You would not BPelieve it

[dieseltaylor]

I am always curious how news - and more importantly the dpeth of analysis is on major events like the recent problem in the Mediterranean and the BP story.

Has any country got something similar in depth to this article below. Is it covered fully in the States? It is pretty disgusting state of affairs.

A series of internal investigations over the past decade warned senior BP managers that the company repeatedly disregarded safety and environmental rules and risked a serious accident if it did not change its ways.

The confidential inquiries, which have not previously been made public, focused on a rash of problems at BP's Alaska oil-drilling unit that undermined the company’s publicly proclaimed commitment to safe operations. They described instances in which management flouted safety by neglecting aging equipment, pressured or harassed employees not to report problems, and cut short or delayed inspections in order to reduce production costs. Executives were not held accountable for the failures, and some were promoted despite them.

Similar themes about BP operations elsewhere were sounded in interviews with former employees, in lawsuits and little-noticed state inquiries, and in e-mails obtained by ProPublica. Taken together, these documents portray a company that systemically ignored its own safety policies across its North American operations - from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico to California and Texas.

Tony Hayward, BP's CEO, has committed himself to reform since taking the top job in 2007. Top BP officials would not comment for this story, but spokesman Tony Odone said that in March an independent expert reported that BP has made "significant progress" toward meeting goals set in 2007 in response to a deadly Texas refinery explosion. Odone said the notion that BP has ongoing problems addressing worker concerns is "essentially groundless."

Because of its string of accidents before the recent blowout in the Gulf, BP already faced a possible ban on its federal contracting and on new U.S. drilling leases [3] [3], several senior former Environmental Protection Agency debarment officials told ProPublica. That inquiry has taken on new significance in light of the Gulf accident. One key question the EPA will consider is whether the company's leadership can be trusted and whether BP's culture can change.

The reports detailing BP's Alaska investigations -- conducted by outside lawyers and an internal BP committee in 2001, 2004 and 2007 -- were provided to ProPublica by a person close to BP who believes the company has not yet done enough to eradicate its shortcomings.

A 2001 report [4] [4] noted that BP had neglected key equipment needed for emergency shutdown, including safety shutoff valves and gas and fire detectors similar to those that could have helped prevent the fire and explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf.

A 2004 inquiry found a pattern of intimidating workers who raised safety or environmental concerns. It said managers were shaving maintenance costs with the practice of "run to failure," under which aging equipment was used as long as possible. Accidents resulted, including the 200,000-gallon Prudhoe Bay pipeline spill in 2006, the largest ever spill on Alaska's North Slope.

During the same period, similar problems surfaced at BP facilities in California and Texas.

In 2002, California officials discovered that BP had falsified inspections of fuel tanks at a Los Angeles-area refinery and that more than 80 percent of the facilities didn't meet requirements to maintain storage tanks without leaks or damage. Inspectors were forced to get a warrant before BP allowed them to check the tanks. The company eventually settled a civil lawsuit brought by the South Coast Air Quality Management District for more than $100 million.

In 2005, an emergency warning system failed before a Texas City refinery exploded in a ball of fire. BP's investigation of that deadly accident [5] [5] -- conducted by a committee of independent experts -- found that "significant process safety issues exist at all five U.S. refineries, not just Texas City." It said "instances of a lack of operating discipline, toleration of serious deviations from safe operating practices, and apparent complacency toward serious process safety risk existed at each refinery." BP spokesman Odone said that after the accident the company adopted a six-point plan to update its safety systems worldwide. But last year the Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined BP $87 million for failing to make safety upgrades at that same Texas plant.

It is difficult to compare safety records among companies in industries like oil exploration. Some companies drill in harsher environments. And bad luck can play a role. But independent experts say the pervasiveness of BP's problems, in multiple locales and different types of facilities, is striking.

"They are a recurring environmental criminal and they do not follow U.S. health safety and environmental policy," said Jeanne Pascal, a former EPA debarment attorney who led the investigations into BP. "At what point are we going to say we are not going to do business with you any more, bye? None of the other supermajors have an environmental criminal record like they do."

