BP Macondo and Cognitive Dissonance

As someone with a fair bit of oilfield experience, I was quite frustrated with the media’s reporting of 2010 Macondo blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. The journalists just had no clue nor seemed interested in interviewing people who knew what really went wrong. But as time passed, the experts were finally gathered to given their findings in Chapter 4 of the Oil Spill Commission Report. As well, there was some very lively discussion on a petroleum engineering discussion group, which eventually formed my reasons for this disaster.

Like many mechanical disasters, BP Macondo was a series of errors that culminated into the accident. The most egregious of these errors occurred after BP had drilled into the very productive oil formation and prepared it for future production. As per government regulations, the company conducted a pressure test on the casing to ensure the steel and cement were capable of keeping the oil out of the wellbore. The test yielded an increase in wellbore pressure, an almost sure sign that oil was entering the wellbore. This should have effected well known procedures for pushing the oil back into the formation, called “killing the well.” Instead, the wellsite supervisors, supported by their engineering team on shore, interpreted this pressure change as “The Bladder Effect,” which was not only false, but technically unsound. So more volatile oil was allowed to flow into the broken wellbore, which eventually could not be controlled.

This particular misinterpretation was not rocket science! Many experienced…