"Poor me" in the oil patch: stop me if you've heard this

Texas Monthly has a long read about the details of the latest oil bust and why this one's going to be bad.

Yeah, it may be, but I've heard this stuff before.

First, I'm old enough to remember $10/bbl oil just before the turn of the century, and how that lasted a long time.

And, adjusted for inflation, per the chart below, WTI was below $40/bbl for SEVEN YEARS, setting aside that brief blip just above the $40 mark in 1995.

Crude Oil Prices - 70 Year Historical Chart

So, let's stop this nonsense, Texas Monthly. Surely somebody on your editorial staff is old enough to know better.

What's changed is that the fracking revolution led MANY companies like Pioneer Energy to be formed, or if on the books as small companies, to greedily expand. Hey, Scott Sheffield, Pioneer Energy CEO and Texas Monthly's fracking whisperer? Nobody forced you to make yourself into the Aubrey McClendon of the oil patch, including, just like him, Ponzi-scheming yourself on leases that you have to drill or lose.

Indeed, a year ago, DeSmog Blog caught Scott Sheffield in either huge self-delusion or else huge fibbing when he claimed fracking was profitable at $30/bbl.

You're right that there is no such thing as a free market, not just in the oil patch but elsewhere. BUT ... until Railroad Commission chairman and nutbar-in-chief Wayne Christian refused to bail you out with proration, I don't recall you saying that the lack of a free market was a problem.

As for the whys of Wayno fighting proration? I'll take him at his word, discounted the 50 percent he normally should be. North Dakota, New Mexico and other states that have also had fracking-related oil booms may have found it difficult to adopt proration in their states. They may also, to the degree their state budgets have become more oil-dependent than Texas', decided they didn't want to, or didn't think they could afford to, prorate. In any case, whether or not Wayno tried that hard, he couldn't get a proration deal. And, within the US, the oil production world has changed since 1970.

In addition, Texas Monthly should be asking how big of a polluter whining Pioneer is. Hell, even the New York Times can ask that of frackers in general, along with other questions.

Yes, Texas is still the biggie. But states 2-10, combined, produce as much oil as it does. Just five years ago, though, New Mexico was way lower, and Colorado and Oklahoma a fair amount lower. Seven years ago, North Dakota was way lower.

Long long ago? In the 1980s, in a situation like this, per graph at this site, Texas only had to worry about Alaska. In the 1990s and 2000-oughts, then offshore production was an issue. And, though it's declined again, especially after the Deepwater Horizon, offshore drilling has two other issues. One, it's federally controlled, so Wayno has no control over it, nor do 49 other states. Second, offshore wells? You won't shut them down, period.

LONG long ago? The misty mythic 1930s? Contra Sheffield, and contra the Texas Monthly reporter who didn't call him out on it, everybody who knows anything about Texas crude knows that the RRC largely failed to control production then. People pumped and sold hot oil and laughed at the state. It took the feds and force to accomplish anything.

If this DOES change everything? It won't be by itself. Per Sheffield, it will be the rise of cars, plus, we hope to doorknob, real climate change legislation that includes a carbon tax and carbon tariff at the federal level, plus, we hope to doorknob, states and third parties winning lawsuits against Big Oil.

Coast Guard - lying for BP?

Is the Coast Guard lying, or just clueless, on Gulf Oil? It's something, because there's plenty of it still there from the BP disaster.

I'd have to say a mix of both. Since various aspects of Team Obama were in BP's pocket soon after the Deepwater Horizon blowout, elements of lying, even by the Coast Guard, can't be overlooked.

And, assuming that Team Obama is still in the background, that's another reason to assume lying, not just ignorance.

Obama on BP spill: Incompetent or lying?

Of course, to some degree, the two aren't mutually exclusive. But, a new report on how the government handled issues related to the size of the BP spill makes this a serious issue:

“By initially underestimating the amount of oil flow and then, at the end of the summer, appearing to underestimate the amount of oil remaining in the gulf, the federal government created the impression that it was either not fully competent to handle the spill or not fully candid with the American people about the scope of the problem.”

There you have it, in a nutshell.

Polishing Bush's BP apple

At first, I read this NYT column noting that Congress had a share of blame for the Deepwater Horizon disaster, and definitely agreed. Then, I got to the part where "the environmentalists" were blamed, and though I agree that Gang Green groups have made some pig-in-a-poke tradeoffs with Big Oil, I knew the author was stretching things.

