BP

This from today's paper.  This is just an excerpt from the story, a link to the rest is at the bottom.  There's a reason that safety policies are in place gentlemen!


A U.S. panel skewered British giant BP as well as Halliburton and Transocean, saying management failures were to blame for the Gulf oil spill, and warned without reform such a disaster could happen again.

Releasing a key chapter of its final report, the panel Wednesday also took aim at U.S. government officials, sharply criticizing them for lax oversight of both the operation in the Gulf of Mexico and the industry.

The root causes of the blowout were "systemic and, absent significant reform in both industry practices and government policies, might well recur," the report said.

Despite the "inherent risks" of deepwater drilling, "the accident of April 20 was avoidable," it said, listing nine key decisions which were made to save time or money even though a safer alternative was available.

The explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig off the Louisiana coast "resulted from clear mistakes made in the first instance by BP, Halliburton, and Transocean, and by government officials who, relying too much on industry's assertions of the safety of their operations, failed to create and apply a program of regulatory oversight that would have properly minimized the risks of deepwater drilling."

BP welcomed the assessment, which analysts said would likely see the British company paying less compensation costs than expected — it is selling 30 billion dollars worth of assets to cover its part of the bill.

Read more: here