If you have a problem which has been attacked before, you don't try failed methods again unless your name is Homer Simpson - or you are too young to remember the event.
The methods tried by BP in the Gulf of Mexico have been tried before. They have failed before. In the Gulf of Mexico. At 18,000 feet, the same depth as the Deepwater Horizon well.
Why does it take Rachel_Maddow - see video below - to explain that bit of engineering history to BP? I think I have a reasonable answer to that. It has to do with the age distribution amongst oil workers. The median age in the US was 36.7 years in 2009, according to Wikipedia.
I don't have oil worker age figures other than from a 1991 paper1 on Norwegian offshore oil worker nutrition. In a sample of 194 men and 9 women, 65% were between 25 and 40 years old.
If that's a good ballpark in which to find oil workers, then it is safe to assume that most oil workers today don't remember the Ixtoc_blowout - at the time, the largest accidental oil spill in human history. In the Gulf of Mexico. At 18,000 feet.
When I was your age ...
I'm in my sixties. That gives me a pretty long memory. I even remember listening to the news reports on BBC radio news - Jan. 10 1952 - about the Flying_Enterprise. From that moment on I was hooked on anything to do with technology versus nature. I have never known nature to lose. If you want to stand toe-to-toe with Mother Nature, then that is your choice. But you're gonna lose them toes!
It can take a few tons of seawater slammed down on a ship's forepeak, or a bird strike in an engine, to remind us of our helplessness against nature.
Speaking of bird strikes, how about putting the Hudson Glider Pilot in charge of coordinating the Gulf
Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger, III is an expert on safety and human resource management. He is also more popular with the American public than any bureaucrat. Come to think of it - any person is more popular than a bureaucrat.
I came across some YouTube videos of this excellent bit of reporting by Rachel_Maddow whilst researching for an article on human interactions and industry regulation failures. Stand by to be gobsmacked2.
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[1] -
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=871812&j...
[2] - a psychological state resembling the effect of having been smacked3 in the gob4.
[3] - punched.
[4] - mouth.
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