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[Kogan Loloklam]

If you say that you need a 1.2% profit increase, and imply that people will be fired if it doesn't happen, then that is coercion, and it is your responsibility to make sure that the system(company) can handle it...

I'm sorry, but no. The top is ALWAYS pushing for faster, cheaper, and better. Someone always makes the decision to do things in a stupid way to make it work. SOMEONE MAKES THAT DECISION.

It's not a matter of "They could get fired if they didn't"
It's a matter of thinking they are choosing to keep their jobs. This is like any soldier who turns a blind eye to the disgraceful actions done by their fellow soldiers like rape or murder innocents.
Before you claim "Bullshit", Let me assure you it is exactly that. If you see something that isn't right, it is your DUTY to stop it as a US Soldier. If you see something that isn't right, it is your DUTY as an employee to report it immediately. Every company has the same wording in it's policy manuals. Just because you think it is bullshit doesn't make it bullshit. Companies have that sort of crap to protect them from this kind of stuff. Yes, there is the potential some dumb fuck will fire you, but that isn't what happened here. People were pushed to do it faster and faster and cheaper and cheaper, and besides a few very vague, general ass-covering statements, NOBODY put the brakes on.

I'm just going to leave that out there. The part about bosses don't have control of their employees, and aren't responsible for them. As for brain drain, and making the leap between oil executives and weapons scientists....no. Just no. Smart bombs OR nuclear weapons, that's a specious comparison. 

I never said bosses weren't responsible. We aren't talking about BOSSES here. We are talking about CEOs. "Big fapping deal, same thing!" you think.
Fine. Answer me this, in ALL the places you or anyone here has ever worked, how many shook hands with their CEO even ONCE. This isn't even talking about exchanging first names or being directly reportable, but just have had the contact of a handshake with one once.

People as a general rule are so far seperated from their CEO with layers and layers of management they don't even see their FACES except on a framed picture on a wall. You propose to start a precident of crucifuing them because they ask for a little more production? I can't even begin to explain where the flaw is in expecting that. I tried, but you are way too dense to even see the problems with it.

A. Did anyone die because of the sewage leak? Did the workers installing it die?

No.

B. I see willful risk taking that resulted in people dying in BP's case. You're saying "screw up" and using a non-oil, non-industry, city project screw up anecdote to reinforce your belief. They did sewer work in my town too. It sucked.

A. Where is the willful risk?
B. Where do you stop the criminal liability? The citizens who vote the politicians in that establish the regulation for the industry that the company operates in? They are as liable as the BP executive. Citizens could have voted against politicians that didn't regulate it as well as it should have been.

By reading the thread, I mean the links too.

I did. Yes, BP cut corners, but it was one of two commonly used designs. it was the cheaper one, it is very common for companies to try to keep their production down. At no point did they deliberately use Sub-standard materials. At no point did they deliberately use sub-standard engineering. They used things that were known to work, and commonly worked. It was the responsibility of the project's engineers to figure out if things weren't going to work and report that so that the cheapest and best could be used. Instead they kept a design that everyone thought would work fine. It wasn't over-engineered because that costs money. You don't make a ladder that goes up to the roof of a house capable of holding the weight of an adult elephant. When you are hauling 10 lb buckets up 50 feet you don't need a rope that can tow a semi truck.

Also, THIS LINK:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/17/bp-safety-violations-osha_n_578775.html
This PROVES what I was saying about things. It wasn't the fapping platforms with 600 violations.
Read your own fapping link and then talk to me about what I (am/am not) reading.

Oh, just so we are clear:
Oil REFINERY:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Rig that looks like Deepwater Horizons:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Apple Farm:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

BP doesn't own any apple farms, but since you are really curious...

With the schedule slipping, Williams says a BP manager ordered a faster pace.

This is an important statement. A faceless BP manager said this. Why didn't Williams state the risks at that time? The link between the faceless BP manager and the project's Engineers is probably where criminal prosecution should begin to be examined. Williams states himself that he saw a MAJOR safety issue and said nothing. He didn't even say "I went to the manager and explained in private that I thought this might be an issue, since he didn't seem to understand."
Nobody corrected the guy who was wrong. Someone knew what would result and didn't say a word. How is that guy LESS criminally responsible that the CEO whom didn't even get this little vital piece of information?

