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Annoyed at the Press Over Macondo (and Ecuador)

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Disclaimer: I have worked in the oil industry 30 years. I started with Western Geophysical, moved to Texaco, and now work for Chevron. I have no specific knowledge of BP, the Macondo well, or Ecuador. The views expressed on this blog are my own personal views and do not necessarily represent those of my employer. I am not defending BP. It looks like here were several errors in human judgment leading up to the blowout. These errors were probably caused by people who did not understand their fields well enough to really understand the riskiness of what they were doing, and whose judgment was tainted by pressures to cut costs. BP seems to have had a really defective culture (See Bob Lewis' column on cost cutting and risk) ( see also this article from Fortune magazine ) during the regime of Lord Browne (who racked up record numbers by taking greater and greater risks). Tony Hayward was apparently in the process of turning that around. Sadly, he was not able to turn it around fast en