Risk Management 101
Posted on | May 24, 2010 | No Comments
Dr. Quenton R. Dokken, Executive Director of the Gulf of Mexico Foundation, which now celebrates its twentieth anniversary, demonstrates what the petroleum industry can do when it heeds the “better angels of its nature”.
This blog is a salute to him, and environmentalists like him, who, with the support of the oil industry, have worked to maintain and protect the complex ecology of the Gulf of Mexico. That body of water, by the way, is the source of a great oceanic river, the Gulf Stream, which powerfully influences the climate and economies of Europe.
Therefore, the good things that the oil industry had done for the environment–and there are many–need to be recognized. One of the principal supporters of the Gulf of Mexico Foundation? Why, none other than BP!
As Chairman and co-founder of the North American Marine Environment Protection Association (NAMEPA), I gave a short (for me) speech in February, at a Mare Forum conference in Houston. That was of course before Deepwater Horizon.
I offered the thought that a major part of the Coast Guard’s mission was “preparedness, response and remediation”. Not exactly a radical view, but remember, this was two months before the blowout disaster in the Gulf. But I’m no prophet. If it’s a prophet you seek, gentle reader, look no farther than the Commandant of the Coast Guard himself, Admiral Thad Allen, who retires tomorrow (I’ll be present in the crowd), and the man he commissioned to write a now-famous report, retired Admiral James Card, the former Vice Commandant. The Card report, written four years ago, is entitled “The. Coast Guard Marine Safety Analysis: An Independent Assesment and Suggestions for Improvement”. The Card report should be read by all those who wish to understand what happened and why.
Particularly important is Admiral Card’s urgent recommendation that industry and government work together in a collaborative framework of environmental awareness. It follows that environmental budget cuts must stop; that risk management is important, and that ineffective risk management costs lives, destroys livelihoods, and can ruin a fine company–or two. That means that employees who seem to have learned the business in the lower cretaceous, and who babble on about “tree huggers” and “the Sierra Club of the Salties” –epithets hurled at the members of NAMEPA, including yours truly– should be retrained in today’s realities, or set down for early retirement.
Yes, my friends in the industry, it’s called risk management 101. Admiral Card understands it, Dr. Dokken understands it, but other members of the oil inustry awkward squad seem to be slow learners. What a shame to see a wonderful company, with a great history like BP, be thrown to the wolves. How many more Exxon Valdez, Deepwater Horizon lessons lie ahead?
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