In response to a Times-Picayune editorial on 16 September 2010
http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/09/dont_stall_on_ending_drilling.html
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The deep water drilling moratorium was and continues to be a prudent policy that puts safety before growth. The rationale is that we don't know what happened and we don't know what responsible measures to take to prevent it from happening again. We need to wait until we see good science and engineering solutions to making offshore drilling as resilient as it needs to be.
Recent articles by your reporter David Hammer, which cite the continued lack of a safety culture have highlighted the profound uncertainty surrounding a conservative, well-engineered solution. Remember what should be the creed of all engineers - err on the side of safety when there are significant safety and uncertainty issues.
Although I have the profoundest respect for Dr Bea and his study team, I believe his recommendations of primarily fixing specific hardware problems is much to narrow and is the prevailing wisdom of today's petroleum engineers. The right line of inquiry should follow the Corp's IPET findings that pre-Katrina works were a system "in name only" and their recommendation that these works must become a true, comprehensive, integrated, holistic and resilient system in order to guard against inevitable future threats.
I firmly believe that if BP and its subs were put to the system-in-more-than-just-name test, conducted by people who have engineered proven resilient systems, they would be found wanting. Until we get the right people asking the right safety-critical questions we should continue to limit drilling in those conditions where there are no uncertainties.
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