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Originally Posted by roachboy
more on the regulatory background for this mess, if regulatory you want to call it. this piece from today's wall st journal is about the minerals management service, a fine bunch of republican-instituted fellows who essentially tell the oil companies that it would be nice to be safe but don't do anything about practices that aren't....and cheerlead for "energy independence"---the way these missions get squared is by way of monitoring industry records about amounts of oil extracted and getting royalty payments. well, the other way they're squared is across a seemingly endless supply of handjobs for oil corporations. but read on:
U.S. Oil Regulator Ceded Safety Oversight to Drillers - WSJ.com |
I am intrigued by those, now after the fact, making charges against "regulators" for relying on the "industry" to help or to fully craft regulation. If I could interact with someone making those charges and willing to answer direct questions, I would start with the following:
Given continuing emerging technology that is often developed through industry R&D that has not been/can not be fully tried and tested in operational conditions before implementation, how would you develop safety/fail-safe regulations covering all contingencies without input from the "industry"?
For everyone else, again, BP has/had no incentive to waste millions of gallons of oil through an oil spill in the gulf, nor incur compensatory and potential punitive damages that will put their on going operations across the globe at risk. No one has yet to offer any hard proof that BP and any regulator failed to act in good faith.