BP Ignored Safety Modeling Software To Save Time 203
DMandPenfold writes "BP ignored the advice of safety modeling software in an attempt to save time before the disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil spill, according to a presentation slide (PDF) prepared by US investigators. The slide in question briefly appeared on the Oil Spill Commission's website in error, but was quickly retracted. Advanced cement modeling software, provided by BP's cement contractor Halliburton, had highlighted serious stability concerns with the well."
Criminal (Score:4, Insightful)
I think some people need to spend time in jail if this is proven. A lot of time.
Re:Seriously (Score:5, Insightful)
Because boycotting BP hurts people that weren't involved in any decision making and doesn't really hurt the ones responsible.
A Question of Scale (Score:5, Insightful)
Quality concerns should never be ignored with projects of this scale. Information like this should result in a shutdown of the project until the issue is addressed.
If you are developing a web site, you can get away with defects in quality because of the nature of the web and precompiled code. To correct an issue, all you have to do is deploy code that corrects the problem. There is no impact outside the site itself. If you want to reduce the possibility of things like this happening, you introduce more advanced testing procedures, beta tests with limited numbers of users, and other methods to reduce the potential for a disruption in services.
If you are building an oil rig, the potential risk of disaster has an impact that goes far beyond the capital involved in building the rig itself, and being faithful to the results of quality assessments is essential to avoiding catastrophes like the spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Any action failing to meet high quality standards should be considered criminal, as the outcome will have a harm on people / environment / wildlife around the rig.
Reading this powerpoint just makes me angry. BP has been lobbying Congress for a while now to reduce potential penalties they may have to pay, and their marketing arm has been doing a lot of damage control in the public arena. It is very important to hold these people accountable for their actions, since this is the way these people do business.
A private company rushed in for profit (Score:3, Insightful)
impossible. that cannot have happened.... because, uncle greenspan said that, corporations could regulate themselves. im agape with surprise.... surely, this must be a one-time incident
Re:A Question of Scale (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, it's penny pinchers: they will do anything to save a few millions, even if it ends up costing a few billions.
Re:Seriously (Score:1, Insightful)
Because boycotting BP hurts people that weren't involved in any decision making
And it helps others. Unless you're driving out of town to buy gas, your money will still go to local businesses.
Re:Seriously (Score:1, Insightful)
This oil spill, gays in the military, flag burning, some girl getting kidnapped who is somehow more newsworthy than the thousands of people who get kidnapped every year, embryonic stem cells, and other non-issues all have one thing in common: they're complete non-issues that always come up whenever the American people are getting tired of the latest pointless war. It's all about control, folks
Re:they made their bed (Score:2, Insightful)
They choose to work for bastards, they get what they deserve.
Seriously, do we overlook what Nazis did in WWII just because they werent the ones doing the gassing?
Re:Seriously (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd say BP hurt it's employees. But the real reason there are no boycott campaigns is that people don't make big moral decisions when the SUV is nearing E. Some dont care, others probably think all oil companies are likely as bad, but I'd guess the majority just want a tank of gas.
Re:Some at BP needs to do Pound-me-in-the-ass pris (Score:2, Insightful)
Some at BP needs to do Pound-me-in-the-ass prison time.
The fact that you and many others condone prison justice in the form of the very acts that cause people to go to prison is a brilliant example of how sad our society has become.
Re:Seriously (Score:3, Insightful)
How does one boycott BP? Some markets have no alternatives. Me, I've never seen a BP-branded fueling station in my life, but I've probably burned lots of fuel that went through BP's hands. The oil marketplace has a gordian interchange of resources that defy any attempt of unravelling what came from where. If you really want to boycott BP oil,,you have to swear off oil entirely.
Being reasonable (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure that BP did cut a lot of corners that they really should not have, and that this lead to the Deepwater Horizon accident.
On the other hand however there will always be 'more that could have been done' in absolutely every situation, by anybody. There's a fine line between taking into account genuine concerns, and listening to every crank or someone with something to sell peddling expensive solutions to minor risks. Nothing is ever entirely risk-free, and there will ALWAYS be more tests, more safely equipment, more drills etc etc that could have been implemented.
