BP Ignored Safety Modeling Software To Save Time

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."

Comments

Criminal

[amiga3D]

I think some people need to spend time in jail if this is proven. A lot of time.

Re:Criminal

[Mspangler]

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:Criminal

[magus_melchior]

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:Seriously

[amiga3D]

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

[techsoldaten]

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.

Re:A Question of Scale

[Stormwatch]

Hey, it's penny pinchers: they will do anything to save a few millions, even if it ends up costing a few billions.

This is seriousely not a suprise

[xQuarkDS9x]

This seriousely does not suprise me at all. In a recent issue of Popular Mechanics magazine (October 2010 issue) they had an excellent article on just how bad BP blew it in the gulf of mexico. Everything from turning off and disabling safety systems and alarms, to rushing the drilling process, using wrong materials, ignoring advice and warnings from others that they were going to fast and ignoring safety, and more.

A private company rushed in for profit

[unity100]

and ignored any kind of safety precautions, even at the cost of an entire ecosystem .....

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 private company rushed in for profit

[ultranova]

The free market doesn't mean you're free to harm others without repercussions.

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, 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:A private company rushed in for profit

[DavidTC]

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:A private company rushed in for profit

[Gordonjcp]

If someone really couldn't do better than a Walmart job, then they probably couldn't run a business either.

Many of these people *were* running their own business, until Walmart drove them out of business by selling at close to zero margin until the competition went under.

Re:Seriously

[RobVB]

they do have a pretty well oiled Lobby and PR machine.

Almost as well oiled as the Mexican Gulf!

Re:Easy peasy

[Anonymous Coward]

BP gas stations are independently owned and operated... and they don't necessarily sell BP gas. Furthermore, even if every BP station were to shut down tomorrow, BP would still be able to sell their gas to every other gas station, none of which are locked into buying their gas from a single provider.

In short, boycotting BP won't do anything but hurt locally owned gas stations that had nothing to do with the spill.

Re:Easy peasy

[DNS-and-BIND]

Uh...typical ignorant response. You do know that BP doesn't actually make anything that you can buy? Unless you're in the business of buying supertanker loads, of course.

Re:Seriously

[beakerMeep]

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.

Being reasonable

[fridaynightsmoke]

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.

Depends on whose ox is getting gored

[RogueWarrior65]

I find it fascinating that people were willing to blame Halliburton (and Dick Cheney who hasn't been its CEO for 10 years) when they had computer modeling software for the cement that pointed out problems. I wonder if these same people are going to dismiss this fact as junk science while blindly accepting computer models of weather forecasts for the next 100 years all because they prefer one flavor of politics over another.

Re:And this is a surprise?

[hrvatska]

Outside of the $20 billion dollar escrow account that BP established after meeting with Obama, and the over $500 million that BP has so far paid for cleanup costs, what other aspects of financial responsibility in this incident did you have in mind? The federal government is in court trying to lift the normal $75 million statutory limit on fines for oil spills. The Obama administration is contending that the cap cap is inapplicable in this case. Obama's 2010 campaign received $71, 000 dollars from BP employees, 0.01% of the total contributions that the campaign received, I don't think his presidential campaign received any corporate PAC money from BP. Despite your sarcasm about hope and change, I'm not convinced that $71,000 in individual campaign contributions to a $710 million dollar campaign buys much influence post election.

Re:they made their bed

[binarylarry]

Yes, the Nazis who didn't commit war crimes are generally not prosecuted.

Re:Seriously

[smpoole7]

Actually, FWIW, here in Alabama, a lot of people *have* been boycotting BP. A number of gas stations here in Birmingham have changed from BP to some other brand because their business dropped off precipitously after the spill. (Anecdotal evidence alert, no hard evidence, just what I've noticed while driving around.)

As for boycotting BP ... well, a lot of people figure the buck had to stop somewhere. To me, it's indisputable that BP made some terrible decisions. The fact that (sadly) they had already determined that the well wasn't economically viable, and BP was planning just to cap it and leave it for the time being, is irrelevant.

I'm a good free market conservative, but I do believe in responsible behavior on the part of those companies that enjoy the benefits of it. If someone were to open a large manufacturing plant in Central Alabama, we'd welcome the jobs . .. .. but we would NOT welcome them cutting corners and poisoning the streams, for example. Stereotypes aside, we ain't ENTIRELY stupid here. :)

One of The Strangest Aspect of this Story

[Greyfox]

Halliburton is everyone's favorite whipping boy and the media has tried to place some blame on them, but they're really coming off looking like some of the good guys in this story. From all the coverage, it sounds like the entire thing was the result of several very poor decisions made by the BP manager of the platform. The scary thing is, it really didn't sound like they were doing all that much differently than how all the other oil rigs are run. It kind of sounds to me like this hasn't happened before now (at least not at this scale) out of pure luck.