What's with all the BP hate?

People tend to get angry because of pain (physical,mental,emotional or financial) that has been inflicted on them.
Thus, as soon as one of the other oil companies has a leak, people will get angry at themas well. The more 'careless' or 'negligent' the company was and the bigger the visible effect, the more the anger.

 

The reasons vary. Try these points of view:
1) A spouse or child of one of the 11 killed.
2) A gulf fisherman.
3) A non-BP oil company employee that made decisions not to risk or rush drilling operations. Exxon abandoned drilling some Gulf wells that they decided were to risky to continue. I don't expect Exxon to get pats on the back, but it shows that some in the oil industry actually exercise good judgment.

The CEO should be on an endless hot seat. He more than anyone else sets the safety culture and priorities for a company. His answers at the Congressional Inquiry were those of a very poor leader. He claims not to know what went wrong. After 50 days, that proves he is either a liar or an incompetent fool. That's one of the things that makes me real angry. I don't want either a fool or liar to be in charge of a company that is doing things that can kill vast numbers of people and ecosystems if shortcuts are taken just for the money.

 

Maybe he doesn't care since he knows he won't be prosecuted for anything?
FOXNews.com - BP Chief Yachts While Gulf Oil Spill Burns

 

Well, if BP's CEO "should be in the hot seat" so should Obama. If the CEO is responsible, then so are the government regulators and inspectors .... thus their boss. In truth, the CEO nor the president have anything to do with the spill.

The fix and the clean-up will be administered by the hard-working "grunts" that are getting dirty performing back-breaking labor on the scene. Photo ops by the president, or hearings by congress will not collect one barrel of oil.

It is a tragedy for sure, and I ache for those that loss lives and their families; I ache for all those legitimately impacted by the spill ... fishermen, businesses, motels and etc. But trust me, there will be many that make millions; there will be many that collect money on fraudelent claims; there will be many boatsmen that make more hauling skimmers than they would from fishing.

BP has set aside $20B dollars. If I were running the pay-out, I would first require a copy of last years income tax form .... there will be extrodinary claims of loss, when last year they REPORTED ..... meager income. Just watch!!

 

What I got out of this is how foolish it is to drill in deep water when you don't have the technology to fix a leak. That seems the case here, but then you wonder about all the North Sea drilling that's been going on for decades without these problems. Kind of the same with nuclear reactors in Europe. Problems only here. What this points to is an inadequacy of proper safety regulation by the govt. Clearly, in both the BP leak and the 3 mile Island nuclear fiascos, there were safety violations and a lack of regulatory oversight to make sure safety regulations were adhered to. Human error.

We are seeing a trend where the U.S. govt continually is in the middle of dangerous events which expose a lack of proper regulatory oversight.And it's getting worse. Witness the financial fiasco. This is expected from the Republicans who are for no regulation--period--. But it shows that Obama has done nothing to change Republican policies in this area. Some areas of govt seem to be still operating as though Bush Jr was President. In fairness, it takes time to move 8 years of entrenched ideological bureaucracy. Obama has been President a short time, and has accomplished a lot--and gets little credit for it in the media. Blame that on the Democrats, who love to be on the defensive and think spin doctors practice medicine. They communicate 1950s style.

 

Sure the BP oil spill is a terrible thing. However, the oil spill wouldn't have happened if we (read: Americans) didn't drive what we do. We are all to blame on this one. It does appear that no one anymore likes to accept responsibility for their own actions and are quick to point the blame. Must be the new American way.

 

The most excellent investigation of the Columbia disaster had the following statement from the commission:

"The Board's view, NASA's organizational culture and structure had as much to do with this accident as the external tank foam."

or this section:

"Structure and hierarchy represent power and status. For both Challenger and Columbia, employee's positions in the organization determined the weight given to their information, bu their own judgment and in the eye's of others. As a result, many signals of danger were missed. Relevant information that could have altered the course of events was available but was not presented."

Big companies pay CEOs obscene salaries claiming that "extraordinary" talent needs to be paid accordingly. That should include the BP CEO applying the above paragraph well before the disaster.

 

And blackouts would not happen if we stopped using electricity. We do need to reduce and conserve with a vengeance, but BP and MMS are at fault here, not you.

 

Shame there wasn't the same witch hunt for Union Carbide or perhaps 3787 deaths, continues leaks 25 years later, yet only $2M was made available....With another $90M after it solds it interest in the local company...Or perhaps Asian lives and environment is not as important as US lives and environment...

 

couldn't disagree with the op more. i'm not taking ANY responsibilty for this. you can say that about almost any action in life. the persons responsible are the ones who made the bad decisions in the design and installation. and regulators and inspectors if there was negligence there. when one of my delivery drivers gets in an accident, my company is responsible and i get put on the hot seat. that's just the way it is, and rightly so. you have to make sure corners are not being cut in the name of profits.

