Culture, is the hardest thing to change in a company. New culture means you have to believe it’s true, like a religion…But, let’s not go there.
Good idea. Let’s stay right here, on the culture issue:
Some of the employees, speaking anonymously, said BP follows an “operate to failure” attitude.
Kovac said that means BP Alaska avoids spending money on “upkeep” and instead runs the equipment until it breaks down.
A top BP Prudhoe Bay official, who has grown “disillusioned” with the company’s management style over the past year, agreed. “Someone was clearly not paying attention to the flow,” said the official, who also requested anonymity because he feared retaliation for discussing internal matters. “The temperature dropped and the line froze. This shouldn’t have happened. I equate this with a lack of operating discipline and place the blame squarely on leadership.”
In January, an employee at Lisburne sent an e-mail to BP officials in Alaska saying the facility was “operating in [an] unsafe condition.” The employee, whose name was redacted, listed more than a dozen pieces of crucial production equipment that he said were not working or were out of service during the time of the spill, thus “leaving no back up to running equipment and equipment out of service which should be on-line as per the system requirements to run the plant.”
“With minimum manning in maintenance and operations we are basically running a broken plant with too few people to address the problems in a timely and safe manner,” the employee said.
“Operations can not rely on Management to provide them with a safe and reliable plant to work in. The management of our maintenance at [Lisburne Production Center] simply is not working to maintain a safe operation. This gap in maintenance management causes problems that increase the overall risk of plant integrity and personnel safety.”
Jeanne Pascal, the former debarment counsel at the EPA’s Seattle office who worked on BP cases for a decade, said in addition to the louvers at Lisburne, the turbines at the facility have not been working properly for about 10 years.
Culture change is the hardest thing anyone can go through. It changes all the rules you know, all the ways you have accepted as ‘gospel’, and the daily requirements to adhere to a new set of values.
Exceptional point. Let’s discuss this, and see how these events might directly relate to the changing, or encouragment, of a “culture”:
A) Two BP management officials, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal matters, said budget cuts were largely the reason equipment was not upgraded or repaired, and indicated that much of it has yet to be addressed. BP’s Alaska budget for 2010 is $1 billion, compared with $1.1 billion in 2009 and $1.3 billion in 2008.
Moreover, according to two BP Alaska officials, projects related to “safety and integrity” have been cut by 30 percent this year and BP’s senior managers receive bonuses for not using funds from BP’s designated maintenance budget, a company wide policy implemented by Hayward. Documents show that Hayward also implemented a cost-cutting directive following the oil spills in 2006 in Prudhoe Bay.
B) Halliburton, the contractor hired by BP to cement the well, warned BP that the well could have a “SEVERE gas flow problem” if BP lowered the final string of casing with only six centrali zers instead of the 21 recommended by Halliburton. BP rejected Halliburton’s advice to use additional centralizers. In an e-mail on April 16, a BP official involved in the decision explained: " it will take 10 hours to install them . … . I do not like this." Later that day, another official recognized the risks of proceeding with insufficient centralizers but commented: “who cares, it’s done, end of story, will probably be fine.”
C) A top BP Prudhoe Bay official, who has grown “disillusioned” with the company’s management style over the past year, agreed. “Someone was clearly not paying attention to the flow,” said the official, who also requested anonymity because he feared retaliation for discussing internal matters. “The temperature dropped and the line froze. This shouldn’t have happened. I equate this with a lack of operating discipline and place the blame squarely on leadership.”
You have excellent points to offer. BP, has problems, but I can assure you it isn’t worldwide. BP, inherited the problems which AMOCO and ARCO presented then with.
Was Hayward (and his management team) the head of the entire company not also the head of worldwide ops? Was he an inherited fossil from Amoco, or Arco…can’t remember which, do you?
Career: Tony joined BP in 1982 and began his career as a rig geologist in the North Sea. Following a series of technical and commercial roles in Europe, Asia and South America, he returned to London in 1997 as member of the Upstream Executive Committee. He became Group Treasurer in 2000, Chief Executive for BP’s upstream activities and member of the Main Board of BP in 2003. In May 2007, Tony was appointed Group Chief Executive of BP p.l.c.
My feeling is that all blowouts are preventable.
You may be right. All we need to do is excise the offal from the tippy-top of the skim. Long-term jail terms for the management and BOD, financial ruin for the shareholders, bondholders, etc., might do a world of good in helping to nudge that “cultural change” along.
“The prospect of being hung in the morning concentrates the mind wonderfully.”
- Samuel Johnson