[ale] BP knew of problems 11 months before the rig blew -further OT

[Geoffrey]

Jim Kinney wrote:
> 
> 
> On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 9:57 AM, Geoffrey <lists at serioustechnology.com 
> <mailto:lists at serioustechnology.com>> wrote:
> 
>     Jim Kinney wrote:
>      > True. EarthFirst is often seen as ecoterrorists. Their antics
>     have been
>      > very geared towards don't make an eco mess while causing problems for
>      > "the man". This BP mess sounds more like NASA bad management
>     calls and
>      > the Challenget disaster.
> 
>     Agreed.  I think the bottom line is, either they cut corners, or they
>     simply did not plan for dealing with such a problem.  Disaster recovery
>     should be part of their plan, obviously it was not.
> 
> 
> Agreed. Either is bad. Both is a gross lapse of judgement. It appears on 
> the surface (no pun intended) to be both. MMS is also in need of some 
> serious slapping. The splitting into license fees and oversight groups 
> is a good start.
> 
> Maybe the US needs a fleet of the fancy oil skimmers like Norway has to 
> be deployed on hot standby where ever we have oil traffic on the oceans.

See, that's where I disagree.  They shouldn't plan on a failure.  I'm a 
big believer is fixing it, not using a bandaide.  Then again, we can't 
think of every possible scenario, or the 1 in a million is too costly to 
plan for?

> 
> 
> Heh, heh. My snark bone tells me if the skimmers are deployed the 
> company that sprung the leak pays for the full cost (boats and crew plus 
> overtime, etc.) of the deployment and the captured oil is sold on the 
> open market and the funds are used to support research to improve the 
> oil process safety (or really snarky - alternative energy sources!). Add 
> in punative fines of highest market value of oil for the 12 months prior 
> to the spill for the total spill amount multiplied by the number of days 
> or partial days the leaking occurred.  Makes for quite an incentive to 
> make no mistakes. So $85/barrel peak price X (low end 5kbb/day X 32 days 
> so far) X 32 days so far = $435.2M so far. . At the high end of 
> 20kbb/day and nothing stops until relief wells done in August  (90 days 
> from explosion) is $13.77B.
> 
> That will catch the attention of the CFO!

Can't say I would argue with that approach either... snark, snark, snark..

-- 
Until later, Geoffrey

"I predict future happiness for America if they can prevent
the government from wasting the labors of the people under
the pretense of taking care of them."
- Thomas Jefferson