WOW! Rolling Stone EXPOSES Koch Bros: financially, politically, environmentally ***MUST READ

[Dustlawyer]

44. Just what BP did to cause their refinery in Texas City to blow up in 2005. They cut "Everything

by 25%" to save money after their merger with Amoco in 2002. In coming up with 4 budget proposals to address Amaco's rusty half shut down refinery, BP had one budget with a picture of a straw house next to it, the next with a stick house, brick house, and something called the impenatrable fortress. Under the Straw and Stick house budgets they estimated they would kill some workers as they were not fixing all of the most dangerous problems. Instead of throwing those out they decided to figure out, "How much $ will it cost to save our little piggies (cartoon picture of pigs) bacon, and how much will it cost if we don't save our little piggies?" They came up with $10 million, but that was to also cover their defense attorneys (self insured) and an ad budget to run commercials to rehab their image. They had a multimillion dollar ad budget and started the damage control within 2 hours of the explosion.
All because they didn't want to install a flare for 2 million that they had talked about doing from the beginning, but kept putting off. See, mid level managers are assigned different units and their bonuses, raises and promotions depended on how profitable their units were. The managers were reassigned every year or two. If they were profitable they moved up, if not they went down. If the pipe in your newly assigned units was too thin, did you have it replaced (very expensive) or patch it and leave the problem to the next guy?
This is also why BP ruined the Gulf of Mexico, they didn't learn!