Screen capture from 31 year old video from the Gulf of Mexico. Yes, it's happened before.

Watching this video was shocking. I know it shouldn’t have been, but it was. The parallels between the Ixtoc oil spill in the Gulf over 30 years ago are eerily similar to the spill now.

Ultimately, the solution to the previous blowout was relief wells. I’m guessing back then they actually thought what they were doing might work. I suspect now they know that what they’re doing won’t work except, hopefully, for the relief wells.

That being said, with this kind of experience and BP having had to have known about this previous blowout, why didn’t they focus more energy on preventing the oil from coming ashore?

I’m not sure how much more ridiculous this situation could get, but I’m sure we’re all prepared.

The real question is, if the government and oil companies already had this experience 30 years ago, why weren’t they better prepared for it now?

The only real answer is: money talks.

For over a month now, conservative estimates are that a minimum of 5,000 barrels a day of oil are gushing into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico just off the coast of Louisiana. Recent revised estimates are now pushing that number to 12- to 19,000 barrels a day. Some estimates are as high as 70,000 barrels per day.

Either way, we’re seeing what may be one of the worst known marine disasters in history rolling out in the bountiful waters of the U.S. coast.

The U.S. government also shares a great deal of the blame for the situation and the inaction in cleaning it up and mitigating the damage. Obama is also being heavily criticized now for the government’s inaction, and rightly so.

Offshore drilling regulations

Once the immediate problem of the gushing oil is solved, there are a few major issues to be resolved. The lawsuits will go on for years, and BP is going to be in serious trouble.

Perhaps we will see sensible offshore drilling regulations in the U.S. and even more importantly, regulatory enforcement. If ever we’ve had a graphic illustration of the dangers of cozying up to the companies you’re regulating this would certainly make the case.

At the risk of opening up the discussion to a wider issue, I’m not in favour of government being cheerleaders for business. Government should be operating as a referee between citizens and business. Government should set a level playing field and enforce it to the benefit of all. It’s not good to tilt the playing field in favour of either group.

I also believe in a free flow of information, something that government and business are usually loathe to accommodate. I am not a fan of secrecy. Evil and stupidity tend to thrive behind veils of secrecy.

The cleanup

View of the top of the BP oil well blowout preventer in the Gulf of Mexico

Perhaps the most shocking thing about this whole Gulf disaster is the slow pace of protection and cleanup. From what I’ve gathered, the government seems to be bowing to BP to control the cleanup and protect sensitive environmental areas.

Had more protective measure been taken concurrent to BP’s attempt to stop the oil gushing into the Gulf, we might not be seeing the environmental damage on the Louisiana coast we’re seeing now. The fishing industry in the Gulf could potentially be threatened for generations.

This is another area where the Obama administration has been tremendously weak. The appearance is that the talk is tough, but there is no action to back it up. The administration claims it has its foot on BP’s neck, but the reality is that the public is going to have its foot on Obama’s neck if he doesn’t do something about this slowly expanding disaster.

BP keeping secrets

For obvious reasons BP has been trying to limit access to the beaches and affected waters. It doesn’t want the public to know the scale of the disaster. It doesn’t want the public to know how dangerous dispersants like Corexit actually are.

I believe the dispersants are actually formulated to keep the oil below the surface where the true extent and danger of the cloud of oil will remain secret. One has to wonder whether BP and the U.S. government have brought in oceanographers, water experts and other scientists to determine the true scale of the problem hidden below the surface of the Gulf waters.

With the top-kill attempts, BP is pumping drilling mud into the failed blowout preventer. They haven’t released how many barrels per hour they’re pumping into it, but if they were to be able entirely replace the flow of oil and gas from the well with mud, we would know exactly how many barrels per day were coming out of that well.

I am positive BP knows this number, but there’s no way in hell they’ll release it. Drilling mud isn’t cheap, and I am sure they meter it when they pump it. They know

The scary part is that they’re probably pumping as much mud into the well as they can but they’re still not completely displacing the flow of oil and gas. This means that however many thousand barrels per hour BP is pumping in are only part of what is escaping from the blowout preventer.

Public relations? What’s PR?

