Forensic Engineering - The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty-First Century - page 197

Just days after the April 22, 2010, sinking of the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mex-
ico, Bea pulled together the Deepwater Horizon Study Group (DHSG), a group of sixty
experts from the United States, Australia, Canada, Brazil, and Norway, to undertake an
independent investigation of what mistakes had led to the explosion of BP's oil well in
the Gulf of Mexico, and to recommend steps to avoid repeating those errors.
Bea has investigated more than twenty offshore rig disasters—including the cata-
strophic blowout of Ixtoc I, a Pemex platform, in June 1979, which caused the biggest
oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico prior to the Deep-water Horizon. Most of these accidents
were caused by human error—though Bea prefers the term humandefect, meaning
man's “hubris, greed, and indolence.” In studying the causes of over six hundred engin-
eering failures, he found that only 20 percent of such disasters are the result of intrinsic
uncertainties, such as floods, tornadoes, and dust storms, while 80 percent are rooted in
extrinsic uncertainties, or what Bea terms “the human factor.”
In the Deepwater Horizon case, Bea's key finding was that the companies in-
volved—BP, Transocean, and Halliburton—as well as the federal regulators supposedly
overseeing the Deepwater Horizon, were “misled by their assumptions about the risks
involved” in drilling miles deep, while cutting corners, on a tight deadline.
As a lead independent investigator of both the Hurricane Katrina and Deepwater
Horizon disasters, Bea says the two tragedies have “chilling” similarities. “BP underes-
timated the wholerisk to their platform and fell into the same damn trap that the Corps
did in New Orleans,” he said. In both cases, a misunderstanding of the limits of techno-
logy combined with a cavalier attitude led to massive losses. “The result is the same: a
trail of tears, floating bodies, expensive equipment destroyed. The big difference is that
the Deepwater Horizon will impact the ecology of the Gulf for many years to come.”