re: #311 garhighway

Maybe because they don’t want another massive spill?

It’s easy to call the Deepwater Horizon incident just a BP thing and therefore write it off as if it can’t happen again, but that is inaccurate. Surrounding that incident was the usual array of oilfield services contractors, none of which had the sense to prevent the blowout. It wasn’t just BP.

Every now and then an incident occurs that makes (or should make) an entire industry reassess its practices. Or, if the industry is in denial and refuses to do so, cause that industry’s regulators to force it upon them. It happened in commercial aviation (for example) after Eastern put an L1011 into the Everglades. You could argue that Eastern (and the other airlines) had plenty of incentive to avoid crashes without the FAA and NTSB meddling in their business. But the FAA/NTSB did meddle after that crash, and their meddling no doubt has prevented lots of other crashes.

Likewise here. The rest of the industry has gone into “that was just BP, WE would never do that” mode. But they use the same support contractors, they buy the same hardware, they hire from the same labor pool. People who work for BP one day work for Exxon the next. You have to address the industry, unless you just don’t give a shit whether this will happen again.

That isn’t a government power grab. That is the government doing what we put it in place to do: protect us, our economy, our beaches, and all the rest from risks that we as citizens cannot manage ourselves.

This is what happens when accountants (not pilots, not engineers) occupy the top management positions. Everything becomes all about the “bottom line” and getting stuff done “on time” and “under budget.” It was shown that BP cut corners and ignored safety precautions because the upper management bean counters were urging them to work faster and cheaper.