Punishing BP for the Oil Spill

[Aileron]

Look, I know that this is a forgone conclusion, but I really hate it that BP was to face punitive damage for the oil leak. This attitude is just plain incorrect.

 

Corporations are not faceless entities. Faceless, yes. Entities, no. They are an abstract idea. Punishing a corporation for doing something undesirable is like hitting a river with a stick after a flood. The river has no feelings and no psychology. They are just objects. A corporation is an abstract collection of finances and policies, nothing more. It doesn't feel. It doesn't think. It doesn't even really exist.

 

Also, I hate the fact that the CEO got re-assigned too. Many would be surprised how little power people in those type of positions really have. I mean, he can make life very painful for a lot of people after the fact, but proactively providing positive control is the domain of the immediate supervisor. The corporate headquarters are responsible for writing the policies, not enforcing them.

 

Still, the guy came off as insensitive. However, his job is to be the most penny pinching prick in the whole organization. What do you expect?

 

 

No argument has been put forward that the BP accountant in Alaska or the BP negotiator in Saudi Arabia should lose their jobs over the oil spill, but that's exactly what will happen with these punitive damages. The organization's bottom line will be affected, and they will have to cut costs.

 

 

I'm not saying that the company should have no incentive to protect the environment, but we have reached the point where this is an emotional knee-jerk reaction that does more harm than good, and furthermore we are making that reaction without even thinking about the second and third-order consequences.

 

Or am I speaking heresy here?

Edited July 29, 2010 by Aileron

[Dr Brain]

Worse is punishing the other drilling companies with the moratorium on offshore drilling in the Gulf.

 

Make no mistake, an attempt is being made on our way of life, and limiting oil is the easiest way to threaten our economy and our way of life.

[BDwinsAlt]

Revelation predicts so much. The oil leak is the least of your worries.

[L.C.]

Revelation predicts so much. The oil leak is the least of your worries.

Isn't like 1/3 or 2/3rds of the sea/ocean creatures supposed to die?

[Dr Brain]

I thought revelation was an allegory for a conflict within the early church? Perhaps I'm mistaken.

 

I consider myself Christian, but when it comes to vague prophecies, just about anything will fit them.

 

So, moving back to the real discussion...

[SeVeR]

Where does the 32 billion, or however much BP are paying, end up? I think a lot of ordinary people lost money through this... fisherman, businesses that rely on tourism, etc. Is the 32 billion covering compensation? Is some for the US government for the cost of clear-up?

 

The top guy getting fired was a joke. I would guarantee you that he offered to get axed. It's a way to scapegoat the company and he walks away with a £600,000 a year pension.... that's about a million dollars per year. He was never fired, it was all agreed beforehand that he would go.

 

In a couple of years he'll be CEO of Marks & Spencers or British Telecom lol.

Edited July 29, 2010 by SeVeR

[»doc flabby]

BP = Beyond Petroleum.

http://www.bp.com/extendedsectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9010453&contentId=7019612

 

I don't think it really matters. It could have happened to any of the oil companies, and it will happen again.

[L.C.]

lawl I thought BP was British Petroleum. D:

 

Anyway, having observed all the articles on Slashdot about what BP is doing since the incident, I think it's safe to say BP is full of shit and doesn't give a damn about the oil spill, and are doing whatever they possibly can to not spend money on the spill.

[Dr Brain]

I stopped reading Slashdot years ago because they couldn't keep their political bias out of their articles. Sounds like they haven't changed. Note that I have no problem with bias when they're honest about it. It's when they claimed to be impartial and objective that I stopped reading.

 

I'm sure BP does care about the spill. But they know they've been thrown to the political wolves. They'll do whatever they can to get out of there with their hides and wallets intact (and there's nothing wrong with that: the job of a company is to make money).

 

EDIT: for those that don't think BP was thrown to the wolves, why didn't the government have the mandated fire booms in the Gulf? That would have contained the problem before it got out of hand. There's a mentality to look toward the government to do everything, and yet when they screw things up by mismanaging things, we're blaming BP? Does this make sense to anyone?

[L.C.]

I stopped reading Slashdot years ago because they couldn't keep their political bias out of their articles. Sounds like they haven't changed. Note that I have no problem with bias when they're honest about it. It's when they claimed to be impartial and objective that I stopped reading.

Meh, I ignore the political articles, and I definitely agree with you about bias when it comes to comments. The comments are shit for politics and related. I mainly read Slashdot for the interesting tech/IT articles.

[Yupa]

Screw oil.

[Aileron]

Look, a lot of you still don't get it.

 

BP isn't an entity and not capable of compassion, so it can't 'give a damn about the oil spill' any more than a rock can. BP is a collection of finances and policies which control a group of people's jobs, and the persons may or may not give a damn based upon their personal preference. I'd assume that most of BP's employees do honestly give a damn about the spill, just like most of us do. The beurocratic machine they work for can't.

 

The only question is whether or not that machine is broken. The most probable answer is: no, it isn't. The company has policies and systems in place to ensure that oil is collected in a clean and safe manner. Most likely, people tried to shortcut the process by circumventing the procedures and the supervisor was letting it happen.

 

To put it bluntly, most likely the people truly responsible for the leak were either among those who died in the initial explosion or someone on the manufacturing line who produced a shoddy product.