Then, I noticed George W. Bush got nothing but kudos for trying to stop Congress, the GOP in Congress no less, from buttering up Big Oil. I also noticed that the Obama Administration also did NOT get blamed.

Then, I looked at the endline of the column and realized it was Executive Branch common oourtesy.

Salazar sux, part deux

Via Frank Rich, I am reminded that in addition to taking down Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Rolling Stone also, in the same issue, has a second installment of all that's rotten in the Department of the Interior.

Everything that was wrong, in advance, with Deepwater Horizon in the way of over-aggressive drilling and lack of advance preparations for serious problems, is wrong in spades with proposed new drilling in the Arctic:

The closest Coast Guard station is on Kodiak Island, some 1,000 miles away. The nearest cache of boom to help contain a spill is in Seattle — a distance of 2,000 miles. ... Relief equipment can realistically be brought to the region only by boat — and then only seasonally. The Arctic is encased in ice for more than half the year, and even icebreakers can't assure access in the dark of winter. "If it's this hard to clean this up in the relatively benign conditions of the Gulf of Mexico," Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse cautioned Salazar at a hearing after the BP spill, "good luck trying to implement this sort of a cleanup in the Arctic."

Shell, in fact, has never conducted an offshore-response drill in the Chukchi Sea. Perhaps that's because there's no proven technology for cleaning up oil in icy water, which can render skimming boats useless — much less to cope with a gusher under the ice. In the worst-case scenario, according to marine scientists, a blowout that takes place in the fall, when the seas are freezing over, could flow unabated until relief wells could be drilled the following summer. In the interim, oil could spread under the sea ice, marring the coastlines of Russia and Canada, and possibly reaching as far as Norway and Greenland. "It could realistically be a circumpolar event," says Steiner.

This is the new frontiers of Arctic drilling for which Secretary of the Interior Kenny Boy Salazar is pushing so hard.

Meanwhile, even as the Rolling Stone piece was being penned, and despite the six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, Minerals Management Service was still accepting new deepwater tract bids.

Hey, Obamiacs: As long as The One stays with Kenny Boy, it's a sign he supports his position. Perhaps, as with Wall Street, "New Democrats" would like more campaign money from Old Big Oil?

Can Deepwater Horizon be closed by explosion?

Specifically, the Macondo well, whose name is just now coming into common media vocabulary.

But, yes, one commentator thinks the Navy DOES have expertise BP doesn't, and can (without nukes, either) blow the well up to "shut" it.

That said, from what I've read, there's a number of caveats.

1. The gushing may be coming from not just the well itself, but other floor fractures; trying to implode the hole itself could worsen those fractures.
2. The amount of methane involved with the leak might be exploded by implosion, or something; at the least, the Russian wells sealed by implosion were almost pure oil, not a significant gas admixture.

Oh, how deepwater oil drilling can go wrong

With the help of the New York Times, let us count the ways it DID go wrong with Deepwater Horizon, and could go wrong again in the future, unless President Obama actually does something during the drilling moratorium. (That said, as you read further down this long, quote-heavy post, and click the story link for more detail, you may not want to hold your breath over too much "does something" happening.

As it turns out, records and interviews show, blind shear rams can be surprisingly vulnerable. There are many ways for them to fail, some unavoidable, some exacerbated by the stunning water depths at which oil companies have begun to explore.

But they also can be rendered powerless by the failure of a single part, a point underscored in a confidential report that scrutinized the reliability of the Deepwater Horizon’s blowout preventer. The report, from 2000, concluded that the greatest vulnerability by far on the entire blowout preventer was one of the small shuttle valves leading to the blind shear ram. If this valve jammed or leaked, the report warned, the ram’s blades would not budge.

This sort of “single-point failure” figures prominently in an emerging theory of what went wrong with the Deepwater Horizon’s blind shear ram, according to interviews and documents. Some evidence suggests that when the crew activated the blind shear ram, its blades tried to cut the drill pipe, but then failed to finish the job because one or more of its shuttle valves leaked hydraulic fluid.