Information about this man-made disaster will eventually flow. I’m sure BP has consulted Oliver North on how to handle the back office though. Once that information is public, I think there will be even more outrage than there is now.

I think this is the key reason BP is so secretive. If the public knew the real extent of the problem, BP executives would be in serious danger.

On the other hand, BP seems not to have learned that in modern PR putting all your cards on the table as soon as possible is inevitably the best strategy. From a legal perspective, at least in the U.S., the crime never seems to be punished as severely as lying about it.

I am sure BP executives probably have their private jets on idle for when the arrest warrants and extradition orders are issued. I’m guessing they won’t be fleeing to any Caribbean countries though.

Once the flow of oil stops from this out of control well, the lawsuits are going to be out of control too. I think we’ll see BP executives arrested once the truth starts to come out. It may be only for their own protection.

The future of energy & government

I hope that efforts to stop the flow are successful soon. It sounds like relief wells could be months away, if they’re even successful.

To me, this whole issue illustrates the importance of moving away from petroleum as a primary source of energy in our society. As oil companies are forced into deeper and more dangerous waters and we recover oil from dirtier sources such as oilsands, one has to wonder why we’re not pouring more resources into alternative energy and distributed power generation.

We have the technology now and the means to put solar and wind power on homes and to create wind farms. This can happen far quicker than wide distribution of fuel cells or the creation of nuclear power plants. Perhaps if we subsidized the production and installation of wind and solar instead of oil and gas, we’d reduce our need for fossil fuels more quickly.

Mass production of electric cars really isn’t that far away either. The reality is that in colder climates, I suspect we’ll still be relying on fossil fuels to a greater degree, especially in a vast country like Canada.

There seems to be little political will to move more quickly on alternative energy, not unlike the lack of political will to deal with climate change.

Regulation and enforcement obviously need to be strengthened and the cozy culture of government and business needs to end. I’m not confident this is going to change soon though. Our politicians are too reliant on the perks, benefits, political contributions, bribes and post-politics jobs that flow from the businesses they loosely regulate.

Citizens are angry and need to let politicians know just how angry they are. If ever our planet has needed grass roots action, it’s now. The corruption in political circles across the planet these days absolutely sickens me and it seems to get worse by the day. Politicians had better understand that they govern with the consent of the citizens they represent. Around the world I think we’re going to see that consent increasingly withdrawn.

How did it get worse? One of the photos they used in their campaign was of Northumberland beach in England near Bamburgh Castle; quite a famous beach.

Sure, it’s not the end of the world, and really, it’s funny, depending on whether you’re in government or not, but it sure doesn’t help Alberta’s PR efforts. It seems sort of… small time.

They say that any publicity is good publicity, but Alberta’s had plenty of bad publicity these days. I’m wondering when Edmonton PR company Calder Bateman’s $25 million campaign is going to start generating positive results for the province.

I’ll cut Calder Bateman some slack though. They’ve really got an uphill battle to try and rebrand Alberta. The oilsands aren’t exactly the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and every ecologically-conscious person on Earth seems to have the oilsands as a target. It’s hard to fight that. You can see the oilsands from space though; so that’s something.

Image of an English beach

Paula Simons brought up the observation that there are few, if any, “ethnic” faces in the promotional video.

Nobody’s denying that Alberta has a rich cultural heritage and is made up of a diverse ethnic population. Dropping in some video from any one of Alberta’s many cultural festivals would have proven that. Just wait for the “racist” labels to start flowing now.

Now Alberta’s PR efforts are damned if they do and damned if they don’t with Paula Simons suggesting:

“We shouldn’t include token “minority” faces in our promotional video because that’s the “politically correct” thing to do. We should include them because they represent the rich reality of contemporary Alberta. We should be celebrating and promoting our authentic cultural diversity because it’s what makes us unique.”

So now if any promotional videos include Alberta’s minorities, they’ll be pandering. If they don’t, they’re racist. It’s a rare day when I feel sympathy for politicians, but today I do. I can respect their desire to rebrand Alberta and show the world what a wonderful place Alberta is. Unfortunately, the whole exercise has just blown up in their face.