Yes, the CEO hired some people who hired some people that Hired some people that shouldn't work for a Burger joint, let alone manage other people.  That doesn't mean that when that burger joint they theoretically shouldn't work for burns down that the top guy should be charged with arson. The guy who was directly above them should get charges if anything, because that individual was the one that should have known that they couldn't be trusted with the delicate art of burgers.

I'm just going to stop there. You're asking for a smoking gun or a memo that says "Cut corners, muwhahahah." There is ample evidence that it's happening without that. Also, while it's cute that you try to undercut OSHA's safety violations by claiming BP has a million fringe, non oil businesses that require OSHA supervision....BS. BP has 600+ violations. The next biggest, 4. Or is BP the only one with millions facilities? Because they aren't the dominant oil company in the US, even before DWH.

I never claimed they have millions of fringe non-oil businesses. In fact, I make a point of saying they DON'T. I stated that to tell you that there is more than one kind of business, and a safety violation in one of those
532 of those violations weren't even associated with OIL DRILLING. They were Oil processing plants. One plant, actually. The other 228 were spread out amongst all the rest of BP's operations, of which there are actually non-oil businesses. No apple farms, mind you, but things like Solar Farms(Unknown if it has any violations, but it could) and Wind Farms(Unknown if it has any violations, but it could). They also have Refineries, Pipelines, regular oil wells, Oil platforms, Tankers, and all kinds of other businesses.
Quick Google-fu will demonstrate that businesses associated with Exxon mobil have had more than a single OSHA violation this year. How the violation figures are tallied I don't know, But I am willing to bet that they are significantly more than the Media claims, and that Exxon is probably the current year's golden child and not representative of the average per facility of the industry. You haven't provided me any information on that, and yet you think the CEO of the company should be held criminally responsible because of a higher than average rate of safety violations, with 532 of them representing only a single facility (which yes, should be shut down until they get their house in order.)
I do think BP needs to do some serious housecleaning, but I don't see any value in prosecuting their CEO. The Manager of that refinery might deserve it if anything comes that is prosecutable. The faceless manager probably should face prosecution as well, but the investigation needs to be finished to find out exactly who. I am starting to think that Williams should face at least a fine too, for keeping his mouth shut over a potential problem he was able to recognize.

And if it turns out he's been pressured by his bosses to take short cuts and approve sub-standard designs...what then? Should we let their mid-level engineer take the fall for their overall policy decisions? Are they not where the buck stops?

It depends. If an engineer said "Don't do this, You'll kill us all!" the engineer did his job and the manager made the critical problem and should be canned. If that manager passed the problem up saying it's the reason for delays and his manager said do it anyway, THAT higher manager should be prosecuted. If the CEO told a manager to increase speed without feedback on potential problems, and the guy below him said increase speed without any feedback on potential problems, Wherever that feedback bottleneck occured we should come down on like the hammer of fucking god and pin that guy's ass to the wall, displayed in such a manner that EVERYONE can see that if you genuinely act without considering your consequences, you will be prosecuted.

Increases of speed can occur without increased risk for casualties. Someone fucked up, someone should pay. I just don't think it is the CEO.

Now you're just nitpicking. I'm saying their overall response early in the disaster was disrespectful to the public that buys their gas. They down played it, tried for as long as they could to conceal the HD video of the leak that they had set up, had their jackass CEO speak off the cuff as though this wasn't a huge freaking deal...yeah, I get the impression that they essentially laughed this off and then realized we are quite seriously pissed about all this. There's no citation for that, and I trust you can read the difference between opinion and informed conclusion. And you can't fault them for the perception they could throw money at this and make it go away; our regulation and punishment of them up until now has only reinforced that perception. It's going to stay that way until we actually hold them accountable for the dozens dead, and the hundreds injured.

And this is no reason to prosecute.

EXCEPT that warnings have gone from the top to the bottom in BP's case. If there has been a systematic pattern of ignoring safety violations, if mangers at all levels expressed their concerns and the word from the top continually was "Don't care', then you hold the people at the top responsible.

Okay, I can see this, but if it were willful and desired you'd have a laundry list of people coming and speaking out about how they were fired from BP for doing the right thing. I don't see it, so yes there may be a pattern of ignoring safety violations, but it isn't on the CEO for this, because people weren't getting canned over reporting problems. BP's corporate climate even had people to assist others in filling out forms in such a way that avoided placing blame, so as to ensure that things got reported more often instead of being swept under the rug until a fapping platform sunk. There is a serious problem with what happened here, and we need to get to the bottom of it, not scream for the CEO's head.

