Many are calling BP evil and negligent, has there actually been any evidence of criminal activities on their part? My first guess is that we’re dealing with hindsight bias. I am still casually looking into it, but I figured some others here may have already invested enough work into it to point me in the right direction.
Like any disaster of this scale, it may be possible to learn quite a bit from it, if we’re willing.
It depends on what you mean by “criminal”; under environmental law, there are both negligence-based (negligent discharge of pollutants to navigable waters) and strict liability (no intent requirement, such as killing of migratory birds) crimes that could apply to this spill. I don’t think anyone thinks BP intended to have this kind of spill, so the interesting question from an environmental criminal law perspective is whether BP did enough to be treated as acting “knowingly”—the relevant intent standard for environmental felonies. This is an extremely slippery concept in the law, especially given the complexity of the systems at issue here. Litigation will go on for many years on this exact point.
I’ve read somewhere that a BP internal safety check performed a few months ago indicated “unusual” problems which according to again BP internal safety guidelines should have been resolved earlier, but somehow they made an exception this time. It didn’t seem like it would have been “illegal”, and it also did not note how often such exceptions are made, by what reasoning, what kind of problems they specifically encountered, what they did to keep the operation running, et cetera...
Though I seldom read “ordinary” news, even of this kind, as my past experience tells me that factual information is rather low, and most high-quality press likes more to show off in opinion and interpretation of an event than trying to provide an accurate historical report, at least within such a short time-frame. Could well be that this is different at this event.
Also, as with most engineering disciplines, really learning from such an event beyond the obvious “there is a non-zero chance for everything to blow up” usually requires more area-specific expertise than an ordinary outsider has.
I’ve heard scattered bits of accusations of misdeeds by BP which may have contributed to the spill. Here’s a list from the congressional investigation of 5 decisions that BP made “for economic reasons that increased the danger of a catastrophic well failure” according to a letter from the congressmen. It sounds like BP took a bunch of risky shortcuts to save time and money, although I’d want to hear from people who actually understand the technical issues before being too confident.
There are other suspicions and allegations floating around, like this one.
I’m not sure it’s relevant whether they did anything illegal or not. People always seem to want to blame and punish someone for their problems. In my opinion, they should be forced to pay for and compensate for all the damage, as well as a very large fine as punishment. This way in the future they, and other companies, can regulate themselves and prepare for emergencies as efficiently as possible without arbitrary and clunky government regulations and agencies trying to slap everything together at the last moment. Of course, if a single person actually did something irresponsible (eg; bob the worker just used duct tape to fix that pipe knowing that it wouldn’t hold) then they should be able to be tried in court or sued/fined by the company. But even then, it’s up to the company to make sure that stuff like this doesn’t happen by making sure all of their workers are competent and certified.
You are not really going to learn much unless you are interested in wading through lots of technical articles. If you want to learn, you need to wait until it has been digested by relevant experts into books. I am not sure what you think you can learn from this, but there are two good books of related information available now:
Jeff Wheelwright, Degrees of Disaster, about the environmental effects of the Exxon Valdez spill and the clean up.
Trevor Kletz, What Went Wrong?: Case Histories of Process Plant Disasters, which is really excellent. [For general reading, an older edition is perfectly adequate, new copies are expensive.] It has an incredible amount of detail, and horrifying accounts of how apparently insignificant mistakes can (often literally) blow up on you.
Also, Richard Feynman’s remarks on the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger are a pretty accessible overview of the kinds of dynamics that contribute to major industrial accidents. http://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v2appf.htm
Many are calling BP evil and negligent, has there actually been any evidence of criminal activities on their part? My first guess is that we’re dealing with hindsight bias. I am still casually looking into it, but I figured some others here may have already invested enough work into it to point me in the right direction.
Like any disaster of this scale, it may be possible to learn quite a bit from it, if we’re willing.
It depends on what you mean by “criminal”; under environmental law, there are both negligence-based (negligent discharge of pollutants to navigable waters) and strict liability (no intent requirement, such as killing of migratory birds) crimes that could apply to this spill. I don’t think anyone thinks BP intended to have this kind of spill, so the interesting question from an environmental criminal law perspective is whether BP did enough to be treated as acting “knowingly”—the relevant intent standard for environmental felonies. This is an extremely slippery concept in the law, especially given the complexity of the systems at issue here. Litigation will go on for many years on this exact point.
I’ve read somewhere that a BP internal safety check performed a few months ago indicated “unusual” problems which according to again BP internal safety guidelines should have been resolved earlier, but somehow they made an exception this time. It didn’t seem like it would have been “illegal”, and it also did not note how often such exceptions are made, by what reasoning, what kind of problems they specifically encountered, what they did to keep the operation running, et cetera...
Though I seldom read “ordinary” news, even of this kind, as my past experience tells me that factual information is rather low, and most high-quality press likes more to show off in opinion and interpretation of an event than trying to provide an accurate historical report, at least within such a short time-frame. Could well be that this is different at this event.
Also, as with most engineering disciplines, really learning from such an event beyond the obvious “there is a non-zero chance for everything to blow up” usually requires more area-specific expertise than an ordinary outsider has.
I’ve heard scattered bits of accusations of misdeeds by BP which may have contributed to the spill. Here’s a list from the congressional investigation of 5 decisions that BP made “for economic reasons that increased the danger of a catastrophic well failure” according to a letter from the congressmen. It sounds like BP took a bunch of risky shortcuts to save time and money, although I’d want to hear from people who actually understand the technical issues before being too confident.
There are other suspicions and allegations floating around, like this one.
That’s a good start, I appreciate it!
I’m not sure it’s relevant whether they did anything illegal or not. People always seem to want to blame and punish someone for their problems. In my opinion, they should be forced to pay for and compensate for all the damage, as well as a very large fine as punishment. This way in the future they, and other companies, can regulate themselves and prepare for emergencies as efficiently as possible without arbitrary and clunky government regulations and agencies trying to slap everything together at the last moment. Of course, if a single person actually did something irresponsible (eg; bob the worker just used duct tape to fix that pipe knowing that it wouldn’t hold) then they should be able to be tried in court or sued/fined by the company. But even then, it’s up to the company to make sure that stuff like this doesn’t happen by making sure all of their workers are competent and certified.
You are not really going to learn much unless you are interested in wading through lots of technical articles. If you want to learn, you need to wait until it has been digested by relevant experts into books. I am not sure what you think you can learn from this, but there are two good books of related information available now:
Jeff Wheelwright, Degrees of Disaster, about the environmental effects of the Exxon Valdez spill and the clean up.
Trevor Kletz, What Went Wrong?: Case Histories of Process Plant Disasters, which is really excellent. [For general reading, an older edition is perfectly adequate, new copies are expensive.] It has an incredible amount of detail, and horrifying accounts of how apparently insignificant mistakes can (often literally) blow up on you.
Also, Richard Feynman’s remarks on the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger are a pretty accessible overview of the kinds of dynamics that contribute to major industrial accidents. http://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v2appf.htm
[edit: corrected, thx.]
Pretty sure you mean Challenger. Feynman was involved in the investigation of the Challenger disaster. He was dead long before Columbia.
In a recent video, Taleb argues that people generally put too much focus on the specifics of a disaster, and too little on what makes systems fragile.
He said that high debt means (among other things) too much focus on the short run, and skimping on insurance and precautions.