Numbers never tell me enough of the story.
The trial to determine British Petroleum’s accountability for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig catastrophe began Feb. 25. 2013. I’ve put quite a bit of time into reading investigative reports from BP and the Deepwater Horizon Study group, and it all comes back to the numbers.
The budget-slashing tactics BP used to garner higher profits for its shareholders. The ratio of chemicals in the cement slurry mixture intended to maintain the well’s integrity. The pressure readouts the rig’s crew appears to have misinterpreted when they chose to proceed with the operation at depths no one had attempted to drill before.
The timeline of the last minutes before two explosions killed eleven people.
Numbers riddle the statements about the accident’s aftermath as well: the months before the well stopped spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, the miles of coastline saturated with oil and the people unable to work for fear of fishing up contaminated animals. Never mind the monetary figures as to what BP, Transocean and Halliburton might pay out in fines or settlements for the environmental damage and lost revenue caused by the spill.
I’ve had my fill of the numbers, and I’m not going to regurgitate them in hopes they might help me prove something.
An obsession with numbers caused this catastrophe – specifically, the obsession with profit. The Deepwater Horizon rig attempted its operation with faulty equipment and materials. Attorneys will eventually distribute liability for those oversights amongst the parties involved, but none can claim innocence that their fixation on attaining higher profit figures helped facilitate this catastrophe in some form.
Modern life would collapse without the oil industry. It’s easy to fail to appreciate how many applications petroleum has beyond filling up a gas tank. We use plastics and other materials manufactured with petroleum daily. It would be a fool’s errand to call for abandoning all oil usage. The oil must flow, but the private interests supplying it continue to prove their disregard for the responsibilities required to steward this vital substance.
The for-profit business model has failed. The oil industry has not maintained safe environments for its employees, nor has it maintained a reliable stream of the oily lifeblood that keeps the world operating.
I don’t want to hear the numbers – how many billions BP will pay out in reparations to the Gulf Coast states, fines to the federal government or compensation to individual citizens. Make damn sure someone takes over who can be trusted to oversee harvesting this resource without bowing before the bottom line.
Speaking of fool’s errands.