I find it hard to believe that, with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake for even a month's worth of delays, that BP execs weren't hovering over the phones going "Progress report! You need 18 more stabilizers?! We don't have that kind of time! How many do you have on site? Two? Do it. No, I don't have time for you to do the math, and neither do they. Just get it done. Wait, we're out of concrete too? Jesus christ, do we have any liner left? Ok, just use the liner for the rest."

Hundreds of millions of dollars is always at stake. You hire competent people to ensure you don't burn yourself out. I am certain that there were progress reports filed. It is certainly standard procedure in the construction of a pipeline, as mandated by the EPA. Did the progress reports contain the issues in them that occurred before the explosion? That's what I'd like to know. If they did, then let's look at the people who were supposedly reviewing the reports and find out why they didn't act. I can assure you though, it is highly unlikely that any of the top Executives read the progress reports. Top people like things like "On schedule" "Early" or "Delayed by x days".
Too many projects with too many millions of dollars at stake for them to focus all their attentions on things that from all reports they got were going right.

[Aqizzar]

It's a matter of thinking they are choosing to keep their jobs. This is like any soldier who turns a blind eye to the disgraceful actions done by their fellow soldiers like rape or murder innocents.
Before you claim "Bullshit", Let me assure you it is exactly that. If you see something that isn't right, it is your DUTY to stop it as a US Soldier. If you see something that isn't right, it is your DUTY as an employee to report it immediately. Every company has the same wording in it's policy manuals. Just because you think it is bullshit doesn't make it bullshit. Companies have that sort of crap to protect them from this kind of stuff. Yes, there is the potential some dumb fuck will fire you, but that isn't what happened here. People were pushed to do it faster and faster and cheaper and cheaper, and besides a few very vague, general ass-covering statements, NOBODY put the brakes on.

Yeah, that's all bullshit.  People are fired for pointing out egregious problems in their business every day.  Heck, BP has been firing people going to the media during this fiasco, you think they wouldn't have been doing it before?

B. I see willful risk taking that resulted in people dying in BP's case. You're saying "screw up" and using a non-oil, non-industry, city project screw up anecdote to reinforce your belief. They did sewer work in my town too. It sucked.

A. Where is the willful risk?
B. Where do you stop the criminal liability? The citizens who vote the politicians in that establish the regulation for the industry that the company operates in? They are as liable as the BP executive. Citizens could have voted against politicians that didn't regulate it as well as it should have been.

The willful risk came in during all the incredibly obvious safety skips, namely the sorts of things Nonsapient was pointing out.  Those sorts of decisions don't get made by the company men overseeing the drilling, at multiple sites, unless they think it's perfectly acceptable above them.  Exactly which of them is at fault, I honestly can't say, because I'm not a lawyer.  What is the precedent on business policy that leads to endangerment; does the blame lie with the people how made it, or the people who carry it out?  Really just depends on how long you want to litigate it.

I did. Yes, BP cut corners, but it was one of two commonly used designs. it was the cheaper one, it is very common for companies to try to keep their production down. At no point did they deliberately use Sub-standard materials. At no point did they deliberately use sub-standard engineering. They used things that were known to work, and commonly worked. It was the responsibility of the project's engineers to figure out if things weren't going to work and report that so that the cheapest and best could be used. Instead they kept a design that everyone thought would work fine. It wasn't over-engineered because that costs money. You don't make a ladder that goes up to the roof of a house capable of holding the weight of an adult elephant. When you are hauling 10 lb buckets up 50 feet you don't need a rope that can tow a semi truck.

I can't drive down the street in a car made of duct tape, even though it would probably hold together just fine.  You're really pulling this out of your ass now, especially in light of the testimony of people who've actually worked on oil rigs, who know what BP was doing was blatantly dangerous.  That's why we're supposed to have safety regulations, because everything works right up until it doesn't, and we're not supposed to wait until a disaster breaks out to decide what the rules were.

I'm just going to stop there. You're asking for a smoking gun or a memo that says "Cut corners, muwhahahah." There is ample evidence that it's happening without that. Also, while it's cute that you try to undercut OSHA's safety violations by claiming BP has a million fringe, non oil businesses that require OSHA supervision....BS. BP has 600+ violations. The next biggest, 4. Or is BP the only one with millions facilities? Because they aren't the dominant oil company in the US, even before DWH.

