Where scale will remain king

It should be considered public infrastructure. There will be operations and supply chains that will only function with a certain monopoly rent, think public transport, telecomunications, internet backbone, highways, electricity networks.

Its very depressing being a techno-modernist. We as human society have a massive task ahead of us.

The Niger delta for instance a historical global supplier of oil. Can not even invest in preventative measures regarding its infrastructure to prevent oil spills.

The petro industry for bad and worse is one of the historically archetypes of multinational business. Shell for example and its local partners are not able to responsibly extract oil, even in a country they have been active in and state to be proud of having a long relationship with for many decades.

What mechanism beside disfunctional public institutions revolving around the capture of public and social institutions can explain this?

Its not as if it is not known that we rely on our ecosystems to provide for our welfare. Nor is it a new fact that oil spills are bad for ecosystems.

Nevertheless, an easy investment to dredge a sledge and lay the pipe underground was never fully implemented.

Beside the interests of the players, where Shell wants to ensure long term profit in a sistuation where their capital expenditures are at risk. Plus governement actors intrested in extracting rents. Can explain this? To me it seems there is a dysfunction that cannot be explained from the interests of the players alone.

Taking any reasonable time frame for delta areas, with their function as bio catalysts, their importance for primary sectors such as agriculture and fisheries. Would determine that all parties are best served with a minimum of oil-spills.

However this is not how history played out.

Underground pipes where probably categorised as a investment that could not be guaranteed to be maintained at a resonable discount rate. If one would do a cost benefit analysis regarding this decision one arrives at a depressing realisation about institutions. Thus their operational excellence assumes a model of their operations where only their actions and intent matter, and dont look further on what the long term effects are beside on their returns and risk and discount of their investments.

In this regard I think that we have to move post viewing rationality and strategy from an insular perspective, if not we are only rewarding virtues not outcomes