I know it’s just a comedy video – but it’d would be fair if a) there was an obvious solution to stopping the leak (there isn’t), b) BP had ignored advice from vaguely sensible people on the oil slick (they haven’t).

It’s certain that the disaster was caused by mistakes on the part of BP and/or its subcontractors, exacerbated by the fact that the rig was drilling deeper than pretty much anyone ever has. That’s BP’s fault.

But the suggestion that they’re not trying as hard as possible to cap the spill is frankly moronic – apart from the gigantic liability incurred as they continue to pollute beaches, they’re also releasing hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of oil into the sea that they own and would otherwise be able to sell. It would be insane for them to do anything other than *everything anyone can think of* to get the problem solved – it’s just that it’s a really, really hard problem.

(and yes, they made their own bed and can lie in it, etc, but let’s be clear: BP FAIL is what happened before the disaster, not what happened after…)

Rather crass humour, very laboured.

Until the well is capped and their has been an enquiry no one will really know what happened to cause the Deepwater disaster.

Only 8 of the 120 people on the barge at the time were employed by BP and aTransocean Drilling man was in charge. All the equipment including the blow out preventer was Transocean’s and the cementing was under the control of Halliburton.

I suppose it is possible that BP did something to order the contractors to breach its lease conditions, hoodwink the inspectorate which visited a few days earlier or intervened to require the contractors to take shortcuts, but in truth that doesn’t seem likely.

It would also have been possible to use inexperienced or say cheap Third World contractors, but that didn’t happen. Transocean and Halliburton are arguably the best in the business.

We can all say with hindsight BP should have been better prepared and covered more contingencies, but if that is so why didn’t MMR mandate this when awarding the lease and why didn;t the EPA (which has the overall responsibility for contingency planning for events like this) have either done it itself or mandated the industry collectively to do it.

The enquiry in due course will give us some leads and it may yet turn out that some of those involved somewhere or somehow were negligent. But I think the lessons to be learned are much more likely to be for industry practices as a whole and for rhe government agancies regulating the industry.

) BP had ignored advice from vaguely sensible people on the oil slick (they haven’t).

No but they obstructed in giving access to scientists and govt agencies to see what scale of the disaster. This is why initial estimates put it at 5000 barrels a day, while it is now estimates to be nearly 10 times that a day.

There are several more examples of this, including bussing in volunteers just for the Obama trip and then getting rid of people instead of hiring them to clean up the beach.