Tragedy of the Commons and the British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon disaster
by Bruce Bagnoli
The surviving crew member's account May 16,2010 on CBS 60 minutes of the pre-accident problems with the blowout preventer that failed when the Deepwater Horizon sank had chilling familiarity. [ see the report here: Michael Williams tells his story of survival to Scott Pelley. ]
It reminded me of the Nasa Challenger Disaster in 1986 when managers overrode the safety concerns of some engineers, discounted the risks, and said "go for it!" just before the whole thing blew up.
According to the Deepwater Horizon crew member, the blowout preventer's rubber seals were damaged during a test prior to the blowout, and pieces of the seal were seen in the drilling mud. Instead of stopping, they continued working.
Later, when there was a choice of methods of stemming the well, British Petroleum managers pushed for the expedient but more risky method. The Blowout Preventer's electronic systems were not fully functional, yet the drilling continued. Indeed it may not have been any one decision, rather the sum of a number of things that added up to the worst environmental disaster in decades.
In common with the NASA Challenger Disaster, the BP Oil Blowout may have lessons about conduct of high consequence operations, lessons about stewardship of safety systems, hubris, and a tendency to discount real risks in a push for some "important goal".
The Department of Energy, and the military understand "conduct of operations", and it may take a smart, strong government to enforce and make effective the safety rules, the environmental protections that must be respected. When the government doesn't have people who are technically qualified and with the authority to enforce environmental regulations such as having effective blowout protection at all times, these sorts of disasters can be expected.
Indeed the nuclear industry has had similar problems, most notably at Three Mile Island. The Nuclear power industry had to learn how to safely conduct high consequence operations and learned the real cost of putting short term profit over safety and environmental protection. Indeed, despite plenty of screw-ups, the nuclear power systems have been remarkably safe since Three Mile Island, since the industry and government took steps to ensure that our operators are trained, qualified, and regulated.
The process of learning to operate safely and effectively in high consequence situations is described in a Department of Energy order 5480 and the process of teaching the formal methods that work is described in this example: Conduct of Operations Mentoring Strategy....
It's not rocket science, but the basic concepts apply here as well and whatever you think about drilling, we need to be serious about conducting high consequence operations safely where ever these operations occur. In a similar manner, the chemical industry world wide re-examined their operations after Bopal.
The fact that there are so many examples isn't comforting, but it does provide guidance when designing systems that must mitigate serious risks, both on the human side, and on the hardware side. One of the key lessons, is that managers who are unable to grasp the value of public confidence can wreck a companies value with one bad decision!
I wonder if it is the same sort of intellectual bubble cycle that has been discussed with respect to financial cycles, where the new crew think that they are "smarter" than the folks who did it "the old way", whose (short term) financial results are so much better than the more conservative folks who move just a bit slower.
It's more than just the push for short term profit, it's also the human hubris, the ego, the view that the planet's resources belong to the extraction industry.
My view is that the environment is the most important Commons, and the tragedy of the commons is the key lesson that our civilization must understand if we are to be viable.
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