Decisions, decisions…..
I know a shipowner who is fond of observing: “I have never had difficulty making decisions. Or mistakes.” As all shipowners know, regulatory requirements change. So does the market. Continue reading
The ISM code comes into its own
The many victims of maritime paperwork fatigue may, in the wake of Deepwater Horizon, soon have even more to bewail. Continue reading
Planning for next time: Matching resources with reality
Nostalgia, as the saying goes, isn’t what it used to be. Reminiscence is kinder; when we look back, in the mellow afterglow of selective memory, it often seems that everything either went according to plan or, at any rate, went just as we said it would. Hindsight is more rigourous. It means examining, understanding and learning from experience. Continue reading
Getting serious about risk management?
The Gulf of Mexico postmortems are landing with explosive force, even if the well has not yet been sealed. At what Churchill liked to call the root of the matter, there wasan inability to appreciate and apply a safety or risk management system to the drilling and operation of at least some exploratory and production wells on the U. S. outer continental shelf. Continue reading
Quote and unquote
When Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, is quoted – again and again – for having said “never allow a good crisis to go to waste”, we’re driven to grub through memory’s attic for other appropriate one-liners, adaptable for oil spill bloggery. Continue reading
A troubled political legacy
One of the oldest sayings in the US Congress is: “There is no such thing as a good regulatory outcome”. Continue reading
Thinking constructively about oil spill prevention
Since April 20, the oil and tanker industries have been confronted with the realization that the rules of risk management, and the framework of maritime liability, are being altered in many ways. Continue reading
What did they know?
It appears that some highly-placed BP executives had some sense of trouble to come, and talked. Continue reading
One disaster at a time
Robert Dudley is an American oil man who became an employee of British Petroleum, oops, BP, when it
absorbed Amoco, the former Standard Oil of Indiana, in 1998. Continue reading
The reality of Risk
BP investors will now lose their dividends for an undetermined period. The reality of risk is now apparent, and for the first time in history, a maritime-related event has had repercussions in the homes of, to use a current expression, “small people”. Continue reading
« go back — keep looking »