The Only American Part of BP was the BP Oil Disaster

[Bloodeagle]

The Only American Part of BP was the BP Oil Disaster
Submitted by louisehartmann on 15. June 2010 - 8:45

The LA Times is reporting that the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that exploded in the Gulf "was built in South Korea. It was operated by a Swiss company under contract to a British oil firm. Primary responsibility for safety and other inspections rested not with the U.S. government but with the Republic of the Marshall Islands — a tiny, impoverished nation in the Pacific Ocean. And the Marshall Islands, a maze of tiny atolls, many smaller than the ill-fated oil rig, outsourced many of its responsibilities to private companies." On the other hand, early reports from survivors of the Deepwater Horizon explosion say that the problem was a major shouting-match fight between a BP official on the rig and a Deepwater Horizon official about how to cut costs and move action faster. The BP official won, the company saved money, and the rig blew up. CBS, which did the interview of the Deepwater Horizon survivor who told the story of the fight between the rig operator and the BP official, has since scrubbed the interview from its website, and President Obama, rather than vilifying the corporate criminals involved, is trying to shift the conversation to failures in the Minerals and Management Service, the government agency that had oversight over the permits for drilling. In that, he's following the first rule of modern American politics: Don't pick on the poor transnational corporations - they may well fund your next election campaign.

[OneWolf]

I have worked most of my adult life in the oilfield and for the last 10 years on a land based drilling rig and I can assure you these types of accidents happen on a regular basis.Usually the cause of a blowout or explosion is
striking a shallow pocket of methane or natural gas and when that happens
there is not enough weight in the hole in the form of driling mud to displace pressure of the gas and boom,the well is done for.
What makes drilling in the ocean so dangerous is that they drill many different
wells on one location where as most of the time on land they only drill one well.So you can just imagine the type of pressure one has to deal with while
drilling offshore wells.What this rig lacked as all the other offshore rigs do in
America was a device that automatically shuts the B.O.P. off in the event of a
blowout.The device is called an Acoustic Trigger and it cost about a half a
million dollars apiece.But to me that pales in comparison to the billions of dollers tax payers and BP are going to have to fork over to put a band-aid on this monumental F-Up.Europe uses Acoustic Triggers so maybe in the future
America will to.I doubt it but I hope they do.