Rather than spending $25 million on rebranding the province, they should be focusing some serious effort on making the whole oilsands project more environmentally friendly. The whole operation has a huge carbon footprint (it uses massive amounts of natural gas and other fuels), its huge toxic tailings ponds are leaking and killing ducks and it uses very large amounts of fresh water (which ends up in the toxic tailings ponds). From what I’ve heard, there’s also a great deal of air pollution that results from the operation too.

I can see why the $25 million rebranding initiative was done. It just seemed like the easier way to go. They must be thinking otherwise now.

Unfortunately the old management model in many organizations, where you know when “you need to know,” still rules. It’s a paternalistic, arrogant and outmoded way of thinking where management makes assumptions about the motivations, desires and actions of employees.

It’s also related to the prevailing management view (in some circles) that employees are simply assets to be deployed, used up and disposed of as necessary. Forget the notion of investing in employees. It’s amazing how many organizations hypocritically preach the “new way” yet continually operate in the old ways. I think it’s a generational thing. Hopefully that attitude will move on as older generations of management retire.

When you really analyze the problems most organizations have, be it a church, government, charity or business, communication is usually at the heart of its problems. When information is currency, the more you have, the more you perceive yourself to be worth and the less you may want to dole it out.

Having a free flow of information in any organization is really a utopian ideal anyway. You’ll never find an organization where anything can be expressed and it will be received in an accepting, non-judgmental manner. Unfortunately humans haven’t evolved to this level yet.

Speaking from experience, I would say that all the dysfunctional organizations I’ve worked for in the past have had major communications issues. It’s virtually impossible to communicate openly in a one way manner in such organizations. You just never know how what you say is being taken and so everyone has a tendency to not say much until everything explodes one day. This further compounds communications problems and employees learn that saying anything more than you have to is probably not a good idea. CYA (cover your ass) is the main operating principle at these types of organizations.

It’s a rare organization that has open communication. I wonder, can any organization really can have truly open communication?

Do you really want to hear from your boss?

“Sorry Bill, I’d meet with you today but I’m in a bad mood since I discovered my wife’s sleeping with the pool boy and it’s made worse because my girlfriend’s lousy cooking gave me diarrhea.”

Probably not. (Sounds like I should be writing commercial scripts.)

So, maybe completely open is out, but on organizational matters, open internal communication is definitely an ideal to strive for. I’m always surprised by the attitude of management at many organizations where they don’t believe employees need to know much of anything that’s not immediately related to their jobs.

I believe in empowering employees to make decisions. I also believe that, outside of sociopaths, you can rely on employees to make good decisions. You just need to let them do it. Of course they need to have the proper training to begin with, but once that’s done, why not take a load off your mind and let them do their job?

I won’t go listing examples of the hilarious and stupid examples of poor communications I’ve run across (right now), but there are many! And there have been times in the past where I haven’t been a shining example of good communication either. Live and learn!

Got any funny or scary communications stories that you want to share?

And thanks to Tamara Stecyk for inspiring this blog post.

Who advises these guys? Looking at this whole thing from a public relations perspective, and with the Alberta oilsands under attack from practically the rest of the world, you’d think they’d realize that you should put the bad news out first. All of it.

Be right up front with the disaster and lay it all out. You don’t want people thinking that you’ve swept it under the carpet, have something to hide, have skeletons in the closet, etc. Of course, that’s the line of thinking. People inherently don’t trust the oilsands companies anyway, but there would be a chance of that if they handled these things properly.

The perception might change slightly if you’re the first to the table with bad news, exactly what happened and what you’re doing to stop it from happening again. It defuses the media a bit because they’re so used to the opposite. It will hopefully help the perception that you’re truly sorry and are really taking steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again. And, hopefully, the company really is.

Any true PR professional would have advised Syncrude to go public with all the details immediately and not extend the news cycle on this fiasco. If Syncrude executives didn’t listen, shame on them.

The whole situation with the oilsands is going to take more than just a $25 million publicity campaign by the Alberta government to make it go away. For world opinion to change, there’s going to have to be real action to clean up the tar ponds and minimize the carbon footprint. There are no shortcuts.

