Scant Testing for Shell Oil Spill Equipment, Despite Green Light in Arctic

[xchrom]

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/09/05-7

***SNIP

“To say that these tests were rigorous or comprehensive is certainly a stretch,” stated Rick Steiner, PEER board member, who submitted the FOIA request. “A simple emissions test report for my car is far more rigorous than what BSEE has produced for Shell's Arctic capping stack. From this, we still don’t know that this critical piece of equipment will work if needed.”

According to PEER, the findings include:

Tests were run for minutes, not hours, despite the fact that any capping system would need to withstand hours, days or weeks of pressure in icy conditions many other variables;
Tests initially lacked a “low-pressure test,” though Shell claimed it would perform this test later; and
The tests went unmonitored by an independent engineer or any third party. Other than the one page of notes, BSEE produced no evidence of what the testing actually showed.


***the kind of regulatory incompetence that really pisses me off.

[Angry Dragon]

1. I agree 100% with your last sentence