On BP & the Oil Slick.

Largely I haven’t spoken on the topic because people have said it all and said it better, but I’m still going to open my mouth on something related – this is an industry problem and it’s also a corporate culture problem.

And no, that isn’t a defence of BP. BP’s failure is epic and unacceptable – and I think any other oil company in the same situation would have been equally unacceptable in their failure. And I think any other oil company is as equally likely to fail on such a level and so unacceptably. That’s not a defence of BP, it’s an indictment of the industry.

And I think that is what is needed that is missing. Don’t make it about one company – yes one company has screwed up on a monumental measure beyond all expectations and the horror unleashed makes the head explode and the eyes weep. And we can vilify that company, blame that company even destroy that company.

And in 5, 10, 20 years time another company will do exactly the same shit. Because the crap that BP has pulled is not in any way limited to BP – it’s not even limited to the oil industry. And perhaps there are some questions we aren’t asking that we all should be doing.

Like the viability of deep-sea off-shore drilling in the first place. Sure that sounds so dramatic – but it has become abundantly clear that BP, the oil industry and, indeed, everyone else on the planet has absolutely no freaking clue how to fix this problem. It has become clear that while we do indeed have the technology to drill like this, we have absolutely zero capability to fix it or even limit the damage when it fucks up. And it will fuck up. Everything fucks up. If you have a plan for anything that doesn’t include a contingency for fuck ups then it’s a bad plan. You cannot base anything on the idea that there will be no fuck ups. You have, at least, have to have some concept of how to stop a fuck up becoming a FUBAR. It’s clear here that we do not have this. It’s also clear that the cost of a fuck up is monumentally staggering. And this can happen in any deep-sea offshore rig in the world – because none of them are immune to fuck ups and no-one has a freaking clue how to fix those fuck ups when they’ve happened.

And that, to me, is an extremely worrisome question.

And the second big question looming out there is the very issue of self-regulation. It’s a mantra in the  world, a religion (and a religion that America is the high priest of though no country is immune to its influence). Don’t clog business with red tape. Don’t be such a BURDEN on them. Let the market have its way, blah blah blah blah.

Corporations – in all fields – will be short sighted and selfish. They will look after their own short term interests as much as possible, they will be blinkered to the long term. They will not care about others and they will not engage in any self-policing that will cost them or hassle them.

That is not because corporations are evil or because the people who run them are evil – it’s because they are run by people. And PEOPLE are short-sighted, selfish, insular and unwilling to do things that cost them or inconvenience them no matter how much sense those things make or how essential they are.

Every corner BP cut, every slap-dash “self-inspection” they performed, every safety measure they refused to take were all down to the fact that they COULD do these things and they could get away with and they weren’t forced to take those precautions. And I will lay odds to evens that every other oil company in America does exactly the same thing and further wager that every oil company in the world does the same thing as much as the laws, regulations and power of the local powers that be let them.

It’s a lesson that I would have thought the banking disaster would have taught us. But it’s still a question we’re not asking, a lesson we’re not learning  and an issue we are fiercely avoiding. Self-regulation does not work. The fox cannot be trusted to guard the hen house. And that isn’t evil, that isn’t paranoid, that isn’t a conspiracy, it’s a basic summation of human nature.

Until we consider the first question, I think it’s only a matter of time before the next oil rig disaster, no matter what happens with BP. And until we consider the second question, we’re going to bounce from one huge epic disaster to the next from field to field. As companies continue to grow in power and scale and incredible wealth then they will continue to have the power to cause disasters that will give us nightmare fodder to last a lifetime and more. And so long as we continue to decide that they can be trusted not to cause these disasters with minimal oversight then they will keep happening. It’s just a matter of where and in what industry the next disaster will be.