 

There's a kind of Marie Antoinette aura as well. As I recall, that didn't end well.

 

Perhaps so many people hate BP now because of their proven terrible safety record, a clueless buffoon of a CEO who comes across as a spoiled rich kid, and their consistent lies regarding how much oil has actually leaked

 

Check out You Should Totally Apologize to BP
We could each apologize for driving a Prius.

 

As I have so often said, there is plenty of blame to go around. As things have unfolded it is becoming clear that BP/MMS have screwed up badly, mostly in the name of saving money, and therefore they deserve the abuse that is heaped on them, and they should be made to pay,,,,every last nickle.

That said, and as I have often repeated in many posts on many forums, as Pogo said, "I have met the enemy and he is us!" The fact that we haven't changed our profligate ways in the last ~40 years, even knowing that oil (and other energy) was going to get increasing scarce and expensive, (never mind the AGW issues we didn't really think about in 1973!). We have had many warnings, both overt and covert, and yet we continue to blindly go forth as though it is our right to have (and waste!) cheap energy.

Just today, in our local paper, a letter to the editor decried a potential boycott of BP for fear that it would only raise the price of gas! Wake up folks, until we realize that the price of gas (energy use) must include it's total cost, that including environmental costs from it's extraction, transport and use, it emission load on the environment, acid rain etc. Social and political costs, such as keeping Armies and Navies and Air Forces busy protecting our energy, until we begin to pay these costs up front, instead of kicking them down the road to our grandchildren in the form of financial debt and environmental debt we must all accept some of the responsibility "costs" of our cheap energy.

Quite frankly, a huge step toward a solution of our energy problem is also a solution to many of our other problems. The big problem is that people don't get it!

Beginning to transition toward more environmentally benign sources begins to solve all kinds of problems. Sustainable energy leads to cheaper energy in the long run, helping the long term economy, the R&D of that energy creates clean, not off shoreable jobs, helping the economy in the short run, it reduces our greenhouse gas emissions, there by making global warming issues easier and cheaper to solve. It reduces out need for foreign energy, reducing security costs.

I personally believe that only by linking all these issue together in way that people can understand, do we have any hope of solving any of the issues. People are really only compelled to act (and change behavior) when they realize there is some self interest to be had. (It will save them money!) If we had to pay the real cost of our energy choices, up front, folks would think twice before commuting to work in a SOV Hummer, or not insulating the attic, or, or, or!

Icarus

PS. And then that wonder of enlightened thinking, Senate minority leader, speaking on FOX Sunday morning with Chris Wallace, stated that the ceo of BP "needed a better PR person" as though that would solve the crisis. He then went on to suggest that the administration was "seizing the moment of crisis to advance a climate change bill" , to which I say, if that is the only way you can get the party of "NO" to get off the pot and do something, go for it! If not now, when? If not to prevent this kind of thing happening in the future, why not?

 

Unfortunately with all that hatred and not all of it is founded their share price keeps going down...Paying every last nickle even though they have the intention may become impossible, and forget about paying for this, the impact on American pensions will be far greater ;-)

Helping them first, instead of shouting from the side line and crippling their finances might be a bit more constructive...

Or do what America did with Union Carbide just ignore it and don't own up to their responsibilities...

 

The pension angle will get very little sympathy from the American public. Most here will receive either no pension, or a fixed pension that has no direct connection to any particular stock price.

Third parties concerned about BP's share price will get the lumped in with CEOs who jet off from disaster management to watch a yacht race.

Welcome to politics and public outrage, American style.

Big Oil, Big Insurance, Big Pharma, Wall Steet, Big Government, Big Labor and numerous other sectors have big guns pre-pointed at targets on their backs, waiting for the slightest misstep as an excuse to start firing media salvos. Sometimes the political shooting is justified, sometimes it is not, but that is often irrelevant to the politics and outrage.

That is another aspect of the American Way. Go overboard in throwing blame, or ignore the issue completely.

 

Actually, we do have the technology, or can develop the technology, to do so safely. Also we have the ability to set standards that can be used to determine if drilling should proceed or stop. The killer problem is that we (Congress) allow both national and international corporations to be their own regulators. Or we allow the political leverage to shutdown the regulator agencies that should effectively oversee them. It really is not a technical issue, but a social-economic one of major importance for all industries, especially those with life/death consequences of their operations.

Seeing someone succumb to the desire to blame a particular party or person I find particularly depressing. (I'm not including you in this comment.) Every Dem/Rep combination of legislative and executive branch control has been tried by the voters. Yet many still think that if so & so were in charge, or allowed to act, the MMS would never have let this happen, or the financial debacle would have been avoided, etc.

Both of these problems, and the future problems to come, have been decades in the building. It's going to take decades to solve. In that period of time we will cycle through quite a few more combination of D/R swings. We need to address the underlying problems directly, locally, and with personnel involvement....not with the nonsense that a certain "political party" will solve it.