 So, in keeping with this notion of multiple perspectives, we thought we would fill out the day hearing from the Department of Energy and the Research and Technology group on the advisory side that's going on in that portion. And we have Chris Smith, who's the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy, but he's in charge of oil and gas. He's also the industry co-chair or the government co-chair on the National Petroleum Council study that's looking at domestic resources. We have Dr. Charlie Wams. Charlie is the Chief Technology Officer at Shell, and he deals with deep water well design and containment, but for purposes today, he will talk about the Joint Industry Task Force and the safety group that he leads in that Joint Industry Task Force and all the developments that have occurred over the last 10 or 11 months, which have been substantial. As I mentioned earlier, Mike Wallace is with us, and we asked Mike. Mike has recently joined CSIS as a senior advisor. Mike's the former COO of Constellation, and he was head of the Constellation Nuclear Group. He was there at the creation of INPO, the Nuclear Safety and Regulatory Group, that kind of sets peer review and standards for the industry. And while it was painful, there's some useful lessons to learn. So it may not be the appropriate model, but we asked him to come by and just give his perspective on how that happened, what occurred, how companies stepped up, and how it evolved, and how long it took to actually get there. And then, of course, Robin West, many of you know, Robin is the chairman and founder of PFC Energy. He's also chairman now of the Institute of Peace, Institute for Peace. He was an assistant secretary at the Interior Department, and oil and gas, and leasing activities were under his purview. So he's got a very different perspective as well, and we hope to continue that dialogue and discussion. For those of you that are looking for Michael Brown, which is prepared remarks, we will have them posted on our website, hopefully within the next couple hours. It was a long and detailed presentation, as Michael has wanted to do, but there's a lot of good information in there. So we want to make sure that that's available. So without further ado, further bios are in your handouts. But let me welcome to the podium Chris Smith. Thank you. Thanks. So how do I control this? Thank you. Just bring yourself. Okay, thank you very much, Frank, for that kind introduction. And I want to thank you for the opportunity to come and speak to this group. We've gotten to know Frank through our work with the National Petroleum Council. So I've enjoyed working with you and your experience, you understand how some of these pieces fit together. Today I'm going to give you kind of a broad overview of some of the things that we're thinking about within the Department of Energy. Our piece in this complicated equation, I'll talk to you from a couple of perspectives. First of all, I was the designated federal official for the Commission that was created by the President by Executive Order to look at the root causes of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. And secondly, I'm just coming yesterday from the first meeting of the Ocean Energy Safety Committee, which I sit on with Mr. Charlie Williams, who's going to be speaking today. Looking forward, that's going to be an organization that's going to truly help us to look at how we're going to take the immediate steps that have been taken by the Department of Interior to ensure that the appropriate mechanisms are in place from a regulatory standpoint and augment that with the type of research and science that needs to be conducted to ensure that we understand the risks and that we're putting in place mechanisms to mitigate them appropriately. So my personal background, I spent a short time as a Army officer and spent a number of years before coming into this role, working for an oil and gas company. So I have an appreciation for people who do difficult and dangerous work. And the folks who supply the energy for our nation, for our economy, certainly fit into that category. So as we went through the look back of trying to understand the root causes of the Deepwater Horizon and put in place research and development and regulation to ensure it doesn't happen again, we certainly had, as a motivator, the 11 individuals who lost their lives back on April 20th of 2010, a year ago now. So that's informed much of the work that we've done. And, you know, Namu are we dedicated to making sure that we were producing the energy that we need for our economy, but also making sure that we do it in a way that's safe and sustainable. So I'm going to talk just very briefly through some of what we observed as being some of the root causes. These are observations that inform the work that we do within the Department of Energy that we will bring to the Ocean Energy Safety Committee as that group considers the work it needs to do going forward. So in just very high level terms, you've got a number of balancing acts that you're trying to manage in order to drill difficult wells in a way that's safe. First, you have the simplest level of keeping the well under control is this balance between hydrostatic pressure and formation pressure, which essentially means that you've got, in the case of Deepwater Horizon, this rig that's floating in a mile of water, there's a mile between the rig and the 5,000 feet beneath where you're at the mud line, and beneath that another four miles down to the pay zone. And essentially through the drilling process, you've got this five miles of fluid that's in this column that's in the well casing. And the weight of that fluid has to be sufficient to counteract the force of hydrocarbons trying to force away into the well of war and get to the surface. That, in simplest terms, is the first equation that you're trying to manage when you are keeping the well under control. The second