Review of Deepwater Horizon (2016) by Andrew O — 09 Oct 2016

As someone who worked in the oil industry for over three decades I appreciated that this film captured some of the grittiness of the offshore world. Several things were a bit off been generally gave an honest feel for the experience.

A few things people should understand: Because of the ever present dangers of working in the offshore environment work progresses much slower than the film made it seem. Everyone focuses on safety or they simply won't be working offshore for very long.

The "hope is not a tactic" emphasis in the movie is unrealistic. The people that work offshore in any position of authority are not idiots and people will almost always challenge decisions until sound reasoning prevails although that reasoning might still be wrong due to lack of information or poor interpretation of information from those that are relied upon in their areas of expertise.

Before branding all corporate representatives as greedy at least consider that they may have tried their best to both complete a project and do so safely but stumbled for any number of reasons without it naturally being that they succumbed to pressure and cut corners.

I don't know what exactly happened on the Deepwater Horizon. It's a complicated mess in which many of my brothers in the industry died and were hurt badly. This event was always in the forefront of my thinking during my last years before a safe retirement.

God speed to all who work in dangerous jobs.