This goes beyond normal criminal negligence. At this point BP has committed and should be charged with gross engineering malpractice, 11 counts of manslaughter, and whatever else will stick.

They proceeded to replace the drilling fluid with seawater after having just failed a negative pressure test.

They overrode the drilling crew and Trans Ocean representatives who knew better.

They refused to manually trigger the BOP in a timely manner, forced a delay that cost the BOP its operating hydraulic pressure.

They modified the goddamned BOP, and then lost the only plans to their own modifications in the blow up. They then requested original schematics from the manufacturer and proceeded to attempt a remote shutdown while operating from the wrong (unmodified) plans. How fucking hard is it to keep an offsite backup of your own engineering mods.

Maybe this is a stupid question, but who the fuck modifies their BOP in the first place? This isn’t like hacking your iPhone, it’s irreplaceable critical goddamned infrastructure. What kind of tool would want to void the warranty on something like that?

BP should be fucked, finished, done. Their US assets should be seized, sold and the proceeds dedicated to Gulf clean up. If any BP officials complain, they should be turned into Torgo’s Executive Powder. I’m not usually this draconian, but this whole fiasco has to end with a set of consequences that will scare the crap out of even the most short sighted and selfishly interested executive.