[ale] BP knew of problems 11 months before the rig blew-further OT

[Lightner, Jeff]

Having been an accountant in a previous life I can tell you that short
term actual profits almost always override potential long term costs.
It used to amaze me that people even bothered doing 5 year projects
given that they clearly weren't expecting to have to meet numbers that
far out.

 

That is to say if you tell your CEO it will cost you $5,000,000 and 6
more months to do it "right" as opposed to generating $100,000 a day
starting tomorrow "as is" he'll almost always choose starting tomorrow.

 

In this case BP's own internal procedures prohibited them from doing
what they did so they actually petitioned the government to be allowed
to do it against their own procedures.   Although I heard that little
tidbit repeated in a report the other night 3 times I never heard the
report indicate which pinhead in the government approved the petition.
(I'm assuming they did as they also didn't say that the government did
NOT approve the petition.)

 

________________________________

From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of Jim
Kinney
Sent: Thursday, June 03, 2010 10:24 AM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts - Yes! We run Linux!
Subject: Re: [ale] BP knew of problems 11 months before the rig
blew-further OT

 

 

On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 9:57 AM, Geoffrey <lists at serioustechnology.com>
wrote:

Jim Kinney wrote:
> True. EarthFirst is often seen as ecoterrorists. Their antics have
been
> very geared towards don't make an eco mess while causing problems for
> "the man". This BP mess sounds more like NASA bad management calls and
> the Challenget disaster.

Agreed.  I think the bottom line is, either they cut corners, or they
simply did not plan for dealing with such a problem.  Disaster recovery
should be part of their plan, obviously it was not.

 

Agreed. Either is bad. Both is a gross lapse of judgement. It appears on
the surface (no pun intended) to be both. MMS is also in need of some
serious slapping. The splitting into license fees and oversight groups
is a good start.

Maybe the US needs a fleet of the fancy oil skimmers like Norway has to
be deployed on hot standby where ever we have oil traffic on the oceans.



Heh, heh. My snark bone tells me if the skimmers are deployed the
company that sprung the leak pays for the full cost (boats and crew plus
overtime, etc.) of the deployment and the captured oil is sold on the
open market and the funds are used to support research to improve the
oil process safety (or really snarky - alternative energy sources!). Add
in punative fines of highest market value of oil for the 12 months prior
to the spill for the total spill amount multiplied by the number of days
or partial days the leaking occurred.  Makes for quite an incentive to
make no mistakes. So $85/barrel peak price X (low end 5kbb/day X 32 days
so far) X 32 days so far = $435.2M so far. . At the high end of
20kbb/day and nothing stops until relief wells done in August  (90 days
from explosion) is $13.77B.

That will catch the attention of the CFO!




-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
Actively in pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness 
Doing pretty well on all 3 pursuits
 
Proud partner. Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
 
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