Bureaucracy and Oil

There's an old saying that zero compounded is still zero. Ignorance compounded is still ignorance. Bureaucracy compounded is still bureaucracy. Fifty-four days and counting as crude oil gushes from the bottom of the ocean in the Gulf of Mexico. Why can't it be stopped? Why is it taking so long to stop it?

In a word, BUREAUCRACY!

When bureaucracy meets bureaucracy nothing much gets done and what is accomplished takes a long, long time. At one end of the spectrum we have a British company laden down in the true sense of European bureaucracy, and at the other end of the spectrum we have an American (?) president and his administration laden down with their own sense of bureaucracy. Thus, not much gets accomplished because its the burden of bureaucracy and its inefficiencies that rules the day.

I spent most of my adult working life with two major American oil companies, AMOCO and ARCO. ARCO was the major player in the discovery and development of the Prudhoe Bay Field on The North Slope of Alaska, and the construction and operation of the pipe line from Prudhoe Bay across Alaska to the port at Valdez on the southern coast of Alaska.

I spent the most part of five years working in Alaska during the development and construction phases. British Petroleum (BP) was a minor partner and not the behemoth oil giant it is today. That came about through the acquisition of AMOCO and ARCO by BP with backing of the British government. Working on the North Slope we often wondered why it took BP so long to something and why so often it went askew. BP's management style was in keeping with European government bureaucracy, "bean counting" (accounting), and excessive regulation. Whereas, the American style was engineering oriented with a determined "lets get it done" attitude. That's what is missing today in the Gulf disaster.