Deepwater Horizon 2020: Remembering BP's 2010 Disastrous Blowout-10 Years Later

Deepwater Horizon 2020 combines two of the author's previously published books about BP's 20 April 2010 Macondo blowout aboard Transocean's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. The tragedy has been defined as one of the most lethal, costly, manmade, environmental disasters in history. As a career drilling engineer, drilling manager, and technical executive, the author's mantra has long been and remains: Only if we understand and care about the cause of BP's Macondo blowout will we know why it should not have happened and why it should never happen again.To this end, the author researched depositions, rig reports, company documents, and public information about the blowout, and then wrote and published The Simple Truth: BP's Macondo Blowout, in 2012. Though the data driven book is diagramed, footnoted, and referenced throughout, it is written as narrative nonfiction to tell the story about drilling BP's deep Macondo offshore exploration well at the hands of fictional characters-surrogates for survivors and the eleven witnesses who died that terrible night. Based on his research for The Simple Truth, the author made technical, academic, and keynote presentations around the world about the cause of the blowout. After his 75th presentation in 2016, he wrote and published From the Podium: The Cause of BP's Macondo Blowout. The nonfiction work is a full compilation of the author's slides, text, drawings, Q&A, conclusions, and recommendations. Now, 10 years after the tragedy, with a new generation of students, faculty, and technical and management personnel across the oil-and-gas industry, as well as new ranks of astute readers across the globe, Deepwater Horizon 2020 combines the previous works, eliminates duplication, and links footnotes, diagrams, and references between the books. Post-blowout accident investigations-academic, legal, regulatory, societal, forensic, environmental, financial, technical, and presidential-cascaded onto the scene in the weeks, months, and years that followed. Analysis of the catastrophe evolved on two fronts: Root Causes and Technical Causes.Root Causes: For those companies and agencies responsible for the well, investigators looked at pre-blowout safety, procedural, communications, human-factors, financial, and other organizational processes that may have contributed to the blowout, as well as to the post-blowout inability to stem the months-long flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, secure the well, and remediate extensive environmental damages at sea and along the shoreline. Such investigative findings define the Root Causes of the blowout.Technical Causes: Investigators also targeted what happened on the rig and in the office on a minute-by-minute, decision-by-decision basis that allowed the 3 1/2 mile-deep, high-pressure oil well to erupt without control onto the rig, explode and catch fire, kill eleven, injure and disable dozens more, sink the rig in a mile of water, and dump more than 200 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico? Such investigative answers, researched by the author and others, define the Technical Causes of the blowout.Drilling and operations personnel, petroleum engineers, company men, toolpushers, managers, academics, students, astute readers, and surviving family members want and need to know what happened, and what could have, should have, been done on the rig that, if handled otherwise in real time, would have precluded the lethal well-control disaster called the Macondo blowout. This book, Deepwater Horizon 2020, does not address Root Causes, finger pointing, attorneys, deep pockets, names, or companies. Rather, it focuses entirely on the Technical Causes of BP's 2010 Macondo blowout, throughout both parts: The Simple Truth and From the Podium.