The spring 2010 BP oil disaster could have been prevented: expert
through its Justice Department. According to the 39-page document, the words and actions of the company regarding safety “should not be tolerated even in a medium-sized company producing goods for a shopping mall.”
Woolfson emphasizes two other critical factors known as “regulatory capture” and the fear-stricken, disunited employees. Regulatory capture means that the independent agency inspecting an industry identifies itself more and more with the companies of that industry and their interests.
This happened to the Petroleum Engineering Division under the Ministry of Energy in Great Britain, and the Mineral Management Service (MMS), the federal institution in the United States charged with monitoring the offshore oil industry.
While the regulations were gradually tightened for drilling oil on land, deep-sea drilling continued to remain the exception. This applied in particular to the Gulf of Mexico, where the number of exemptions from various environmental requirements increased from three in 1997 up to 795 in 2000, all to avoid “cumbersome and unnecessary delays” in production. A program for tightened safety regulations dragged through endless consulting processes with the industry and ultimately never bore fruit. When the MMS proposed updated safety requirements in 2003, the White House vetoed the proposal.
The cutbacks also affected the regulatory agency. The dwindling number of inspectors lacked sufficient training, and became more and more dependent on the expertise and information of the oil companies. This is according to the Obama-appointed independent National Commission’s own 2011 report on Deepwater Horizon. The same weakness was raised following the Piper Alpha disaster. The industry’s promises regarding self-regulation, voluntary enforcement and standards of conduct effectively torpedoed all demands for stricter supervision of safety arrangements. The National Commission in the United States wrote:
“It is inexcusable that a regulatory agency is so inadequate in its fundamental safety tasks.”
The hesitation among employees and the fear of making independent decisions also affected the catastrophic development of events in both cases, Woolfson states. On Deepwater Horizon, for example, the crew dared not make a decision about activating an emergency system that could have constrained the disaster. Woolfson describes a culture among the workers of silence and fear of being stamped as a troublemaker in the event that they expressed concerns over safety issues on board. Attempts at unionizing have been thwarted.
In total, BP has claims for damages against it totaling almost $70 billion.
The company denies all accusations of negligence and misconduct. Woolfson elaborates: “The company may have to pay a high price…but the fundamental questions we must ask are: What went wrong, who is responsible, and how can we prevent it from happening again?”
“Industrial accidents don’t just ‘happen’, they are often the result of a weak culture of safety and companies systematically failing to prioritize safety.”
Following both catastrophes, the regulatory agencies and legal codes were reorganized and strengthened. Woolfson discusses the risks of “gradual erosion,” however, which, in time, will lead back to diminished thinking regarding safety. As oil becomes more expensive and less accessible, the risks in extracting it also increase.
The study will be published in 2013 under the title Safety failures the offshore oil industry: from Piper Alpha to Deepwater Horizon in the book Governance, Change and the Working Environment (Amityville: Baywood Press).