These kinds of weaknesses were understood inside the oil industry, documents and interviews show. And given the critical importance of the blind shear ram, offshore drillers began adding a layer of redundancy by equipping their blowout preventers with two blind shear rams.

So, it appears, again, that some of this is BP's fault, not Big Oil's fault. But, some of it is Big Oil in general:

Last year, Transocean commissioned a “strictly confidential” study of the reliability of blowout preventers used by deepwater rigs.

Using the world’s most authoritative database of oil rig accidents, a Norwegian company, Det Norske Veritas, focused on some 15,000 wells drilled off North America and in the North Sea from 1980 to 2006.

It found 11 cases where crews on deepwater rigs had lost control of their wells and then activated blowout preventers to prevent a spill. In only six of those cases were the wells brought under control, leading the researchers to conclude that in actual practice, blowout preventers used by deepwater rigs had a “failure” rate of 45 percent.

For all their confident pronouncements about blowout preventers (the “ultimate failsafe device,” some called it), oil industry executives had long known they could be vulnerable and temperamental.

Rising five or more floors and weighing hundreds of thousands of pounds, these devices were daunting in their scale and complexity. There were hundreds of ways they could malfunction or be improperly maintained, tested and operated. Not only did they have to withstand extreme environments, they were relied upon to tame the ferocious forces often unleashed when drilling rigs penetrate reservoirs of highly compressed oil and gas.

They were also costly to maintain. An industry study last year estimated the price of stopping operations to pull up a blowout preventer for repairs at $700 per minute.

Those costs could be enough to draw the attention of Wall Street.

Ahh, the old bottom line. That said, some industries accept more regulatory costs, or trade on a safety reputation as part of their bottom-line enhancement. Given that BP's safety record was so crappy under Tony Hayward's predecessor, Lord Browne, one wonders if he ever thought of that idea.

And that's not all:
>>In 1990, a blind shear ram could not snuff out a major blowout on a rig off Texas. It cut the pipe, but investigators found that the sealing mechanism was damaged. And in 1997, a blind shear ram was unable to slice through a thick joint connecting two sections of drill pipe during a blowout of a deep oil and gas well off the Louisiana coast. ...

(And) in two studies, in 2002 and 2004, one of the industry’s premier authorities on blowout preventers, West Engineering Services of Brookshire, Tex., found a more basic problem: even when everything worked right, some blind shear rams still failed to cut pipe.

West’s experts concluded that calculations used by makers of blowout preventers overestimated the cutting ability of blind shear rams, so-called because they close off wells like a window blind. Modern drill pipe is nearly twice as strong as older pipes of the same size. In addition, the intense pressure and frigid temperatures of deep water make it tougher to shear a pipe. These and other “additive pressures,” the researchers found, can demand hundreds of thousands of additional pounds of cutting force.



Yet when the team examined the performance of blind shear rams in blowout preventers on 14 new rigs, it found that seven had never been checked to see if their shear rams would work in deep water. Of the remaining seven, only three “were found able to shear pipe at their maximum rated water depths.”<<


And, the feds are at fault, too:
>>In 2001, just as BP and Transocean were pressing the Deepwater Horizon into service, the Minerals Management Service was being warned against allowing deepwater rigs to operate with only one blind shear ram. The agency had commissioned a study that documented more than 100 failures during testing of blowout preventers.



“All subsea B.O.P. stacks used for deepwater drilling should be equipped with two blind shear rams,” said the report, written by the SINTEF Group, a Scandinavian research organization that advises the oil industry and maintains detailed records on blowouts around the world.



The agency made no such requirement. Indeed, it waited until 2003 to require even one blind shear ram. By then, the industry had already started moving to two blind shear rams — although industry and government records show that roughly two-thirds of the rigs in the gulf today still have only one.<<
And, THAT is scary. Why, during the deepwater drilling moratorium, isn't Minerals MISmanagement Service requiring all deepwater rigs with just one ram to be retrofitted? Salazar, the story, notes has "recommended" such rules, but that's it. Equally scary is no testing requirements for backups like the deadman and autoshear. And, again, why isn't MMS promulgating new regs to this end during the moratorium?



Ultimately, it's a legacy of Reaganism + Newtism, combined with Clinton's natural neoliberalism, shifting Democrats far enough right that Barack Obama can talk about admiring Reagan.


