BP Robot Seriously Hampers Oil Spill Containment

ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes "A high-tech effort by BP to slow the oil gushing from its ruptured well head led to a large accident yesterday that forced the company to remove a vital containment cap for 10 hours. Robots, known as remote operated vehicles, were performing multiple operations at the disaster site when one bumped into the 'top hat' cap and damaged one of the vents that removes excess fluid, according to the US Coast Guard. The robots weigh around four tons, and are controlled from vessels on the surface using advanced IT systems with both manual and automated functions. BP removed the cap for nearly 10 hours ... in order to assess it after a discharge of liquids was noted from a key valve. The cap's removal left the oil gushing out of the wellhead, largely uninterrupted. Admiral Thad Allen, US National Incident Commander for the response, told the media that part of the problem was the number of robots conducting simultaneous operations at an immense depth. A dozen robots are circulating the wellhead." Another factor that may hinder containment even more is the increasing potential for tropical storms in that area of the Gulf.

Comments

All corporations are sociopaths

[Eternal Vigilance]

Another factor that may hinder containment even more is the increasing potential for tropical storms in that area of the Gulf.

The biggest factor that will hinder containment and cleanup is that BP has no inherent motivation to either contain or clean up the oil, other than an economic one. All of the normal human responses, that it's a horrible disaster that will cause unimaginable human and environmental suffering for years if not decades, none of that matters to BP at all.

BP's interest isn't to "fix" the problem. BP's only interest is to make the problem go away.

If that's most cheaply done by hiding the problem by keeping people away from the ocean and beaches that's what they'll do. If that's most cheaply done by spinning the effects with PR so it's no longer seen as quite the disaster they'll do that. If it reaches the point where it's cheaper to declare bankruptcy, walk away from the whole thing, and (like with Exxon Valdez) use the legal system to deny the victims any care until the victims simply die then they'll do that.

Corporations have only one motivation and one thing to which they respond - money. They "care" about others only to the degree that the other might affect their own interests.

In other words, corporations are - by explicit design - sociopaths.

And so what we have in the Gulf is a situation where we have in charge of fixing the problem and caring for those injured by it an agent who has no interest whatsoever in either of those things. Their only interest was, is, and can only ever be what is good for BP.

(The U.S. Government works much the same way, which is why Dubya and Obama are themselves both sociopaths. Business and government in the U.S. aren't separate, but cooperating parts of a single, larger business/government/media entity. A larger discussion of that needs a separate thread, but the essential characteristic to recognize is action without concern for the feelings of the other party, action without empathy - i.e., sociopathy.)

So the biggest factor that will hinder containment and cleanup is the parties we have in charge have a completely different set of motivations, and resultant behavioral choices, than those of us who actually feel the pain their actions cause.

It's our false assumption that corporations (and governments) are anything other than sociopaths that leads to such cognitive dissonance when they repeatedly act in a sociopathic manner. It's not that they won't act with empathy - it's that they can't.

Ever expecting them to act empathetically, and leaving them in charge of the care for our society and our world, that's not their failure. It's ours.

One positive outcome of this horrible disaster, if we manage to live through it (and many people and possibly many species won't), is it will make undeniably clear the consequences of basing a society on values that are at their core sociopathic. The system self-destructs - by design! - which is what we're all witnessing now.

The only way out for those of us who survive will be to create social structures that have empathy intentionally and explicitly built into them, and for each of us to act moment by moment with an understanding of, and care for, each other.