***

Response efforts get underway as more than 200,000 gallons of oil spill out of a corroded hole in the Prudhoe Bay pipeline into the snow in March 2006. (BPXA)

Since the late 1960s, BP has pulled oil from underneath Alaska, usually without problems. But when the company pleaded guilty to a felony conviction in 1999 for illegal dumping at an offshore drilling field there it drew fresh scrutiny to its operations and set off a cascading cycle of attempted -- and seemingly failed -- reforms that continued over the next decade. To avoid having its Alaska division debarred -- the official term for a cancellation of contracts with the federal government -- BP agreed to a five-year probationary plan with the EPA. The company would reorganize its environmental management, establish protections for employees who speak out about safety issues, and reform its approach to risk and regulatory compliance. The company pledged to improve its conduct and reform its safety and maintenance programs.

Less than a year later, employees complained to an independent arbitrator that BP was letting equipment and critical safety systems languish at its Greater Prudhoe Bay drilling field. BP, in the spirit of reform, hired a panel of independent experts to examine the allegations.

The panel identified systemic problems in maintenance and inspection programs -- the operations that keep the drilling in Prudhoe Bay running safely -- and warned BP that it faced a "fundamental culture of mistrust" by its workers, in part because senior management lacked a structure of accountability.

"There is a disconnect between GPB (Great Prudhoe Bay) management's stated commitment to safety and the perception of that commitment," the experts said in their 2001 operational integrity report [4] [4]. "Correcting these underlying causes is essential ... for ensuring long term operational efficiency and mechanical integrity. Without a concerted effort to address these basic issues, any other action will provide only temporary relief."

According to the report, "unacceptable" maintenance backlogs ballooned as BP tried to sustain profits in the aging North Slope even though production was declining. The consultants concluded that BP had neglected to clean and check pressure valves, emergency shutoff valves, automatic emergency shutdown mechanisms and gas and fire safety detection devices essential to preventing a major explosion. It warned management of the need to update those systems, which "have a potential immediate safety impact or that pose an environmental threat."

It also warned that emergency shutdown systems would need to be operated manually, that there may not be enough staff to do so, and said that even if closed, the isolation valves were known to leak.

"Workers believe internal leak-through of isolation valves is a significant problem and under certain circumstances may pose a potential hazard to workers and equipment," the report stated.

In May 2002 -- less than seven months later -- Alaska state regulators underscored the panel's critical findings in a tersely worded order warning BP that it had failed to maintain its pipelines. Alaska struggled for two years to make BP comply with state laws and clear the pipeline of sedimentation that could interfere with leak detection systems.

Soon after, BP hired another team of outside investigators to check complaints made by workers on the North Slope. The resulting 2004 study by the law firm Vinson & Elkins warned that pipeline corrosion endangered operations on the Slope.

"Due to corrosive conditions present at the Greater Prudhoe Bay oilfield and the age of the field, corrosion control is and has been a major issue for BPXA," the study said.

It also offered a harsh assessment of BP's management of health, safety and environment concerns raised by employees. According to the report, workers accused BP of allowing "pencil whipping," or falsifying inspection data. The report quoted an employee who said BP workers felt pressure to skip key diagnostics, including pressure testing, cleaning of pipelines and checking for corrosion, in order to cut costs.

"To reduce staff workload it was suggested by BPXA management not to rebuild the pulling equipment as often ... and possibly not pressure test the equipment," BP employee Marc Kovac wrote in a safety complaint filed with the company. "This obviously would increase the potential for equipment failure resulting in equipment damage, environmental spills and injury to workers."

The report said that the manager in charge of corrosion safety in Alaska at the time, Richard Woollam, had "an aggressive management style" and subverted inspectors' tendency to report problems on the pipeline.

"Pressure on contractor management to hit performance metrics (e.g. fewer OSHA recordables) creates an environment where fear of retaliation and intimidation did occur."

Woollam was soon transferred, but the damage was done.

Two years later, in March 2006, disaster struck. More than 200,000 gallons of oil spilled out of a corroded hole in the Prudhoe Bay pipeline into the snow, the largest spill ever on the North Slope. Inspectors found that the steel pipe -- the inside of which hadn't been inspected in years -- had been corroded to dangerously thin levels along nearly 12 miles of pipeline. It was exactly the kind of situation BP's auditors and Alaska officials had feared.

When Congress held hearings into the cause of the spill later that year, Woollam pleaded the Fifth Amendment. He now works in BP's Houston headquarters. Reached at his home in Texas this week, Woollam referred questions to the BP press office, which declined to comment on the matter.

