Heh. BP looks to be down about 30% since this started (vs ~9% for the Dow). If i had stock, selling it now would be way too late.
No, i'm not trolling. It's just that everything here is relative. Let's look at a quote from the NYT article:
"BP documents released last week to The Times revealed that company officials knew the casing was the riskier of two options.
Though his report indicates that the company was aware of certain risks and that it made the exception, Mr. Hafle, testifying before a panel on Friday in Louisiana about the cause of the rig disaster, rejected the notion that the company had taken risks."
From these statements and others like it how can one judge whether BP acted "correctly" or not? One can't. What's an acceptable level of risk? How much riskier was the option chosen ? Without at least some framework to evaluate this, it's pure innuendo.
Or, let's look at another:
"
On at least three occasions, BP records indicate, the blowout preventer was leaking fluid, which the manufacturer of the device has said limits its ability to operate properly. ...
When the blowout preventer was eventually tested again, it was tested at a lower pressure — 6,500 pounds per square inch — than the 10,000-pounds-per-square-inch tests used on the device before the delay. It tested at this lower pressure until the explosion.
A review of Minerals Management Service’s data of all B.O.P. tests done in deep water in the Gulf of Mexico for five years shows B.O.P. tests rarely dropped so sharply, and, in general, either continued at the same threshold or were done at increasing levels.
The manufacturer of the blowout preventer, Cameron, declined to say what the appropriate testing pressure was for the device.
"
It certainly SOUNDS suspicious, but is it relevant? They don't say, and I don't know. This information could be very damning or it could be irrelevant. Without further analysis it's impossible to make a determination. I have yet to see such analysis (in the NYT or anywhere else).
This isn't just philosophical masturbation... in my unexciting career as a software engineer i've been involved in 100s of situations where we had to choose between alternative courses of action where we had to balance cost/time vs features and/or confidence usually w/ less than perfect information about costs and consequences. Much lower stakes in my case, but same general dynamic.
The transcript in the article could be turned into a template that applies to pretty much every project i've been witness to.