Shit Always Rolls Downhill

BP is hard at work investigating other people’s responsibility for the Deepwater Horizon explosion:

COVINGTON, La. – Oil giant BP said its internal investigation of the unchecked Gulf oil spill is largely focused on work done by other companies as a new government report Tuesday showed workers at the federal agency that oversees offshore drilling accepted sports tickets, lunches and other gifts from oil and gas companies.

BP PLC said in a release that an initial investigation found multiple control mechanisms should have prevented the accident that started with an oil rig explosion April 20 off the coast of Louisiana that killed 11 workers.

BP, the largest oil and gas producer in the Gulf, listed seven areas of focus as it hunts for a cause. Four involve the blowout preventer, a massive piece of machinery that sits atop the wellhead and should have acted as a safety device of last resort but did not. That was manufactured by Cameron International Corp. and owned by Transocean LTD, which also owned the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.

The other three areas of focus for the investigation involve the cementing and casing of the wellhead, which was Halliburton Inc.’s responsibility.

BP isn’t primarily responsible, it was Cameron International Corp., TransOcean LTD, and Halliburton. Meanwhile, Halliburton is blaming TransOcean, and TransOcean has its own investigation underway. Each one will spend millions trying to finger all the others and get their own slimy hides off the hook. Round and round the accusations will go in a great big toxic circle-jerk that will reveal, yet again, what spineless little weasels our ‘elites’ truly are. A blinding storm of reports, investigations, hearings, statements, briefs, motions, accusations, counter accusations, delays, obfuscations, evasions, lies, lawsuits and pay-offs will choke the air like swarms of malarial insects buzzing over the carcass of a dead ox. Everything will become so cloudy and confused that nobody will be able to figure out exactly what happened or who is really to blame, if anyone. By the time the truth finally comes out, nobody will care anymore. Mission accomplished.

Luckily for them, a professor at Texas A&M just might have come up with a compromise solution they can all agree on, a multi-partisan consensus, if you will:

Gene Beck, a petroleum engineer at Texas A&M at College Station who worked in the drilling industry for two decades, said the list of problems BP is investigating appears exhaustive. But he said the company also needs to look at decisions made by people on the rig.

“That needs to be investigated: Why did they do what they did?” Beck said. “They need to ask themselves that very, very serious question: ‘Why did we make these choices?’”

Eureka! The workers are to blame!

Why didn’t anyone think of that before? They have, but a TransOcean spokesman says the’re waiting until after the company memorial service to bring it up.“We’ll comment at the appropriate time,” he said. That’s nice. To do otherwise would be unmannerly.

Every problem has a solution.