That, in turn, leads to lies like this from Team Obama:

Barely three weeks before the Deepwater Horizon disaster, President Obama announced that he planned to open vast new tracts of ocean for oil exploration, including environmentally sensitive areas that for decades had been declared off limits by presidents from both parties.

Environmental groups were bitterly disappointed, but Mr. Obama said he had arrived at his decision after more than a year of study by his administration, including a careful weighing of environmental risks. Yet the administration’s examination did not question the oil industry’s confident assertions about its drilling technology. The well-known weaknesses of blowout preventers and blind shear rams simply did not make it onto the administration’s radar, interviews and documents show.

Mr. Hayes, the deputy interior secretary, said senior officials were reassured, perhaps wrongly, by “the NASA kind of fervor” over the oil industry’s seemingly “terrific technology.” They took comfort in what appeared to be a comprehensive regime of regulations. Most of all, he said, they were impressed by the rarity of significant oil spills even as more of the nation’s domestic oil supply was being drawn from ultradeep wells.

“The track record was good,” he said. “The results were significant.”

Not even environmental groups bitterly opposed to expanding offshore drilling were raising concerns about the industry’s technology for preventing deepwater spills, he added. “We were not being drawn by anybody to a potential issue with deepwater drilling or blowout preventers.”

Untrue. While not getting into every detail, non-Gang Green enviro groups have long worried about whether Big Oil could deliver.

Louisiana asks God to end BP spill

Dear nutbars suggesting prayer in the Louisiana Legislature to stop Deepwater Horizon: If God is so omnipotent, why didn't he prevent the spill/gush in the first place?

Deepwater Horizon: NOT worst enviro disaster ever

The NYT makes that clear in its refutation of one bit of Obama's rhetoric.

Worse, one thing they miss and the biggest, most ironic, or timid, omission of Obama's speech, is global warming itself, the meta-disaster behind the Deepwater Horizon disaster. But, certainly the Dust Bowl, among NYT examples, is far worse than this, too.

(For more on global warming as disaster, with a direct comparison to Deepwater Horizon, go here.)

Beyond the overarching fact of global warming, we could include inside it species extinction, shoreline erosion, island drowning and other things all worse than Deepwater Horizon.

Mountaintop removal coal mining, still countenanced in "light" form by Team Obama, is also worse.

Arguably, so is giving out new nuke plant loans without figuring out where you're going to put the waste.

The push for even more ethanol in gas tanks by Obama's EPA, when ethanol is, at best, energy-return neutral?

I guess that's why Obama wants to make Deepwater Horizon look so bad — to try to get us to forget about worse disasters unfolding or getting worse on his watch.

Neoliberal blech at TPM

Talking Points Memo proprietor touts this weak-tea defense of Obama against true liberals on his handling of Deepwater Horizon by Theda Skocpol. I write back:

Any non-Gang Green enviro group worth its salt 18 months ago was saying how bad, relatively, Kenny Boy Salazar was as Interior nominee.

The recent Rolling Stone article points out just how bad MMS continued to be under Salazar/Obama.

Greenwald had more. (In part because I and others told him to look at Salazar and more.)

And, don’t forget Obama’s hands deep in Exelon’s pockets; hence, all his nuke plant guarantees.

Finally, did Skocpol actually listen to Obama’s excuse of a speech, mixed of platitudes and the lack of tough specifics?

Or Robert Reich’s latest post (at TPM)?

Finally, her “do not support” leading to “rabid Right” comment is like the spouse of an alcoholic and “enabling.”

The only way Progressivism got on the plate of either major party a century ago was vigorous third-party movements in the late 19th century.

Reading between BP's escrow lines

That $20 billion escrow account? It won't be topped off until the end of 2013.

BP could be bankrupt by then. Or bought by ExxonMobil or Shell. All of which would render the account's topping off as kind of nugatory.

The Mighty Obama strikes out?

I didn't see too much of The One's speech, read snippets of it online, read more in the way of analysis of it. That said, nobody needed to tell me in advance that "pontificating platitudes" were likely. Also, now, can we get past the idea that he's that dynamic? Or eloquent? Can we also get past certain stereotypes (you have them too, many white liberals) that lie behind those presuppositions?

Face it, the speech sucked. It contained nothing new, other than Obama groveling more for the Senate to pass about anything he can call an "energy bill" with his name attached.