issue that was particularly important in this well was this issue of pore pressure versus fracture gradient, which in simple terms is stating that you have to have enough weight, enough force in that column of fluid to keep the formation under control, but not so much that you fracture the formation and you can create alternate pathways for hydrocarbons to flow uncontrolled up to the surface somewhere outside of the casing in the well war. So this was a challenge that existed in this particular well and that exists when you're drilling difficult wells. This is just a cartoon schematic of the drill bit as it passes through the formation. But essentially as you're drilling the well, you're constantly flowing drilling mud down through that drill pipe. It circulates and comes back up the casing to the surface. You know how much fluid you're putting into the well, and therefore you know how much fluid you should be getting out. And if you're getting back out less than you're putting in, you suspect that at some point along this, in your open hole, you're fracturing the formation. So this is something that occurred early on in this drilling process. It was something that informed all of the steps that the companies took when they were drilling the well eventually led to the accident. And as Secretary Chu and Secretary Salazar and BP and all the other participants in the industry who were helping us to resolve the crisis noted, every step along the way when you're looking at different ways of capping the well, you're always concerned about this equation that you didn't want to make this situation worse. This is something that was resolved successful in this case, but as was noted by Director Bromwich, as you go into more and more difficult situations and you get different challenges, this is a moving target that you have to make sure that you, on an ongoing basis, understand the different types of risks that you have to deal with. The third is this issue of data versus intuition. And this is something that the committee yesterday spent some time talking about. You've got what you could consider the technology, the hard science of understanding how fluid passes through porous media, how fractures propagate, all of those things that technically you need to understand to drill a well safely. But you also have this concern about human factors engineering, about how you take decision makers on the platform and allow them to make in real time important decisions that are going to lead to your ability to control a well and keep drilling safely. This is just a picture of the last two hours of the Sun Spurry data, which is measuring a number of things, you know, pressure and flow rates. You can't read this from where you're sitting, and that's kind of the point. I mean, this is actually a manifestation of the type of reading that the person on the platform has to read, follow, make decisions and act upon those decisions in real time. It was, for me, notable during the investigation itself when the lead council was up talking through the investigation that they had conducted. They took this diagram, they took this graphic, they blew it up, they cropped it, they spun it, they put arrows on it so that you could see bits of key information that's hidden in this readout. There was one point in particular where they noted that this was, you know, one of the first tangible signs of a potential blowout where they had a slight increase in pressure on the drill pipe at a time in which the pump rate was steady, and in that condition you would expect a more steady pressure reading, and there was a slight increase which is captured here in one of these arrows, but that is something that that individual who's on the platform, who's responsible for ensuring that the drilling is done safely, would have to see and note and interpret and act upon in real time. If we look at the way that other systems operate outside the oil and gas industry, be it the nuclear navy or the way we manage nuclear reactors or the way that we handle air traffic control in congested airports, similarly you're dealing with tremendously complicated quantities of data, and you're having to take that information, you're having to push it into something that an operator, a skilled and conscientious operator, but a human being has to be able to make decisions on. This isn't something that's unique to the Deepwater Horizon, I mean this is the way that we do things in oil and gas, and this is an area of research that I think we can benefit from other areas that have to deal with complex and dynamic systems. And the last thing I'll mention is the fail safe barrier which was touched upon just briefly in the last presentation. We're still looking at various studies that have looked at what actually happened with the BOP itself, the blowout preventer. The blowout preventer was considered to be that your fail safe device. In this case it appears that during the blowout just the force of those hydrocarbons coming up the well bore was sufficient that it was able to elastically buckle the drill pipe, such that it physically was not located within the cutting surface of the blind shear ram which was supposed to cut that pipe and crimp it. It was, the BOP appears to have operated, the devices that were supposed to close on the drill pipe closed, but the range of failure in which it had been previously tested was not sufficient to predict that it needed to operate in an environment that was this extreme. Again, this was not a condition that was unique to this particular drilling rig or this particular drilling crew. This was the blowout preventer that was the same type that's been used in other operations. So again, this is another area of interest that is being addressed by the Department of the Interior and their regulatory standards and that we will continue to look at as we go out into deeper horizons as we go and look for oil and gas in more difficult locations. So