What You Missed in the BP-YouTube Interview
Buried under all of we've-never-seen-anything-like-this-before talk, Bob Dudley, BP's new man in charge of the Gulf oil spill, managed a few surprisingly candid moments in a recent interview with PBS. It's too bad the question-and-answer session, advertised as America's chance to speak directly to BP about the oil spill, didn't receive more media coverage because at times it was more revealing than the slew of recent congressional hearings on the subject.
Maybe it was who was doing the asking that made all the difference. The live event took the public's questions submitted via YouTube and Google (GOOG). Questions were ranked in importance by Internet voters and those with the highest score were used in the interview with PBS' Ray Suarez.
I've cherry picked the responses that either shared some new information about the spill and cleanup, or provided an inside look at Dudley's management style.
Dudley on the moratorium. Dudley essentially supports the moratorium, without ever uttering those exact words.
I believe that the industry will have no choice except to go through and re-engineer these (blow-out preventers) to make them fail-safe. We have with airplanes, with nuclear power plants -- we have a standard of safety which people regard as fail-safe, as they need to be. We just had an event now, that is going to make us re-evaluate the oil and gas industry globally, no question in my mind.Dudley's biggest concern. In short, it's the storms that keep him up at night. Hurricane Alex
caused delays to the clean-up and it didn't even get that close. That storms are Dudley's "biggest worry" is an indication of just how serious it would be for the Gulf coast if there were a direct hit. It also gives insight into where BP will place its resources and effort in the coming weeks.Problems, challenges with the clean up. Dudley listed numerous challenges, including tides pushing boom ashore; Hurricane Alex raising high waves; the large geographic area; and charting the oil. He said at night, the oil moves and "we think we know where it is in the evening. And often at dawn, it's in a different place, it often surprises us."
The clean-up effort has not been perfect. ... There have been gaps in the defenses.
So, what are they going to do about it? Dudley said they're upping manpower and the number of vessels on site. Specifically, BP is increasing aerial surveillance of oil and will bring in airships or blimps in parts of the Gulf to direct the skimmers.On the claims process.
It was a little bit beyond our capability to maintain this, because we need that sort of expertise.BP's solvency.
BP is a very strong company, in terms of its cash flow. It needs to have that strength to be able to fund these claims. And we're putting aside $20 billion over four years. We're going to securitize that with assets in North America. It can still be increased in the future.Dudley on media access. This was one item that did receive media coverage. There have been numerous reports of reporters and bloggers being pushed out of public areas; and of moonlighting sheriff deputies working for BP as private security. At first, Dudley calls attempts at keeping employees silent a "bit of an urban myth." But then goes further to clarify.
We have a policy that anybody who is working on this has the right to talk with the media. And there is no suggestion that they can't. but it persists and I've seen some of the tapes which show people that say we can't because BP won't let us talk. Just today, we have made an announcement and given all of the contractors and the subcontractors and the BP people pocket cards that has our media policy.For the entire 1-hour interview check out the YouTube video. For complete coverage, see: All Things BNET on BP's Gulf of Mexico Spill Related: