Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE)

• The Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board unveiled their new website. Very impressive!

• Jane Cutler, CEO of NOPSA (Australia), made an outstanding (must-view) presentation on Safety Priorities for 2010. My favorite quote:

Safety culture is how the organization behaves when no one is watching.

Also, NOPSA’s September Newsletter has some interesting updates including information on the jackup failure offshore China.

• Joel Achenbach, a very good reporter, wrote an excellent Washington Post article on that addresses some of Macondo’s human and organizational factors. I do disagree with the deepwater emphasis, particularly his BOP comments.  As we have noted on several occasions, subsea BOPs have a far better performance record than surface BOPs. Also, having the stack right at the surface is a hindrance, not a benefit, if the rig is on fire.

And how does a reporter question the humility of engineers? 🙂

Engineers do amazing things, but they aren’t always as smart as they think, nor their systems as robust as they seem on paper.