SHELL OFFSHORE ARCTIC DRILLING: COMMENTS FROM A FORMER EMPLOYEE OF SHELL OIL COMPANY
John,
I have a few comments about Shell’s claim that it prepared to handle any ‘foreseeable problem/disaster’ that may befall its proposed drilling operations in the Arctic Ocean of offshore Alaska.
I would like to point out that major blowouts these days are almost always caused by some sort of preventable error/screw-up on the part of the oil company or its contractors. In fact, this has historically been the rule rather than the exception.
BP’s recent blowout in the Gulf of Mexico was completely preventable. From what I have been able to ascertain from publicly available information, it is BP (through poor technical management oversight and technical incompetence at various stages in the drill in testing of that well) that is clearly responsible for that ‘incident’.