Gulf Spill Panel Gives BP a Slap on the Wrist
The president's oil spill commission didn't find evidence of a "conscious decision" to trade safety for profit at BP, but the company's record is nothing to boast about.
This week, critics attacked the findings of the presidential oil spill commission, in particular the statement from the commission’s chief counsel that he hasn’t seen evidence of a “conscious decision” to trade safety for profit on the Macondo well.
Parse the statement down to its bare essentials, and sure, it makes sense. It’s a safe bet that workers on the Deepwater Horizon rig did not hold a staff meeting and decide to ignore the safety rules so that Tony Hayward could snag a bigger bonus and buy himself a bigger yacht. If the commission had subpoena power, chief counsel Fred Bartlit could probe for evidence that would show if and where costs explicitly entered the equation up the decision chain.
More broadly, we also need to be concerned about the unconscious decisions. They stemmed from what commission co-chairman William Reilly called a “culture of complacency” that led to one questionable decision after another, triggering a cascade of high risks that caught up with BP and its partner companies when gas kicked up the well bore and blew up the Deepwater Horizon.
Reilly, who served as George H.W. Bush’s EPA chief, said the culture of complacency affected all three of the companies involved – BP, Halliburton, and rig owner Transocean.
To hear of BP’s complacency is no surprise. From rotting pipelines on Alaska’s North Slope to the exploding refinery in Texas City, BP has left a trail of unacceptable performance that has resulted in oil spilled, ecosystems polluted, and lives lost.
Other oil companies operating in deepwater argue that they should not be tarred with BP’s brush. Fair enough, but one bad actor can damage an entire industry.
How badly does the deepwater oil and gas industry wish to prevent another Macondo well disaster? It ought to want that badly enough to establish a deepwater counterpart to the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO), an industry-established and funded organization that runs a training academy for nuclear power plant operators, checks up regularly on nukes, and spotlights performance deficiencies.
Just last week, for example, the INPO reported that managers of the Columbia Generating Station in Washington State have not been holding plant employees accountable for adhering to operating performance standards. Supervisors have been willing to let workers slack off and accept risks, the sort of sloppy behavior that can lead to equipment failures and accidents.
The deepwater industry should take a leaf from the nuclear industry’s book and use naming and shaming peer pressure to make sure industry laggards shape up.