Failure on the BP Rig Explained

It seems that it was a methane bubble that shot up the drill hole when they were converting the rig from an exploration rig to a production rig.

Up on the rig, the first thing workers noticed was the seawater in the drill column suddenly shooting back at them, rocketing 240 feet in the air. Then, gas surfaced. Then oil.

"What we had learned when I worked as a drill rig laborer was swoosh, boom, run," Bea said. "The swoosh is the gas, boom is the explosion and run is what you better be doing."

The gas flooded into an adjoining room with exposed ignition sources, he said.

What seems to forgotten in this whole mess is that 11 people died in that explosion. All this talk of keeping the boot on the neck of BP kind of flies in the face of those people pretty much dying in an accident probably because a part failed. It is a dangerous job bringing up oil from 3000 feet below the surface of the water at the White House needs to acknowledge the fact that 11 people died so we can drive our SUVs to the mall.