I for one do not buy the notion that BP is uniquely culpable for this disaster, while all the other oil companies are good guys and this would never have happened but for BP.

The rest may be doing what needs to be done now, with hindsight, but I’d bet dollars to Chinese doughnuts that the others were cutting corners before this disaster, and would still be cutting corners today if BP had gotten lucky. The profit imperative is too strong for me to believe the “good guy, bad guy” explanation. If it hadn’t happened at a BP rig, it would eventually have happened to some other company.

And chances are good that something even worse will happen again.