Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

SoylentNews is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop. Only 18 submissions in the queue.
posted by Fnord666 on Friday August 14 2020, @06:37PM   Printer-friendly
from the drilling-what? dept.

Report: Facebook Quietly Abandoned Drilling Gear Off the Oregon Coast:

Facebook has boldly face-planted right into one of the few remaining types of fuckups it hasn't before: quietly abandoning a pile of drilling equipment under the ocean.

Per The Oregonian, Facebook subsidiary Edge Cable Holdings was in the middle of drilling to place a trans-oceanic fiber optic cable off the coast of Tierra Del Mar, Oregon when a drill bit became stuck on April 28, 2020, rupturing a pipe approximately 50 feet below the seafloor. The company moved on, but "about 1,100 feet of pipe, a drill tip, various other tools, and 6,500 gallons of drilling fluid" did not. Edge notified county officials of the accident on May 5, Department of State Lands spokeswoman Ali Hansen told the Oregonian, but declined to mention it had left large amounts of equipment on the seafloor until it told state officials on July 17.

Hansen told The Oregonian that Edge's delay in informing state officials "eliminated any potential options for recovery of the equipment," while the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers told the newspaper that Edge plans to just construct a separate pipe in 2021 without cleaning up after itself. Hansen's department has notified Edge it is violating permits by continuing to "store" its equipment onsite, the paper reported, as well as notified Facebook it had 30 days to pay damages, 180 days to remove their junk or get a new permit, and must accept any liability for the incident.

[...] Facebook disputed these accounts, saying the state had been notified earlier and adding that Edge had determined its sea trash wouldn't harm the environment.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by GreatOutdoors on Saturday August 15 2020, @03:11PM (1 child)

    by GreatOutdoors (6408) on Saturday August 15 2020, @03:11PM (#1037102)

    Seriously Facebook, pull your head out of your corporate a$$. It's your responsibility to clean up after yourself. It's the same when a person goes hiking in the woods, the expectation is that you do your very best to leave nothing behind, and to treat the environment properly so that no one even knows you were there.

    The people of the world who invest in your company do not want you to be an environmental nuisance. They want the world to be passed down to our children in the best shape possible. I suggest you create a board of morals and ethics to oversee things like this. If you already have that, then you should fire them and hire people who will tell you to go back and clean up your trash.

    --
    Yes, I did make a logical argument there. You should post a logical response.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Insightful=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Saturday August 15 2020, @03:28PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 15 2020, @03:28PM (#1037109) Journal

    It's the same when a person goes hiking in the woods, the expectation is that you do your very best to leave nothing behind, and to treat the environment properly so that no one even knows you were there.

    Facebook isn't hiking in the woods. And they didn't leave much behind. Not seeing a story here.