ace---you're making the same argument you made a couple times before. it's like your premises get taken apart and you think ok, so i'll wait a week and say the same thing again.
i posted the mms booklet on leasing oil drilling plots off the us to show what the general rules of the game were. in post 182, i linked to this document, which has the agreement that was in place that shaped the initial exploratory activities of the deepwater horizon:
http://www.gomr.mms.gov/PI/PDFImages/PLANS/29/29977.pdf
on page 12, for example, you can see the environmental exemptions that mms granted bp. look at point 2.7 in particular. bp was not required to generate a scenario that would be the basis for planning and so forth for a blowout or fire or anything else on the deepwater horizon that was not also in place for shallow-water drilling.
secondly, that bp is still bound by the agreement with mms is not surprising: on what basis would they be held to continual liability for the leak if there was no ongoing agreement?
what you'd do once you picked up the phone is let bp off the hook and call that leadership. which is consistent with your on-your-knees-before-the-manly-capitalist approach to such things. but it's hardly "leadership" in any sane sense.
and the epa is actively reviewing bp's overall authorization to operate in or around the united states at all. obviously no-one knows what the outcome of that yet. but it is under review. i would hope that its fate hinges on bp's performance in addressing the actual oil problems (you know, the leak and the very large amounts of oil) materially (like stopping the flows for real rather than playing stupid games with numbers to make amounts rendered meaningless by the context that's excluded seem like a step forward with the capping and actually cleaning up the oil) rather than focusing mostly on brand triage (preventing journalists from photographing wildlife that's impacted when possible, etc.)...