????他現在表示，庫魯克號事故正好證明了自己的觀點：“我沒想到頭一年就能出這么多亂子，但這正好說明他們要做的這件事難度有多大。這個行業里的游戲規則是‘何時能賺到第一筆錢’，如果你不能在10年內賺到第一筆錢，后續就很難在這個項目上掙到說得過去的回報。”

????持懷疑態度的不止他一個。與石油業經常打交道的美國德州農工大學墨西哥灣哈特研究所（Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies）執行理事拉瑞?麥金尼也算一位。麥金尼預測，以當地的浮冰和氣候條件來說，“沒有發生什么惡性事件就是科技奇跡了。”

????庫魯克號事故之后，我再次致電麥金尼。他重申了自己最初的擔心，并強調庫魯克號事故將給反對海上采油的觀點提供“彈藥”。“那里的條件十分艱苦，”他說。“肯定會發生不幸的事情。”北極地區出事，就算是小事故也會給經營帶來很大的影響。“在北極耽誤兩個月可不就只耽誤了兩個月，”麥金尼說。“耽誤兩個月可能就錯過了整個開采期。”

????譯者：郭延航

????The Kulluk accident, he now says, bears this out: "I didn't expect to see so many things go wrong in their first year, but it shows you how hard it is to do what they want to do. In this business, the name of the game is 'time to first cash flow,' and if you can't get first cash flow for at least 10 years, then it's going to be awfully hard to earn a decent return on the project."

????He wasn't the only skeptic. Larry McKinney is executive director at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M, which frequently works with the oil industry. Given the ice and weather conditions, McKinney predicted that it would be "a technological miracle if something bad doesn't happen."

????I called McKinney again after the Kulluk accident. He reiterated his initial concern, noting that the Kulluk accident will give "ammunition" to those who oppose offshore drilling. "The conditions are extreme up there," he said, "which means something is going to happen, unfortunately." And when things do go wrong in the Arctic, small problems have outsized business impacts. "A two-month delay in the Arctic is not a two-month delay," McKinney said. "A two-month delay could wipe out the entire drilling season."