Quote Originally Posted by Dreadnaught View Post
I suspect too optimistic, but also it's tough to plan for some things like this. After all, a plan for something like this is useless if the right assets are in place. Those assets are expensive, so people won't invest in them (and governments won't require them) unless this kind of disaster seems very likely.

Remember Condi's line about how preventing September 11 was a "failure of imagination". Now it seems obvious, but it didn't always seem so obvious to everyone. Similarly, we've had an offshore oil industry for four decades without problems on this scale. Sure, in retrospect we can now sorta see how we got here but the big-picture potential for totally unstoppable gushers on this scale probably wasn't necessarily "imagined" by everyone involved in this.
Having followed this on an off and on basis (no TV) I can only make a couple of uneducated opinions here.

1.) BP KNOWINGLY took shortcuts with mud/cement and blow-out containment features! That seems to lay this squarely on their asses!

2.) When the "people" supposedly elected two oil-men into the two highest offices in the land, and "our" representatives in Washington D.C. didn't try to contain their own, and the President's and the Vice President's, interest(s) in BIG oil, we the people got fucked! I don't care how you look at Obama or what your opinion(s) are of him, he did NOT cause this fuck-up! This rig/well, and others, were already in place long before he got into office! Wanna blame someone, blame the Bush/Cheney regime! That's when this rig/well, and others, were given the green-light go-ahead to drill!


3.) Hell no...a blow-out is never a planned event! FFS people, they happen! It's the nature of the oil patch, whether on land or on the ocean! No, they don't happen as often as they used to, and usually not any where close to this magnitude, but they do happen! Had BP not tried to cut costs by cutting corners on safety, and had the government not tried to cut costs by not doing the proper inspections in a timely manner, this disaster would probably not have happened. If there were procedures in place, by the company and mandated for all off-shore rigs, for clean-up, this mess wouldn't have spread like it did! This seems to place the blame on both BP and the Feds!

4.) Until BOTH parties quit pointing fingers and start working together, this mess is going to continue to grow out of control!