***

Tony Hayward, then a 25-year BP veteran, took over BP in May 2007 as global CEO. (Sean Gardner/-Pool/Getty Images)

In August 2006, just five months after the spill at Prudhoe Bay, a pipeline safety technician for a BP contractor in Alaska discovered a two-inch snaggle-toothed crack in the steel skin of an oil transit line. Nearby, contractors were grinding down metal welds, sending a fan of sparks shooting across the work site. The technician, Stuart Sneed, feared the sparks could ignite stray gases, or the work could make the crack worse, so he ordered the contractors to stop working. "Any inspector knows a crack in a service pipe is to be considered dangerous and treated with serious attention," Sneed told ProPublica. "The crack could have created a hellacious leaker with people grinding on it."

Sneed believed that the Prudhoe Bay disaster had made BP management more amenable to listening to workers concerns about potential safety problems. The company had replaced its chief executive for North America with Robert Malone and had ordered him to make fundamental changes. Malone quickly focused on reforming the company's culture in Alaska.

But instead of receiving compliments for his prudence, Sneed -- who had also complained that week that pipeline inspectors were faking their reports -- was scolded by his supervisor for stopping the work. According to a report from BP's internal employer arbitrators, Sneed's supervisor, who hadn't inspected the crack himself, said he believed it was superficial.

The next day, according to multiple witness accounts and the report, that supervisor singled out Sneed and harassed him at a morning staff briefing. Within a couple of hours, the supervisor sent emails to colleagues soliciting complaints or safety concerns that would justify Sneed's firing. Two weeks later, after a trumped up safety infraction, he was gone.

During the investigation BP inspectors substantiated Sneed's concerns about the cracked pipe. The arbiter also investigated Sneed's account of what happened when he reported the problem. Not only did the report confirm his account, but it determined that he was among the best at his job.

The investigators interviewed dozens of workers and according to most of them Sneed "was likely to be the most careful technician on the Slope with respect to safety and quality of his inspections. If there was corrosion in existence... he would find it," said the report, which was authored by Washington, D.C., attorney Billie Garde and environmental investigator Paul Flaherty and delivered to BP executives in late 2006.

So why would BP want to get rid of one of its most effective inspectors? The report echoed BP's internal investigations from 2001 and 2004, finding, once again, that BP pressured its contractors and employees in order to save money.

"Many of the people interviewed indicate that they felt pressured for production ahead of safety and quality," the report stated.

Contractors received incentives to list large numbers of completed inspections, the report found, something Sneed said routinely led workers to falsify their reports. Contractors also received a 25 percent bonus tied to BP's production numbers. With fewer delays, more oil would be pumped, and more cash would flow to companies executing the work under BP supervision.

The message to workers was clear.

"They say it's your duty to come forward," said Sneed of BP's corporate policies and public statements, "but then when you do come forward, they screw you. They'll destroy your life."

"No one up there is ever going to say anything if there is something they see is unsafe," he added. "They are not going to say a word."

The following year saw another shakeup at BP. The company had already replaced its chief executive of Alaskan operations with Doug Suttles -- the man now in charge of offshore operations and cleanup of the disaster in the Gulf. In May 2007 it also named a new global CEO, Tony Hayward, a 25-year BP veteran.

But worker harassment claims continued to be made in Alaska and elsewhere, and more problems with the Alaska pipeline systems also emerged.

In September 2008, a section of a high pressure gas line on the Slope blew apart. A 28-foot-long section of steel -- the length of three pickup trucks -- flew nearly 1,000 feet through the air before landing on the Alaskan tundra. Sneed had raised concerns about the integrity of segments of the high-pressure gas line system before he left the company. If the release had caught a spark the explosion could have been catastrophic, said Robert Bea, a University of California Berkeley engineering professor who has worked for BP on the North Slope.

Three more accidents rocked the same system of pipelines and gas compressor stations in 2009, including a near explosion that could have destroyed the entire facility. According to a letter that members of Congress sent to BP executives [6] [6], obtained by ProPublica, the near miss was the result [7] [7] of malfunctioning safety and backup equipment.

BP spokesman Tony Odone said BP is continuing to roll out a company-wide operating management system that helps track and implement maintenance. He said the company reduced corrosion and erosion-related leaks in Alaska by 42 percent between 2006 and 2009.

***

The BP West Coast Products LLC Carson oil refinery on Aug. 7, 2006, in Carson, Calif. (David McNew/Getty Images)

As BP battled through the decade to avoid accidents in Alaska, another facility operating under a different business unit, BP West Coast Products, was having similar problems. For years the BP subsidiary that refined and stored crude oil was allowed to inspect its own facilities for compliance with emission laws under the South Coast Air Quality Management District, the agency that regulates air quality in Los Angeles. The thinking was that companies had the technical knowledge and that self-inspection was cheaper and more efficient.

