Kenneth G. Brill

Kenneth G. Brill

7/21/2010 @ 4:00PM

Don't Give Up On Deep Sea Drilling

I was a teenager when President Kennedy challenged the nation to put a man on the moon and have him safely return within 10 years. Retrospectively, the effect on me and the nation was electrifying. The goal was simple, clear and easily measurable. It spoke to the higher purpose, of stretching the capabilities of man to go beyond to where we had never been. In short, it spoke to my/our imagination and mobilized a generation.

By way of comparison, look at the BP oil spill. Instead of seeing deep sea drilling and the mining of vast mineral deposits on the ocean floors as a creative challenge to mankind and a way of improving our well-being in ways we can’t fully anticipate, significant elements of our society want to stop all drilling. While it is difficult to fault this impulse in light of the human and environmental costs of the current leak, putting an end to deep sea drilling is likely short sighted. I am sure Kennedy got a lot of negativism, too. Yet, from the today’s perspective of 50 years later, was Apollo 13 a waste?

If anything, the technical unknowns of going into space for the first time greatly exceeded the challenges of working under water, which at lesser depths has a history of almost 100 years.

How were the space program’s unknowns identified and successfully managed? First, it was done as a government-directed program and the knowledge benefits generally flowed into the public domain. Second, it engaged the best and brightest science and engineering minds of the time. Third, it had outside scientific review processes to offset typical bureaucratic tendencies to hide or ignore risks. Fourth, it explicitly addressed a never failing outcome because the consequences of failure would be seen by the world live on television.

As I discussed in previous columns (See “The Real Cause Of BP’s Oil Spill“), never failing assumes that component and system failures are natural occurrences which must be anticipated. This demanded the creation of new technologies, systems, processes and back-ups required to assure the mission itself will still be successful). Fifth, and perhaps most importantly, the people were specially trained–in some cases for years–for the many tasks of getting astronauts into space and ensuring that they return safely. This focus on never failing paid off in multiple instances during the mission when the astronauts had to override systems and assume manual control.

Why don’t we apply the 50-year-old lessons of the moon program to successful deep sea drilling? Why do we leave technology development, risk assessment, back-up alternatives and training exclusively to the private sector, when, as we have seen, the consequences of a major leak are devastating to our environment as well as to our prestige as a nation?

We charge the oil companies billions for the right to drill. Why not invest some or all of this public money into creating a common global store of technology, processes and risk assessments needed to achieve a high level of environmental safety and then require that this knowledge be used by private industry? Like the moon program, it would require several years to do basic research, experimentation and invention. It would also require investments in engineering and scientific education to develop new skills. And, it will require a deliberate system of checks and balances to channel the narcissism, arrogance, short-termism and failure to fully appreciate consequences that have bedeviled human endeavors for thousands of years. Could a deep sea exploration program be a way of re-engaging a generation’s imagination and commitment?

China is planning on moving 300 million people from rural farms to cities in the next 20 years. How is this largest migration in human history relevant to fault-tolerant drilling? The additional energy consumption created by 300 million people moving from subsistence living to cities is going to significantly drive up resource demand and prices. Being Luddites and refusing to drill is not a satisfactory answer. Energy is going to be in increasingly short supply. Wars are likely to be fought over it. More environmental disasters are on the horizon because deep ocean drilling and ocean floor mining is going to happen, if not off U.S. shores, then in other parts of the world.

Why not recast all the risks and problems into a challenge to our collective imagination? We rose to meet Kennedy’s challenge. With the right vision and long term goals, we can solve the technical, engineering, management and human problems that BP has encountered. We have demonstrated we can do better, much better. The process starts with an attitude of imagination and higher purpose!

Kenneth G. Brill is Founder of Uptime Institute.

See Also:

The Real Cause Of BP’s Oil Spill

Why BP, Toyota And Lehman Failed

It’s Sputnik, Stupid!

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