Point 1: Never forget all oil drilling is to meet the oil demands of US and other country consumers and our demand pushes them to take risks to fill our demand for oil.
Point 2: Never forget that "BP" is a BRITISH firm, not American, and they have a terrible drilling safety record, compared to other oil firms. I will discuss that later.
Point 3: Never forget that BP and other firms were drilling in risky, high depth locations because US Democrats, liberals and environmentalists refused to let them drill in safer, lower depth locations near shorelines like is done near Santa Barbara & Long Beach, California, and they have also reduced oil firm ability to drill onshore, which is even safer. There have been hardly any ONSHORE drilling catastrophes, so it is much safer.
Background:
In the 1980's, I lived in Southern California and worked as one of 10 Internal Audit group Directors at ARCO (Atlantic Richfield), a very well managed oil company with a headquarters in Los Angeles, plus operations near New Orleans and the Alaskan Pipeline. I traveled to an offshore oil rig near New Orleans, Coal operations in Denver, the Alaska pipeline in Alaska ( including two weeks in Prudhoe Bay), as well as a refinery in Oregon's coast. I was in charge of audit quality control for all audits, and later moved to the Oil & Gas audit group before leaving for another position. I audited refinery and other contracts, and one audit of a $400-million Alaskan pipeline supply contract resulted in finding so many management mistakes that ARCO did not renew the contract and wouldn't engage the firm again for at least 15 years.
ARCO was a VERY well managed firm. The industry used their standards for measuring how much oil flowed through pipelines. The industry group that owned the Alaska pipeline asked ARCO to MANAGE the entire project because of their management skills. ARCO also was a leader in establishing methods to prevent damage to the environment, and had a whole group who focused on Alaska pipeline construction methods to prevent environmental damage. When Congress passed an "excess profits" tax on the oil industry because oil, for the first time, was over $30/barrel, I reviewed all the efforts they implemented trying to get definitions from Congress on what the law meant, and how to calculate the tax. They couldn't get answers from the Federal agencies, so they set aside a reserve, which was later attacked by Congress for being insufficient. Congress never mentioned that they never defined how to calculate the fines until several years later.
Thus, we were all proud to work at ARCO and they were an American company with high work standards and professionalism.
Unfortunately for ARCO, they were purchased by BP in 2000, thus I suspect many of their safety and other standards were dropped by BP. BP apparently still uses the ARCO brand and their AM/PM stores in the West Coast. In my opinion, things would be a lot different if ARCO had acquired BP, instead of BP acquiring ARCO.
BP - the company
BP is BRITISH. I also worked separately after ARCO for a construction materials company that was owned by BRITISH firm for eight years. The Brits were very class conscious, and the Brit CEO that was put in place for our American holding firm wouldn't even have lunch with the Americans. The British have an entirely different way of doing business. They don't have regulations we have in the US. At the time I was at that firm, England did not have anti-trust regulations. When we were having problems with a competitor selling below cost in Houston, the Brit CEO said why didn't we just get around a table with them, agree to split up the market and set prices at full margin. He was so totally out of touch with US management practices and the fact that such "collusion" was a violation of anti-trust regs that we had to send him to a two day presentation by our law firm on US anti-trust and other restraint of trade regulations.
Later that same firm was caught up in hostile takeover battle between our UK parent company and another UK firm. BOTH of them made most of their money from diamond mines in South Africa, and invested funds into basic industries like aggregates, etc. The US firm I was at was finally bought by an Australian firm, who didn't know the Brit firm that bought us fired the HQ, all the plant accountants, etc. to make the short term earnings look better to a purchaser who was from Australia. It took them more than 3 years to recover and break even due to the administration and accounting systems being gutted by the Brit firm (known as a vulture investment firm).
Safety Record of BP
A recent TV new article showed that BP had a terrible US safety record, and over 700 safety incidents had been reported for them vs US and other firms that had UNDER 10 incidents. In my opinion, their lack of safety practices indicates that the Brits DO NOT CARE about US safety and ethics, only profits.
Here is a quote regarding BP's safety record from Wikipedia (which may not be totally accurate):
BP was named by Mother Jones Magazine as one of the "ten worst corporations" in both 2001 and 2005 based on its environmental and human rights records.[65][66] In 1991 BP was cited as the most polluting company in the US based on EPA toxic release data. BP has been charged with burning polluted gases at its Ohio refinery (for which it was fined $1.7 million), and in July 2000 BP paid a $10 million fine to the EPA for its management of its US refineries.[67] According to PIRG research, between January 1997 and March 1998, BP was responsible for 104 oil spills.[68]
And, here is a link to a UK newspaper article about BP's safety problems BEFORE the oil spill. It talks about a letter from two US Congressman with the following quote:
In that letter, dated Jan. 14, 2010, Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Bart Stupak, D-Mich., noted that the company's efforts to cut costs could imperil safety at BP facilities.
And, HERE is a NY Times article on BP safety screwups, including huge refinery explosions, etc.
Go ahead, do a search on "BP oil safety record" and see more.
\My Perspective:
- The safety record of offshore drilling should not be attacked due to BP's practices - they are the problem, not the entire industry. News reports have discussed that BP took more risks (ie to reduce costs) than other firms may have.
- British firms still consider foreign operations to be "colonists" to be made use of for profits, and little else. I would not be surprised that they are much more cautious in techniques used in the UK versus other countries.
- British leaders mostly come from private schools that push a class ethic, thus they don't consider non-private school graduates as equals. They pretty much sneer at the US education system. Thus if they don't have respect for Americans, they won't be as careful in their work practices. "Colonist" operations in non-UK countries are meant to generate profits, not goodwill.
- Clearly, BP probably dropped many of the ARCO safety practices, or did not continue them. BP was always "British Petroleum" when they purchased ARCO, so they may have even fired or closed down entire ARCO departments and continued their existing, lower quality control standard practices. The huge volume of safey incidents indicate that.
- I personally would boycott BP gas stations which are mostly in the Eastern US, and ARCO stations on the West Coast, but not be mad at other oil firms. They have much better safety records.
- Remember that the leaking BP oil platform was operating in VERY deep water BECAUSE US Democrats and Environmentalists refused to let them drill onshore or near shores at more safe depths for drilling. Thus the oil leak can also be considered to be the result of the US public still wanting oil, but suppliers had to drill in risky depths due to restrictions implemented by Democrats. Drilling near shorelines at low depths and onshore are much less risky than where BP and competitors were forced to drill to meet US demand for oil.
- Democrats and liberals continuously follow their "bible" on activist techniques from Saul Alinsky. He says "never waste a good crisis" to use as the basis to get wanted regulations. Beware of the Dems now trying to use this oil leak "crisis" to justify reduce oil drilling and running up more debt and taxes to subsidize "clean" energy like solar panels, etc which are not as economically feasible as oil.
Vance Jochim
