LETTING THEM CUT CORNERS

At what point do we just admit that BP was criminally negligent?  How many stories like this is it going to take, folks?

BP was facing fresh criticism over its approach to safety on Saturday night after critics said it did not use an industry standard process to asses risk ahead of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. 

The procedure, known as a safety case, was developed in Britain after the catastrophic Piper Alpha oil rig explosion of 1988 in which 167 people lost their lives. 

Royal Dutch Shell confirmed that it always develops safety cases – a lengthy written document – on each of its thousands of wells in the world, even though they are only mandatory in some countries.

However, BP admitted to The Sunday Telegraph that it does not use safety cases on any of its US wells, including the high-pressure deep water Macondo well from which up to 60,000 barrels of oil per day are still leaking in the Gulf of Mexico.  

But remember, as the oil services stock-owning judge who blocked the Obama administration's moratorium on drilling said, the government does not have any compelling evidence that deep water oil drilling represents a threat to the coast.

No evidence of threat at all.