event that took place in a matter of minutes, as I had first thought. A blazing fire followed the explosion and the fire was fought over a period of days, with the rig surrounded by boats that pumped thousands of gallons of water onto the fire.
Second, flammable gases coming up the pipe from the well on the sea floor were feeding the fire. Therefore the responsible parties must have had knowledge or should have understood that a collapse of the platform could break the pipe connection between the well and the platform and then trigger the device designed to cap the well.
The fire on the platform was intense. The photographs taken from helicopters confirm that extent of the disaster. However, a haunting question remains: Why was not the device which would have capped the well triggered during the fire? The fuel for the fire was coming up the pipe. Without fuel the fire would have gone out and the rig would not have collapsed. Did BP try to cap the well during the fire or was the decision made that it was potentially more profitable to put out the fire, save the platform and not cap the well at that time?
I do not know the technology of initiating the capping process. Could it have been triggered remotely during the fire? Was the capping process a permanent irreversible act that would have meant a re-drilling of the well would have been, perforce, required? Is there a claim that the capping device was not functioning properly and that BP had already tried to cap the well and failed as a part of the fire fighting? There is some evidence already obtained by Congressional hearings that there was a dead battery in the BOP, that the proper rods were not in place in the device and that the fail / safe links onboard the platform may have been disconnected by the fire. Mention is made of possible favorable inspection reports that could not have been actual reports of the condition of the BOP. I don’t know the answers but I suspect that someday, as the sequence of events is made known, we will find out who are the culprits.
In retrospect and in an atmosphere of cries for more regulation of the drilling process, it is reasonable to ask whether the potential immensity of a spill made a necessity of more robust and redundant devices to cap the well and whether there could never be a choice of trying to save the well and platform which the alternative could result in a spill. It may be impossible to anticipate all possible causes of a spill, including malfunction of equipment that has redundant means of activation, but it seems clear now that the horror, which awaits Louisiana and the other states, cannot be avoided. The inevitable and destructive oily tide slowly makes its way through the habitat of so much life, leaving sadness and dislocation for so many.
Once again we are presented with a moral dilemma and compelled to ask, “is this remotely possible failure of precautions too great a risk to bear to achieve the comfort of more oil. Is it necessary to attempt the possibly impossible - a riskless deep sea drilling method?”
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