My piece of the oil business

I found this op ed piece in the Wall Street Journal.

It comes from an executive of the Oil and Gas company that manages the land under a little Texas rice farm My Great Grandfather invested in. The farm was a bust but the mineral rights left my Great Grandmother with a modest income until her death. Today the rice farm is helping to pay for my Mother’s full time care.

The Op Ed is unforgiving in its analysis of British Petroleum.

I think I’ll hang on to the rights when they pass on to me. I like the company’s management.

This is the column’s conclusion:

This well failed its casing integrity test and nothing was done. The data collected during a critical operation to monitor hydrocarbon inflow was ignored and nothing was done. This spill is about human failure and it is time BP put its hand up and admitted that.

Oh, and it turns out that the latest estimates for oil spillage is at least double the most recent estimates.

I read one commentator who opined that the pensioners who have money in BP were given poor advice because the threat of environmental damage was part of the risk built into their investment. So too was poor corporate management.

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