But in 2002, eight years after the program began, inspectors with the management district thought BP's inspection results looked too good to be true. Between 1999 and 2002, BP's Carson Refinery had nearly perfect compliance, reporting no tank problems and making virtually no repairs. The district began to suspect that BP was falsifying its inspection reports and fabricating its compliance with the law.

The management district sent its own inspectors to investigate, but when they tried to enter BP's plant, the company turned them away. According to Joseph Panasiti, a lawyer for the management district, the agency had to get a search warrant to conduct inspections required by state law.

When the regulators did finally get in, they found equipment in a disturbing state of disrepair. According to a lawsuit the management district later filed against the company, inspectors discovered that some tanker seals had tears that were nearly two feet long. Tank roofs had gaps and pervasive leaks, and there were enough major defects to lead to thousands of violations.

"They had been sending us reports that showed 99 percent compliance, and we found about 80 percent noncompliance," Panasiti told ProPublica. "It was clear that no matter what was said, production was put ahead of any kind of environmental compliance."

Panasiti sued BP for $319 million, alleging, among other things, that emissions from the refinery forced nearby schools to be evacuated on two separate occasions. After 24 months of litigation, BP settled out of court, agreeing to pay more than $100 million without admitting guilt. Colin Reid, the plant's operations manager during the prosecution, was later promoted to a vice president position at a BP office in the United Kingdom. Reid recently left BP; he did not respond to requests for comment.

Allegations that BP or its contractors falsified safety and inspection reports are a recurring theme. Similar allegations were attributed to workers in BP's 2001 and 2004 internal reports on Alaska, but the internal auditors stopped short of confirming that fraud had occurred. The 2004 Vinson & Elkins report, titled "Report for BPXA Concerning Allegations of Workplace Harassment From Raising HSE Issues and Corrosion Data Falsification," says investigators did not thoroughly examine those allegations and couldn't conclude whether fraud had occurred. But the report extensively quoted workers who described how it was done.

As recently as 2006 a North Slope worker told a BP investigator that he suspected tests had been faked after an inspection team produced 2,500 completed reports from a weekend's work in remote territory. In 2007 another North Slope safety engineer brought in to examine a pipeline system quickly identified a pattern of problems in an area that had received clear inspection reports for the previous five years.

***

BP's Atlantis heads to the Gulf in August 2006. (Flickr user: munchicken)

In August 2008, Kenneth Abbott accepted a job with a BP contractor as a project control leader on the Atlantis, a monstrous deepwater drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico that is significantly larger than the Deepwater Horizon rig that sank in April. The Atlantis is capable of producing more than eight million gallons of oil a day from the ocean floor. Abbott supervised a staff of six charged with doing internal audits and making sure the rig machinery was built to specifications and had the documents and instructions necessary to operate safely. It was an important job on one of the world's most advanced drilling platforms.

Yet it quickly turned sour. In a debriefing with the person who last held the post, Abbott was told that BP did not have final design drawings ready to deliver to the crews that would operate the Atlantis in the Gulf, Abbott said in an interview with ProPublica [8] [8].

Final design drawings, called "as-built" drawings, are considered an essential safety component. They prove that a piece of equipment -- say a shutoff valve or an engine winch -- was built the way it was supposed to be. Those drawings are thus the final checks to make sure the equipment operates properly. They also serve as instruction manuals for emergencies. If there is a fire on deck or a blowout, for example, operators under extreme stress and danger can use the design drawings to find the hidden kill lever that can shut an engine down before it explodes.

Abbott told ProPublica that as-built documents had been issued for only 274 of more than 7,100 pieces of equipment, the equivalent of constructing a house without having an architect or engineer sign off on the blueprint.

In May, Abbott filed a lawsuit against the Minerals and Management Service in federal court in Texas aiming to force the regulatory agency to stop Atlantis operations until BP could prove the documents are in place. He is not seeking monetary damages or compensation.

In the court filings, he said that some of the most critical spill-protection infrastructure, including the wellhead documents, hadn't been approved. None of the sub-sea risers -- the pipelines and hoses that serve as a conduit for moving materials from the bottom of the ocean to the facility -- had been "issued for design." And the manifolds that combine multiple pipeline flows into a single line at the sea floor hadn't been reviewed for final use.

