A Tale of Two Oil Giants

First there is British Petroleum, which pretty much fits the definition of a "rogue company."[1] They take lots of risks with safety and good practices and, when things go wrong, they don't learn a fucking thing. BP's management is a toxic stew of both arrogance and stupidity. As much as they proclaimed that safety was their number 1 priority, that was just lip service. Safety, in practice, was about the very last thing that BP cared about. Four years after a refinery explosion that killed 15 workers (and which earned BP $21 million in fines), the safety inspectors went back to the same refinery, found even more safety problems than existed at the time of the explosion and fined BP $87 million. It is clear that the institutional attitude towards safety at BP is "well, shit happens".

Then there is Exxon, now ExxonMobil. The Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska 21 years ago and dumped over ten million gallons of oil into the water. The environmental damage is being felt even today. Exxon's reputation took a well-justified beating. Exxon's brass decided that they did not want to be a part of a similar catastrophe and Exxon changed. They set a goal of making the company into the gold standard of safety in the oil industry.

Exxon also drilled a very deep well in the Gulf of Mexico, one that was six miles deep. They spent over 18 months doing it and over $150 million. But when Exxon's drillers thought the conditions were too severe and that the risk was too high, Exxon's management ordered them to cap the well and Exxon walked away.

BP seemed to believe, and may still do, that with a few pronouncements about safety from their corporate tower in London, that magical managerial fairy dust would be dispensed throughout the company and everyone would follow safety rules. But it is clear that whatever BP's stated safety policies may be, their actions and practices on the ground had little regard for it.

There is way to make safety work in a company. But it takes a hard-nosed attitude and even harder enforcement. BP is even now basically letting OSHA do the safety inspections and discover the problems. But if BP wants to truly change, then they have to find their own problems and fix them on their own.

BP won't ever be a safe company until they break the code on that.

UPDATE: And neither will TransOcean.

[1] They also sell shitty gasoline.