With This 500-Ton Deepwater Well Cap, BP Is Ready For The Next Oil Spill

[Guns Guns Guns]

Tom Poundgrasp would do well to reflect on the similarities in these two British disasters:


Tony Hayward came to be vilified across America for what looked like insouciance in the face of a seemingly unstoppable disaster, a man with a flair for bad PR.

In the early days of the leak he offered the consolation that the spillage was tiny compared to the size of the ocean.

Later, as the oil came ashore, he apologised for the disruption to the livelihoods of fishing and tourist communities, and said that he too wanted his "life back".

"He wouldn't be working for me after any of those statements," President Obama said, and by the end of the year, he had left BP.

What was to be his life thereafter?

Hayward was 53 when he parted from the company he'd served for nearly 30 years, eventually on a salary of $6m.

He could have reflected bitterly on the unfairness of his role as the lightning conductor for blame – as he said, Deepwater Horizon was a complex accident involving several companies – and then "moved on".

He might have run a charity for tarred seabirds or, as a geologist, spent days with a hammer on the Dorset coast.

It would have been a quieter life – more time on the yacht – but by no means a poor one.

But Hayward did none of these things.

A century ago, disgrace had a different effect.

The chairman and managing director of White Star Line, J Bruce Ismay, felt the full force of American contempt when the Titanic went down in 1912, and he never recovered.

Many of the charges against him echo those raised against Hayward: that he neglected safety in pursuit of competition and profit. Hadn't he persuaded his captain to work up maximum speed while the ship entered an ice field?

Hadn't he refused to equip the ship with more lifeboats because they would over-crowd the promenade deck?

Nothing was ever proven.

Incontestably, however, he had escaped on a lifeboat when more than 1,000 of his company's passengers, including women and children, waited to be saved.

He made a plausible case for his behaviour – he jumped into the boat at the last moment, he insisted, because no more women and children answered his call – but the shame never died.

For HG Wells, capitalism's "noble pretension" had jumped downwards with Ismay: "He was a rich man and a ruling man, but in the test he was not a proud man."

The powerful had been seen to be no better than the rest of us.

Like Hayward, he faced hostile Washington committees of inquiry who grew angry with his blocking answers: "I do not know" and "I could not say" (Ismay); "I am not a cement engineer" (Hayward).

Neither man could charm the media.

To American reporters, Ismay came across as disdainful and arrogant ("J Brute Ismay").

The next year, aged 50, he quit White Star and spent increasing amounts of time at his house in Connemara.

One might also wonder how much he regretted passing up the opportunity to sink, literally, like his 1,500 dead passengers and crew.

But at best, Ismay persisted as an undersea creature, shy and seldom seen.

He never got his life back.

This is what shame and feelings of personal responsibility did, once upon a time.



http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...pwater-horizon

[Aoxomoxoa]

The Gulf Oil Spill Commission stated there wasn't a deliberate cutting of corners as expounded by our resident oil ex-pert, obviously they didn't seek his bean counting expertise on oil well blowouts.

The BP oil rig explosion and spill in the Gulf of Mexico were caused by a "suite of bad decisions" and a "culture of complacency" rather than deliberate cutting of corners to save money, the presidential commission investigating the disaster said Tuesday. In its preliminary technical conclusions the commission said, "No evidence at this time to suggest that there was a conscious decision to sacrifice safety concerns to save money."

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/nov2...-11-10-01.html

[Guns Guns Guns]

Maybe chemists for British Pollution should be facing criminal charges along with their engineers?

[The Dude]

The Gulf Oil Spill Commission stated there wasn't a deliberate cutting of corners as expounded by our resident oil ex-pert, obviously they didn't seek his bean counting expertise on oil well blowouts.




http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/nov2...-11-10-01.html

Yes it's not illegal too not use a backup double string or mudd like much safer american companies do?
Britts don't o to college much, kinda like dentist o them.

[Aoxomoxoa]

Yes it's not illegal too not use a backup double string or mudd like much safer american companies do?
Britts don't o to college much, kinda like dentist o them.

If you think they are so unsafe, why do you have shares in them?

[The Dude]

Sold my shares at a profit, cause the price was cheap when I bought it. Cheap like Britt culture.

[Aoxomoxoa]

Sold my shares at a profit, cause the price was cheap when I bought it. Cheap like Britt culture.

Contrast the willingness of BP to accept the need to perform a quick cleanup and deal with compensation with the secretive almost fascist way Exxon dealt with the Exxon Valdez disaster. You need to get off your arse, stop smoking weed and do some travelling, your knowledge of the world is woefully lacking. The very epitome of the ugly American.

http://www.onearth.org/taxonomy/term/3466

[The Dude]

Contrast the willingness of BP to accept the need to perform a quick cleanup and deal with compensation with the secretive almost fascist way Exxon dealt with the Exxon Valdez disaster. You need to get off your arse, stop smoking weed and do some travelling, your knowledge of the world is woefully lacking. The very epitome of the ugly American.

http://www.onearth.org/taxonomy/term/3466

When your cultural standard is set at better than Exxon at its worst, you are England. You still have little brother syndrome Tom you toothless Limey!
Get an education, one day you won't be a wage slave! Loser