this is one of the conclusions of the oil spill commission. And again, the oil spill commission was independent bipartisan organization that looked at root causes. And one of their conclusions was the immediate causes of the Mekando well blowout can be traced to a series of identifiable mistakes made by BP, Halliburton and TransOcean that reveals such systematic failures in risk management that they place in doubt the safety culture of the entire industry. There's been some observers that have taken this quote and looked at this as a strong statement. But when you really think about it, when you think about the commonality between the operation as it existed on that platform and there were mistakes were made and there were problems obviously with that particular operation. But there are many things I think we can identify that we have to address that are common and the idea that we can focus very nearly on one event that we can relive that disaster and refight that battle and figure out how to deal with that specific incident and just move on and change nothing else is not the approach that we've taken. So that's a philosophy that is informed the work that's been taken by the Department of Interior to make sure that they reform their regulatory environment and ensure that this doesn't happen again. And it's a spirit that informs the research that we're doing within Department of Energy to make sure that we're not going back and refighting the old battle, but we're looking at new things that have to be considered as we move out to more difficult frontiers. We've had a collaborative relationship between the Department of Energy and the other agencies that operate in this space. I won't elaborate too much on the points here that Director Brom which talked about in great detail. But I will highlight a couple of comments that has been made by the President in terms of our commitment to make sure that we get this right. The first was a quote made by the President that actually during the disaster, not too long after the well was blown out. I continue to believe that domestic oil production is an important part of our overall strategy for energy security, but I've always said that it must be done responsibly for the safety of our workers and the environment. That again was during the time that Secretary Chu was down in the Gulf of Mexico working with the teams to ensure that we took care of the problem. And the second comes recently from the blueprint for America's energy future that followed the President's energy speech in Georgetown on the 30th of last month. When I was elected to this office, America imported 11 million barrels of oil a day. By a little more than a decade from now, we will have cut that by one third. That is something that we can achieve. Achieving that means that we have to get this right, that we have to figure out how we can produce safely and move forward to commercialize this resource. Director Bromwich gave you a couple of statistics about the progress that they've made in terms of changing the rules in Gulf of Mexico to reflect a mitigation of the risks as we see it. And their progress in permitting wells as companies have made the steps and strides that they've asked for. So since the 20th of February, 11 deep water wells and over 49 shallow water wells in that period of time since last summer. So certainly this is something that we do have to solve. We have to do this. If you look at the places where new reserves are coming from, they're coming from the Elta Deep Water and they're coming from unconventional plays onshore. These are new frontiers in terms of opportunities, but they're also areas in which we have to bring our understanding and our scientific ability to quantify risks to bear. So those are the comments that I had, Frank. I think we'll pass it on to the next speaker and then we'll take questions at the end. So thank you very much. Thank you very much. I was gonna talk about the industry response to post-McCondo and I was gonna talk about the things that were proactively done in the industry following the McCondo incident and how those have contributed to cooperation and communication and working with the government agencies and the different investigative bodies that have looked into McCondo as we evolve this. And so the things I'm gonna talk about are the four industry task forces that were set up immediately after McCondo, subsea containment, which was mentioned by Director Bromwich and others, well-designed and in the Center for Offshore Safety. And so I get asked a lot, so what's changed post-McCondo? And of course, I'm tempted to put up one view graph and say everything and then I'm done with my talk. And in lots of ways, it is everything. I mean, there's been a lot of very good, positive, constructive changes, but certainly there were a lot of good things, good standards, a good process is going on before McCondo and a lot of those have been enhanced and improved post-McCondo. So in a way, it's everything in a, but lots of other good things were going on. But the key thing I wanted to talk about is so the other thing I get asked is when's it gonna be normal again? And Director Bromwich also talked about this, but I mean, the truth is, of course, it's never been normal. It's never been normal in the regard that the entire industry has been faced with increasing technical challenges, deeper water, Arctic, more remote operations, deeper reservoirs, more difficult reservoirs. So we've had to evolve the technology on a continuing basis throughout the entire history in the industry. So actually, in a way, you could say it's never been normal because we've always had to evolve things. Now the other thing, of course, we evolve is the safety system, safety processes, environmental protections. And I think that, of course, the key in all of this is to evolve these in an appropriate manner and evolve these at the right speed together. You have to evolve.