B.P. = Bit of Perspective?
 

Not to put too fine a point on it, but B.P. bashing seems to have become the new contact sport. It's maybe worth thinking of the following. On July 16th 1998, 167 people died when the offshore rig Piper Alpha, wholly owned by Occidental Petroleum (Los Angeles) exploded off the Scottish coast. The heat was so intense one of the rescue boats caught fire. The subsequent inquiry found Occidental Petroleum partly liable on the grounds of inadequate safety and maintenance procedures and guess what? No prosecutions followed.

U.S. companies were directly involved with Bhopal, Exxon Valdez and the Torry Canyon and in all cases, the first thing they did was run to their lawyers and start building walls. "It wasn't our fault, a big boy did it and ran away".

It's arguable who was actually responsible for what happened on Deepwater Horizon; The owners? The operators? The designers? The maintenance crew??? I guess that's yet to be decided on but it's worth noting that the first thing B.P. did was try to fix the problem. OK, their P.R. people are a joke, but it was their designers and engineers who tried again and again to solve the problem. Now it looks as if they might have succeeded so how about some applause instead of more ball kicking.

"Who's ass to kick". Would that be his by any chance?

People forget that BP stock is owned by millions of people. If all of this hammering of BP causes them to take bankruptcy, not only will it cause a lot of people to lose their retirement funds, but they won't be able to pay for the cleanup.

The law of unintended consequences.

Chas

The sad part is that there is plenty of money to be made in the oil business, but one or two individuals seeking corporate fame or attaboys made shortcuts to save $$$ and a whole hell of a lot of innocent folk suffer.

True. If some attaboy is proven to have made shortcuts to line his pockets, he'll be praying to be put inside before he's hung up by the balls.

Everything you say is true.

But screw BP anyways. Every bit of this from failing to maintain their equipment, to bribing inspectors, to the manifold lies and attempts to mislead lay squarely at their feet. Don't attempt to ameliorate the blame.

Millions of pensioners and investors at risk? Unfortunately true. BP execs should have thought of that before they created this mess.

See what corporate incompetence and corrupt government inspectors gets us?
And the answer is to simply stop regulating?

Sorry, but that's insane.

Regards,
Dave

when this disaster is all said and done, ie hopefully safely ended, i have little faith that bp or any other entity will be brought to any kind of justice. they may pay some of the claims and for some of the cleanup but imo, that will be about all that happens.

i hope i'm wrong.

The fallacy is assuming that BP is a British company and Occidental is (was) a US company. The largest corporations no longer respect any citizenship. They put their tentacles into any corner of the earth where they can find a buck, or a euro or a yen or a peso. The tentacles are around our testicles too, because they control access to jobs, to energy, to medicine, to agriculture, etc. The corporations are psychopathic beings programmed to maximize profits at all costs.

Regards,

D-Ray

I have a hard time viewing the original post as little more than jingoistic America bashing. It would seem that Combwork is equating anti-BP sentiment with anti-British sentiment. I think that conclusion is entirely unjustified.

As a result, I'll try very hard not to draw similar conclusions about his litany of catastrophes perpetrated by US companies. Rather, I'll limit myself to some of the specifics in his post.

Let me begin by saying that I agree that US companies have indeed acted in horrifyingly irresponsible ways in the past. That they did doesn't somehow disqualify us as US citizens from criticizing non-US corporations when they commit similar outrages.

Combwork's list of offenses includes the Liberian tanker, the Torrey Canyon. The Torrey Canyon ran aground off the Cornish coast and broke up. The disaster was largely the result of human error. The cleanup, which was largely unsuccessful, was conducted by the Royal Navy.

He is correct, by the way, that the Torrey Canyon was owned by a Union Oil subsidiary. Guess who it was leased to though.

That's right! BP!

Now, let's move on to the Exxon Valdez. Again, a case of human error on the part of the tanker crew and again a tanker running aground and leaking. There was also the matter of a broken radar system that Exxon knew about and failed to repair.

That being said, the real problems came from the botched cleanup effort. Guess who was in charge of that!

Aw, you peeked!

Now, the matter of who's to blame for the current catastrophe. True, the investigation is yet to come but the press reporting all seems to point to BP ordering that the drilling be sped up and that drill mud be replaced with sea water. The operation was behind schedule and over budget and BP wanted to cut its losses. The operators objected to this but, since BP was paying the bills, their decision carried the day.

As to BP trying to "fix the problem", I'd have to say that their idea of that was to conceal the magnitude of the problem by barring "outsiders" and media from the area, requiring cleanup workers to sign a contract forbidding them from talking to the media and using dispersants (despite being told not to by the EPA) to make it impossible to quantify the amount of leakage (and therefore their liability). And you don't think the first thing they did was run to their lawyers?

Finally, Combwork claims that it appears BP is succeeding in stopping the leak. All one need do is look at the live video feed to see just how absurd that notion is.

Anyone want me to go through the list of other disasters that BP has been responsible for?

John

So, what's your solution?

John

Surely you know how that will go (if it goes at all). The flunky who delivered the message from the BoD will get hung out to dry while the BP boffins who actually made the decision will get bonuses.

John