I haven't written a diary here in years, but this story forced me to. The meaning of this statement CANNOT be overlooked.
BP said it never follows a federal law requiring it to certify that a blowout preventer device would be able to block a well in case of an emergency....at the same time, the British oil giant blamed the federal oversight agency, Minerals Management Service, for not asking it to comply with the law.
My jaw is still on the floor.
This is a red letter example of the impact of deregulation. The whole concept behind deregulation--which of course has given us Enron, the banking crisis, mining disasters, and now BP--is that companies in the "free market" should regulate themselves, and government should get out of the way.
Now, BP is coming out and saying that if the regulators don't ask, they won't do.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a letter Thursday that he became concerned when he read in The Times-Picayune that the Minerals Management Service official in charge of reviewing BP's application for the Macondo well was not aware of a regulation requiring oil companies to certify that their blowout preventers can cut drill pipe to shut off a flowing well under specific conditions.
This is bigger than BP, bigger than the oil industry and bigger than Democrat/Republican. This speaks to the entire rationalization for deregulating industry. If we cannot assume that industry will do the right thing without being followed-up on, we cannot conclude that deregulation is safe.
Now BP is admitting they aren't following that segment of the law because the regulator in question wasn't asking them to.
My jaw is still on the floor.