In summary, there's a difference between saying, for example in the event of a car wreck "the driver shouldn't have been drinking" (a genuine concern) and "the driver should have taken weekly driving exams, fitted 2ft of foam rubber to the front of his car, and drove everywhere at 10mph max" (the 'more' that could doubtless have been done). I'm not saying that's the case here, but it's worth bearing in mind.
Re:Easy peasy (Score:3, Insightful)
A "responsible company"? In the oil business?
Re:A private company rushed in for profit (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it does. From Wal-Mart killing off local businesses and then hiring the newly unemployed people for minimum wage which forces them to subsist on food stamps, to IBM selling counting mahcines to the Nazis so they could keep tally on the Holocaust, to building a pesticide plant in the middle of a city and letting it blow up due to negligence [wikipedia.org], to robber barons treating their factory slaves so badly during the Industrial Revolution that it gave birth to Communism, "free market" has always meant that he who has the gold makes the rules and usually screws everyone else over to get more of it. And always, always do they get away with it.
But hey, Feudalism 2.0 is fun if you're part of the nobility, so I expect it to continue on its way.
Re:Criminal (Score:4, Insightful)
11 counts of negligent homicide (or manslaughter in other jurisdictions) should be adequate cause for a long jail time.
The question is who is the corporate designated felon. I vote for all the C-level executives in charge at the time, but then I'm ex-Navy, so I have archaic notions about the chain of command.
Re:Easy peasy (Score:3, Insightful)
All of your local gas stations get their gas from the same place. It doesn't matter what brand the label on the pump says.
Re:A Question of Scale (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey, reminds me of the general attitude towards saving electrical energy.
Re:they made their bed (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, the Nazis who didn't commit war crimes are generally not prosecuted.
Re:A private company rushed in for profit (Score:4, Insightful)
What does one call an alliance between government and the rich designed to screw over every one else while distracting us with useless baubles like "free health care"?
Considering that business hate the health care bill because it now means that people won't be stuck at their job, unable to leave, because they'll lose their insurance, I'm not sure why you decided it was 'useless'.
Granted, it's a huge giveaway to one business, the health insurance industry(1), but it actually directly harms the creeping fascism (Which is the word you were looking for) we've been living under, simply because it decouples insurance and employment.
It's interesting how businesses generally didn't like the bill, except for a few high tech companies and whatnot, despite the fact that providing insurance for workers is becoming a huge cost of doing business, and the inability to compete with other countries is part of that. But they're rather have crippling costs if that means they have wage slaves who, if they leave, risk bankrupcy for any minor sickness, so cannot leave.
Lack of worker mobility has always been a goal of the 'free market'. In their ideal world, everyone would have one job choice and either work there or die. They're just better at hiding this than 100 years ago, where they'd have the police assault people for daring not to work.
1) It's going to be funny to see what happens when republicans, who want to 'repeal the bill', get into office. The health care bill consists of two parts...the wildly popular parts like disallowing pre-existing conditions, allowing everyone to buy insurance...and the corporate parts like requiring everyone to buy insurance.
If they repeal it all, or just the first part, they...take away insurance for kids with cancer. Yeah, that will play well. If they just repeal the later, health insurance companies go bankrupt. (Which is way too nice for them. Health insurance companies should exit history with their CEO's head on a pike as a warning.)
It's going to be interesting, I think I'll go out and help the tea party chant 'repeal the bill' for shits and giggles.
I wish the Democrats were smarter and willing to play chicken, because I feel the Republicans are going to 'try' to repeal the later, and 'fail' because of the Democrats. It would possibly be the funniest goddamn thing to happen in history if the Democrats said 'Hey, good idea', and started to pass it.
Re:Criminal (Score:3, Insightful)
The thing about corporate malfeasance of this magnitude, is that it's extremely difficult to nail an individual within the company unless there's evidence specifically fingering him-- which was why Enron was shredding documents against explicit orders from federal investigators not to do so. It's a bit like how high-ranking government officials get nailed-- Nixon would have surely been impeached for at least conspiracy and obstruction of justice because of the tapes he took of his office (the irony of his paranoia is enough to fill several volumes); contrast this to Bush and Cheney, who have gone out of their way to avoid letting their secret deliberations go recorded and have no doubt instructed all of the staff to never remember anything important that could implicate someone in the administration. In the latter case, AG Gonzales looked like a total idiot, but he played his part perfectly.
