criminal charges? so i don’t know if it’s a cementing problem or a drilling problem, but I suspect in spite of all this hotheaded blather that it’s kind of like deciding whether a shooting was a gun thing or an ammo thing.
probably whoever’s making the bucks ought to be responsible. So what about criminal charges? good or bad? will it incentivize execuives to maybe give a rat’s ass about whether or not they destroy the earth? Would it offend your sensibility to throw ten or twenty corp execs in the hoosegow for a few decades? would it not maybe give other oil execs a moment’s pause before they go for it? instead of counting on “endless years ina civil court fend off plaintiffs” maybe the risk benefit analysis might change if the executives added in the speedier criminal trial that might occur a year or two from the date of incident and might result in them losing everything. certainly would change my personal risk/benefit analysis.
personally, i’d like to see gas at 10 bucks a gallon minimum. I have no particular opinion on this incident other than it sure looks like someone f***ed up, whether it’s the drill guy, the cement guy, or whoever…if this is just the cost fo doing business, i think maybe we ought not to be in this business…[/quote]
scaredy, as a lawyer, you know the difficulty in proving intent to commit criminal negligence. Add the number of legal staff that corporations can afford to buy into the equation, and I come up with a “not guilty” verdict as my answer.
I’m with you on wanting to see the corporations and their executives hit where it hurts, but my gut feeling is that they do a hundred times better job on risk management where the possibility of criminal charges is concerned than they do on risk to the general public or to their employees. As I mentioned in an earlier post, this is certainly not what I learned when studying risk in college. But whether or not it’s what they’re teaching today, it certainly appears to be the widely accepted method. “We’re not going to contemplate it, not going to analyze it, study it, worry about it. Risk simply doesn’t exist in our equation. But, in the extremely unlikely occurrence of shit going down, we have staff who are extremely fluent in technojargon, and we will set them loose on anyone who has the temerity to ask questions. They’ll simply weave a sticky verbal web, fashion it into a noose, and let the investigators hang themselves.”
Allan stated it eloquently in the last paragraph of an earlier post: “…the parallels between Wall Street and the oil/gas companies are eerie. Both sides count on lawyers and lobbyists and highly paid engineering (or mathematics, in the case of Wall Street) consultants to come in and argue that these various companies did everything possible to analyze and mitigate risk and then they count on endless years spent in court, fending off plaintiffs.”
What’s really bad about this prevailing attitude is that, in many companies these days, fast-talking junior staff (especially those with Ivy League 4.0 GPA double or triple major credentials) can rise to positions of incredible power because of their brilliant innovations. Senior management buys into an idea that a freshman accounting major could see through, because they don’t want to embarrass themselves by asking questions (classic remake of “The Emperor’s New Clothes”). It’s much easier to act like you know what the Wharton grad whiz kid is talking about, allow him to implement it with no oversight or restrictions, and make a shitload of money. When the scheme invariably implodes, creating disastrous impact on the lives and bank accounts of customers, stockholders, and rank-and-file employees, the CEO and other senior staff who let WhartonBoy off his leash, shrug their shoulders, tap their abundant supply of arrogance, and show up at the inevitable government hearing (a.k.a., taxpayer-sponsored grandstanding event). Typical responses to congressmen brimming with faux indignation and outrage? “You can’t pin this on me”, “What right have you to summon me to this hearing?”, and “When will the bailout money be in our account?” Then we are treated to testimony from the whiz kid, who proceeds to bullshit and buffalo the congressional panel as he did with his company CEO. In an eerie repeat of that occasion, the members of the panel don’t ask any questions, either, for fear of appearing clueless.
Sorry. I’ve got this overwhelming pessimism thing going this weekend….
