Oil Spill Prediction

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Old naive me thought that was the governments job, make sure the catastrophic couldn't happen. How many failures led to this? If the government wasn't so cozy with the industry would this have happened? And the one thing that isn't rocket science, protecting the coast from the oil, the government can't even handle that.

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It is quite self evident that the government has not regulated the oil industry as much as they should but in today's free market, virtually every major private company has asked for less regulation and lobbied for less regulation and for this reason BP must be held just as culpable if not more so than the US government.

BP (amongst others) pushed for less regulation to increase there profit margins as far as possible. It seems to me that this disaster and the banking crisis have just shown that private enterprise cannot be trusted to regulate itself.

Now the public realises this they get on the governments back about it (and although in this case i am talking about the US Government, dont forgot looser and looser regulation has been happening all over the world.) but just a few years ago if the government had talked about tightening regulation for the private sector they would have been shouted down, nobody wanted to know.

Only now are we starting to see the effects of years of de-regulation has had, and for me as for many other the eventual cost is too high. Big business still holds to much power in my eyes, and to much influence on politicians.

As for protecting the coast, from what i have heard the main thing they have been making sure is that BP actually pay for it rather than the US Tax payer, so they have waited to make sure of this.

If BP had been willing to splash out more of its cash on this earlier then more may have already been done.

The one argument i do not get is this idea that this is not BP's fault its the governments for not regulating them properly, this is just plainly ridiculous.

If BP were not at fault then if we transferred that idea over to people instead of companies, would we accept the defence of "its not my fault, its there fault because they didn't stop me from doing it" no i think not !

"The one argument i do not get is this idea that this is not BP's fault its the governments for not regulating them properly, this is just plainly ridiculous.

If BP were not at fault then if we transferred that idea over to people instead of companies, would we accept the defence of "its not my fault, its there fault because they didn't stop me from doing it" no i think not !"

BP took advantage of the system. Arguing that they influenced the system means that the Government allowed it. If they broke a law they should be punished, just like you and me. But do you really think that the bought / paid for government will allow this to go to far up the food chain? Some mid-level manager is going to fall on the sword, regardless of how much further up it went.

I am not a big fan of government regulation, up until "Catastrophic" failure. I guess it was the banks fault that they were too big to fail?

I do not hold blameless these large corporations, but what is the common denominator?

Zzzzz....ZZZZ......ZZzzzzz

National Geographic had a special on the disaster that aired last week. I just watched it. It was good, but it raised other questions in my mind.

1 - They tried to manually close the BOP, almost from the beginning.
2 - They knew if the BOP didn't close the rig was going to go down, or break free and maybe drag the riser across other pipes from other rigs.


So why didn't they cut the riser near the surface while they were still in "control"?

DB asked, "So why didn't they cut the riser near the surface while they were still in "control"?"
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Perhaps there was no motivation nor any incentive to do so. From the beginning, BP erred in estimating how serious the leak was, initially reporting to the world that only 1,000 Barrels were leaking per day. That was a pure blunder because more than 40 times that amount was the actual case.

At that time, the 1979-80 Ixtoc I spill was far greater, so they thought they were playing with small potatoes. Then suddenly they woke up and discovered in horror that this mess was going to make the Ixtoc I leak look like small potatoes. :eek2:

Now we are all paying the price of atrocious projection analysis by a collection of buffoons playing with forces that are out of control. :down:

One thing I've been wondering about in general
(ie, before the disaster occurred) ...

The drill rig was floating... what kept it in position
- long anchors (like, way long)?
- GPS driven propellors on board?
- the drill string -- unlikely.
- something else?

Spoo

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BP took advantage of the system. Arguing that they influenced the system means that the Government allowed it. If they broke a law they should be punished, just like you and me.

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Yes that is part of it, Governments has been to close to big business for some time now, and this is not just incumbent governments but also for the past 10 - 20 years.

The problem is the system is broken still. While we have the current level of lobbyists and while large businesses can help decided the outcome of political campaigns by donating large sums of money we will have this skew towards big business interests in Politics.

You or me can't go and lobby the court system to get more favourable laws passed for our benefit.

Also for me there is quite a difference between Regulation and Red-tape, and regulation as i see it is something that big business in particular need more of to make sure they behave.

If there attitude is to push the rules to breaking in order to make the most profit then they need more regulation to curb this kind of behaviour, particularly when it effects the whole economy or has wide environmental effects or that kind of size issue.

Red-tape on the other hand is something we need less of, overly complicated forms to fill in and hoops to jump through just to operate normally and that type of stuff.

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Originally Posted by Code Doc

DB asked, "So why didn't they cut the riser near the surface while they were still in "control"?"
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Perhaps there was no motivation nor any incentive to do so. From the beginning, BP erred in estimating how serious the leak was, initially reporting to the world that only 1,000 Barrels were leaking per day. That was a pure blunder because more than 40 times that amount was the actual case.

At that time, the 1979-80 Ixtoc I spill was far greater, so they thought they were playing with small potatoes. Then suddenly they woke up and discovered in horror that this mess was going to make the Ixtoc I leak look like small potatoes. :eek2:

Now we are all paying the price of atrocious projection analysis by a collection of buffoons playing with forces that are out of control. :down:

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I was talking about before the rig sank. What was holding the rig in position was the riser pipe that was fueling the fire that eventually melted and sank the rig. The rig sinking made a mess of the drill string.

@spoo, GPS and azipods.

DB

Azipods ... who knew?
Great crossword or Scrabble word.

Spoo

Aren't those the curiously strong mints?

Aside from better regulation regarding "fail-safe"
blow-out preventers and such, I've been dubious
about all the wild gripes that the Government should
do more.

Except for this... the BP dividend.
I heard a news report that BP plans to pay out
their "normal" dividend .. I missed the amount, but
could it have been $50 billion?

Anyway, I don't have a specific problem with BP
paying a dividend (a lot of Brits rely on that income),
but the Government should force BP to set aside at
least $50 billion to cover upcoming restoration costs.

What we don't need is for BP to go bankrupt after
paying out dividends.

Spoo

Hah!

BP slated to announce they'll be setting aside funds
into an escrow account.

What do I win?

Spoo said, "What we don't need is for BP to go bankrupt after paying out dividends."
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BP will not go bankrupt after paying out dividends or paying another $10 billion or more on top of that to help out Gulf seashore merchants. This company has assets that reach all the way into the British crown and a continuous stream of cash flow.

Also, take a look at their proven reserves of natural gas. This company is filthy rich (no pun intended).