Abbott -- an engineer with 30 years of experience completing design documents for companies like Shell and General Electric -- said the completion of "as-built" documents is standard for the industry. Machinery is designed, approved for manufacturing, checked to make sure it was built properly, and then approved for final use. If BP didn't provide the documentation to its workers in the field, it would be a stark exception.

Yet to Abbott's surprise BP's engineers resisted completing the process.

"I just hit a lot of resistance form the lead engineers," Abbott told ProPublica. "They got really angry with me. They wanted to shortcut the system and not do the reviews, because they cut short the man hours."

Abbott estimates BP saved $2 million to $3 million by streamlining the process.

"There seemed to be a big emphasis to push the contractors to get things done and that was always at the forefront of the operation," Abbott said. "I felt there had to be balance. You had to have safety because peoples' life depended on it. My management didn't see it that way."

Abbot's complaint wasn't the first time the company had been warned about not maintaining as-built drawings. According to BP's internal 2001 operational integrity report conducted in Alaska, as-built documentation wasn't being maintained at the company's Prudhoe Bay operations either.

It was among the issues BP executives were encouraged to fix after the audit of their operations there nearly a decade ago.

BP declined to discuss Abbott's allegations, telling ProPublica it does not comment on pending legal matters. In a previous statement made to federal investigators, BP said the drawings were updated and in place before the Atlantis began operating. The Minerals and Management Service is reportedly investigating Abbott's claims and Congress has also launched an inquiry that is still in progress.

A BP ombudsman letter written by Billie Garde and obtained by ProPublica confirmed Abbott's allegation that the company had violated its own safety and management protocol by not completing as-built documentation. The ombudsman's office has not yet investigated Abbott's claims about the specific pieces of equipment that lacked documentation because Abbott didn't make that information available until he filed the lawsuit last month.

Shortly after he raised his complaints to BP management, Abbott lost his contract to work with BP.

***

The U.S. Coast Guard responds to the Deepwater Horizon disaster after it exploded on April 20, 2010. (Deepwater Horizon Response)

Among the most important pieces of safety equipment that BP was criticized for not having in place in Alaska, according to its own 2001 operational integrity report, were gas and fire detection sensors and the emergency shutoff valves that they are supposed to trigger. When gas leaks from a pipeline break or a blowout near a running engine, it's a lot like stomping on the accelerator of a car: The engine will suck up the fuel vapors and scream out of control. Gas sensors are critical to preventing an explosion, because they can shut down a rig engine before that happens.

Now investigators are learning that similar sensors -- and the shutoff systems that would have been connected to them -- were not operating in the engine room of the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico.

In sworn testimony before a Deepwater Horizon Joint Investigation panel in New Orleans last month, Deepwater mechanic Douglas Brown said that the backstop mechanism that should have prevented the engines from running wild apparently failed -- and so did the air intake valves that were supposed to close if gas enters the engine room. The influx of gas from the well gave the engines "a more volatile form of burning mixture," he said, and caused them to rev out of control. Another system was supposed to kick in and shut the engines down, but that system also failed. He said the engine room wasn't equipped with a gas alarm system that could have shut off the power.

Minutes later, the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in a ball of fire, killing 11 workers before sinking to the seafloor, where it left a gaping well pipe that continues to gush oil and gas into the Gulf.

The investigation into that massive spill is still under way, but these revelations -- plus evidence that BP skipped key parts of the drilling process intended to prevent a blowout to save roughly $5 million -- echo the problems that BP's auditors, attorneys and investigators have identified in the past 11 years.

Over the next few months, the Department of Justice will decide whether what happened in the Gulf violates criminal or civil laws intended to protect the environment. Separately, EPA investigators are considering whether to end BP's ability to do business with the federal government, a sanction that could cost it billions in revenue. The investigators say a pivotal question in that investigation will be whether BP's record over the past decade amounts to a corporate culture of "non-compliance."

ProPublica Director of Research Lisa Schwartz and researcher Sheelagh McNeill contributed to this report.

Write to Abrahm Lustgarten at Abrahm.Lustgarten@propublica.org [9] [9].

Write to Ryan Knutson at Ryan.Knutson@propublica.org [10] [10].

Want to know more? Follow ProPublica on Facebook [11] [11] and Twitter [12] [12], and get ProPublica headlines delivered by e-mail every day [13] [13].

[hoolaman]

BP probably bit off more than it could chew when it took over Amoco in the 80's.

