What a shame.Right up there with fracking.Big business wins again.
As I said, I worked in the oil patch. Fracking, when done right, is safe. When not done right, it is risky.
One problem I see is that the people approving the permits are going to follow the letter of the law when approving the permits. The people passing those laws, rules, and regulations are politicians. In theory they use experts in crafting those laws, rules, and regulations, and many do. The oil companies themselves provide a lot of that expertise. I was involved in reviewing a certain proposal that was being considered. What was being proposed had a basic flaw in it. I was able to point that out and get a better safer regulation written. The department I worked with wrote up a change to a regulation that was adopted. It reduced our costs to operate without reducing safety. We did sound engineering calculations to back that up. That was an example of changing a bad regulation.
But ultimately the laws, rules, and regulations are approved by politicians that have very little, if any, expertise in what they are passing.
Most of the technical people working for the oil companies are pretty good. But they are human and sometimes make mistakes. Some are pretty fresh out of college and don’t have enough experience. In both cases there are supposed to be supervisors reviewing the work. Some supervisors are better at this than others. Some oil companies have teams that are supposed to do a technical review and give an approval. Some, not all.
I’ve had to point to a specific law, rule, or regulation to get a manager’s approval to do something that I considered required for safety. Managers have to manage budgets. If they can reduce costs it is a feather in their cap and can lead to promotion. Most came up through a specific discipline and had the expertise to make good decisions. Some trusted their in-house experts and did not question them really hard if those experts said it was required for safety. But some were really brutal in making us prove everything we did was required. It made my life a lot easier if I could point to a specific requirement in the regulations instead of going back to my basic engineering and trying to convince someone from a totally different background why it was required. Safety valves on pipelines was one area some often wanted to cut but they are required by regulations. Those valves are expensive.
The oil patch has changed too. A few decades ago the major oil companies had their own in-house engineering staffs that did all the detail work. Now they contract most of that out. There are a lot of engineering small businesses servicing the oil patch. A lot of those are really good but some are run by people that are willing to cut corners. What they do is supposed to be reviewed by people in the oil company but again some people doing the review are better than others.
Another big change in the oil patch is that there are now a lot of small independent oil companies that pretty much rely on the small businesses servicing the oil patch. Some of these smaller independents don’t have the staff with the expertise to know what they are approving. And in the 80’s, a lot of the people these smaller independent oil companies were hiring were the people the oil companies were letting go as they were downsizing and contracting a lot of their engineering work. Do you think the oil companies were going to get rid of their best people and keep the substandard performers?
I’ve seen what some private businesses will do if they are not adequately overseen, inspected, or reviewed. Sometimes it is not real pretty. Most oil service companies, oil companies, and government regulators do a good job. That’s why you hear of so few accidents. But you are dealing with humans. Sometimes they make mistakes, whether by accident or on purpose to cut corners. The laws, rules, and regulations are approved by politicians, not technicians. That’s kind of scary.