I’m just curious how they’re going to handle it when it happens again, because it will.<–>

I guess Martin fraudulently used credit cards to purchase just under $5,000 worth of goods. It’s really a shame he did that. He was sentenced to three years in West Virginia for the crime. I’ve chatted with Martin on Twitter and I like Martin. That won’t change either. It’s a shame he’s ruined a promising career and everything’s come crumbling down around him.

What I’m pissed about, and apparently there are many others who are upset in this case, is the sentence. Three years for credit card fraud? Doesn’t that seem a little harsh for someone who has no record? There have been many people who’ve been convicted of far worse crimes and only had house arrest. I remember one case where a guy molested his daughter many times and never ended up in jail. The judge should be convicted of stupidity in that case.

I think judges should really weigh whether it’s worth the cost to the taxpayer to keep someone in jail who’s not violent or dangerous, depending on the severity of their original crime of course. I don’t think crime should go unpunished, but why not community service, restitution and fines?

What’s happened to zi.ma?

The great thing about zi.ma was that it was a URL shortening service that tracked visits through the URL you created. Now it’s been redirected to kl.am. Apparently the arrangement is legitimate, but kl.am pales in comparison. The name sucks too. But, I’ll use it because I don’t know of any other service that does the same thing. Know any?

It’s nice that the old zi.ma URLs have been recovered to an extent, along with the statistics. I’m not sure how accurate or complete either are.

Martin Bowling’s future

According to the story, Martin could get out of jail on parole within 12 months. Let’s hope he does and that he gets back on the path to success quickly. I hope for his sake that it does happen. Hang in there Martin! You do have support out there.

Related links & stories about Martin Bowling:

• State official gives grants to company Martin Bowling worked for
• Webmaster Radio story on Martin Bowling
• Free Martin Bowling
• Interview with Martin Bowling
• Martin Bowling’s blog
• Twitter search feed: @martinbowling
• Martin’s inmate record
• Charleston Gazette Blog: Resident evil genius
• Charleston Gazette Blog: No hoax
• Raven: Kl.am taken over by Zi.ma

Story update:

March 24 – Martin Bowling hoping to serve sentence at home

]]> http://alainsaffel.com/martin-bowling-in-jail/feed/ 3 http://alainsaffel.com/good-life-edmonton/ http://alainsaffel.com/good-life-edmonton/#comments Sat, 13 Dec 2008 06:56:35 +0000 Alain Saffel http://alainsaffel.com/?p=126

The store is actually already open to the public with the grand opening this weekend. I think most of us invited to the store thought we’d be getting a sneak peek at it, but no such luck.

Apparently the store is one of their largest, if not THE largest. I wasn’t taking notes, but I was putting some pictures and comments out on Twitter. I took lots of video too, and I’ll look at putting that up sometime. It’s a nice store and no doubt I’ll probably give it a more thorough look late. While it is open to the public, the appliance section still has some construction going on.

The word is that it’s substantially different than any of the other stores. They are carrying fitness equipment and used video games now too.

I thought the most interesting part of the store was the instrument section. They have a giant wall of guitars and have a selection of other musical equipment. That should be interesting. I’m not sure if other music stores in Edmonton are worried. It’s not a huge section, but it’s pretty good. I think that the thought was that once you’ve mastered Guitar Hero you can move up to the real thing. Makes sense.

We got the grand tour and a chance to ask a lot of questions of the PR people from Vancouver

as well as the store’s general manager. They were very accommodating and fielded a few tough questions. One of the questions that came up was about extended warranty, always a touchy subject.

Having been an employee of Future Shop I know that there’s a huge emphasis on selling extended warranties (giant profits). I worked there five years ago and I know they were expensive then. Getting extended warranty service was not the happiest experience for those who bought it too.

Chris, the general manager, said that his staff will take ‘no’ as the final word when it comes to extended warranties and he doesn’t believe in wearing down customers until they relent. That’s good to hear and let’s hope it happens. I also hope that Future Shop makes it easier for customers to get their extended warranty service too.

I didn’t ask about mail-in rebates, but I probably should have. Who hasn’t been burned on those? I have once, and I’ve had to fight for a few. I avoid them generally.

If you’re a fan of Future Shop, you’re going to really like the store. According to Chris there are more cash lanes and people will get out of the store without huge waits. Employees will also have keys so you won’t have to wait to buy your laptop. There’s also the Apple section, which seemed to be pretty decent.

