5 Responses

1. Standardized safety requirements for deep-water drilling. Better safe than sorry. A few hundred thousand dollars of caution saves you from a $20B escrow account.

   And to answer which party would be better off, that’s obvious. Republicans roll over and do whatever corporations want, and they do not want to improve safety if it cuts into the bottom line.

2. Since they seem to know what a safe rig looks like why not find someone who knows what they are doing to actually go LOOK at the damn thing????

3. this is the only well that has broken in the gulf. bp has a poor safety track record. everyone else will surely examine their respective drilling sites for possible problems due to faulty equipment, or lack of safety backup systems.i

4. No I don’t think it is up to the federal government to do much more than put inspections in place. Already we are awarding overseeing positions to those persons with the correct political stance. Who can forget Obama’s green czar?

   As of yet we really don’t have any evidence that this entire affair was not caused by some group of environmental terrorists!

   Get real! This accident is going to cost BP almost all of it’s assets. Nobody is more concerned with not having spills than Oil Corporations.

5. I think it makes more sense to create an independent entity that has very strong regulatory teeth that can force oil companies to adhere to stringent safety guidelines.

   Obviously, government pensioned individuals have appeared to be highly disinterested in their attitude towards never saying no to a wealthy client, (like oil/coal industries).

   So, I don’t think a government agency is capable of holding a powerful and wealthy corporate entity in check no matter who you place in charge of it, Bush had a Coal Baron in charge of the MMS and Obama continued the trend by nominating an Oil Lobbyist as the head of the MMS, so nether party appears to be interested in upsetting the status quo of their corporate masters.