I never claimed they have millions of fringe non-oil businesses. In fact, I make a point of saying they DON'T. I stated that to tell you that there is more than one kind of business, and a safety violation in one of those
532 of those violations weren't even associated with OIL DRILLING. They were Oil processing plants. One plant, actually. The other 228 were spread out amongst all the rest of BP's operations, of which there are actually non-oil businesses. No apple farms, mind you, but things like Solar Farms(Unknown if it has any violations, but it could) and Wind Farms(Unknown if it has any violations, but it could). They also have Refineries, Pipelines, regular oil wells, Oil platforms, Tankers, and all kinds of other businesses.
Quick Google-fu will demonstrate that businesses associated with Exxon mobil have had more than a single OSHA violation this year. How the violation figures are tallied I don't know, But I am willing to bet that they are significantly more than the Media claims, and that Exxon is probably the current year's golden child and not representative of the average per facility of the industry. You haven't provided me any information on that, and yet you think the CEO of the company should be held criminally responsible because of a higher than average rate of safety violations, with 532 of them representing only a single facility (which yes, should be shut down until they get their house in order.)

So, you're saying that BP is provably carrying out dangerous practices, but you're sure that every other company in every field is doing things just as bad, even though you have nothing to point to that, and somehow that makes it all less of an issue?  You're pulling things out of your ass on multiple fronts there.  I don't doubt at all that ExxonMobile had more than one OSHA violation in the same period as BP's 600, and I have no idea how they tabulate those things.  You don't either.  Until you come up with a different tabulation, that's really the only information to go on.

But if I could pull something out of my ass myself, consider that 600 being mostly from two refineries.  How often do you suppose OSHA inspectors make it out to the thousands of off-shore oil rigs, compared to facilities on land?  Especially when you're considering safety practices on something as potentially harmful as oil drilling, "where there's smoke there's fire" is the only safe way to approach numbers like that.

And this is no reason to prosecute.

I think the way BP approached the media and the congressional hearings could be reason to prosecute, namely the way they vastly underestimated the size and details of the spill, perhaps even knowingly.  That disclosure is pretty important when you're supposed to be working with the government, but there's everything to suggest (like only releasing crappy grainy wellhead footage when they had plenty of more detailed footage) that they greatly undersold the size of the problem to try to protect their stock and liability, until the government got its act in gear.

Too many projects with too many millions of dollars at stake for them to focus all their attentions on things that from all reports they got were going right.

That is not a statement that fills me with any kind of sympathy or confidence.  I'm not one of the people calling for Tony Hayward's blood or anything, just the managers actually involved in the problem areas.  But saying "hey, that's just the way things are" is not an argument of any kind for anything, least of all an excuse for not prosecuting what went on that just wasn't publicly realized until now.

[Greiger]

Can't we all just get along, and get back to devising massive, based in DF physics, just crazy enough to have a small chance of success and a massive chance for spectacular failure plans to stop the oil?

[nenjin]

I don't have time continue the quote war. However...

A Washington-based research group says two BP refineries in the U.S. account for 97 percent of "egregious willful" violations given by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Also, THIS LINK:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/17/bp-safety-violations-osha_n_578775.html
This PROVES what I was saying about things. It wasn't the fapping platforms with 600 violations.
Read your own fapping link and then talk to me about what I (am/am not) reading.

Proves absolutely nothing that you were saying (the violations were on non-oil businesses and gas stations and were reasonable for a large oil company), while proving me....right. Comprehension and AHAH moment fail. Refineries and platforms are both part of the process, are both part of BP's safety record...and guess what, people died at both when they went boom, due to....

*drum roll*

Systematically ignoring hazardous conditions.

Apple farms, indeed.

I may or may not sift through the mountains of conjecture and slippery slope appeals you have there. Aqizzar is doing a far better job of correcting you cordially than I'll be able to.

[Kogan Loloklam]

Yeah, that's all bullshit.  People are fired for pointing out egregious problems in their business every day.  Heck, BP has been firing people going to the media during this fiasco, you think they wouldn't have been doing it before?

I'm not seeing reports of that in this thread. I'm not seeing it in the news. It's not popping up in any sidetalk anywhere about it. I'm curious to know why, if it is happening?

The willful risk came in during all the incredibly obvious safety skips, namely the sorts of things Nonsapient was pointing out.  Those sorts of decisions don't get made by the company men overseeing the drilling, at multiple sites, unless they think it's perfectly acceptable above them.  Exactly which of them is at fault, I honestly can't say, because I'm not a lawyer.  What is the precedent on business policy that leads to endangerment; does the blame lie with the people how made it, or the people who carry it out?  Really just depends on how long you want to litigate it.

