BP'S Shocking Memo

Source: Daily Beast

BP'S Shocking Memo
EXCLUSIVE: This internal BP document shows how the company took deadly risks to save money by opting to build cheaper facilities for workers. The company estimated the value of a worker's life at $10 million.


A document obtained by The Daily Beast shows that BP, in a previous fatal disaster, increased worker risk to save money. Are there parallels with the Gulf explosion?

This is a story about the Three Little Pigs. A lot of dead oil workers. And British Petroleum.

From the minute the Deepwater Horizon offshore rig exploded, BP has hewed to a party line: it did everything it could to prevent the April 20 accident that killed 11 men and has been spewing millions of gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico ever since. Some critics have questioned the veracity of that position.

Now The Daily Beast has obtained a document—displayed below—that goes to the heart of BP procedures, demonstrating that before the company’s previous major disaster—at a moment when the oil giant could choose between cost-savings and greater safety—it selected cost-savings. And BP chose to illustrate that choice, without irony, by invoking the classic Three Little Pigs fairy tale.






Read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-05-25/shocking-bp-memo-and-the-oil-spill-in-the-gulf/?cid=hp:mainpromo1

Shocking indeed.

Why are people shocked and surprised when the most successful capitalists act like sociopaths?

Is like sending your kid to a marine bootcamp, and then wondering why he is wearing green and has a buzzcut all of the sudden. The American people need to grow up, and quit it out with their doublethink fantasies: expecting a sociopathic system to behave like Mother Theresa.

The chickens are getting back home, and it is roosting season.


We looked the other way during the financial meltdown and the bailout, we pretended that the for-profit corporate health care just needed a paint coat, this is mother nature just telling us: "hey, whassup?" Good luck trying to ignore that one, but if one thing is certain about my fellow Americans... is that a lot of us are incredibly creative in our approaches to denial. So even after half of the gulf is dead and millions of people are affected, plenty of people will stil be looking the other way.

why people expect corporations to act in a socially responsible manner. It's not their job. They're not charities - they're businesses. If the executives at these companies cared more about social responsibility than money they'd be working for charities, not businesses. But they care about money, which is why they do what they do. We shouldn't consider it cynical to say that corporations only care about money at the expense of everything else - it's not uncharitable to say that they exist for the sole reason of returning a profit to their investors. It's the express reason for their initial organization. The hospital's goal is not to heal your sickness - it's to make money. If they can do that by treating you, they will treat you. If they can do that by turning you away, they'll do that. It's not the food store's job to provide you with the safe, clean, nutritious food you need to live. It's the store's job to make money. If they can make money by selling wholesome food, they will do that. But if they can make money by selling tainted, spoiled, or poisonous food, they'll do that. (It should be noted that it is only because of state and federal regulation that they are not able to do that.) But if it can make money by selling sugary, fatty, over-processed food analogs, that's cool too.

And it's not the oil company's job to provide us all with safe, clean, renewable, cheap, sustainable energy. Their job is to make money at all costs, and they are very, very good at it. If they can make money selling us a toxic, dangerous, over-priced, finite black sludge that must be extracted by a process almost akin to an act of violence against our mother the Earth, then they'll do it until somebody stops them. It seems to me there's two ways to go about doing that - if we're not willing to do away with the capitalist ethos that money is the single most important aspect of society and an end unto itself, then at very least we need to stand up and say "No, you can't do that."

I'm no good at business.

:dilemma:

concludes that the value chain includes not only customers and vendors, but the attendant community, as well. The partnership is among all the elements. Otherwise, the system will fail.

And THAT'S the reason for social responsibility on the part of corporations.

"While BP did announce a $500 million research project yesterday, to study the impact of the oil disaster on marine life over 10 years, that’s cold comfort to those worried about their livelihood. For all of BP’s pledges that it’s delivering a figurative brick house, a solid plan, to stop the leak, contain the spill and clean up the shore, too many people on the Gulf feel like they’re living in a house of straw."
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http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/bps-daily-tally-175-million-for-gulf-oil-spill-93-million-in-profits/19472532

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x468345

This is just beyond comprehension to think that we have people like this that actually put a dollar value on human life.

Republicon Family Business Values all the way.

Ptooooey.

10 Critical Facts about BP and the Gulf of Mexico Crisis


1. On May 10, BP said it had already spent $350 million as a result of the Deepwater Horizon accident.

2. By contrast, in the first three months of this year, BP made $93 million per day in pure profits. This does not include the huge salaries and perks of its executives that are considered “costs,” not profits. Thus, BP has spent what might seem to many people to be a big number on the accident ($350million) but it is only equivalent to 4 days of pure profits for BP.

and more:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8413624

and it's not about capitalism. A government, too, would have to decide what kind of facilities to construct.

You forgot the profit part of the cost analysis as the main motivation for the decision making for BP. That is not a minor detail.

We all make decisions. That is not the point. It is like saying how everyone breathes, so we're morally equivalent to a killer because he too was breathing oxygen while he was killing, well it is the killing part which makes the moral difference.

You hopefully have smoke detectors in your house. However, if you install a sprinkler system, there is a better chance of surviving a fire since it can suppress the fire before it spreads. The cost of the sprinkler system may be $20,000. By not purchasing it you are deciding that the cost-benefit is not worth it. The cost of your life is high, but you believe the odds of a fire are low. You've basically put a cost on your life, although you don't think of it like that.

... in terms of arbitrary numbers, representing a very abstract concept of "worth" over which definition I have had absolutely no part.

If that is what you do, fine. But please, do not include me in your "we."

I am not the one putting a cost on my life. Those above me who decide how much my labor is worth (in terms of dollar value) are the ones limiting what I can or can't afford. Thus they, not me, are putting a cost on my life.

No one could have predicted it?

F'ing greedy f'ing corporations forever placing their profits first. :mad::nuke:

:thumbsup:

:wtf:

:mad:

:kick:

it lays it out pretty good that bp chose saving money over safety. they did this out of greed

instead of literally being in bed with the oil industry, we'd find it BEFORE and prevent these disasters.

I'm thinking it's time to take a good hard look at the man behind the curtain, Darth Cheney. I want to know WTF he did in those secret meetings.

I don't see how it's possible to move forward, until you clean up past criminal activity.

What's that old saying? "A House built on sand will not stand." Neither will anything else, and this is looking more and more like an impending washout with major erosion.

Never mind the pit of moving sand we're drowning into, since our eyes still can look above it into a questionable future.

When we'll be completely suffocating, it will be too late to look forward ever again, but the guilty souls will be long gone and forgotten, so all those who think and act the same will also get away with their criminal acts scot-free.

That itself is shocking.

there is always, as argued above in several notes, a study.... install fire sprinklers, or JUST a smoke alarm

....................... NO ISSUE WITH A COST RISK ANALYSIS..... MY ISSUE IS IT SHOULD NOT BE DONE BY THE COMPANY, RATHER BY A UNION...

THE QUESTION IS WHERE IN THIS "RISK ANALYSIS" WAS A SPOKESPERSON FOR THE EMPLOYEE

I mean, the "little piggy" example they use is actually a pretty good one. The problem is that they (deliberately?) underestimated the "vulnerability" column, and lowballed the full loss realization amount (the $1000 in the example).

The BOP was broken and they did not stop to fix it. It wasn't a "it's cheaper to kill 11 people than to slow down and lose time".

They most likely violated their own procedures.

Puleez !

They did decide it WAS cheaper to RISK EVERYONE'S LIFE on the rig than slow down and follow procedures.

No BP cannot divine the future.... which is THE WHOLE POINT OF SAFEGUARDS and why you follow them.

... in the 19th century for nothing!