[Rapier]

Jack,
I sent your and Larry's comments to a friend in the oil drilling business, as an afiliated company owner. He actually had a bit more to say about the entire episode than we may have known. These are his comments:

"Most deep water BOP's have the following, 2 annular preventers or "Hydrills" one is part of the LMRP or lower marine riser package that can be disconnected from the main BOP stack in case of hurricanes where the rig wants to move away from the well and either leave the riser hanging under the rig or pull it out of the water.
The main BOPs usually consist of one more annular [two total] plus 3 pipe rams [2 half's with the centers designed to close and seal around either, 1 set size of drill pipe or VBR's that can close a range of pipe, plus one set of blind shears that are designed to either cut drill pipe and seal or just seal off the well bore.
Annulars, sometimes will have bits & pieces of the elements, kind of looks like a serrated doughnut break off,
BUT the point is there were 6 ways to seal off the well, and there were two independent systems used for functioning all the valves, etc. on the BOP's.
AND no one is stating this and asking what happened or why none of these systems were activated from one of at least 3 control panels ??
MMS rules call for a complete testing every 14 days, and that any problems must be corrected before drilling any deeper, UNLESS the operator gets written permission to continue operations from the MMS.
The rig owner Transocean was getting about $ 500,000.00 a day rent and they have never been shy about finding reasons to stop forward movement of the drilling operations. "

So it appears that if the pooch did not get properly mated, she sure missed a good chance!
Ed