BP oil spill

^^^
ROTFLMFAO

I use to work at one years ago and remember that sign! Little did they know...

Poje - I can't see that sign

EoN... I do apply the same thinking to all beings. Now: why does a CEO get more $$ than an engineer on a oil rig? Why does a pilot get more $$ than a cabbie? Would you apply same standards in liability as you apply in payment?

Absolutely not and I honestly don't have the time to give a 101 level lecture on economics let alone a 200+ level one on international business. It's pretty clear the guy signing papers and making decisions is the sole determiner of if that engineer gets paid or even has an open position and that's just the tip of the iceberg,

Money doesn't just magically appear, nor do job positions, demand for product, so on and so forth. That's all common knowledge so what does that have anything to do with seperating individuals off the clock from them fulfilling their obligations on the clock?

In the end even the top of the chain has someone or many to aswer to. Neither you or I am an expert in all of the workings and those who are have their advise ignored on a frequent basis. One thing is a fact, you have no job or paycheck or criteria or benefits or anything without those who can provide it to you, those who cannot do a good job at it (regardless of how they provide) will pass on that misfortune and vice versa. That's life in our modern world and it existed like this in ancient times and it can be seen replicated in nature as well. It just is...

Like all that has happened the tables do turn every now and again, just like everything else!

*I gotta load up my car, be back Monday most likely*

I can hardly wait for when you finally got time to educate me on economics and international business...



The BP oil spill is not an isolated event... maybe the spill is but the seepage is happening every single day.

I repeat: this is a wake up call!

Suddenly the issue was brought into (y)our very backyard... the anger and fury Americans (and the rest of the (western) world) feels towards BP today has been that of indigenous people for decades already.

Does this mean indigenous Americans feel twice the disappointment?

As a primary industry safety supervisor (coal mining in my case, but I suspect the principals are the same), I find it interesting that there's a whole bunch of finger pointing and blaming the CEO and the higher ups. OK, apparently BP has ignored advice that the pipework was inadequate for the job, but here's the thing - if that rig was working where QLD legislation applied, under any primary industry act or workplace health and safety act that I can think of, the workers not only have the right to down tools until it gets fixed, they also have the *obligation* to down tools until it gets fixed.

I'll qualify that by saying that the legislation I'm working under is the Coal Mining Safety and Health Act 1999 (I can hear Puk groan from here with that one), the Petroleum and Gas Production and Safety Act 2004, and the Workplace Health and Safety Act 2001. I don't know what a US offshore rig comes under, but if they don't have anything similar in law, perhaps it's about time it started.

RC: ask them - you're closer up than me ;)+

Eera: that's quite an interesting point and I'm guilty as charged. I turns out that every body is really having a share in this.

Right now we might face the scenario, that this leak is to continue for months - if not years to come. Rumors go out that the oil starts leaking through the seabed (and maybe BP's CEO knew of this). IF that is the case, then as RC stated: we will see this oil up until the coasts of Europe and it might even exceed the Tchernobyl nuclear disaster in damages and consequences.

It might become one of THE biggest environmental disasters witnessed in our lifetime.

FT: They're no more disappointed than any other group of people in the fabric of American society. I live inside the Chickasaw Nation, they exploit the resources all the same, including the oil rich deposits of south Oklahoma.

Eera: The US has so much legislation concerning oil drilling safety that it is difficult to even sort through. The US justice system is a miasma of red tape and failure agencies. Workers could whistle blow and strike citing poor safety, but it would have no immediate affect, if any at all. The workers would be left redundant and the company would find people to replace them whilst they combat the allegations with never ending litigation.

The agencies charged with enforcing safety and regulations are corrupted. It's sad that the companies will do anything to increase their profits and that these agencies are necessary. But the failure is firstly the corporations' involved, secondly the entity charged with enforcing these regulations.

As FT said, this is nothing new and it is a wake up call. There should be larger consequences for the corporations and for the government entities responsible for enforcement. I suspect there will be, from here onward. For now, oil is a necessary evil that can't be done away with.

BP has stated it will take full responsibility and pay all legitimate claims. The outcome of this claim remains to be seen. This disaster happened when it could have been prevented. It happened under BP's watch when it could have easily been any other oil company operating in the offshore drilling sites around the world. In BP's favour they have, so far, taken responsibility and have been attempting to clean up the oil. Is it PR, guilt, fear of far reaching repercussions or responsibility?

No matter what the case is here, part of the outcome for BP and it's figure head is being on the receiving end of the criticism and the blame.

RC - there's always that argument that whistleblowers will be made redundant in every industry, but the legislation I'm familiar with goes on the talk about the obligations of the suppliers of plant (that's pretty much anything from the derrick to the earplugs, it's not a term restricted to big machines) - they have an obligation to ensure that they are supplying plant which is fit for its intended use, in this case it clearly wasn't.

