EPIC

Explain to me, if you can, how a big a#%$ company like BP can determine that it is cheaper to gamble with the environment than to pay the few million or many million for the safety valve that shuts off a well if something goes wrong?

Of course I know there's no explanation necessary. Companies like BP have two things going for them. First, they have friends in high places. Would that I had a few such myself, I wouldn't be out here writing my genius on a blog that only I read. Second, having important friends, they can put profits ahead of, well, everything. Decency was never a big value for companies, and clearly, as far as poster children for indecent corporate behavior, BP wins the prize. The people of the Gulf Coast however, get the Zonk (to use Let's Make a Deal terminology).

It became clear to me, within the first couple of days of cleanup and well-plugging activities, that BP had not done a proper scenario planning activity in advance of a catastrophe. Clearly, they had not considered what would happen if everything went wrong. I realize that such planning is extreme, but given the nature of the work they do - drilling for oil in water 5000 feet deep - and the risks of accidents to the environment, what justification could they possibly name for avoiding such a review?

I pray that they will eventually get the spill under control, but in the interim, what really needs to occur is that someone at BP needs to resign, be fired or better, be sent to the Gulf to work at cleaning up the mess his decisions have caused. This is a risk management failure of epic proportions. E-P-I-C. The VP Operations, or the senior-most risk manager needs to move to the Gulf Coast and work cleanup on the beach for the next 5 years or perhaps even the balance of his career.

This level of failure is almost criminal if not actually criminal. Mark my words, down the road, we're going to hear that the number crunchers did a cost/benefit analysis on the cost of additional safety procedures and that they determined that those procedures weren't worth it. Why, you ask? The decision was made, we will hear, because the probability of catastrophic failure, rig loss, oil spill AND inhospitable weather conditions was so low that there was no real 'benefit' to absorbing the costs of the additional safety procedures/techonologies. Yeah, well we see how well that's worked out.

Isn't it time we stopped seeing safety as an addendum to any plan and more the centerpiece? Whatever happened to "Safety First"? Or doesn't 'safety' include the safety of the environment?