The Gulf

[Edd]

What amazes me is is total lack of knowledge - or at least his lack of knowledge when getting grilled today..

So typical though of managers and executives today. They aren't experts regarding the very business they are in charge of. This drives me crazy.

 

[Puck it]

Cheap oil is pretty f&ckin expensive if you ask me

That is a risk for the exploration. The companies have the technogy to drill at angles and hit these deeper reserves. However, people did not want the oil wells close to shore.

Oil is in everything. It is in your ski boots, jacket, pants, goggles, helmet, skis, even the plastic loft ticket bails. People would be screaming if oil was $8 a gallon. Look at the effect at $4 a gallon. At 8, ski resorts would be hurting. Hotels would be hurting. Face it the economy is run by oil until we find an alternative that has a better price per unit energy then there will be drilling or until we run out. The companies will figure what happened and try to prevent an event like this happening again. It is called good engineering.

 

[Puck it]

So typical though of managers and executives today. They aren't experts regarding the very business they are in charge of. This drives me crazy.

One thing they care about. Stock price.

 

[mondeo]

And this thread started out so rationally...

A CEO's job is to maximize profits. That's what they're there for. Not maximizing profits as a top executive of a publicly traded company is unethical.

Even with a CEO that's come up through the ranks, they're never going to know all aspects of the business with nuts and bolts details. My company's last president (and now president of a sister company) was an engineer his entire life before becoming president. But if one of our products blew up, I doubt he would do any better in front of a congressional panel than the BP CEO, the auto CEOs, or the financial CEOs. Congressional panels are complete BS where members of congress feel free to ask about minutae that only the person that did the work would know the answer to. The kinds of questions where, in business, a completely acceptable response would be to take the action to get the information after the meeting. CEOs look bad, congress looks good, nothing's accomplished. But hey, they're just fat cat CEOs, who cares?

I've dealt with most of the engineering executives in my company, including manufacturing engineering. Management styles may differ, but they are all brilliant, (relatively) reasonable people. I could see most of them, if they were execs for an oil company visiting a rig that cost $500k/day to run, pushing the crew of the rig to finish faster, and pushing specific options to do so. That's their job. More, faster, cheaper oil production. According to the media and public opinion, that makes the executives automatically responsible for what happens. I call BS on that. Unless there's a corporate culture of yes men, the blame goes on the operators. You better have a good reason why not to do something or state valid concerns and request time to assess risk, but I've never met an executive who would force a bad decision to save a buck. In my experience, most of the stuff that execs get blamed for are merely suggestions that lower level spineless employees just go off and execute rather than push back.

 

[Puck it]

Your statement is very true. But a lot of execs do not get involved or come around talk to the lwer level people to understand the true problems. Just my thoughts

 

[Marc]

And this thread started out so rationally...

A CEO's job is to maximize profits. That's what they're there for. Not maximizing profits as a top executive of a publicly traded company is unethical.

Even with a CEO that's come up through the ranks, they're never going to know all aspects of the business with nuts and bolts details. My company's last president (and now president of a sister company) was an engineer his entire life before becoming president. But if one of our products blew up, I doubt he would do any better in front of a congressional panel than the BP CEO, the auto CEOs, or the financial CEOs. Congressional panels are complete BS where members of congress feel free to ask about minutae that only the person that did the work would know the answer to. The kinds of questions where, in business, a completely acceptable response would be to take the action to get the information after the meeting. CEOs look bad, congress looks good, nothing's accomplished. But hey, they're just fat cat CEOs, who cares?

I've dealt with most of the engineering executives in my company, including manufacturing engineering. Management styles may differ, but they are all brilliant, (relatively) reasonable people. I could see most of them, if they were execs for an oil company visiting a rig that cost $500k/day to run, pushing the crew of the rig to finish faster, and pushing specific options to do so. That's their job. More, faster, cheaper oil production. According to the media and public opinion, that makes the executives automatically responsible for what happens. I call BS on that. Unless there's a corporate culture of yes men, the blame goes on the operators. You better have a good reason why not to do something or state valid concerns and request time to assess risk, but I've never met an executive who would force a bad decision to save a buck. In my experience, most of the stuff that execs get blamed for are merely suggestions that lower level spineless employees just go off and execute rather than push back.

I half agree. In a lot of other corporations I'd fully agree with your analysis. But with BP... they've had problems with safety reg violations across the breadth of their business for quite some time now. It pretty much all came to a head with the Texas City explosion. Hayworth was supposed to usher in a new era and culture of safety and responsibility. I think that's where a lot of the current angst towards him specifically comes from.

But yeah, congressional hearings are just a chance for congressmen to posture and give an emotional outlet to their ticked off constituents. As far as I'm concerned. And that goes for both sides of the aisle.

 

[Puck it]

This would go over like a lead balloon.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/gallon_gas_9GlF3o1xIcIBelOV3k0RsK

 

[Marc]

This would go over like a lead balloon.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/gallon_gas_9GlF3o1xIcIBelOV3k0RsK

I saw nothing except a very distracting sidebar. Thanks for posting about Megan Fox.

 

[dmc]

So typical though of managers and executives today. They aren't experts regarding the very business they are in charge of. This drives me crazy.

The best CEOs I've worked with understand the whole enterprise from the ground up...

The worst live in their own patch like marketing or finance...

This guy knows... He's smart... But he's lying...

 

[dmc]

I saw nothing except a very distracting sidebar. Thanks for posting about Megan Fox.

I like to oil her up... and... never mind,,,

 

[Puck it]

I saw nothing except a very distracting sidebar. Thanks for posting about Megan Fox.

Nice catch. I missed the sidebar. I was worried about the $7 a gallon and how it would affect my skiing. Megan made forget about that.

 

[drjeff]

The best CEOs I've worked with understand the whole enterprise from the ground up...

The worst live in their own patch like marketing or finance...

This guy knows... He's smart... But he's lying...

Being the boss(of any sized company), the vast majority of the time is so much more difficult than most people could even comprehend. Let alone in a situation like this, where even if BP is currently doing everything they possibly can (and who knows if they are???) and ends up taking care of everyone directly affected in an appropriate way in the coming weeks/months/years - he can never do right in the views of so many.

 

[drjeff]

I saw nothing except a very distracting sidebar. Thanks for posting about Megan Fox.

I like to oil her up... and... never mind,,,

Nice catch. I missed the sidebar. I was worried about the $7 a gallon and how it would affect my skiing. Megan made forget about that.

Now if Ms. Fox wants to do her part to help clean up the Gulf, by say swimming in it and collecting some of the oil on herself, I would gladly volunteer to give her a very, very, very thorough post swim clean off/wipe down to make sure that there wouldn't be 1 square millimeter of her that had any oil on it!

 

[smitty77]

I saw nothing except a very distracting sidebar. Thanks for posting about Megan Fox.

You need to dig for the real news. Apparently, monitoring the beaches of Southern Florida is not without perks:

 

[ski_resort_observer]

So long as they don't put any damn windmills. Those things are downright hazardous.

Yea, oil spills don't kill enough birds and other wildlife.....unreal

 

[bigbog]

....you tell me that this "what if" scenario wasnt played out by any of the engineers/govt agenices as to have a plan of attack just in case if and when something like this happens.....

You can bet there was BIG $$$ distributed to engineers and to the best Congress money can buy(ie...MMS..etc) to prevent that.....and safety/environmental-safeguards would've been to cut into profits and had it come from the Federal Gov't from 1994-Present would've sounded like that ugly word "socialism", wouldn't have it? (Not a shot at conservative Republicans...fwiw Clinton was almost as lax as Dubya'..imho).