T
he U.S. Minerals and Management Service documented more than 1,400 offshore oil drilling accidents between 2001 and 2007. It's developing regulations aimed at preventing human error, which it identified as a factor in many of those cases.
What caused Tuesday's massive blast off the Louisiana coast is unknown. On Friday, Coast Guard officials suspended the three-day search for 11 workers missing since an explosion rocked the Deepwater Horizon, saying they believe the men never made it off the platform that erupted into a giant fireball.
Environmentalists say that while new technology touted by oil industry executives continues to improve, people still have to oversee those devices and human error remains a widespread problem.
"You can't outlaw human error," Richard Charter, a senior policy adviser with Defenders of Wildlife, who has been involved in drilling issues for 30 years, said of Tuesday's explosion. "It's one of the sidebar issues now emerging for the Horizon incident
- these are common incidents and this was just a bigger one."
The decision to call off the search for missing workers was made after the Coast Guard called their families.
"I'm a father and husband, and I have done this a few times before. It's never easy. Your heart goes out to these people," said Coast Guard Capt. Peter Troedsson, who talked to the families.
The Coast Guard says it will resume the search if any ships in the area see anything, but the workers' chances of survival had seemed slim well before Friday afternoon's announcement. "The time of reasonable expectation of survivability has passed," Rear Adm. Mary Landry said.
The 11 missing workers came from Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. Neither the Coast Guard nor their employers have released their names, though several of their families have come forward.
Scott Bickford, a lawyer for the family of missing worker Shane Roshto, said Roshto's wife, Natalie, had been staying with other workers' relatives at a hotel in suburban New Orleans but returned home to Liberty, Miss., on Friday morning.
"Natalie has pretty much accepted the fact that her husband is not coming back," Bickford said.
Karl Kleppinger Sr., whose 38-year-old son, Karl, was one of the 11 missing workers, said he doesn't blame the Coast Guard for calling off the search.
"Given the magnitude of the explosion and the fire, I don't see where you would be able to find anything," said Kleppinger, of Zachary, La.
As the search was ending, oil company crews were trying to clean up the environmental mess created by the Deepwater Horizon, which finally sank Thursday.
The other 115 crew members made it off the platform; several were hurt but only two remained hospitalized Friday. The most seriously injured worker was expected to be released within about 10 days.
The rig was the site of a 2005 fire found to have been caused by human error. An MMS investigation determined that a crane operator on the rig had become distracted while refueling the crane, allowing diesel fuel to overflow. Records show the fire was quickly contained, but caused $60,000 in damage to the crane.
An MMS review published last year found 41 deaths and 302 injuries out of 1,443 oil-rig accidents from 2001 to 2007. An analysis of the accidents found a lack of communication between the operator and contractors, a lack of written procedures, a failure to enforce existing procedures and other problems.
