You’re completely right, and I apparently cannot use units(1) to save my life. I have no idea how I screwed that one up so badly. I was more wrong than the original poster.
Motivation and constraint is completely driven by what budget or cost centre one's in. These can be schizophrenically distant, and work to the detriment of the organisation, in organisations that still insist they're one team.
Another perspective on the 20M is the salaries and total running cost of an office of 1500 in Southeast Asia for ayear (or potentially Latin America, or Africa, but I'm less familiar with pricing there than in EA/SEA).
ExxonMobil made $23 billion in profit in 2021; that works out to just over three days and three hours to get to $20 million.
Shell made $20.6 billion in profit in 2021; it would take them even longer.
The other majors made even less.
A project which wastes over three days of profits is hugely expensive.