The fault lies, where it always does, with the person who commited the crime. That is not the CEO, no matter how cruel his policy was.
People losing their houses who go rob banks aren't innocent because they had it tough. A crime is a crime, Gross negligence resulting in death rests in the hands of the people who did the gross negligence, not in the hands of the company that made a corporate climate where gross negligence seems acceptable. In the CEO and top Executives we aren't talking about individuals who chose to ignore safety concerns that lead to this situation. We are talking about underlings who probably never even passed it up the chain.

I can't drive down the street in a car made of duct tape, even though it would probably hold together just fine.  You're really pulling this out of your ass now, especially in light of the testimony of people who've actually worked on oil rigs, who know what BP was doing was blatantly dangerous.  That's why we're supposed to have safety regulations, because everything works right up until it doesn't, and we're not supposed to wait until a disaster breaks out to decide what the rules were.

No, I am not. I am speaking from an engineering (well, architectural) point of view. Yes it would be great if everyone designed everything to such a degree that no disasters happen, but you can't do that. Each incident becomes way too expensive then. We aren't talking about "Oh, it was only $800", we are talking about 800*the number of rigs they have in operation. And furthermore we aren't talking about one $800 gasket, we are talking about tens of thousands of dollars of cuts here and there. Who among you bitched about $3 a gallon gas? A simple search will probably give me the answer here. These "cost-cutting measures" are what creates cheap oil. Are they good? No. Will they continue to happen even if regulated? Yes. Designs are always created to be only as sufficient as is needed. Your "Duct Tape" car probably will not run, because if it did and met the bare minimum standards it would be on the road now.

You got ONE individual here who said what BP was doing was blatantly dangerous, but he said that not about BP's operation, but about how all companies do Oil. That was something fairly important to note. So you use his statements that it was dangerous as a reason that BP top executives and their CEO need to be held responsible in a criminal sense for the guys who died on the rig?

Look at all the stuff that the BP employees who were working on that rig were saying. They saw the problem but BP didn't. They knew it was going to happen but didn't say anything. Perhaps if they were given a few weeks to get their balls out then maybe one would have said something. I don't think so though, and I think that the problem isn't in BP's corporate climate. I think the problem is in the fact they didn't actually think that there was a problem and didn't want to "rock the boat". I see it all the time creating dangerous situations, and I've seen executives in some of these situations show great appreciation for the boat being rocked, no matter how inconvienient people think it might be for them.

Take a pure mercenary view of it. Do you honestly think they'd prefer an outcome where there is damage to their machinery and more important to them, public image? You think that's an outcome they would prefer over a little slowdown? I don't buy it. Accidents are expensive, and failure to report known dangerous work conditions is pretty serious when it comes to avoiding accidents. I doubt very much that Tony Hayward knew that his stuff was damaged. He might have been familiar with the fact that his company did their sealing process in a dangerous manner, but I doubt that as well. The whole disaster smacks of middle management bungling the thing up. Those individuals are NEVER punished when it comes down to it except with termination. Those are the ones who cost the lives. You call for the Criminal prosecution of CEOs and Top Executives because they are rich, not because they deserve it. People deserve prosecution, just not the ones yourself and nenjin are focusing on.

So, you're saying that BP is provably carrying out dangerous practices, but you're sure that every other company in every field is doing things just as bad, even though you have nothing to point to that, and somehow that makes it all less of an issue?  You're pulling things out of your ass on multiple fronts there.  I don't doubt at all that ExxonMobile had more than one OSHA violation in the same period as BP's 600, and I have no idea how they tabulate those things.  You don't either.  Until you come up with a different tabulation, that's really the only information to go on.

But if I could pull something out of my ass myself, consider that 600 being mostly from two refineries.  How often do you suppose OSHA inspectors make it out to the thousands of off-shore oil rigs, compared to facilities on land?  Especially when you're considering safety practices on something as potentially harmful as oil drilling, "where there's smoke there's fire" is the only safe way to approach numbers like that.

I can tabulate this, Deepwater Horizon had no OSHA citations. It was the golden child of the Oil Industry. A Flawless record. As to how OSHA inspectors get out there, the same way the crew and materials get out there. You can ask Non-sapient about how I know that they all do it, or anyone who has ever been associated with industrial processing of raw material.

