NEWS BRIEFS
Sub-Standard Fasteners Halt BP Oil Production
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British Petroleum had to stop work on a platform at its Holstein field in the Gulf of Mexico after BP discovered fasteners on the facility weren’t up to its standards, the Houston Chronicle reports.
That was among the safety problems BP CEO Robert Dudley revealed to energy analysts and executives during a luncheon on Tuesday, March 8, in Houston.
In his first formal public address since taking the helm, Dudley predicted that “the oil and gas industry will emerge from the Gulf of Mexico spill safer and smarter, developing new technology to tame runaway wells and stepping up standards that govern their design,” writes Jennifer A. Dlouhy of the Chronicle.
Dudley embraced a presidential commission’s conclusion that the April 2010 spill in the Gulf of Mexico wasn’t an isolated exception.
“It would be a mistake to dismiss our experience of the last year simply as a black swan, a one-in-a-million occurrence that carries no wider application for our industry as a whole,” Dudley stated.
In the wake of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig catastrophe — which exploded on April 20, 2010, killing a crew of 11 and causing the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history — the Obama administration imposed a five-month moratorium on some deep-water drilling and imposed new safety mandates.
“The oil spill intensified charges that BP has had a lax safety culture — a claim that also emerged after a 2005 explosion at its Texas City refinery killed 15 workers and injured many more,” Dlouhy writes.
Dudley said BP has made broader changes to make safety a priority, including creation of a program to reward workers who alert their superiors to problems. ©2011 GlobalFastenerNews.com
For more on subsea fastener supply chain woes click here.
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