So you have people working on the rig who knew something was up, you have people in charge who knew something was up, you have the operators and ownders of the rig who knew something was up, and you have the suppliers of the plant who presumably knew something was up, and yet no-one said "that's enough, down tools"?

I've seen mines which produce 12 mTa coking coal closed due to one section feeling unsafe; not through whinging about wages or industrial action, but simply because the mechanical fitters were finding taht at night they couldn't see where the haul road was due to bright lights from the CHPP and there being a few near-misses with haul trucks. Under the CMS&H Act people have a personal responasability for safety and can be prosecuted and jailed if they don't discharge their obligations, and that makes individuals sit up and take notice and be proactive (under Workplace OH&S it's the company that gets fined, not the individual, which is why construction sites suffer from so many accidents compared to mining). Maybe it's that personal responsability that's missing in this case.

Here's a thought or rather a handful of observations - I think it comes down to a question of scale:

I was thinking that here in NZ our companies seem more respoonsible and fair with the workers having much more say in what happens in terms of safety etc. But then the more I thought about I realised they're not necessarily any better morally than any other company, it's just that our companies are so much smaller than these big corporations that you hear being quoted for this kind of thing.

I mean NZ based Fonterra had a big problem with their baby powder and some of the company people went to jail for it - admittedly they were some of the key people in China not kiwi's but it was a start and the kiwi's were certainly under the spotlight.

More recently Cadbury started using palmoil in their chocolate in NZ and many people were outraged and switched to Whitakers forcing Cadbury to go back on this practice. While Cadbury is a reasonably sized company, not just NZ, this was a noticeable dent in their NZ business to force the u-turn.

BP is so huge that it would take an awfully determined effort by an awfully large number of people globally to have the same impact. That being said it is possible that a regional change say of everyone in Florida switching to another petrol supplier would be noticed - that's still an awful lot of people, and while it might be noticed, would it be enough for them to make any real changes?

The trouble is that in order to plunder the earths reserves of the expensive stuff we "need", these days it needs huge resources and the kind of money that only a large corporation can afford. Look at oil, gold, diamond etc mining. Mostly all the "family" businesses trying to do it can't and they have all gradually merged/bought out/absorbd such that it is now the domain of the mega-corporations. When a corporation and the mining operations are that big, the stakes become very high and it also becomes necessary to involve the local politicians to get things done (legally or otherwise). So undoubtedly along the way, strategic alliances are made and power/prestige is attained. As time goes by this spreads and the politics becomes so entangled with the business it is hard to know when one stops and the other begins. And I don't mean to imply that this is necessarily corruption - if there is corruption it just adds another dimension. Would anyone dispute that American foreign policy is determined without input/direction from corporate interests? And not just America - it's just that the media makes it more visible there.

Solution? Ban corporations and stick to "family" businesses?? It might make companies more socially responsible, but you wouldn't be able to achieve the expensive things. Maybe that's ok though too - go back to a tribal kind of era finding other ways of doing the things that the expensive stuff provides. That would however mean no more techy gadgets as a family business wouldn't have the scale to create the ever increasingly powerful silicon chips that make it all possible (for example).

I rather think we have become too accustomed to our little luxeries to contemplate giving up such a life.

So if this kind of occasional event is the price of progress, maybe the best we can hope for is that corporations are still made up of people and people are still "human". As long as there is enough public opinion the feedback loop to control their actions is there. The question is really how much public opinion does it take to force a change in a corporation? The bigger they are, the more it takes, but also, the bigger they are the harder they fall.

I assume that the weight of public opinion will fall on BP as time goes on. There will be legal things and there will be commercial things. Some people will say "they're too big, we can't make a difference" but if enough people felt that BP had acted irresponsibly they actually could make a difference. I guess though that while there is enough people that think this is a terrible thing that has happened, probably the largest percentage of them are simply of the view that it's a terrible ACCIDENT and are not yet of the opinion that it was criminal NEGLIGENCE, and therefore not worthy of action to teach BP a lesson. If it does emerge that there was negligence involved I suspect that the public would be galvanised to take personal action (eg boycotts) that would be felt and force change.

George, in modern mining terms they no longer recognise the word "accident" as everything is preventable; it's "incident" now.

Re the point about getting the pollies involved. Any new venture takes a massive long time to get off the ground, I'm not sure the general populace realises how much effort is involved. One of the mines I'm involved in developing right now has a history going back to 1984 of continuous studies, environmental impacts, feasabilities etc. High impact activities don't simply involve getting a lease and rolling up with some big yellow trucks. The time that it takes to actually get a venture off the ground entire governments come and go.

While the idea of family ventures is nice, the costs are abslutely prohibitive for a reason; efficiency and personal safety. An exploration rig costs about $18,000 per day to hire, plus the costs of the logging, sampling, ash quality, packer testing etc on top of that. A 400m exploration hole takes roughly 12 days to drill, you need one every 50m to model your seam so you can work out the spacing of your chocks, where the seam actually goes for your longwall, how much space you can give between seam and country rock etc. And this is assuming that phase actually pays off and isn't abandoned like nine out of every 10 ventures.

