Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE)

The hearings resume tomorrow.  Catching up on what I missed:

1. I’d like to have a dollar for each time one of the witnesses said “in hindsight.”  I guess saying “in hindsight” is a way of acknowledging that you were wrong without admitting you made a mistake.  After all, how could anyone have known that a float leak wouldn’t cure itself, that an underbalanced well would start to flow, that oil and gas might pass through the channels in the shoe, that well barrier requirements have a real purpose (beside challenging your cost-cutting creativity), and that gas bubbles might be actually be a reason for concern?  When you do a proper risk assessment, you consider all of the future possibilities and how decisions made in the present could affect the outcomes.  You are thus taking advantage of hindsight BEFORE an accident occurs.
2. The “Not My Job” attitude seemed to be prevalent at Montara.  Did the famous Arizona highway worker use the “in  hindsight” defense?  (In hindsight, I should have removed the dead armadillo before striping the highway.)
3. I guess I’m slow, because it took me until Day 12 (more than 1000 pages of transcripts) to realize that the mudline suspensions were not really mudline suspensions, but that the wells were hung from the jacket (just above the splash zone?).  The tops of the wells during the suspension of operations were thus in a highly corrosive environment, so the damage to the unprotected 13 3/8″ casing threads is not surprising.
4. I’m still scratching my head about that “shudder” that was felt on the platform the night before the blowout (see Tom Maunder’s comments below).  Was there a seismic event?  I checked the USGS records and didn’t see anything for that area and time.  Apparently PTTEP checked with the Australian government.  Is the seismic grid sufficient to detect small quakes in that portion of the Timor Sea?
5. So now we know that the integrity of 3 of the 5 Montara wells was compromised.  Gas bubbles were observed in the annulus of the G-1 and there were significant cementing issues with the H-2.
6. None of the PCC’s were pressure tested in situ.  I’m still waiting for a tutorial on how that is done.  Would the 9 5/8″ PCC have been pressure tested against the casing?  If so, perhaps that test would have identified the channels in the casing shoe?