Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE)

BP settled Macondo litigation with Weatherford, manufacturer of the float equipment equipment used in the Macondo well. The failure of this equipment was a key contributing factor in the Macondo blowout. Under the agreement, Weatherford will pay BP $75 million.  This money will be applied to the $20 billion Macondo trust fund.

Weatherford is the first of BP’s contractors to formally agree with BP that the entire industry can and should learn from the Deepwater Horizon incident. Accordingly, Weatherford has committed to working with BP to take actions to improve processes and procedures, managerial systems, and safety and best practices in offshore drilling operations. BP and Weatherford will encourage other companies in the drilling industry to join them in this improvement and reform effort.

Comments:

1. $75 million seems like a rather modest payment by Weatherford given the magnitude of Macondo damage costs. BP will “indemnify Weatherford for compensatory claims resulting from the accident.”  Presumably, Weatherford’s sales agreements provide good legal protection.
2. One of the root causes of the Montara blowout was also a float collar failure. That float collar was also supplied by Weatherford.  I’m surprised that this common cause and supplier have received almost no attention. Of course, no one has paid much attention to Montara, either before or after Macondo. Had more attention been paid to the Montara inquiry, Macondo might have been avoided.  (Note that most of the post-Macondo commentary still implies that deep water is the threat even though Montara was in 80 m of water and the root causes of Macondo were not water depth related).
3. When do we learn more about the “improvement and reform effort” described in the quote above?

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