You can bet that email is being overwritten with multiple layers of digital gibberish, paper documents are getting "lost or misplaced", and management/workers are being drilled or intimidated into not implicating anyone important to the company. You can also bet that other big multinationals will be looking at BP's actions and government response closely to see what, in the future, they can get away with.
Re:Criminal (Score:1, Insightful)
Illegitimate orders? What the hell are you talking about?
The model is advice, they may have had other pieces of advice from other sources that said it was ok.
Someone did make the decision weighing everything they knew.
It's not a clear cut don't follow orders scenario as if someone was ordering you to shoot babies.
Re:A private company rushed in for profit (Score:3, Insightful)
Your analyze starts off correct, but then goes into crazy-land.
The fact that employers are going to drop insurance coverage doesn't really have jack shit to do with anything at all....they'll just drop it, and that will be it.
There is no way to get from there to 'people won't be able to buy insurance' and 'the government won't be able to cover it'.
I swear, you're living in some weird alternate universes where businesses can cover a specific cost, but neither individuals or the government can do it. What the fuck is this, Bladerunner?
Sheesh. What a stupid analysis of the situation.
Likewise, your 'death panels' is idiotic. Yes, we will continue to have those as health insurance companies act as a totally surrealistic choice of 'middle man'. And that might, indeed, get worse after they become unable to remove people from their rolls, and try to keep up the same level of profits, so have to deny more services
But it has nothing to do with America not being able to afford health care. It's because we've decided to operate in what is possibly the stupid retail system that has ever existed in the entire history of humanity. I am not exaggerating in the slightest amount: We pay companies a set amount of money to provide what we need, and they have to give us what we 'need' but nothing more, and they decide what it is we 'need'.
That is literally so stupid as to be incomprehensible. It's like threatening criminals with hookers and blow. It's like giving money to a banking industry that blew up the economy...wait, bad example.
This is one of those beliefs that, if you hold it, you have to bend your entire mind in half to avoid thinking about just how stupid the entire fucking 'health insurance' concept is as a premise. 'The less service they provide, the more money they make. The less service the provide, the more people die. Ergo, the more people die, the more money they make.' It's one of those things where the major design flaw is hidden by the trivial design flaws.
Re:A private company rushed in for profit (Score:3, Insightful)
Although the health systems in Europe differ greatly between countries the vast majority of Europeans are flabbergasted about the opposition there seems to be against proper health care in the USofA.
In American, people are afraid of the government attempting to help them. People riot in the streets because the government wants to tax the rich and corporations, and give them health care.
In Europe, the government is afraid of the people lynching them for not helping them. People riot in the streets because the government wants to allow people to work 50 hours a week.
A large amount of Americans are total fucking idiots.
I'm sorry to have to say it, and I hate playing into the 'the left hates America' meme, because I really don't, it's one of the few countries actually founded for the purpose of liberty(1), but there is a large proportion of Americans who are total fucking brainwashed idiots, and a media operated by large corporations that are only too happy to give them voice.
1) Despite the fact that same-said idiots have tried to pretend it was founded on 'less taxes'.
Re:A private company rushed in for profit (Score:3, Insightful)
Communism started in Europe, and France, for example, had a communist commune [wikipedia.org] for a while. The main reason why Communism didn't overcome all of Europe is that most countries realized the threat and granted the workers enough rights and a sufficient wage to keep from rebelling.
Re:Being reasonable (Score:3, Insightful)
Just search BP safety on google for a heap of reports from various credentialed experts.
Accidents like this are almost never one simple thing that was done wrong. In practically all such accidents across industries it's a long series of poor procedure, bad documentation, cut corners, simple human error, and ignored warning signs that finally culminate in a big accident. For each thing that contributed, you can honestly claim "if not for X, it wouldn't have been a problem".
Dig a bit deeper and you'll find corporate culture that encouraged all of the contributing factors. Certainly BP has an unusually bad safety record according to OSHA. Yes, I know, OSHA has a tendency to get a bit too crazy sometimes, but not enough to explain why BP has so many more violations than the others. Certainly that doesn't explain why BP has an unusually high rate of documented accidents.