Edmonton Social Media

It was nice to visit with the other bloggers and Tweeple (Twitter users, for the uninitiated). I met a couple of people that I have as friends on Twitter but hadn’t met in person. We had a few sandwiches and took away a gift as well.

Now, here’s an interesting topic. Having worked as a journalist in the past, this would be a big no-no. The thought is that any kind of gift would be contrary to a journalist’s code of ethics and would not want any appearance of bias.

Well, I’m not a journalist any longer, but I don’t think a Bluetooth headset for my cell phone is going to make any difference in my opinion. Nothing like that will change my opinion but good evidence as to why my opinion might not be well-founded, could.

I think the store is worth checking out though. And if you think you’ll get a Wii Fit, well, they’re out too. They did have them. Apparently they’ll have more for this weekend when Gene Simmons is there for the grand opening. The store is going to be nuts on Saturday! I might brave the crowds to see if I can get an autograph.

Comments:

1. Cheryl Says: December 8th, 2008 at 11:26 am

Hi – Some great photos of the store! Just thought I’d answer your question about the mail-in rebates. Future Shop doesn’t have these any more. They were eliminated about 18 months ago to make it easier for customers : )

2. Alain Saffel Says: December 8th, 2008 at 11:33 am

Hi Cheryl, good to hear. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen much about mail-in rebates anywhere lately.

I know I’ve actually avoided products that have had them. I can’t be the only one!

I was at the latest Edmonton Tweetup and @NAIT happened to sit down beside me and I ended up with a copy of Tech Life.

Now, normally I have never been a fan of magazines that are for PR purposes, but I can honestly say that NAIT’s Tech Life is different. I’d skimmed one once before, but never really read it. (Mea culpa) I decided, this time, to give it another look.

Obviously the goal of the magazine is to promote the positive things happening at NAIT. You’d think that the content might be on the thin side but there’s a wealth of interesting stories here.

The articles range from automated home building machines to electric cars to interesting three question blurbs from NAIT-related people. There was also an interesting little piece on starting your own business.

The home building machine is an intriguing idea that could substantially cut the time, labour and ultimately cost of building a new house. Mark Holtom and Ben Bertrand are in the process of developing such a machine and in September 2008 received a $600,000 grant to build a prototype of their Geometric Construction Unit.

Bertrand had some advice for would-be entrepreneurs about not dwelling on mistakes:

“Founderitis, that’s what I had. Founderitis is when someone creates an idea, a business model, and they get very high on themselves because of it. Creating something that has potential is not something everyone can do, and it is something to be proud of. But if you have founderitis, you take it to the extreme: you’re smarter than everyone else, you deserve to own 90 per cent of the company forever, and it’s your way or the highway. It’s a sickness – not in the literal sense, but it will harm you greatly.”

I’ve certainly run into a few people like that in my business travels and most of them haven’t a clue that they have it. I think it’s similar to people who are glory hounds and can’t give credit to those around them. Neither condition is conducive to long-term happiness.

I enjoyed the article on a local electric kit car builder. I’m a big fan of outside-the-mainstream transportation. One day maybe I’ll even have my own electric car. If I can’t buy it, maybe I’ll build it.

Social media preference?

Being a big social media fan, I found the “Under the Q” short three question interview of NAIT-related people to be quite interesting. The other two questions didn’t matter as much as “what social media do you use?”

I was surprised to see only one person who stated they use Twitter. I guess it’s not for everyone, but I figured there’d be a few more people out of the 10 who use it, especially looking at the businesses they’re in.

That’s just a slice of what’s in the 68-page glossy magazine. I haven’t read everything yet, but I will definitely be going through the rest of the articles. I must say, I was impressed. It’s a good solid magazine with really interesting articles. I didn’t feel like I was being spun at all. Good job NAIT. Looking forward to your next issue.

Comments:

1. Walter Schwabe Says: November 16th, 2008 at 2:03 pm

Alain, thanks for the mention and the great writing on my blog….

2. Alain Saffel Says: November 18th, 2008 at 11:51 am

No problem Walter. Glad I can help you out. :)