What's to Blame for the BP Oil Spill?

Post Reply New Topic

The Joker!! !!

Did you know BP means British Petroleum?[/quote

And before that it was knows as Anglo-Iranian Oil Ltd.

ruveyn

A blatant disregard for safety, corner cutting, neglect, lack of planning ahead and corrupt "Gubmint" officials who were too willing to get cozy with Big Oil executives, thereby neglecting to make sure the regulations that are in place for a reason were enforced. It's tempting to blame this fiasco on one party, but it wouldn't be intellectually honest to do that, in my opinion.

"The investigation into what happened and why, who's responsible and who will pay whom and how much has only just started. A presidential commission will now be part of that investigation, but it's likely to be years, if not decades, before this is all resolved."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... =127015738

"Over a month has passed since the BP oil spill and fingers are STILL being pointed. BP is getting most of the blame (with good reason). The Obama Administration has not been let off the hook either. The problem with the blame game is that it halts efforts to fix the problem."
http://www.cwgmagazine.com/politics/lib ... lame-game/

"BP has been blamed more than almost any other potential culprit in this oil spill. They are an easy target, as it was their oil well that caused this spill (leased from Transocean). BP has been called in the gas/oil industry what the blood diamond industry is called in the jewelery world. In other words, BP has been accused of doing what makes money first and what is right/safe second."
http://newsflavor.com/opinions/the-bp-o ... -to-blame/

"On Thursday's Good Morning America on ABC, co-host George Stephanopoulos laid blame on BP and Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen for mishandling the Gulf oil spill response but depicted the Obama administration as having done everything it could. In contrast, on the CBS Early Show, guests from both sides of the aisle gave the President a 'C' grade for his response."
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/kyle-drenn ... -gives-pre

Republicans, Conservative Christians and Bush are missing in the poll.

I think everybody agrees it's not a very good poll. The OP or someone with mod privileges could fix it.

Gotta agree. There's way too much of a conservative slant here, that even most rational conservatives (Of which there are many.) would shake their heads at. To try and promote the idea that BP's not responsible in light of all the facts that have come to our attention is silly as all get out, in my opinion. If the OP's not being facetious, it's a pretty god-awful poll, which like you said, would benefit from being edited so as to make it more balanced.

Last edited by Jordan87 on 26 Jun 2010, 11:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'm wondering if the poll part of this is one big joke.

qft

Any corporate like institution be it private or government puts CYA before public safety. There is a river that runs through BP's processes for dealings with its own errors --- De Nile. The first impulse is to deny anything went wrong. The next impulse is shift the blame elsewhere. The last impulse (unfortunately) is to do something rational about the problem.

Also there was no central entity to handle an emergency. The exploded rig was run by at least three different companies without a central management entity to take charge.

ruveyn

Goodness! Are you falling out of love with private enterprise?

I might assume it's an issue of private enterprise actually doing what it is supposed to.

The human condition.

As a former U.S. Navy nuclear submarine sailor, and current, and past, employee of a BP contractor on Alaska"s North Slope, I'd say ruveyn's and ZerOnetgain's opinions are closest to spot on. In short, regulators failed to regulate and enforce, and BP's focus is largely on the bottom line for this quarter; a phenomenon common to all public corporations.

For some perspective, look up Piper Alpha, the Texas City refinery, or the '05 spill on the North Slope. Also, BP's own website gives insight into the focus on cost cutting.

I contend one of the reasons for the extensive use of contractors, is the ability to point the finger at someone else when things go wrong. Safety is perpetually rammed up my backside at work, however, on the "energy octagon" I fill out before performing a task, there is no blank for "piss poor engineering".

Being a privately owned firm is not a license for Reckless Endangerment. Private ownership as such is not a blank check to commit acts of criminal negligence. I might also point out that government entities are just as prone and perhaps more in the direction of reckless endangerment and criminal negligence. For example, if the Army Corps of Engineers were a private company the owners would have been sued for every cent they owned for the sh***y job they did on the levees in New Orleans. The Army Corp claimed they would stand up to a Cat 4 Hurricane. They lied. If they were a private firm they would have been idicted for endangerment and fraud.

ruveyn

That is actually very, very true.

I found this out through personal experience.

Several years ago, when I was being libeled by a government employee, I consulted with a lawyer, and found out that if I was being libeled by a private-sector employee (e.g., a government contractor), then I could have either sued her or her employer for hundreds of thousands of dollars. But, because it was a government employee, there wasn't anything I could do.

Well, you get what you pay for, and government is no exception. It's the American way of thinking that doomed the levees in New Orleans to be insufficient. What politician here is gonna stand up and say "We need more taxes for things that need to be done"? Not one that has any chance of being elected. Notice that in the Netherlands they're not as tax-phobic, and they manage to keep their entire country out of the North Sea every single day as a matter of routine. Why? Because the people are willing to pay for it without bitching and moaning. Here it's a big circle jerk. We won't fight, struggle and pay for a better government, so our government sucks, so we don't see it as something worth fighting, struggling or paying for.