Where have we seen that one before? Oh, yeah. National health care. Stimulus.

Yes, Dear Leader, you have a share of BP blame

The Obama Administration has increased outsourcing inspections of offshore drilling rigs. Including Deepwater Horizon:

In May 2007, an auditor named David McKay arrived by helicopter on the oil rig Deepwater Horizon. His mission was to assess the rig's compliance with an international safety and environmental protection code.

McKay's visit lasted about a day, and he found that maintenance on some of the equipment was overdue by as much six months. Some of that work was "safety critical." But none of it stood in the way of the rig's recertification for another five years.

Yet, it's not just Obamiacs, but other Democrats who should know better, who chastise me, or wonder how I can say that in some ways, Obama has been worse than Bush.

Well, let's stop with the soft bigotry of low post-Bush expectations. Let's also remember that, on the environmental pitch, before his nuclear loan guarantees, before his nomination of Kenny boy Salazar, Obama never was a notable environmentalist. Hard ot be that when your hands are hugely outstrectched to companies like Exelon.

So, read the full story, find more outrage, and stop enabling him, dammit!

BP vs. Apollo 13

A great read from Timothy Egan about "can do," not vs. "can't do," but, "won't do."

And, as he compares BP's actions to those of Exxon 20-some years ago, it's clear that's what BP, as a Division I member of Big Oil, is all about. Not "can't do." But "won't do."

And, the longer we don't get a real climate bill, the longer Obama won't push the Senate to use reconciliation procedures even to pass the weak crap of a "climate bill" on its plate, and more, it's ever more clear that Just.Another.Politician.™ has some "won't do" issues too. And not just here. Torture, and other things, this is all about "looking forward," not backward.

Team Obama knew about BP video all along

Even clearer evidence of Team Obama and it's treating Deepwater Horizon as a PR issue first? Long before the Administration finally "forced" BP to release its underwater video of the oil spew, the government knew all about it.

Let that sink in.

So, should AG Holder criminally investigate Coast Guard Adms. Mary Landry or Thad Allen? Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano? Interior Secretary Kenny Boy Salazar? (Yes to that last one, on other grounds.

Team Obama joins BP in lying?

One day after a shallow water drilling application was OKed, the administration appears to have a moratorium on further such drilling, while fibbing about there being a moratorium:

Meanwhile, the Minerals Management Service stopped issuing permits for new oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, even as an administration official denied a formal freeze on drilling in shallow water.

"There is no moratorium on shallow water drilling," said Kendra Barkoff, a spokeswoman for Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. "Shallow-water drilling may continue as long as oil and gas operations satisfy the environmental and safety requirements Secretary Salazar outlined in his report to the president and have exploration plans that meet those requirements."

Barkoff's comments appeared to contradict an e-mail sent out earlier in the day by a top official in the Gulf Coast office of the Minerals Management Service, the federal agency that oversees offshore drilling.

Michael J. Saucier, regional supervisor of field operations for the MMS Gulf of Mexico region, told a company seeking a permit that "until further notice" no new drilling is being allowed in the Gulf, no matter the water depth. A copy of the e-mail was obtained by The Associated Press.

Obama appears to be trying to still run this like a PR operation. And, it's one where clearly not everybody in his administration is on the same page.

Even clearer evidence of Team Obama and PR? Long before the Administration finally "forced" BP to release its underwater video of the oil spew, the government knew all about it.

Let that sink in.

So, should AG Holder criminally investigate Coast Guard Adm. Mary Landry? Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano? Interior Secretary Kenny Boy Salazar? (Yes to that last one, on other grounds.

That said, that's another reflection that we are now a nation of 310 million people. It's not just government bureaucracies; it's not just bureaucracies in general; it's a country that's this size is going to be "lumbering" in more and more ways, or at least potentially so.

BP: 50 percent is really 10 percent, right?

BP's latest attempt to shut off the Deepwater Horizon gush has not the greatest chance of success:

After several failed attempts to divert or block the well, BP's latest attempt involves cutting the broken riser pipe, making it spew as much as 20 percent more oil into the water for days while engineers try to position a cap over the opening.

Eric Smith, an associate director of the Tulane Energy Institute, said the strategy had about a 50 to 70 percent chance to succeed. He likened it to trying to place a tiny cap on a fire hydrant.

