BP violations overlooked

just last year the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA, issued its largest fine ever, $87 million to B.P., not just for safety violations that led to the massive 2005 explosion which killed 15 and injured another 170, but for 270 violations of its agreement afterward to clean up its act, plus 439 new violations. Four people died at the Texas City refinery in separate incidences after that blast.
And what about deep water offshore drilling—is there any evidence suggesting stricter regulation rather than a less angry god might have prevented or mitigated this disaster? Cleanskies.com reports B.P. was cited in 2007 for poor training in well control. It was fined only $41,000, fined $75,000 for lacking adequate water pressure in one rig‘s firefighting system, fined only $80,000 for bypassing safety alarms.
Regulators last year and this, honored B.P. for its outstanding safety record—a record B.P. trumpeted in pushing back just last year on a new attempt to have government safety audits replace the industry‘s voluntary self-audits. According to a lawsuit filed some family members of the 11 missing and presumed dead oil rig workers in the Gulf, the oil services company Halliburton improperly and negligently sealed the Deepwater Horizon pipeline to the well itself.
Improper seals, ABC News reports, are responsible for more than a
dozen previous blowouts in the gulf. “The Wall Street Journal” reporting that Deepwater Horizon did not have a remote-controlled shut off valve that is mandatory in at least two other countries, and is used voluntarily by other drilling companies in this. In 2000, the Minerals Management Service began considering making that and other backup measures mandatory. The oil industry pushed back against the device.
Three years later, an administration led by two oil men, including the former CEO of the aforementioned Halliburton, decided not to mandate any new backup systems. The shutoff valve being, in the words of the administration itself, quote, “not recommended because they tend to be very costly.” They cost half a million dollars—less than Mary Landrieu has received from the oil industry.
Far less than the $5 million that B.P.‘s CEO, Tony Hayward, makes per year. His company reporting $5.6 billion for the first three months of this year, not revenue, profits. The kind of profits apparently that can prophesize a future free of regulation but full of acts of God.