Judge Blocks Deep Water Drilling Moratorium
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
"Much to the government’s discomfort and this Court’s uneasiness, the Summary also states that “the recommendations contained in this report have been peer-reviewed by seven experts identified by the National Academy of Engineering.” As the plaintiffs, and the experts themselves, pointedly observe, this statement was misleading. The experts charge it was a “misrepresentation.” It was factually incorrect. Although the experts agreed with the safety recommendations contained in the body of the main Report, five of the National Academy experts and three of the other experts have publicly stated that they “do not agree with the six month blanket moratorium” on floating drilling. They envisioned a more limited kind of moratorium, but a blanket moratorium was added after their final review, they complain, and was never agreed to by them."
Judges don't tend to view blatant lies with favor.
He wrote that “the blanket moratorium, with no parameters, seems to assume that because one rig failed and although no one yet fully knows why, all companies and rigs drilling new wells over 500 feet also universally present an imminent danger.”
Personally, if I have a component fail violently and no explanation why, then I tend to err on the side of caution until I have some answers.. but that's just me. I'm sure this judge knows what he's doing.
Here's the words that are wrapped about the about incendiary NYT quote:
"The Deepwater Horizon oil spill is an unprecedented, sad, ugly and inhuman disaster. What seems clear is that the federal government has been pressed by what happened on the Deepwater Horizon into an otherwise sweeping confirmation that all Gulf deepwater drilling activities put us all in a universal threat of irreparable harm. While the implementation of regulations and a new culture of safety are supportable by the Report and the documents presented, the blanket moratorium, with no parameters, seems to assume that because one rig failed and although no one yet fully knows why, all companies and rigs drilling new wells over 500 feet also universally present an imminent danger.
On the record now before the Court, the defendants have failed to cogently reflect the decision to issue a blanket, generic, indeed punitive, moratorium with the facts developed during the thirty-day review. The plaintiffs have established a likelihood of successfully showing that the Administration acted arbitrarily and capriciously in issuing the moratorium.
As a matter of law, I suspect the judge does know what he's doing. And we are, or at least aspire to be, a nation that lives under the rule of law, not men.
Also, as he notes: "no one yet fully knows why", which is very different from "no explanation why". We know quite a bit about how this happened, probably enough to prevent it from happening again with the current state of the art.
BP wasn't following industry best practices, wasn't listening to its subcontractor, saw a bunch of large red flags as previously noted in in submissions to HN, etc. etc. Prior to the inevitable new regulations, we can have a reasonable expectation that other drillers will pay sufficient attention to all this and avoid another nasty blowout anytime soon.
After all, the last one was 30 years ago (Ixtoc I); the real danger will be when people become complacent again.
Yeah, it was a tragedy, I love puppies, blah blah, but here's what I'm saying: "Even though this blew up and nobody knows why, and even though this was allegedly safe under the previous inspection regime, I see no reason to stop drilling for 6 months while we figure what went wrong."
The preamble doesn't change anything.
NOTE: jbooth probably wrote his "nobody knows why" while I was adding to my initial draft of my posting that we actually do know a lot of why it happened.
It seems like this judge is playing politics. He's not an engineer. He's not supposed to be ruling on policy, just on legality. And yeah, the report the administration sent to him sounds sloppy -- that's more of a reason to be cautious for a few months while they get their house in order.
"You must prove imminent danger beyond a reasonable doubt before I let you take cautionary measures" is a sort of ridiculous position to take.
EDIT: Regarding your addendum to your previous comment: "we can have a reasonable expectation that other drillers will pay sufficient attention to all this and avoid another nasty blowout anytime soon." -- I see absolutely no reason to assume this to be the case. Do you see them voluntarily stopping drilling and auditing all of their processes to make sure they're ok? Probably not, right? So stuff's gonna continue the same as before.
Not exactly. As a court of first instance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_courts) "[...] evidence and testimony are admitted under the rules of evidence established by applicable procedural law and determinations called findings of fact are made based on the evidence. The court, presided over by one or more judges, makes findings of law based upon the applicable law."
Also note that the domain of the ruling is not the engineering per se but how the executive came to its moratorium decision.
In the case of a preliminary injunction he's supposed to assume that all the questions of facts go in the favor of the defendant (the government) and to then decide if as a matter of law the plaintiff would likely win anyway. Hence the closing paragraph I included above.
No, I see them as simply following the industry's best practices, which BP conspicuously did not. If necessary, I see the subcontractors, the ones who really know which end is up, pushing back a lot harder, asking overbearing oil company managers if they want to be another BP.
That plus making damned sure your BOP is working (there's some question to whether it failed or simply hit the unshearable coupling section between two pipes) is all that's needed as far as I can tell.