President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, Helix
Search every verified Owen Kratz interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. In a September 2012 interview, Owen Kratz, CEO of Helix Energy Solutions Group, discussed the company's work for BP following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Kratz stated that the contract "doesn't represent a windfall for Helix," explaining that the company made its assets available to BP at the same rates it had been receiving from previous clients. He described the deployment of three vessels: the Q4000, the Express, and the Helix Producer 1, which were engaged in diverting oil from the wellhead. Kratz said that Helix would like to lead an industry effort to create a "fast response flexible universal system" that could be deployed quickly in the event of another spill. He argued that while regulatory oversight and prevention are important, preparation for incidents is necessary to mitigate impact. Kratz noted that the current response involved performing work on a "very fast track basis under very abnormal conditions," and advocated for pre-assessing options and pre-engineering components to be ready for future emergencies.
“It doesn't represent a windfall for Helix. What we did was we made our assets available to BP to respond to their needs by simply going to our current clients and getting a release and then transferring the vessels over to BP at the same rates that we were being paid before.”
“We believe that the technology does exist to create a fast response flexible universal system that could be ready to deploy at a moment's notice. To that end, Helix would like to lead the effort in providing such a system to the industry.”
“You can pay all the attention you want to regulatory oversight and prevention but inevitably you need to be prepared for an incident such as this in order to mitigate the impact and allow the cleanup assets a chance to be effective.”
“In normal circumstances to take the oil from a wellhead to shore is a process that takes years to design, engineer, and fabricate, and we're trying to do it here on a very fast track basis under very abnormal conditions.”
June 21 (Bloomberg) -- Owen Kratz, chief executive of Helix Energy Solutions Group, talks about the company's relationship with ...
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