So, why does it matter that they aren't doing anything more or less dangerous? Because the CEOs cannot stop this. The only people who can are the management on those rigs. If the management of those rigs isn't held accountable for their own criminal negligence, then how are you going to hold other people accountable for it? These aren't slaves or robots, but thinking human beings with not just the right, but responsibility to execute their best judgment to prevent the loss of life.

I think the way BP approached the media and the congressional hearings could be reason to prosecute, namely the way they vastly underestimated the size and details of the spill, perhaps even knowingly.  That disclosure is pretty important when you're supposed to be working with the government, but there's everything to suggest (like only releasing crappy grainy wellhead footage when they had plenty of more detailed footage) that they greatly undersold the size of the problem to try to protect their stock and liability, until the government got its act in gear.

This isn't prosecuting under criminal negligence, so I don't care in the aspect of this discussion. I don't think there is any crime there to prosecute. I do agree that they should have, and that the company should be responsible for it, but I don't think this goes to criminal prosecution of the CEO or any top executives.

That is not a statement that fills me with any kind of sympathy or confidence.  I'm not one of the people calling for Tony Hayward's blood or anything, just the managers actually involved in the problem areas.  But saying "hey, that's just the way things are" is not an argument of any kind for anything, least of all an excuse for not prosecuting what went on that just wasn't publicly realized until now.

Then why are you arguing with me? I'm saying that we need to focus on the people who are responsible and stop looking at the figureheads. Prosecution of the figureheads has a net damaging effect on our economy. Prosecution of the people who did the fuckup that cost lives shows that even managers need to pay attention and be willing to take a little flack from on high to ensure the safety of their people.

...
Proves absolutely nothing that you were saying (the violations were on non-oil businesses and gas stations and were reasonable for a large oil company), while proving me....right. Comprehension and AHAH moment fail. Refineries and platforms are both part of the process, are both part of BP's safety record...and guess what, people died at both when they went boom, due to....

*drum roll*

Systematically ignoring hazardous conditions.
...

My statements were that the horrible safety record of BP is irrelevant to this discussion. The fact that none of those citations demonstrated a serious problem with Deepwater Horizons or even the majority of their oil platforms is what I was getting at. OSHA violations are for some very stupid stuff sometimes. All of it is written in someone's blood, but it can be for some stupid shit. I'm certain a few new ones are already in there due to this accident. The Deepwater Horizons platform didn't even have any citations at all, so it wasn't a systematic ignoring of things that even the top executives can see.

[nenjin]

My statements were that the horrible safety record of BP is irrelevant to this discussion

Ok, I get it. You've got your position and you're going to stick to it, no matter how ridiculous the above statement is in the context of this disaster.

Nice debating with you.

[andrea]

"It doesn't matter how many of their platforms are on the brink of self annihilation. This one worked perfectly until it didn't."

[ChairmanPoo]

I think this guy sticks to these debate principles

[Aqizzar]

Kogan, I'll admit that I should have mentioned right up front that I personally never called for Hayward or any other BP talking head to take the brunt of prosecution over this mess, at least in lieu of any particular evidence of personal involvement.  That said, when you acknowledged me saying that at the end, it would have been nice if you'd gone back through your response and taken out all the parts lumping me in with the Robespierre crowd.

There's so many parts of that post that could be picked apart that I'll just wrap them into answering your question.  Why am I arguing with you?  Because you were, again, and still are talking out of your ass.  You willfully admit you don't know any more about this than I or anyone, but you insist over and over that your assessment is the only right one.  You call BP workers nutless for supposedly not raising objections to the unsafe business practices, having absolutely nothing to support that idea.  You simultaneously say that there was no significant safety problem because nobody would be stupid enough to let there be, while saying that it's impossible to not have systematic safety problems because nobody can keep track of a business that size or spare the expense, with again nothing to say either way but your impressions of the story.  And then you throw in an unprompted bit about gas prices, because hey it's always a good time to call your opponents hypocrites.

And finally you try to back out of the issue by qualifying your argument as just being about the particular rig and how Tony Hayward wasn't personally involved with it.  Which is entirely true, except for all your talk about companywide violations, safety culture in the company, and all these other red herrings you keep throwing in apparently just to win an argument about whether the CEO is at fault.  I again never said he was solely or largely responsible.  I've argued with you because I think you're full of crap.

