BP Oil Spill: What Not To Do

Although BP is having some success capturing the oil from their undersea well, some is still escaping into the Gulf, adding to the enormous amount of oil already spilled. As the oil slick continues to spread, and oil begins to come ashore in coastal communities, the sense of frustration in the general populace continues to mount.

I have been reading a lot of wild proposals coming from both op-ed writers and the commenters on news sites. I thought I might react to several of the most preposterous.

Boycott BP
This has got to be the dumbest idea yet put forward. Let’s “punish” BP by not buying their gasoline. Even if it were possible to get enough people acting in concert to impact BP’s sales, this would be a bad idea. Cleaning up this spill is going to take years, and a ton of money. If BP is going to be held responsible, they are going to need a continuing stream of cash flow to pay for this mess. They are going to get that money by continuing with their on-going business of producing and selling oil and gas. Starving your cash cow is never a good idea.

Turn the situation over to the armed forces
What are they going to do? Defend the beaches by shooting the oil as it tries to come ashore? Launch air strikes against an oil slick? I was in the army, and I was actually in a Corps of Engineers unit that had earthmoving and construction capabilities. One thing we were not trained or equipped to do was clean up spilled oil. Even more ludicrous is the idea that the military will take over efforts to shut down the leaking well. All they can do is provide unskilled labor. The know-how, gear, and systems for cleaning up will have to be provided by someone else.

A variant of this is the plea for the government to take over the effort to plug the leaking well. Nobody in the government knows jack-all about undersea well drilling operations. There is no evidence anywhere that BP’s management and operating personnel aren’t doing everything they can to plug this well, and they seem to be throwing all their resources into trying to solve the technical problem.

Criminal prosecutions against BP executives
I read a news story earlier this week that said people being polled wanted to see criminal prosecutions by a ratio of two to one. To even conduct the opinion poll is an example of mobacracy at its worst. I am hard put to imagine what the crime is supposed to be that the senior executives committed. Did they knowingly buy defective blowout preventers because they were cheap? Did they direct personnel to falsify test reports and bypass safety protocols? No evidence of any such activity has come to light.

Stop drilling oil wells
The fantasy here is that screwing in compact fluorescent bulbs and driving hybrid cars will drop our energy usage to the point that we can stop using petroleum. Even if we cut our energy usage in half, we still need to face the fact that all of our transportation systems are totally dependent on liquid fuels. Unless we want to outlaw air conditioning and airplanes, and put everyone on a bicycle, we’re going to continue to need oil to make our civilization function.

Frustrating as it is to watch the live video feed showing oil continuing to pour out BP’s well at the bottom of the Gulf, they will eventually solve the problem and seal off the leak. Containing, and then cleaning up all of the leaked oil will take years, maybe decades, and BP should have to pay, both for the clean up efforts and for the losses other people are going to suffer as a result of this disaster. As a going concern, BP has the size and scope of operations to compensate the victims of this colossal accident.

But striking out at the company as a result of built up frustration won’t solve anybody’s problems.