Deepwater disaster was not an aberration but systemic

The April blast aboard the Deepwater Horizon oil rig killed 11 people and caused one of the worst in history. The Macondo well, about a mile under the sea's surface, eventually leaked millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, damaging hundreds of miles of coastline before it was capped in July.

The companies involved in the BP oil spill had made decisions to cut costs and save time that contributed to the disaster, a 48-page report by the presidential commission found. The failures were "systemic" and likely to recur without industry and government reform. The new report criticises BP, which owned the Macondo well, Transocean and Halliburton, which managed the well sealing operation, and blames inadequate government oversight and regulation.

"Whether purposeful or not, many of the decisions that BP, Halliburton, and Transocean made that increased the risk of the Macondo blow-out clearly saved those companies significant time (and money)," the presidential panel wrote. "BP did not have adequate controls in place to ensure that key decisions in the months leading up to the blow-out were safe or sound from an engineering perspective." In a months-long investigation, though it lacked subpoena power, the panel reviewed thousands of pages of documents, interviewed hundreds of witnesses, and in the autumn conducted a series of public hearings.The panel found that mistakes and "failures to appreciate risk" compromised safeguards "until the blow-out was inevitable and, at the very end, uncontrollable".

Bob Graham, former Florida governor and a co-chairman of the commission, said the findings showed the blow-out was avoidable. "This disaster likely would not have happened had the companies involved been guided by an unrelenting commitment to safety first," he said.

The conclusions run counter to industry efforts to portray the Deepwater Horizon disaster as a rare occurence, as oil companies prod the US government to open greater areas of the US coast to oil exploration. "The blowout was not the product of a series of aberrational decisions made by rogue industry or government officials that could not have been anticipated or expected to occur again," the report read. "Rather, the root causes are systemic and, absent significant reform in both industry practices and government policies, might well recur."

This is what this blog wrote at the time, "It's Always an Accident "- "Capitalism, with its emphasis on profit and short-term considerations, provides fertile ground for accidents and disasters of various kinds. It also means that any accidents which do happen are likely to be more serious and harmful than would otherwise be the case. Cutting corners and ignoring safety matters is part and parcel of a profit-oriented system."

The truth is that capitalism by its very nature causes such disasters. Capitalism, lets face it - is a disaster!

How differently a socialist society would deal with oil exploration can be read here