The company was firmly in the sights of regulators already for killing 15 people at Texas City, and unfortunately these massive accidents don't happen without a lot of safety checks and procedures being ignored or never existing in the first place.

OTOH There seems to be a lot of hysteria and hearsay in the media at the moment. Hopefully the truth will come out eventually and the industry can learn from it, because there are a lot of similar wells out there.

[ASL Veteran]

No BP thread would be complete without this

[JonS]

or this:

http://www.youtube.com/user/hosslady#p/a/u/2/mSujCHfvTb0

[Stalins Organ]

BP, and almost any organisation, are very susceptible to the rewards & sanctions that _actually_ exist.

and basically if they are getting away with stuff then that becomes learned bahaviour. Same with employees - if they get bollocked for insisting on operating in accordance with safety manuals they soon learn to not bother.

It's really basic, simple human behaviour that exists across all endeavours - the pilots ofhte NWA flight that overflew their destination because they were busy with their laptops, the routine at Piper Alpha that allowed it to be destroyed, Bhopal, Air NZ flight 401 into Mt Erebus in the Antarctic, the London underground fire that was caused by dust build up in escalators - all of them show the same thing - learned norms/habits that go against basic good practice.

the only way to stop such things happening is to have an utterly ruthless regulator that is well resourced to do whatever it needs.

For example the US's aviation authority has half of that formula -0 it's f-ing ruthless!! any infraction will cost you $1000/flight - so if a major airline screws up somethign across its flet & flys for a couple of months with an error on board most of it's a/c - that'll be (say) 6 flights per day, x (say) 60 days x $1000/flight = $360,000/aircraft....multiply that by 100 or 200 or 500 aircraft......

And yes they have done that to the likes of United & continental ocasionally.

they usually use the resulting figure as a starting point and negotiate it down for good behaviour!!

But the FAA is not well resourced to go out and proactively find such things, so they don't happen often.

But even so airline execs in hte US are extremely aware that they _could_ happen.....and so do actually...generally...pay some attention to safety.

Contrast that with BP's experiences with whatever authority it is that regulates oil exploration in the US - they submitted an emergency response plan that said that they could cope with a much larger spill than has actually happened, and the likelihood was almost nil anyway, so the regulator required them to do nothing!

I'd be prosecuting the people who perpetrated that fraud - both from BP and at the regulator.....pour l'encouragement des les autres.

Unlike the front lines in WW1, making examples of corporate fraud & regulatory negligence does actually seem to work!

[Michael Emrys]

I'd be prosecuting the people who perpetrated that fraud - both from BP and at the regulator.....pour l'encouragement des les autres.

In cases like this I favor public decapitations.

Michael

[Elmar Bijlsma]

In cases like this I favour public decapitations.

Michael

Heathen!

Tradition requires a shooting. On an oil rig will do, they are technically ships.

[Stalins Organ]

I thought hanging from a yard arm was traditional on ships.

Or keel hauling - that would work if they have to pass under a pipeline connecting the ship to the seafloor......

[Elmar Bijlsma]

pour l'encouragement des les autres.

is a quote from Voltaire, regarding the shooting of English Admiral Byng, by the RN, for failing to engage a French fleet.

[ironbar]

The spin control that BP is attempting here in the states strikes me as much like the practice of fourth generation warfare as described by T.X. Hammes in 'Sling and stone.' Buying the search terms on Google and Yahoo, the BP support for Discovery Channel's 'Disaster in the Gulf' (while avoiding quite a few of the traditional news outlets) all make me think that BP understands exactly how huge this issue was going to become from the outset.

I think BP is trying to (as in 4th gen warfare) go directly to the decision makers, which in this case is that small percentage of the US public who actually particpate in congressional elections. They faced the fact that they will have to send some functionaries up on the hill to eat some dirt- hey the automakers did it, wall street did it, and now it's big oil's turn to go up there and let congress throw crap at them. The real danger lies in that this disaster could not come at a worse time for the oil companies-the partisan part of the US public can easily lump them and "Drill, baby,drill," crowd (so vocal and visible and losing last time around) together, and vote for anyone who can prove that they haven't taken oil money, and promises tighter regulation.

BP , I think, realizes that the post disaster energy world will be a vastly different place, Cap and trade, man induced climate change all pale in comparison with the immediate, and easily understood effects of this; oil soaked birds get a lot more response than shrinking ice caps. For the US, I'm thinking this will have a long and lasting effect which won't be expiated by a quick war.

