5 ms·

I agree with the sentiment of your argument. I also agree with OP that $24 billion is a ridiculous amount of money assuming it isn't mostly graft. If the oil

I agree with the sentiment of your argument. I also agree with OP that $24 billion is a ridiculous amount of money assuming it isn't mostly graft. If the oil company had to pay for this operation entirely with its own money, with bankruptcy-threatening fines for failure to comply with strict independent oversight, I bet they could do it for 10% of that cost. This comment is purely speculation based on my loose understanding of corruption in the construction industry. I am not familiar with petroleum engineering and could be wrong as I am quite obviously guessing.

nitrogen 6y ago
How does that $24bil compare to oil revenue? Big numbers aren't scary if they are contextualized by even bigger numbers.
- Judgmentality 6y ago
  You're missing the point. It's like the $10,000 toilet seat covers the US military paid for. I'm not saying they can't afford it. I'm saying it's graft. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/the-air-forces-10000-toilet-cover/2018/07/14/c33d325a-85df-11e8-8f6c-46cb43e3f306_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/the-...
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    Paying $10k for one toilet seat might be graft. We have to ask what the engineering specs were. $10k for an ISS toilet seat might be reasonable. And that $10k might be buying something else they don't want on the budget, which is near enough to graft as makes no difference. But paying $1mil for many toilet seats probably isn't graft if you run 10,000 profitable paid toilets. Until someone can successfully decomission a fleet of oil rigs for way less than $24bil, we don't know if it's a good price or not, but especially if it's a small fraction of the overall lifetime value of the oil produced, it might not be a big deal.
- perl4ever 6y ago
  I had no clue, but it seems to be in the ballpark of 8 years revenue for "the world's largest offshore drilling contractor". So it sounds like a lot to me. [Edit: if that was pounds not dollars, then more like 11 years]
obmelvin 6y ago
Very fair. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the math as well - my understanding was 24B was the cost to decommission 350 platforms which comes out to about 68M a piece. I can't claim to know enough to judge whether it could be done drastically cheaper, but yes I'm sure there is some inflation in costs

nitrogen 6y ago

How does that $24bil compare to oil revenue? Big numbers aren't scary if they are contextualized by even bigger numbers.

Judgmentality 6y ago
You're missing the point. It's like the $10,000 toilet seat covers the US military paid for. I'm not saying they can't afford it. I'm saying it's graft. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/the-air-forces-10000-toilet-cover/2018/07/14/c33d325a-85df-11e8-8f6c-46cb43e3f306_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/the-...
- nitrogen 6y ago
  Paying $10k for one toilet seat might be graft. We have to ask what the engineering specs were. $10k for an ISS toilet seat might be reasonable. And that $10k might be buying something else they don't want on the budget, which is near enough to graft as makes no difference. But paying $1mil for many toilet seats probably isn't graft if you run 10,000 profitable paid toilets. Until someone can successfully decomission a fleet of oil rigs for way less than $24bil, we don't know if it's a good price or not, but especially if it's a small fraction of the overall lifetime value of the oil produced, it might not be a big deal.
perl4ever 6y ago
I had no clue, but it seems to be in the ballpark of 8 years revenue for "the world's largest offshore drilling contractor". So it sounds like a lot to me. [Edit: if that was pounds not dollars, then more like 11 years]

obmelvin 6y ago

Very fair. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the math as well - my understanding was 24B was the cost to decommission 350 platforms which comes out to about 68M a piece. I can't claim to know enough to judge whether it could be done drastically cheaper, but yes I'm sure there is some inflation in costs