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Deepwater Horizon Disaster is just another milestone along their yellow brick road to total government control of the American people via “necessarily” skyrocketing energy costs

The cult of arrogance and the Deepwater Horizon Disaster



I have been working in the petroleum industry as a technician and later an engineer for over 30 years and involved in the investigation of many “incidents”. Invariably a common underlying cause has been “Human Error”; be that in the initial engineering, failure of follow proper procedures or regulations, taking shortcuts to save time and money or plain stupidity.

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The underlying element in all of these is arrogance. Despite the “Star Chamber” selected by the Obama Administration to review this incident with the self fulfilling prophesy of needing more regulation over the offshore drilling industry, the root cause will probably boil down to an individual or handful of individuals who allowed arrogance to cloud their judgment. In some regards the offshore oil industry is self regulating, especially when you consider the sheer cost of this incident and none of the companies are in the business of loosing money, lives and public reputation. For example there had to be an ignition source for the gas cloud on the Horizon to explode, from the reports of some of the survivors the Horizons Diesel generators started to speed up as the gas was ingested. The fact that the main generators were still running after the gas bubble erupted and was being ingested indicates a lack of gas detection and shutdown on the generator intakes. I know for a fact that a number of my clients are currently reviewing the gas detection interlocks on their rigs generation systems as well as BOP control and redundancy issues. While Captain John Hazelwood was vilified by the media as the main culprit when Exxon Valdez met its demise the reality of the situation was a combination of factors and arrogance in the management chain. Similarly, while the Challenger disaster was caused by an O-ring failure, the underlying cause was the arrogance of the project managers pushing for a launch despite objections by knowledgeable engineers; It remains to this day as an oft referred to case study in engineering safety and workplace ethics. In the case of the Valdez disaster it was the 8,700th or so transit voyage in the 12 years along that route by various tankers, while for the Challenger it was the 10th flight of a total of 25 shuttle missions to that point. While NASA suspended the Shuttle missions for 32 months to resolve design issues there was no cessation of oil tanker traffic, and in neither case did congress or the office of the president curtail those activities. My late relative Hon R.S. Furlong often quipped “there is no such thing as consistent stupidity” as those acting in a randomly stupid manner will occasionally err in your favor. Yet some are suggesting that the Obama Administration is acting stupidly in the same manner as they accused the Cambridge Police over the professor Gates incident last year. Look at the illuminaries [spelling intentional] that have slithered into Czardom on the aegis of “Fundamentally transforming America” and consider Rham Emmanuel’s quote "Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before.” You must consider the possibility that even ineptitude and inaction may actually be part of the plan to make crisis go from bad to worse before finally “reacting” to public pressure and enacting the draconian legislation they wanted all along. This too is the cult of an arrogant ideology that only Marxist intellectuals from ivory towers (who have never run a business or met a payroll) know what is best for the great unwashed masses and the nation in general. There are many troubling questions about the disaster and its aftermath:
  • Has there been an investigation into semi-substantiated rumors that Goldman Sachs shorted Transocean stock just days before the incident?
  • Why was the pre-approved plan of burning the oil from such a spill in situ not implemented and instead the fire was fought to the point of sinking the rig?
  • When you consider if the burning rig had been secured in place via cables and tugs and been allowed to burn while the riser was still intact, the recently failed Top Kill would have probably worked due to the mile of hydrostatic head of kill mud building up in the riser?
  • Why have suppliers of organic dispersants and microbially rich peat been summarily rejected in favor of less suitable dispersants?
  • Why was BP prevented from doing anything that would temporarily increase the flow, but ultimately cap it, like the current plan cutting the riser away and required to waste time and resources on Band-Aids that did not work?
  • Why was Governor Bobby Jindal's plan to use suction dredge resources to bridge the barrier island gaps with sand met with such obstinance? Especially when you consider the water discharge from the suction dredges could actually create their own flow of water from inside the barrier islands to the gulf and act as a countering force to wind and tide to reduce the oil incursion into sensitive marshes?
Stopping the activities of BP or Transocean in the deep water is one thing; however with the blanket curtailment of deep water drilling, these rigs will ultimately be heading to other countries such as Brazil causing the direct loss of as many as 20,000 high paying jobs and 10 fold spinoff jobs. Perhaps devastating the fishery and tourism based economies is not enough coupled with jealousy over the fact that South Louisiana has had substantially lower unemployment and was not as affected by the housing crisis as the rest of the nation; so destroy it completely like a latter day Cloward and Piven Strategy! The horrific reality is that the viper pit of Czardom is getting what it really wants, control over and destruction of the oil industry while clinging to its hallucinogenic denial over Climategate; These vipers are arrogantly laying in wait for their Lusitania or Pearl Harbor to foist their final solution on America and destroying the last bastion of freedom, while the Deepwater Horizon Disaster is just another milestone along their yellow brick road to total government control of the American people via “necessarily” skyrocketing energy costs.


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J Desmond McGrath -- Bio and Archives

J Desmond McGrath is a Canadian Engineer (BSc Petroleum Engineering-Honors Montana Tech) who has been living and working in Louisiana since 2002.


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