Of course I'm probably wrong about all this; it WASN't an accident, but a commando raid funded by Goldman Sachs to divert attention away from the derivatives scandal. Shoot, I need to get working on a conspiracy theory, hmm can I work Bigfoot into this, where's John when I need him,,,,

[JonS]

is a quote from Voltaire, regarding the shooting of English Admiral Byng, by the RN, for failing to engage a French fleet.

It's a very interesting case, that one. IIRC, he was for all practical purposes fully justified in not engaging, on the grounds that he would have gotten smoked for no gain. Nevertheless, one of the ways the Admiralty maintained control over their ships - and by extension the world's oceans - was through it's standing order that the enemy was to be engaged whenever and wherever found. Byng disobeyed that standing order, got ratted out by one of his subordinates (which, again, was an understood and encouraged part of the Admiralties system of remote control), and paid the consequences.

Edit: having just read Wiki, it seems I mangled some of the details, but got the general gist of things about right.

[Stalins Organ]

Shoot, I need to get working on a conspiracy theory, hmm can I work Bigfoot into this, where's John when I need him,,,,

I'm sure Kraken and Cthulhu can be found to be involved if you look hard enough.....

[JonS]

The rig was pre-chambered, but unfortunately the BOP wasn't.

Also, if you look closely at photos of the Deepwater Horizon, there is clearly a Panther turret slung underneath the production deck. I suspect this is the real reason BP didn't want to live-feed the video from the seafloor. They stonewalled for just long enough to move the turret out of camera shot, in the process wasting valuable time that could have been spent capping the well while the flow of oil out of the well was still barely manageable. By the time BP got focussed on the real task at hand, the gush flowrate had increased to the point where it couldn't be contained anymore.

This is also the source of BPs early low flowrate estimations. For the first couple of days the flowrate really was as low as BP were saying, which is why they didn't move too quickly. They figured they'd be able to get the gush under control easily enough once they'd taken care of the incriminating evidence. But in their efforts to hide the turret they further damaged the sea floor, which increased the flowrate, which in turn set up a viscious feedback loop.

[Stalins Organ]

I expect the rmains of a North Korean torpedo will shortly be found on the seafloor nearby.

But perhaps Above Top Secret has it right?? It's really Halliburton & Goldman Sachs in league with NK.....

[dieseltaylor]

So does the US media cover this in detail ... I am making an assumption its too meaty for commercial radio and TV. ANd most newspapers will ignore it as it is not syndicated.

The idea of bonuses seems to permeate all the cases of wrongdoing where everybody is paid to keep shtum so bigger profits can be made. I do like the FAA system plus more rigorous enforcement.

This is sure going to help renewables. Incidentally the state of Kansas if seeded with wind farms could generate all the electricity used in the US in 2008. Just goes to show how much resource is available - because solar is pretty neat also.

And electricity can be used to make hydrogen to fuel cars and .... and screw deep sea oilfields.

[JonS]

theoildrum.com is good, as is what coverage www.boingboing.com has (esp the posts by Maggie Koerth-Baker)

[gunnergoz]

Its all about making bucks. The entire American political/electoral system has been skewed and manipulated so that it is at the beck and call of moneyed interests, be they corporations or wealthy individuals. The entire deregulation movement was the result of such forces at work. It has reached a tipping point now where Congress is essentially powerless to act except in accordance with the wishes of the lobbies that fund their election campaigns. BP is of course one of those lobbies. The current administration, just like the two political parties, are just as deeply mired in this system as any one in the past. The only difference is, people are pretending it isn't so and keep talking about change. They are changing silverware on the Titanic. No one is acting to change how elected officials are funding their campaigns and that is the one thing that the lobbies want to stay the same, so it probably will. And the more money these lobbies have to swing, the greater their effect upon public policy. Finally, when the system reaches a certain point and all three branches of government are fully invested in the system (including the Supreme Court) then the vested interests will have a lock on it all and real change becomes an ever more remote possibility. BP and the oil spill is just one more act in a stage play that is growing tiresome. Frankly, I'd like my money back but I'm afraid its too late.

[dieseltaylor]

For years, the Government Accountability Office has suggested that liability limits are too low, particularly for oil spills from certain vessels such as tank barges. (Liability limits, such as the $75 million cap on BP’s liability in the Gulf disaster, depend on what type of vessel the spill comes from.)

