The Reputation for Safety at BP

John Browne BP’s chief executive from 1995 to 2007, he is most credited for turning BP into the global behemoth it is today. Ignored small projects and went after the riskiest, most expensive and potentially most lucrative ventures. Business strategy was similar to that of a financial company, turning over managers into new jobs with tough profit targets and then switching them out again before they had time to see the consequences of their work. Stepped down in 2007 under pressure by the company.

Texas City Refinery incident of March 2005 “We have never seen a site where the notion ‘I could die today’ was so real.” – the Telos Group Built in 1934 and poorly maintained, however it still remained America’s 2 nd largest refinery Explosion occurred in 170 ft tower after it was filled too high with hydrocarbons, shooting unstable compounds into the sky 15 dead and more than 170 injured BP had to pay a record $21 million in fines for the accident

Thunderhorse platform incident of July Hurricane Dennis caused the problem to arise when it did A valve had been installed backwards, causing the vessel to flood during the hurricane Further investigation found the underwater pipelines brittle and full of cracks, due to a poor welding job

Prudhoe Bay pipeline leak of 2006 Worst spill ever on the North Slope of Alaska – 200,000 gallons of oil Went undetected for five days The third largest spill on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Widespread corrosion, and miles of under-maintained pipeline BP paid more than $20 million in fines in retribution

Tony Hayward Became chief executive of BP in May 2007 Kept many of Browne’s business strategies, continuing to go after “the tough stuff that others cannot or choose not to do,” as Hayward has said himself. Focusing on cutting back on costs within the company eliminated tens of thousands of jobs, effectively streamlining management but making the company more reliant on outside contractors Set up a new companywide management system to evaluate risks and standardize safety practices

Deepwater Horizon rig incident of April 2010 At the time of it’s operation, Horizon was the least efficient rig working in the Gulf for BP 44% of its days were nonproductive pushed costs up to $29 million over budget in 2010 alone Workers had "high incentive to find shortcuts and take risks. You only ever got questioned about why you couldn't spend less—never more," says Ross Macfarlane, a former BP health and safety manager who was laid off in 2008 “Some 46 percent of crew members surveyed felt that some of the workforce feared reprisals for reporting unsafe situations, and 15 percent felt that there were not always enough people available to carry out work safely.” - according to a survey done of Transocean crew on the rig just a few weeks before the incident

Moving Forward Greater responsibility on all companies to learn from the mistakes made by all other companies in the industry. The existence of a better self-policing agency, potentially modeled after the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations.