The British Petroleum Corporation has, through risk management failure, just created what will become the worst environmental disaster in American history.  Something must be done to prevent this from happening ever again.  If we don’t want to specify regulation to mitigate corporate generated risk, then we must at least utilize the simple and basic principle of risk transfer:  industry needs to hold the United States harmless for the true cost of their risky operations within our borders.  BP should have installed functional blowout protection devices that would automatically arrest the flow of oil out of the well at the ocean floor in the event of disaster at the surface.  Did BP consider non-functional blowout protection devices worth the risk to their entire company?  Obviously, BP did not consider safety device failure. BP’s own 2009 environmental impact report for this production site insisted that a major oil spill from their project was unlikely. Their leadership still, most damningly, insists that the disaster was “unforeseeable.”  This is pure crap.
If they had managed the risk of device failure as if it was a hundred billion dollar decision, perhaps functional devices would be in place today.  But in either case, the oil is spewing unchecked into the gulf. However, if BP and its cohorts in this environmental crime do not pay for the full and true cost, we are allowing them to externalize the true cost of a global level disaster. This means the taxpayers of this country will be heavily subsidizing BP and cohorts for their incompetence now and far into the future. BP claims it will pay “legitimate costs,” which is corporate speak for “here come the lawyers to shield the company from paying anything.” Those who are concerned about Federal deficits are going to have to swallow big time public sector payments to handle this one.  Will BP reimburse the taxpayers for all these direct and indirect losses and when will it start paying?  Are they going truly hold the US harmless for the full and complete costs of the global scale devastation they have caused by simple failure to manage spill prevention risk?  Irrespective of whether you favor heavy regulation of risky industries with strong specification standards or letting them do it themselves (although it is obvious this method doesn’t work at all), how can anyone favor continued externalizing the true costs of their actions? If we do not absolutely create an ironclad liability that corporations must fully and completely hold the US fully harmless for the risks they create while they are making vast profits within our borders, before they cause disaster we are subsidizing corporate failure and subsidizing corporate sponsored devastation.  Perhaps because here in the US, corporations such as BP or Massey mining or Lehman Brothers exist in a cocoon of taxpayer sponsored externalization of risk, they don’t really feel the need to protect both themselves and us from their cavalier failure to manage risk that devastates far beyond the reaches of the corporate headquarters. If a real person was now being held in custody for the crime of blowing up the oil platform and causing 11 employee deaths and this global scale environmental destruction, he would be called a terrorist.  What would the penalty be?  Over the past ten years BP has clearly demonstrated they are serial occupational killers, and serial environmental destroyers. We cannot execute the BP Corporation for this massive crime against our planet, our country and our people, but we should certainly not subsidize them either.  When you watch the news reports over the next few months play out with all the frantic and ultimately useless efforts to corral and sop up oil, think of how much this is costing the taxpayers of this country and the species of the planet.  We should make BP and any other corporation like them use the vast profits they are extracting from us and pay us back in full.

RE: Lesley Palmer, May 8 at 3:49 pm

Very well said. Reducing demand is critical. All of this regulation is like
a band-aid on a blimp. If we don’t fund them, they can’t exist. We the
“consumers” are driving the demand with no self accountability. Wasn’t the
oil embargo in the 70’s enough of a red flag that this limited resource was dwindling, even then? And now we’re going farther and deeper to get it. It’s
like a defective roller-coaster careening toward doom, but for some reason
no one else wants to get off. Is limiting personal driving by half (easily
done in areas with mass transit) totally out of the question, or will we all
just stay on the ride?

We do need good regulation but they can’t fix a problem that we have created
and continue to exacerbate by our own unreasonable actions. One of my
friends always says “one of these the world will shake us off like fleas”,
and she may be right.

Thank you again

Unnatural Selection is not a bad film either.

my wife always said god has movies and other forget that news has video….

We could all also make a concerted effort to curb our consumption.
The driving force behind this problem is our demand after all. Is
that unrealistic? Or are we just unwilling to change?

For both environmental and economic reasons, US oil needs to be nationalized immediately, and the price of oil disattached from USD.

There is no other choice.

There is also no reason whatever that a foreign company should be drilling offshore at all, whether shallow or deep.

felicity:

Shout out to felicity for her brilliant solution! Right to
their doorstep!

Halliburton’s Katrina:

STORY LINK HERE:
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/207801-Gulf-of-Mexico-Oil-Spill-Shows-
Disastrous-Legacy-of-Halliburton-and-the-Real-Cost-of-the-Oil-Era

I pulled this link off of a post on another thread. Apparently, Halliburton is
the contractor responsible for the “rig cementing” on the Deepwater Horizon
and had completed the work just 20 hours before the blowout. Guess what. Rig
cementing is the most common cause of rig blowout.