I suppose we could go back to the old family groups doing board-and-pillar mining with a pick, but the fact is modern techniques are increadibly safe to the extent I can name every single worker killed in the QLD coal industry for the last 5 years, as every death makes news.

And for every death, someone is going to jail for it, which is why it's so safe in the first place.

Anyway, I think I digress...

Nope - I think you're helping prove my point - I just didn't say it very well since I'd already said too much! I wasn't seriously suggesting it was feasible in this modern world to have small companies doing those major things so we have to put up with large corporations for such ventures.

And the best we can hope for in these large corporations is that people are human.

... and there exactly is the point: in remembering people who run these global mega-corporations that they still are fellow human beings and by no means above the law.

But at this point I doubt that anyone is going to jail as a result of this disaster.

of course people only complain when its in their backyard, despite the same happening all the world.

nigeria and oil

thats why although compassionate to suffering, im a little cynical when the USA gets up in arms about yet another disaster (be it natural or manmade) that has been happening in non-western countries for ages...

Careful Dentrassi - you may get accused of spewing poison The spill will go on for months - but what about the decades of spillage that happened outside "our backyards" for decades?



Saying that working for a company - whose policies goes against your own ethics - may be the only job you get (IMNSHO) is a lie!

It's the same lame excuse as if a German SS soldiers who worked at a concentration camps claims that "he followed orders". It is a lie! And I don't buy it anymore.

You work for a pollutive company/ industry, you're part of the problem, you're corrupted by money vs. ecological sanity. You're either completely ignorant, helplessly optimistic or plain stupid.

You work for the industry, you better admit that you either don't give a frickin damn (which is okay) or you have the whistle ready 24/7 and stay at risk to get fired over it - because all the rest of us depend on YOU.

Needed to vent this [/rant]

Or simply supplying a product that is in demand because of the end user; you and everyone else.

Seriously, take a look at what's around you, how many things can you see that are not the end result of the extractive industries? Just stretching out my hand I can touch stuff the result of mining iron, bauxite, coltran, gold, lead, silver, zinc, silica, lithium and ilmanite, processed by the petrochemical and coking coal and energised by pulverised coal dust injection.

And that's just my mobile phone.

*high five* I love people who just tell it how it is because it's the truth. In the end everything is everything when it all comes down to it and if we all broke down all the components involved in us living day to day in industrialized nations this picture would become more and more clear to many. We either go prehistoric or accept things for what they truly are.

*happy to be an absurdist and not get bent out of shape over things out of my control, providing my own purpose to the journey and accepting the meaninglessness of existence to make the most of being here on earth*

not wanting to make what they did ok in any stretch of the imagination, but studies, research and history have taught us that we would do the same thing in this situation as the German people did.

its easy taking the high moral ground sitting in an armchair.

ahh ive missed you firetom



err yes. precisely. that was my point about my previous post...


yep no disagreement there. Ive never encountered a policy in my firm that goes against my ethics. Its not as if we are like the eco-villians in captain planet you know. but then again, australia has some of the stricted industrial environmental standard (and repercussion for infringments) in the world. If i was working for a nigerian based oil firm on the other hand...


ok, so i work for an ethical firm, in an industry where there are some dodgy practices in other locations on the planet. does that make me the devil?


i think its pretty clear i do give a damn


yep. no problem there. ive never had a problem raising environmental, health, and safety issues.



too right you do. i was at an outdoor party the other weekend when a hippy laid into me, because i make no secret of my job. Its funny being abused by a hippy sitting in a plastic chair, under a plastic tarpaulin, with aluminium tent poles, drinking mulled wine cooked on a gas burner in metal saucepans, with a massive nylon and fibreglass tent, wearing polar fleece, listening to electronically produced music, projected out by a 5kw speaker system (powered by a generator), all of it trucked in from 500km away by petroleum and diesel vans, and watching firetwirlers spinning with aluminium/kevlar wicks dipped in shellsol d60...

you get my drift. Life Cycle Analysis is great for revealing hypocracy.

you can strap yourself to a chain fence, or sit in a comfortable chair and rant away on various internet forums about how horrible industry is and how THEY must fix it. Or you can accept responsability as a consumer, and attempt to change things from within.

last project i worked on i worked out a way to save 4 million m3 per annum of water for the 15 year life of a mining plant. We also worked out a way to have no tailings dam. No waste. Energy and Water going in, metal oxide coming out, and no other waste.

happy with what i do? damn right im happy with what i do. I sleep comfortably every night knowing ive done a hell of alot more that 30,000 idiots whose idea of environmental action is to join a facebook group.

Vent away my friend! that was Discussion is for!!

You know i work in similar industry . And youd be surprised by how many oil rigs are unsafe .

And bp should of had soo many plans of what if and we should do. Instead of guessing and trying something after the event .