On a movie
Watched Deepwater Horizon for the first time last night and have some thoughts…
- I began my white-collar career covering the oil/gas industry as a reporter, including the new technology of deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
- Some in the oil industry were passionate at the time about finding more domestic petroleum to avoid U.S. reliance on foreign countries for it. They were right in a way, because I think petroleum economics, in addition to other things, led to the 9/11 terrorism.
- Semi-submersible technology was pretty new when the rig blew up in 2010, and the rig was built in an Asian country that had almost no oil business. It basically means drilling a hole in the sea floor without the rig being securely put on the ground; it can be dangerous.
- The movie demonstrates the tensions that can happen between a controlling company like BP (the recent CEO of the corporation resigned in scandal) and a contracting company. One of the contracting drillers says, “we’re just the help to drill a hole.”
- Mark Wahlberg and Kurt Russell are two of the better action actors in Hollywood, and the visuals of an exploding rig are pretty good in this movie.
- In reality, 11 people died on the rig in the explosion, and it caused a lot of environmental pollution in the Gulf area, although local businesses may have overdone the damage.