There are two topics that are just about guaranteed to make you more enemies than friends: politics and religion. I realize that this blog is freely accessible to anyone including potential employers, co-workers, or clients. Because of this, I try to avoid the aforementioned ”two topics”. However, this is a personal blog, after all, so I will try to keep some balance here. Somehow the discussion of BP’s actions have gotten rather politically charged, and I feel like writing about something like this is metaphorically like navigating a social minefield. Regardless, I’m going to share my thoughts anyhow. Potential employers, co-workers, clients: stop here if you are particularly sensitive about this.
I think most people will agree that Deepwater Horizon is a tragedy and an environmental disaster. Not only did eleven rig workers lose their lives, the environment in the gulf has been severely impacted in a negative way, and will be for a substantial amount of time to come. The multi-billion dollar fishing industry in the gulf has been crushed, and as of this moment in time, oil is still leaking. The American people — and to some extent the rest of the world — are growing pretty restless about this and I think a lot of people want someone to blame.
There is a common train of thought about this that bothers me. I see it a lot in casual discussion, forums, Facebook, etc. and other places where serious objective thinking sometimes takes a backseat to emotional venting. It more or less goes something like this: “BP is a big evil corporation because they make a lot of money! They don’t even care about the environment, they want oil to spill! That’s why they haven’t stopped it yet!”
Rest assured, I can almost guarantee that not a single soul at BP or Transocean actually wants oil to spill. It’s true that corporations exist primarily to create value from which they can profit, but I sincerely doubt anyone plainly doesn’t care if oil is spilled. I think it’s reasonable to assume that some key people in a company got so caught-up in increasing profits, they cut corners, and an accident happened. An accident that has cost BP at least twenty billion in a escrow fund to mitigate and reverse environmental and economical damages to the gulf, and cost around half of the company’s market capitalization. This amounts to the order of $120 billion. That’s a lot of cash, so it makes sense that the shareholders, and employees of BP don’t like it happening. Not to mention the PR disaster this leaves for the company.
Another thing people tend to disregard is how difficult it is to actually do work at such extreme depths. OurAmazingPlanet has a great infographic to put things into perspective. For those too lazy to click: it’s really deep. It’s also really cold, there is minimal light, and sub-sea currents are constantly jostling everything around. Delicate work has to be done with remote underwater robots, and trying to hoist or lower any kind of payload, such as a containment cap, is pretty difficult to do when you’re a crane operator literally a mile away. It takes immense amounts of engineering effort to coordinate an operation like that.
To the people who are saying “I don’t get why Obama doesn’t just fix it!” Well, Obama certainly doesn’t know much about oil extraction and deep-water operations. It’s not like he can just throw on some SCUBA gear and plug the hole with a big rubber stopper. If anyone is most qualified to create a plan to stop the leak, it will be someone who is familiar with the environmental conditions at those depths, and with deep-water oil extraction. Likely a BP engineer. See above for why this is difficult.
On a similar note, BP CEO, Tony Hayward isn’t going to single handedly stop the leak either. And unlike others, I don’t think Tony Hayward should be fired. In fact I think he should actually receive a healthy bonus for the work he’s put in. The guy is working around the clock trying to keep things under control, this is a PR disaster for BP, and Mr. Hayward is getting the blame even though it’s clear he wasn’t even a part of the decision-making process involving the blowout preventer. I’d wager that right now he’s working harder than any previous BP CEO has before him. Contrary to what a lot of people would like to believe, Mr. Hayward was likely never presented with a situation like the following:
Engineer: “Mr. Hayward, we think there might be a problem with the blowout preventer, should we just ignore it and try to suck more oil outta’ the well?”
TH: “As the Americans say, ‘Drill Baby Drill!’”
Those are more or less the main points I wanted to touch on. As a closure to this post, I made a Google SearchStories video (Brilliant marketing from Google, by the way). It’s not my intent to undermine or downplay the seriousness of the situation, but it’s also important in life to be able to just take a step back and shake our heads and laugh at the situation, as difficult as it may be.
There is a lot of money to be made in Oil. It’s funny (maybe). Enjoy: