The companies involved in the BP oil spill had made decisions to cut costs and save time that contributed to the disaster, a US panel has found.
In a 48-page report, the presidential commission wrote that the failures were “systemic” and likely to recur without industry and government reform.
But it said BP did not have adequate controls in place to ensure safety.
Pretend that you have 100 people watching you make a 10 mile drive to Walmart and back. Doubtless, if these 100 people wrote reports on your journey they would identify a number of “cost cutting and unsafe practices” in your journey.
The environmental/anti-energy/anti-big oil/ lobby has forced oil exploration and drilling into mile deep waters where there is total darkness, near freezing temperature, and mind boggling pressures: where methane, carbon dioxide, and other volatile gases exist in states nearly unknown outside of laboratories.
The media make it sound like BP and Haliburton were operating from some “standard operations manual” and just skipped a few steps to shave costs along the way and “oh my” we had this terrible “big oil” accident that only the Obama administration will be able to stop in the future.
Whether you are in outer space, playing with fusion reactions, or drilling for oil/gas a mile deep in the water, you pushing the envelop of exploration. By its nature it represents the unknown. By its nature things will happen that will catch explorers unprepared. By its nature there will be accidents. Progress is made by learning the lessons of those accidents and moving on toward more progress.
The world economy is beginning to stir. Oil demand will increase; if supply does not, price will go up and up. And if we do not stay in the game, our dependence of foreign oil will become larger. Not a safe strategy in a competitive world.