BP's BIG PROBLEM: The oil slick, shown creeping toward the Mississippi Delta May 1.
Image: NASA EARTH OBSERVATORY
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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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BP, the global oil giant responsible for the fast-spreading spill in the Gulf of Mexico that will soon make landfall, is no stranger to major accidents.
In fact, the company has found itself at the center of several of the nation's worst oil and gas–related disasters in the last five years.
In March 2005, a massive explosion ripped through a tower at BP's refinery in Texas City, Texas, killing 15 workers and injuring 170 others. Investigators later determined that the company had ignored its own protocols on operating the tower, which was filled with gasoline, and that a warning system had been disabled.The company pleaded guilty to federal felony charges and was fined more than $50 million by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Almost a year after the refinery explosion, technicians discovered that some 4,800 barrels of oil had spread into the Alaskan snow through a tiny hole in the company's pipeline in Prudhoe Bay. BP had been warned to check the pipeline in 2002, but hadn't, according to a report in Fortune. When it did inspect it, four years later, it found that a six-mile length of pipeline was corroded. The company temporarily shut down its operations in Prudhoe Bay, causing one of the largest disruptions in U.S. oil supply in recent history.
BP faced $12 million in fines for a misdemeanor violation of the federal Water Pollution Control Act. A congressional committee determined that BP had ignored opportunities to prevent the spill and that "draconian" cost-saving measures had led to shortcuts in its operation.
Other problems followed. There were more spills in Alaska. And BP was charged with manipulating the market price of propane. In that case, it settled with the U.S. Department of Justice and agreed to pay more than $300 million in fines.
At each step along the way, the company's executives were contrite.
"This was a preventable incident. ... It should be seen as a process failure, a cultural failure and a management failure," John Mogford, then BP's senior group vice president for safety and operations, said in an April 2006 speech about the lessons learned in Texas City. "It's not an easy story to tell. BP doesn't come out of it well."
In a 2006 interview with this reporter after the Prudhoe Bay spill, published in Fortune, BP's chief executive of American operations, Robert Malone, said, "There is no doubt in my mind, what happened may not have broken the law, but it broke our values."
Malone insisted at the time that there was no pattern of mismanagement that increased environmental risk.
"I cannot draw a systemic problem in BP America," he said. "What I've seen is refineries and facilities and plants that are operating to the highest level of safety and integrity standards."
Nonetheless, Malone, who spent three decades at BP and was promoted to the CEO of BP America shortly after the Texas refinery blast, promised to increase scrutiny over BP's operations and invest in environmental and safety measures.
He told Congress that it was imperative BP management learn from its mistakes.
"The public's faith has been tested recently," he said. "We have fallen short of the high standards we hold for ourselves and the expectations that others have for us."
Time will tell whether the accident that killed 11 workers and sent the Transocean Deepwater Horizon drilling rig -- a $500 million platform as wide as a football field -- floating to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico was simply an accident or something else.
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16 Comments
Add CommentOf course Transocean is not BP. BP was not drilling on their lease, they hired Transocean to do the drilling. So the real question is what is the record of Transocean.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd as Heinlein once wrote "Blowups Happen", and so do blow outs. So we will have to wait until the cause of the blow out is determined and then hopefully learn from this incident.
Meanwhile look on the bright side of this. This is turning out to be one heck of a well.
The U.S. is the largest consumer of oil, and drills in some of the most dangerous and environmentally sensitive regions on the planet. Why not use the safest technology and enforce the toughest regulations? Even if the cost of oil doubled, the net impact to consumers would be minimal. If you want to encourage the development of alternative energy, nothing would be as big an incentive as $200 a barrel oil.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBP and Americans must be very happy that Congressional Republicans voted to limit compensatory damages that the Oil Industry must pay for such disasters to $75 million or less.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDrill baby Drill.
The article states:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"There are also indications that BP and Transocean, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig that burned and sank, could have used backup safety gear-- a remote acoustic switch that would stanch the flow of oil from a leaking well 5,000 feet underwater -- to prevent the massive spill now floating like a slow-motion train wreck toward the Mississippi and Louisiana coastline. The switch isn't required under U.S. law, but is well-known in the industry and mandated in other parts of the world where BP operates."
