Titans of Industry category archive

Buccaneer Petroleum’s approach to drilling: They thought they were playing with Tinker Toys and Erector Sets.

From the St. Petersburg Times:

Testimony of survivors and experts continues to paint a picture of corporate recklessness on the part of Transocean, the owner of the rig, and BP. Transocean, according to a September 2009 audit, had not completed 390 repairs to the rig, including many that were “high priority.” It also is accused of not properly maintaining the rig’s blowout preventer, the device that is supposed to shut down an unstable well and that catastrophically failed on Deepwater Horizon. Transocean’s upkeep of the rig sounds like an experiment in what it could get away with.

Meanwhile, there are a plethora of allegations that BP pushed workers to speed the completion of drilling using cost-cutting methods. The rig rental was costing about $1 million a day and work was 43 days behind schedule. On the day of the explosion, BP managers didn’t bother with a time-consuming “cement bond log” test that would have discovered problems in the cementing of the well. The company also did not use 21 “centralizers” to position the well before cementing — the recommended number — and instead used just six. And there are other examples where the company chose the less expensive and more risky option. It may not be that any one of these actions alone led to the blowout, but the combination was deadly.

Is in employees’ pockets. From MarketWatch:

Roughly once a week in July alone, some of the 150 million Americans covered by the more than 700,000 employer-sponsored retirement plans received notice that their hard-earned money ended up in the wrong pocket.

Read the whole thing, then tell me again why Social Security should be privatized.

Does Tony Hayward still want his life back?

Will he get it back, and will he like it when he does?

Tune in next time for the continuing story of
As the Well Wilds.

In some areas of the upper Potomac (I think they meant “Delaware”–ed.) near Delaware City and New Castle, concentrations of benzene, vinyl chloride and chlorinated benzenes are so high that exposure poses an immediate health threat. Elevated levels of these industrial byproducts significantly increase the risks of cancer. Sustained exposure could kill.

I haven’t worked up the nerve to finish the story yet. I’m about halfway through.

This is why regulation is bad. Without regulation, we wouldn’t know about this sort of stuff and would have one less thing to worry about.

Plus all that glowing in the dark would cut down on the cost of lighting.

His business is broken, courtesy Buccaneer Petroleum’s wild well.

Via The Green Miles.

Then back up again:

Leo Lindner, a drilling fluid specialist for M-I Swaco, told the panel investigating the causes of the explosion that BP decided to mix two chemicals the company had a surplus of — two chemicals that aren’t usually mixed — and pump them into the well to flush out the drilling mud.

They wanted rid themselves of them without having to worry about hazmat rules.

Even if the cap holds, it isn’t over.

One water sample blew up when tested for the spawn of Buccaneer Petroleum’s wild well.

Story here.

Via the Booman.

The world’s mine oyster, which I shall ope with my swo–oops:

Surveys of coastal oyster grounds have discovered extensive deaths of the shellfish, further threatening an industry already in free-fall because of BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The deaths are blamed on the opening of release valves on the Mississippi River in an attempt to use fresh water to flush oil out to sea. Giant diversion structures at Caernarvon and Davis Pond have been running since April 25 on the orders of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and local officials with the consent of the Army Corps of Engineers.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer reporting on a gas blowout in the Marcellus shale foundation:

John Hanger, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), sharply rebuked EOG Resources Inc. for failing to maintain control of the Clearfield County well, which erupted June 3 and spewed natural gas and toxic wastewater for 16 hours before it could be capped.

Hanger said that EOG had employed only one mechanism to keep the high-pressure gas well under control and that that measure had failed at the hands of employees who were not certified in well-control techniques.

He also said EOG, which is based in Houston, wasted valuable hours by failing to promptly notify officials about the blowout.

Rather than calling DEP’s 24-hour emergency line, the driller left three phone messages at night with a DEP employee who was on vacation. Then, the Texans twice tried calling the county sheriff, who in Pennsylvania is not responsible for emergency response. Finally, three hours after the blowout, EOG called 911.