[Kogan Loloklam]

Proof the BP employees are nutless:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=BP+Employee+fired+for+speaking+out
Searching the top 20 for any mention of an employee who was fired for rasing safety concerns...
One for talking to the media... No others. Yes, the BP employees ARE nutless. They lost their lives due to something any idiot can see was dangerous because they were too afraid to lose their jobs? If they would have even lost their jobs, which I am not seeing any evidence to think it was true.

You can think whatever the hell you want about my argumentative skills, but it is a simple fact that no CEO or top executive is going to give a flying fap about something that is going well, and nobody gave them any reason to think anything other than the Deepwater Horizion project was going well. You show me anything that counters that and I'll listen to what you have to say. You can dismiss all of what I said however you want, but in this case yes, lack of information does equal proof. We have plenty of information about everything else that you can be sure if it existed it'd be there. The people that have attempted to use other stuff in its place would have used it if it existed. (and I'm talking about individuals such as Williams, who was quick to point out that while he stood there and said nothing about large chunks of rubber coming out of the hole the BP manager said it wasn't anything special.)

I may not have worked on anything to do with oil, but I do understand dealing with OSHA and working in dangerous conditions. Everyone's responsible for looking out for safety in those situations. I'd be surprised if our resident oil rig expert would say that this wasn't the stated position of the oil company he worked for, even in the 1970s. I'd be surprised if that same information wasn't in standard BP safety manuals, especially since such manuals were shared by Chevron, Shell, and ExxonMobil.

You are right though, it was wrong of me to continue in the path as if your position was nenjin's. Most of what I said was to address him giving blanket agreement with you, which required a response.

[ChairmanPoo]

Actually, it  proves that your search-fu is weak. Have you tried googling from anything other than the exact phrase you typed?
Such as...

http://www.google.es/search?hl=es&client=firefox-a&hs=SCO&rls=org.mozilla%3Aes-ES%3Aofficial&q=BP+whistleblower+employee&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

http://www.google.es/search?hl=es&client=firefox-a&hs=zri&rls=org.mozilla%3Aes-ES%3Aofficial&q=BP+employee+fired&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

http://www.google.es/search?hl=es&client=firefox-a&hs=0EO&rls=org.mozilla%3Aes-ES%3Aofficial&q=BP+worker+fired+speak&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

http://www.google.es/search?hl=es&client=firefox-a&hs=Gvi&rls=org.mozilla%3Aes-ES%3Aofficial&q=BP+worker+fired+whistle+blow&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

[PTTG??]

While it's true we must resist the mob impulse, it occurs to me that it is the CEO's responsibility, in part, to ensure that the other  employees are fulfiling theirs.

[Kogan Loloklam]

While it's true we must resist the mob impulse, it occurs to me that it is the CEO's responsibility, in part, to ensure that the other  employees are fulfiling theirs.

So what do you propose we do?

[PTTG??]

While it's true we must resist the mob impulse, it occurs to me that it is the CEO's responsibility, in part, to ensure that the other  employees are fulfiling theirs.

So what do you propose we do?

Execute them all.

[Nonsapient]

While it's true we must resist the mob impulse, it occurs to me that it is the CEO's responsibility, in part, to ensure that the other  employees are fulfiling theirs.

I'm honestly against this, to a degree.

Enron still exists guys.  A few people lost their jobs, and there was a management shuffle.  The inherent structure of the company went on as EOG, Enron Oil and Gas.

They're STILL doing shady shit.  I've been asked to falsify records to show they weren't PLANNING to steal oil from their neighbor.

Now, as that pertains to what is going on:  the point of a CEO position is to have a figurehead that can be pulled down;  a way to personalize the corporation.  I do think Hayward should lose his job,  because he failed to prevent something like this on his watch.  Beyond that, there are some drilling engineers that deserve prison time; even the guys at halliburton would have been privy to the most minute details of the well. 

The people responsible for this are the drilling/production engineers at BP, and the company man on location.  They should be prosecuted.   Everyone below them involved in this is a grunt.  The company man is treated as a God on his rig.  I have known of motorcycles being flown out TO AN OFFSHORE  RIG as christmas presents for company men,  by the owners of the rig.  Whoever that man was is the one that should take the most blame, and maybe the production engineers.

Also: just for everyone's info,  I wasn't just a rig hand.  I was involved in directional drilling.  I didn't just throw pipe down a hole;  I've designed wellbores.

If anyone has questions for me I'll chime in again.