Hey, anybody seen our nation’s soul. I can’t seem to find it. Oh, there
it is covered in hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude oil. Amazing
how so many bitter political rivals are all sharing the same revolving
door. I mean why would the oh so liberal Obama administration support off-
shore drilling? And will they still be doing lucrative business with an oh so
conservative and evil company like KBR (Halliburton) if they are responsible?

Whether it was Halliburton cement or a failed blow-out valve manufactured by
Cameron International (more right-wing cronies), the “perps” will never be
held fully accountable by this or any other administration. I mean, the LL in
LLC does mean limited liability. And even if we have the Obama administration
to thank for bringing the actual severity of this spill to light, they support
this type of off shore drilling and will remain complacent in doing business
with companies like BP and Halliburton. They can share in the big blame
bonanza too. It is ample enough for everyone. The thing that sickens me most
is that even this horrible tragedy is being slanted for political gain.
Apparently, we would rather poison our own food sources than be wrong.

Please note the sanitized rhetoric in Mr. Whatley’s conclusions.  Where he could be driving his main point home—how to bring about essential changes toward better regulation in terms that are easy to understand, he clouds the issue with difficult language: 
  “Will stakeholders such as employees, customers and the surrounding environment be kept in mind alongside profits? The compounded frustration with BP, Massey, Goldman and anyone else lurking behind the next crisis will shunt many important questions like these to the forefront of policy discussions. But in the background will always be the money that oils the gears of a perversely incentivizing political system. Until that sees fundamental change, mine ventilation could easily remain inadequate, emergency stop valves optional, and casino-style financial products hidden in the shadows.”
  Do ordinary people understand:
  1. they are “stakeholders” or “customers” ..  to be “kept in mind”
  2. And that “be kept in mind”—Doesn’t the situation require a bit stronger notice than merely being kept in mind?
  3. do ordinary people know what “compounded frustration” means?
  4. does the article give any indication whatever of just how ordinary people might “shunt themselves to the forefront of policy discussions”?
  5.Do they have any idea what “perversely incentivizing? means?
  4. And the final evasion—the odd use of the word “sees”—rather than an active verb such as “until you DO SUCH AND SUCH (spellING out what needs to be done about mine ventilation and stop valves)
  5. How does “casino-style financial products” relate, exactly.
  This kind of language puts people off because it is too indirect and difficult. People need information given simply and directly, not obfuscated attempts at literary grandeur.  If reading material is to be available to “the public” it will have to be written (not simple-mindedly) but clearly and directly.  IMO

re “the sheer, inexorable predictability of it all”

Obama = Big Oil’s dupe

“It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills,” Obama had said on April 2. “They are technologically very advanced. Even during Katrina, the spills didn’t come from the oil rigs. They came from the refineries on shore.”
[NPR.org, May 5, 2010, by Debbie Elliott and Scott Horsley]

Consider: “In 2008, one of the most common lines of misinformation used by media conservatives favoring the lifting of the moratorium on certain offshore oil drilling was the false notion that no oil was spilled offshore as a result of Hurricane Katrina.

“Their strategy was quite simple…if they could convince people that there was no oil spillage offshore, even during the havoc brought by Hurricane Katrina, then they could convince people that offshore drilling was relatively safe for the environment.

Drill baby, drill!”
[Media Matters, April 29, 2010, by Karl Frisch]

The truth: “In fact, according to a 2007 report prepared for the U.S. Minerals Management Service by the international consulting firm Det Norske Veritas, damage related to Hurricane Katrina resulted in 70 spills from outer continental shelf structures with a total volume of approximately 5,552* barrels of oil and petroleum products, including damage to 27 platforms and rigs that resulted in the spilling of approximately 2,843* barrels of petroleum products, including 2,252 barrels of crude oil and condensate. Damage to 43 pipelines resulted in the spilling of approximately 2,710* barrels of oil and petroleum products.

“Further, regarding the combined impacts of hurricanes Katrina and Rita on outer continental shelf structures in the Gulf of Mexico, the report stated, ‘124 spills were reported with a total volume of roughly 17,700 barrels of total petroleum products.’ The report further noted that ‘about 13,200 barrels were crude oil and condensate from platforms, rigs and pipelines, and 4,500 barrels were refined products from platforms and rigs.’”
[Media Matters, June 27, 2008]

Does President Obama get his information from FOX News? How sad to think that his recently announced pro-drilling policy was based on misinformation.

How about this scenario. The zillionaires ultimately responsible for this tragedy must own and live in mega-zillion dollar estates lining the Gulf.  Assuming they do, how about directing all that floating gunk so it ends up at/on their ‘doorsteps.’ 

Oil-soaked water lapping at their private beaches, their mega-docks, their pristine mega-yachts, not to mention all the oil-soaked, dead sea life lying on their oil-soaked sand would definitely spoil the view (frolicking in the surf would be rather unattractive too)  from their 50,000 square-foot mega-mansion.

Unfortuate but true, until it hits home and hurts like hell we humans commonly find little reason to change our behavior.