Is BP Doing their Best? No!

While I realize that the BP Oil spill is not exactly a Congressional issue now (yet?), the President has said he needs to do more to help, and he should. He should start by pushing BP to do more, or fining them billions of dollars and hiring other companies to simultaneously come up with solutions on BP’s dollar. I am sure Halliburton, the company responsible for the faulty concert pillar that gave way and may have caused the problem in the first place I am sure is standing by, just waiting to receive millions to help fix this!

As an engineer, I watch this embarrassing fiasco wondering just what is wrong with the BP executives and engineers. If a project I was working on had a major problem, we would not simply design and try one idea at a time, wait for it to fail, and then START designing a new idea at that point. If it was critical, multiple teams would be working on a possible solution at the same time.

What amazes me the most about this whole thing, is that BP IS working on one idea at a time. When it fails, there is a 4 to 10 day pause while they come up with and engineer the next plan. Really?

Shouldn’t they be working on dozens of ideas at the same time and have them ready to try immediately when one fails? For example, when the last attempt at caping, or shoving trash in the hole did not work, the next attempt, another cap, another robot, what-ever, should have been ready to go immediately, But BP said it would take 6 to 10 days to ready the next solution. It should not had they already been working on it in advance.

Of course, they do not do this because it would cost additional money to have multiple engineering teams working on multiple solutions at the same time, and their egotistical attitude is that the next solution will simply work, so no need to spend all that money on other solutions. You would think after so many failures, they would realize that multiple solutions now need to be created at the same time and be ready to try one after another.

This is gross negligence on a scale never seen before. Perhaps the Federal Government needs to step in and insist that they spend what ever it takes to solve this problem, and not design one solution at a time with 10 days in between, but have them ready one right after another. Cost, for a company that makes BILLIONS OF DOLLARS PROFIT EACH QUARTER, should not now be an issue. They need to step up their spending by an order of magnitude.

I also hope that if the government does decide to step in, they will spend BP’s money, and not my tax dollars. I so fear that the public will end up paying for this in both higher oil prices and tax dollars used to find a solution. And if we have given them help already, I sure hope it is being billed back to BP, plus interest!

But apologies don’t cut it really. Apologize for not spending more money to have more teams working on this. Apologize for the thousands upon thousands of barrels of oil that gush into the water while you wait to try the next hacked solution. Apologize for the deal in acting. And then actually do something about it.

Thank you,
-Owen-