After the party responsible for an oil spill reaches its liability limit (or its ability to pay), up to $1 billion may be drawn from an Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, which is funded by taxes on both imported and domestically produced oil. Oil spills with costs that go beyond these liability caps, therefore, put a strain on the government’s fund, which is why the GAO has pointed out over the years that liability limits are too low. Here’s what the GAO said in a December 2007 report [1]:

The liability limits for certain vessel types may be disproportionately low compared with their historic spill cost.

And here’s what it said in a report released Wednesday [2]:

The liability limits for certain vessel types may be disproportionately low compared with their historic spill cost.

That’s word for word, two and a half years later. The 2007 report was released after a spill in the San Francisco Bay.

Hey just like the banks - the public carries the can if it goes bad

[costard]

Hey just like the banks - the public carries the can if it goes bad

Privatise the profit, socialise the risk. It's a practise that came out in to the open twenty years ago. The real risk to the privates is that there'll be bloody revolution and all their assets will be confiscated by the state. Before you scoff (which is what the privates are doing), note that it's happened recently in Bolivia, and more or less with monotonous regularity down the ages throughout the world. It nearly happened to the banks and it might even now happen to BP. What lesson can we take from these observations?

[dieseltaylor]

I think the lesson to be drawn is that the punishment for failure for private managers are not draconian enough.

A managers incentive - and to keep his job - is to make profit. We need to make a suitable counterweighing imperative which may be variously financial, custodial, or both. Even in extreme circumstances fatal.

Look at Bhopal - the US twin plant made safe and the Indian one left unsafe. Funny a sort of more fatal 9/11 but done through deliberate negligence in pursuit of profit rather than for a political cause.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster

[costard]

I was thinking more along along the lines of "People are stupid."

If the law is in place but not being enforced, no law will do the job (that's the last decade for you). If someone tells you lies in the knowledge that you'll listen and believe (because you haven't the mental capacity or will to analyse what they're saying), you've only yourself to blame (that's our leadership).

Someone recently challenged me to explain why the law of the jungle is an intellectually bankrupt philosophical position: the fact is that no-one who espouses that belief grows their own food, makes their own clothes or fights their own wars. Every single time they have someone else (frequently, a group of someone elses) do the work. Humans are social animals: kill the society and you kill the human. Expect the organism to purge itself of parasites if it can, suffer or die if it can't.

[womble]

The problem with expecting the draconian punishment of individuals to curb corporate excesses is that for the most part, infringers of laws don't expect to get caught (as in they consider the possibility zero, not just negligible, making the risk x punishment equation come out to zero too). If they did, then current sanctions are probably sufficient. This, as someone has pointed out wrt airlines, doesn't seem to apply so strongly to corporate entities which arguably have a more rational approach to risk than humans in general do.

Sure, punish people who've been criminally negligent, but don't expect that to stop criminal negligence. Punishing the corporations will do a better job of that.

[dieseltaylor]

But corporations feel no pain. Shareholders may feel pain but the perpetrators are not directly responsible to the shareholders. There has to be personal liability for making dangerous decisions - and I do not mean only criminally negligent.

After all the guys who made the Bhopal decisions may well have left the company before fan**** happened. In fact in a lot of businesses you skip from job to job being promoted on the basis of how much money you generated/successful you were in your previous jobs.

Leaving off the fact in your CV you made a decision to short cut safety features which lead to a disaster would not seem difficult.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buncefield_fire

[costard]

The US had a better record than most at putting white collar criminals behind bars - and I suspect it'll maintain that record. In Australia you can defraud to the tune of billions, tell the judge you "can't remember", fake illness to avoid court... I'd like to see more judges jailing people for contempt and perjury. Smart-ass lawyers, too. When Stern Hu (Rio Tinto, iron ore, etc) was jailed in China for corruption, our gummint declared that the sentence was harsh. Given that they'd just released a corrupt Labour buddy with a stern warning (for his fifth offence), you can follow their logic, but the general populace is applauding the Chinese and wondering if Mr Hu got off lightly.

People who have money to invest get quite annoyed if the company they invest in goes belly-up DT. Just ask Ms Bettancourt's ex-accountant.

[womble]

But corporations feel no pain. Shareholders may feel pain...

Corporations may not feel pain, but, to stretch an analogy a bit, they do have good sensors for what will impair their effectiveness as money-making machines. Like a Terminator, they recognise damage and operate to reduce its impact, whereas individuals react much less rationally.

There has to be personal liability for making dangerous decisions - and I do not mean only criminally negligent.

Absolutely. But you have to recognise that it's a punishment, not a deterrent, for many of those who elect to break the rules.