Dear Readers,

This week I have two questions for you.

The first question:

With all the investigations done so far what can we learn from the BP Deepwater Horizon accident?

To get an overview of all the information that is publicly available, I suggest reviewing the links at:

http://www.taproot.com/wordpress/2010/07/12/monday-accident-lessons-learned-bptransocean-deepwater-horizon-explosion-spill/

and then leaving your comments there.

The second question goes back to an issue we first raised in June ... the qualifications of the President's Independent Commission that is charged with investigating the BP Deepwater Horizon well blowout, explosion, and spill.

The President has requested $15 million to complete this independent investigation, so one would hope that the money is spent wisely to understand the true root causes of the accident and to plot a path forward that could prevent future accidents of this type. But the qualifications of the Commission members could make an independent observer wonder:

Are they qualified to investigate the accident and recommend actions to improve deepwater drilling? Or do they come to the game with an agenda - to stop offshore oil drilling?

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) once again pointed out the biases and weak qualifications of the Commission members. Then the new Executive Director of the Commission, attorney Richard Lazarus, wrote a letter to the editor criticizing the WSJ's article, saying that it "...borders on the irresponsible." He also said: "This is no time for misdirected attacks that promote an 'us against them' mentality." He pointed out that the Commission had hired a consultant, Richard Sears, with an oil industry background (he was a VP at Shell) and implied that this would make their findings fair and impartial.

Therefore, I thought it was once again time to dig out some biographies and see where Mr. Lazarus and Sears were coming from. For the details, see:

http://www.taproot.com/wordpress/2010/07/15/wall-street-journal-takes-up-qualifications-of-the-presidents-independent-commission-to-investigate-the-bp-deepwater-horizon-accident/

and leave your comment if this has changed your opinion about the qualifications of the President's Independent Commission.

That's all the questions for this week.

Thanks for your efforts to keep your companies accident free.

Best regards,


http://www.taproot.com

P.S. (Read the Editor's Note at the end of this article to learn how to have a chance to win an iPad and share best practices at your facility!)