It should surprise few that Congress shares in the ultimate responsibility for this engineering travesty (along with everyone else, except vendicar9 and a few others relishing their victory).
So now at least let's all do everything we can to ensure that in the future no one drills without tertiary contingency plans for all such potentialities, including legislating their requirements. We've all got 5 mph bumpers on our cars, already!
That's very cheering to know that there is still plenty more to gush out. Why not take you bucket and spade and go and get some free oil ! Picj-up a few ready-made firelighter-corpses.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's sure to improve the "tourist undustry". Better get there before the "oil-rush" starts.
Lovely fantasy - but without oil, (or a substitute energy provider) money soon has no value - because there ain't no goods !!. Ever thought of that ? Much "Alternative" (to oil and nuke? , I guess) energy, uses more to create it than it provides during its wkg. life. "Modern windfarms" for instance. Sensible wind energy can float well in many locations and be "guilt-edged in particularly good ones. Strangely, neither governments nor "environmentally concerned .orgs" etc. appear interested. They Luv OIL ! Yummy yummy - we luv oil ! - even if it's all over our neighbours back country.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn short we are ruled by our addiction to the stuff - so Bigtime, that even Mr. President himself is bound to run out of breath on it. People generally have not awoken to the calamitousness of the Global energy situation. This latest disaster might at least help in that. No mention of terrorism so far - apart from this. They can all take a break. We have "Transocean" what more could we wish for in our worst nightmares ? - Oh a couple more Chernobyl's, I suppose. Still, anything is better than "maths" lesson (followed by a working life on the dole) - depending upon the teacher, of course.
Well said my friend. I totally totally totally agree . Further, I wish the media would not refer to this as a "spill". It is not a "spill" it is an on-going, unfolding disaster. I've said the rest just now.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisbertwindon and David Cota...in tampa,fl we also rely on desal...probably will screw it up too....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"It is not a "spill" it is an on-going, unfolding disaster. " - Bertwindon
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWrong Bert. It's comedy.
A disaster is when a rock falls off a mountain and crushes a town.
A comedy is when a town balances a rock on a mountain in order to make money as a tourist attraction and the rock falls off and crushes the town.
It's 2010 and Uncle Sam is scenile. How many Americans does it take to turn off an oil well? None because 99 out of 100 American Gun Grubbers agree, the constitution doesn't hold that one needs to be installed.
Oh my gosh.. It's a three ring disaster, the bozo the clown forgot to install an off switch.
I was watching Faux news today and apparently - according to Faux, Obama personally caused this oil spill so that he would have an excuse to change government policy on off shore drilling.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDrill Baby Drill.
Since when does Scientific American do editorial hatchet jobs? I thought this was a technical publication.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@cpragman, nature is a technical news publication, this is a science and technology news magazine. Certainly issues of technology failure, ecosystem destruction and corruption of resource management and environmental policy qualify.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAre you trying to say that it is the responsibility of Congress to legislate every possible happenstance? If there is a technology within an industry that is known to have a significant effect on overall safety within that industry, isn't it the responsibility of that industry to use it?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"If there is a technology within an industry that is known to have a significant effect on overall safety within that industry, isn't it the responsibility of that industry to use it?" - Conrad
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot in America. In America corporations are only responsible for following the law and grubbing for every dime they can extract from the slave population.
@Conrad, if congress passes legislation to protect the industry by limiting compensation claims then they better do all they can to ensure there is no need for a claim. Of course this is wishful thinking. It assumes that the intent of the government is to serve the people. The fact is the oil companies bought special treatment from the american government or in other words the american government sold its influence in creating laws that favoured the oil companies at the expence of the american people. The government is as corrupt as any third world petty dictatorship, the only difference is the third world can't afford the same lawyers and spin doctors.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry Robert, but Congressional Republicans did just that years ago to protecte Exxon.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"if congress passes legislation to protect the industry by limiting compensation claims then they better do all they can to ensure there is no need for a claim." - Robert