The oil spouting from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico is unquestionably the result of technological failure and potentially the cause of an environmental disaster greater than any the world has seen. Such an accident, even though an extremely rare event, is something that everyone – not least the folks at British Petroleum – wishes would never have happened. But the risk of an accident is part of the price we pay for the conveniences of a sophisticated modern society that is highly dependent on science and engineering, endeavours that are incompletely understood and sometimes confused.
We certainly owe a lot to science. It tells us – with the help of devices that are products of engineering – whether it will rain next week; when to watch out for a tornado; where it is best to drill for oil; and where the ocean currents might carry it when it spills. Geologists, employing advanced instruments and techniques, have identified the abundant fields in the Gulf, the North Sea and the Middle East. But knowing where the oil is likely located does not bring it to the surface. That is where engineering takes the lead. It is engineers who design the offshore platforms and drilling rigs and the robotic equipment that are used to probe for and pump oil from a mile or more beneath the water’s surface.
THERE'S NO PERFECT SYSTEM
The surprising thing about such remote operations should not be that they sometimes fail, but that they fail so infrequently. There never will be a perfect system for oil recovery or any other technological endeavour. The equipment and procedures employed are the creations of human beings and, as such, are as fallible as their creators. Engineers know this, and that is why the Deepwater Horizon oil rig installation had multiple backup safety features. Unfortunately, in this case that was not enough. There were multiple failures. What happened in the Gulf of Mexico is an illustration of Murphy’s Law, which states that anything that can go wrong with a technological system eventually will.
In the wake of the Gulf spill, it is likely that there will be calls for further redundancy in oil-well safety. That may or may not be an improvement, for more complicated devices can sometimes mean less reliability – there is more that can go wrong, especially with the interaction of their parts. With technology, more and bigger are not necessarily better.
In 1981, the Kansas City Hyatt Regency’s elevated walkways collapsed and killed more than 100 partygoers because the single support rod of the original design was replaced with two. The double O-ring design of the booster rockets on the space shuttle Challenger was thought to be an improvement over earlier rocket designs, which were very reliable but had only a single O-ring. The change to a double-ring design was supposed to make a reliable system even more reliable. It was more difficult, however, to make sure that the double O-rings were seated properly, and that contributed to the gas leak that initiated the explosion that destroyed the Challenger. And recall that the reaction of British Petroleum engineers to their failed attempt to contain the oil leak with a 100-tonne concrete box was next to employ a smaller, two-tonne box – not a larger one.
Technological improvements can be counterintuitive, and full of surprises themselves. We tend to build upon successful experience, thinking that adding features will result in a better product, device or method. But videocassette recorders with too many bells and whistles became the butt of jokes about owners who could not figure out even how to set the time on them. Complicating anything with more parts or steps introduces more places and ways in which it can fail.
