The tragedy is that M.M.S. eerily presaged the disaster in the draft of a May 2000 environmental analysis of deep-water drilling in the gulf. The agency noted that “the oil industry’s experience base in deepwater well control is limited” and that given the prodigious production rates, “a deepwater blowout of this magnitude in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico could easily turn out to be a potential showstopper” for the Outer Continental Shelf program.
But M.M.S. got rid of those caveats in the final report, just as they deemed a remote-controlled shut-off switch an unnecessary expense for drilling companies several years ago.
via www.nytimes.com
