Jim Baird: “If we have an interaction system wherein people are making decisions with a known possibility of a blowout and blowout…”

“If we have an interaction system wherein people are making decisions with a known possibility of a blowout and blowout preventers that have a fairly high probability of failure, somebody needs to intervene and say what the heck is going on here if people can make these decisions when, and I want to underscore this, when the consequence is the loss of human life. Eleven souls lost their lives on that rig that day. We talk so much about the cleanup and the environmental catastrophe that's resulted. Let us not forget those eleven lives. When people's decisionmaking leads to the loss of human life and leads to an environmental and economic tragedy of this magnitude, we've got to make sure they make those decisions in the right way, with the right information and the right communication strategy, and as important as this bill is in improving the technology for drilling and drilling safety, essential to that technology are the human elements, and I'm grateful that the committee saw fit to include those elements in the legislation. I thank the chairman again.”