Of course, if there were no government regulation, the blowout would never have happened. Read the whole story for other things that would never have happened: spills, blowouts, polluted water, and so on.

Also, pigs, wings.

Dean Baker in the Guardian. The whole thing is worth the five minutes it takes to read:

While BP has taken some heat over its spill in the Gulf, it is remarkable how limited the anger actually is. Many defenders of the company have made the obvious point: it was an accident. BP did not intend to have a massive spill that killed 11 people, devastated the Gulf ecosystem and threatens the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of workers.

Of course this is true, but it is also true that a drunk driver who runs into a school bus did not intend to be involved in a fatal collision. As a society, we have no problem holding the drunk driver responsible for a predictable outcome of their recklessness. Driving while drunk dramatically increases the risk of an accident. This is why it is punished severely. A person who is responsible for a fatal accident while driving drunk can expect to face many years in jail. Even someone who drives drunk without being in an accident often faces jail time because of the risk they imposed on others.

It would be a stretch to refer to Buccaneer Petroleum’s wild well as an “innocent mistake,” given the corners they cut, the chances they took, and the false paperwork they filed.

Also, stuff that can’t be called an accident.

No accountability for the no account.

Facing South takes a look at Buccaneer Petroleum’s policy of glastnost.

Check it out.

Buccaneer Petroleum invades Lake Ponchartrain, seeks revenge for Battle of New Orleans:

John Lopez, director of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation’s coastal stainability program, spotted the first tar balls in the Rigolets Pass on Sunday. By Monday, the blobs of oil had washed ashore as far west as Treasure Isle in Slidell.

Alex Beam in the Boston Globe pens a note to Buccaneer Petroleum. A nugget:

The next best thing to caring is advertising that you care.

Thank heavens no one remembers that you were once the British Persian Oil Company, a colonial oligopoly probably more responsible for the ongoing bloodbath in Central Asia than any other business or government in history. But why dwell on the negative, especially now?

Your critics temporarily hold the upper hand — the “little people,’’ the media sermonizers, the pusillanimous politicians who were hectoring you for handouts just a few months ago. This, too, shall pass. Like Americans everywhere, they need their overpowered cars, their grandiose, climate-controlled McMansions, and their scalding hot showers every day. A year from now, they’ll be begging you to drill more, deeper, farther from shore.

Windmills? How charming. Good for grinding flour, less useful for powering the most wasteful economy in the history of mankind.

Gallows humor keeps us from tears.

BBC:

Detailed simulations of the Gulf of Mexico oil leak show that crude is likely to start spreading into the Atlantic Ocean soon.

Once oil becomes caught in the Gulf of Mexico’s fast moving Loop Current, it could be carried thousands of miles, around Florida, up the Atlantic coast of the US, and then out into the open ocean.

An animation by the US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) suggests that concentrations of oil in the water south of Florida will start to become detectable around 70 to 90 days after a leak starts. The Deepwater Horizon rig sank on the 22nd April.

Animated map at the link.

Mudflats has more wild well pictures, even while reminding us that BP is going all out to prevent news coverage. Buccaneer Petroleum knows that out of sight is out of mind with much of the American public.

The U. S. Department of the Interior has fined BP over five million dollars for underpaying an Indian Tribe its royalty payments.

It’s unclear whether this resulted from incompetence or intent. With BP it can be difficult to tell. (BP blames a computer problem).

More BP foolishness here.

The St. Petersburg Times photoblogs the desecration of Pensacola.

Via True Blue Texan.

MarketWatch compares the effects Katrina and Buccaneer Petroleum. Katrina comes off looking pretty good. As you watch it, remember that MarketWatch is part of Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal. The focus on dollars, rather than on nature or any sort of holistic take on things, is simply how they see the world. In the Wall Street World, dollars are the wholistic take.

Via Andrew Sullivan.