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This article points out that people screwed up, which is fine, and also pretty obvious, considering the size of the screw up. But what about BP's corporate cul

This article points out that people screwed up, which is fine, and also pretty obvious, considering the size of the screw up. But what about BP's corporate culture that would allow people to screw up this badly, and this many times? Isn't that indicative of systemic failure? Or is it just that people just screw up, no matter the system? If that is the case, and no matter how good the system is, eventually there will be another drilling disaster like this one, it begs the obvious question of whether there should ever be this sort of drilling again.

brown9-2 16y ago
Just want to point out this is a letter to the editor, not a WSJ-authored article. As to BP's corporate culture, who is to blame for it's failures - isn't the culture created by humans? I think the distinction being made here between "human failure" and "systemic failure" is incredibly subtle, since any system has to be created by humans in the first place.
- hugh3 16y ago
  I think many people would really like to blame BP's corporate culture, since it puts the blame on the shoulders of somebody with deep pockets instead of some random schmo with two kids and a mortgage. In fact, I'm certain that this is where the blame is going to wind up, regardless of the merits.
  - knowtheory 16y ago
    I think you're losing the forest for the trees. Corporations are made up of individuals. Individuals who bear the responsibility and power invested in them by the corporation for whom they work. If the individual is liable, the corporation is liable, both for having initiated the project in the area, as well as imbuing the individual with the power and responsibility they have. That's why it's a total non-starter that BP, Transocean and Halliburton appear to be trying to make responsibility evaporate (much like the hydrocarbons on the Gulf) by passing the buck to other parties. The contract for drilling is in BPs name. It doesn't matter if they hired incompetent drillers (Transocean) to do the drilling. They did the hiring, it's their responsibility.
- knowtheory 16y ago
  Good human factors engineering should make human inattention or negligence result in a safe(r) outcome. Clearly these systems are not designed this way and require careful attention to a variety of metrics (if the OpEd is to be believed) in order to proceed in a safe manner. Given that this is the industry standard, it is morally reprehensible, if not criminal, that more care was not paid to the red flags indicated in the oped, or the clear signs that something was going horribly horribly wrong in their piping operation. Lives were at stake, both of the workers and of the wildlife and aquaculture in the Gulf.
hugh3 16y ago
Or is it just that people just screw up, no matter the system? I don't know of any human activity which is immune from human screw ups, do you?
- stcredzero 16y ago
  Yes, but what is the ultimate failure condition if everything goes wrong? If everything screws up in a car, you have a chance to pull off the road and you're walking. Even if even more things than that screw up, your steering locks while simultaneously your brakes fail while your wheels fall off, you're going to flip over a few times. Even then, you're just sitting on the ground and still usually in easy reach of rescuers. Why didn't someone ask, "what if the blowout preventer fails more than a mile under water?" I bet somebody did, but no one listened to them. EDIT: If it's possible for someone to screw up using the BOP, why didn't they plan for this? The entire industry only needed one TopHat that they knew would've worked.
gaius 16y ago
It is that they delegated the operation of the rig to Transocean without doing adequate due diligence.
russell 16y ago
It looks like the systems, ie standard practices, were in place, but that the appropriate practice was overridden at several places. Haliburton did a poor cementing job but BP chose not to fix it. That is BP's failure, not Haliburton's. BP chose to ignore the warnings about pumping out the heavy mud, overriding Transoceanic. BP seems to have a culture of ignoring government regulations, industry practices, and operational warning signs, not to mention going for cheap rather than fully functional safety equipment. The blame for the dysfunctional culture lies squarely on the shoulders of Tony Hayward. We do have a problem of the regulators being in bed with the regulated. The rig should have been shut down because of violations long before the blowout, just as the WVA coal mine should have been shutdown because of safety violations
- hga 16y ago
  There's also been specific allegations that BP's cementing specifications to Haliburton were supar to (we assume) cut costs. E.g. use 4 of X instead of the recommended 20 and that sort of thing. BP were the architects/designers of the whole affair as well as the entity that made the high level operational decisions like when and how to replace the mud with seawater.

brown9-2 16y ago

Just want to point out this is a letter to the editor, not a WSJ-authored article. As to BP's corporate culture, who is to blame for it's failures - isn't the culture created by humans? I think the distinction being made here between "human failure" and "systemic failure" is incredibly subtle, since any system has to be created by humans in the first place.

hugh3 16y ago
I think many people would really like to blame BP's corporate culture, since it puts the blame on the shoulders of somebody with deep pockets instead of some random schmo with two kids and a mortgage. In fact, I'm certain that this is where the blame is going to wind up, regardless of the merits.
- knowtheory 16y ago
  I think you're losing the forest for the trees. Corporations are made up of individuals. Individuals who bear the responsibility and power invested in them by the corporation for whom they work. If the individual is liable, the corporation is liable, both for having initiated the project in the area, as well as imbuing the individual with the power and responsibility they have. That's why it's a total non-starter that BP, Transocean and Halliburton appear to be trying to make responsibility evaporate (much like the hydrocarbons on the Gulf) by passing the buck to other parties. The contract for drilling is in BPs name. It doesn't matter if they hired incompetent drillers (Transocean) to do the drilling. They did the hiring, it's their responsibility.
knowtheory 16y ago
Good human factors engineering should make human inattention or negligence result in a safe(r) outcome. Clearly these systems are not designed this way and require careful attention to a variety of metrics (if the OpEd is to be believed) in order to proceed in a safe manner. Given that this is the industry standard, it is morally reprehensible, if not criminal, that more care was not paid to the red flags indicated in the oped, or the clear signs that something was going horribly horribly wrong in their piping operation. Lives were at stake, both of the workers and of the wildlife and aquaculture in the Gulf.

hugh3 16y ago

Or is it just that people just screw up, no matter the system? I don't know of any human activity which is immune from human screw ups, do you?

stcredzero 16y ago
Yes, but what is the ultimate failure condition if everything goes wrong? If everything screws up in a car, you have a chance to pull off the road and you're walking. Even if even more things than that screw up, your steering locks while simultaneously your brakes fail while your wheels fall off, you're going to flip over a few times. Even then, you're just sitting on the ground and still usually in easy reach of rescuers. Why didn't someone ask, "what if the blowout preventer fails more than a mile under water?" I bet somebody did, but no one listened to them. EDIT: If it's possible for someone to screw up using the BOP, why didn't they plan for this? The entire industry only needed one TopHat that they knew would've worked.

gaius 16y ago

It is that they delegated the operation of the rig to Transocean without doing adequate due diligence.

russell 16y ago

It looks like the systems, ie standard practices, were in place, but that the appropriate practice was overridden at several places. Haliburton did a poor cementing job but BP chose not to fix it. That is BP's failure, not Haliburton's. BP chose to ignore the warnings about pumping out the heavy mud, overriding Transoceanic. BP seems to have a culture of ignoring government regulations, industry practices, and operational warning signs, not to mention going for cheap rather than fully functional safety equipment. The blame for the dysfunctional culture lies squarely on the shoulders of Tony Hayward. We do have a problem of the regulators being in bed with the regulated. The rig should have been shut down because of violations long before the blowout, just as the WVA coal mine should have been shutdown because of safety violations

hga 16y ago
There's also been specific allegations that BP's cementing specifications to Haliburton were supar to (we assume) cut costs. E.g. use 4 of X instead of the recommended 20 and that sort of thing. BP were the architects/designers of the whole affair as well as the entity that made the high level operational decisions like when and how to replace the mud with seawater.