[»Lynx]

Accidents happen. Punishing a company which has already been severely crippled doesn't get anybody anywhere. If BP weren't doing a good enough job of containing and cleaning the spill, that's a whole other story, but from what I can tell BP are doing what they can.

[»doc flabby]

A take on the situation now from the british press.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/inance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/7920085/BPs-evaporating-oil-slick-leaves-America-without-a-villain.html

 

Punishing BP won't stop this happening again. Whats the US goverment doing to prevent another spill, thats the question that Obama doesnt want to answer?

[Yupa]

Punishing BP won't stop this happening again. Whats the US goverment doing to prevent another spill, thats the question that Obama doesnt want to answer?

Opening up more waters for drillin... oh wait that won't really prevent another spill will it.

[Simulacrum]

Punishing a corporation for doing something undesirable is like hitting a river with a stick after a flood.

I'm not saying that the company should have no incentive to protect the environment

I'm having a lot of trouble reconciling these statements. If BP is going to respond to incentives, then it clearly can't be compared to anything so inflexible as a river.

 

Accidents happen.

True, but many accidents are preventable. BP has a consistent record of willfully violating safety standards. Given the scarcity of such violations among other companies, BP's problems aren't merely a product of random chance. It is negligence rather than misfortune that exposes the company to liability.

[»doc flabby]

True, but many accidents are preventable. BP has a consistent record of willfully violating safety standards. Given the scarcity of such violations among other companies, BP's problems aren't merely a product of random chance. It is negligence rather than misfortune that exposes the company to liability.

 

Given that record why where they allowed to drill at all? Its hardly a secret...I doubt its any differnt to other oil companies, they've all caused a mess, oil is a dirty business

[BDwinsAlt]

If George Bush was president imagine what the news would be saying.... (Other than the fact he would have been serving 3 terms)

[Yupa]

That would've been great, if the Bush administration had been successful in their attempts to get him another term. Then we would've had real change (in the form of revolution or close to it ).

[»Xog]

howabout you all drop this boring ass discussion that you can gain absolutely nothing from.

 

my apologies fellas, i read about this shit every forum i go to. there's nothing unique anyone has to say. just bickering between different opinions.

 

sorry.. you can continue pissing into the wind now.

[Yupa]

[Aileron]

Boring ass conversation? There's a subtle reason this conversation is popular, if you can pick up on it.

 

Rivers can be dammed and channeled to prevent flooding. You can *control* inanimate objects, but *punishing* them doesn't work. Companies do respond to government fines and incentives, but the distinction is that these are control mechanisms and not punishments.

 

 

This is indeed a case of negligence rather than an accident. (Hence why the blanket moratorium was ruled against: other organizations were not prone to the same negligence and thus are not liable to the same risk.) One thing to note is that technically BP's policy is to be in compliance with all applicable government regulations, and all cases of them not being in compliance are a result of somebody violating company policy. It looks to me at this point that the organization had insufficient supervision of the people in charge of the rigs.

 

 

What I am trying to get at here is that BP isn't a bunch of old guys sitting around a table in a smoke filled board room plotting about how they are going to rape mother nature for more money. That seems to be the public perception considering that the government has filed a RICO case against the company.

 

In reality BP, as well any 'real' corporation, is a bureaucratic system of checks and balances which currently doesn't have enough check and too many balances.

 

If our attitude is to fix a broken machine, we'll do it. If our attitude is to punish the old men in the smoke-filled room, we'll destroy a bunch of scape-goats and won't solve the problem.

[Yupa]

Hear hear, destroy it all.

[»Xog]

http://img840.imageshack.us/img840/7478/trollj.jpg

[Aileron]

Go ahead, it takes very little effort to ignore you guys.

 

 

To be fair, I haven't really made suggestions on what the government *should* do. I personally don't know anything about drilling, but I *am* a professional when it comes to engineering management. Operating a drill rig has two qualifiers: Operation of the rig requires specialized skills, and the rig itself is isolated from the outside world.

 

There are thus two realms here. One is the realm of operating the rig and is handled by engineers, operators, mechanics, and construction workers. The other is the realm of business and is handled by business managers and accountants. Since at BP the rigs are making a profit but aren't being operated safely, the problem is that the realm of business has invaded the realm of operations.

 

I had a long post before I edited it, so here's the short version. There needs to be a system in place to keep the businessmen from ever stepping foot on the rigs. Each rig should be captained by a senior member of the realm of operations, and that captain should be king of his little piece of the ocean. He should report to an 'admiral' also from the realm of operations who should keep the rig captains under control. The 'admiral' should be partnered with but not subordinate to a junior member of the realm of business who in turn will report to his superiors.

 

This is what works. I can damn near guarantee that successful oil companies look like this and BP doesn't. Most likely at BP you have many different operators directly reporting to many different businessmen, and the businessmen are making jackasses of themselves with their decisions and the operators are taking them for a ride.

 

What the government should do, rather than filing a RICO case against BP's Board of Directors, which will accomplish absolutely nothing, is to build up the operator's power. The government should require a licensed professional with real-world qualifications to be legally accountable for the rig, and should require somebody with the same license to be in charge of running a fleet of 3 or more rigs. This license should be designed so that only someone who has mastered the art of drilling can obtain it. This would ensure that a large amount of responsibility rests with the people most qualified to operate rigs, and with that responsibility comes power to keep the business types out of their realm.

Edited August 3, 2010 by Aileron