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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."
Because boycotting BP hurts people that weren't involved in any decision making and doesn't really hurt the ones responsible.
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.
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.
You must master your joystick like a fisherman masters bait! - Gimpy
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.
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.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
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.
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. :)
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
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.