So, if it doesn't work, the 20 percent increase in the gush will be permanent? Adding yet more plumes to the already existing ones BP claims don't exist.

Ultimately, we have to look at BP's claim it can shut off the Deepwater Horizon gush with relief wells, by August. Is that believable? It took 10 months to shut off the huge 1979 Mexican well blowout. Yes, technology has advanced in 31 years, but that was a shallow-water well.

So, instead of two months, should we say four? Six? Or like Mexico 1979, 10 months? And, 10 months of a gush increased by 20 percent?

So, Obama wants a criminal probe of BP?

First, will this vaunted probe lead into Minerals Management Service as well as BP? If so, will it lead not just to career staff, but anybody appointed after Obama and Kenny Boy Salazar took over?

Answer: Not likely. DOJ will have a tough time proving criminality on BP's part. MMS won't get a look at, lest post-Obama MMS actions come on the radar.

Second, will Obama ask the Securities and Exchange Commission to get involved as well as Justice?

Answer: Not likely. That would mean that this was something serious, not just grandstanding.

Let's start with BP's claim it can shut off the Deepwater Horizon gush with relief wells, by August. Is that believable? It took 10 months to shut off the huge 1979 Mexican well blowout. Yes, technology has advanced in 31 years, but that was a shallow-water well.

A lie, if not under oath, is not criminal in the legal sense, but you know it is. So, is this another lie by BP to prop up its ever-fading stock value?

Seriously, if everybody knew it would take, say, 6 months not 2 for BP to fix this, and knowing this is affecting the U.S., not Mexico, unlike 1979, with attendant lawsuits, etc., where would you price BP's stock at? Ten bucks? Right in the heart of ExxonMobil or Shell takeover territory? Or by CNOOC or another Chinese oil company? Of course, if the suits and claims get thick enough, that could actually lessen BP's desirability as a takeover target.

In light of this, I think Robert Reich is right: We need to freeze BP's assets, at the least.

Third: That all said, a criminal probe is not the same as an incompetency probe. From President Obama through Rep. Ed Markey, the incompetence of Democratic elected officials in believing BP in specific and Big Oil in general also needs to be probed but probably won't be.

Answer: Of course not.

Peggy Noonan is a major leaguer

A .333 batting average is major-league level, including for Peggy Noonan, who calls Deepwater Horizon President Obama's third political crisis.

Wrong; it's his first. (You might wish it was his third, but, even in the Bizzaro world of the WSJ op-ed section, wishing don't make it so.)

Health care reform was a political win for Obama, of course, contrary to you, Nooners. That said, Obama almost made it become a crisis, including the Scott Brown win in Massachusetts. (If Coakley won, we might STILL be in a House-Senate conference room or something, no closer to health care reform of any sort, so Brown's win might have even been a blessing in disguise for The One.)

Illegal immigration? Not a crisis yet, at least. It may be a boon, if it locks in Hispanics in New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada. Given that those last two states will likely each pick up an electoral vote, that's a bit better, even.

So, big fail, Nooners.

That said, depending on how a climate bill, and other regulatory issues, play out, Obama may transform Deepwater Horizon out of crisis for him.

Or he may not.

BP, open-heart surgery, Ed Markey

Considering Big Polluter did shortcuts on drilling Deepwater Horizon, do we really trust them to do "open-heart surgery" on their own cheating failure?

That's a big negatory there. Especially since Blossoming Plumes can't guarantee even this will contain all the oil.

And Ed Markey trusted BP before?
>>There is particular acrimony that BP's initial estimate of the leak at 5,000 barrels of oil a day dramatically understated the scale of the flow, which is now put at 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day. Ed Markey, the Democratic chairman of a Congressional energy committee investigating the disaster, said BP was "either lying or they were incompetent".<< Gee, Ed, it took you now to believe BP might be lying? While you're at learning the truth, can you give us a tougher carbon-control bill than you did earlier this year? Meanwhile, a nutbar like David Vitter draws the wrong analogies after the blowout.

No, the Deepwater Horizon is not like a plane crash in general. Rather, it's like the Polish government's disastrous plane crash, where you learn the lessons of not flying a 40-year-old plane model, not letting passengers in the cockpit and other things.