Who Was In Charge Before Spill?

The Deepwater Horizon rig operated under the hazy authority of multiple corporations and regulators, with no one in charge of safety, The New York Times reports. Regulations for offshore drilling have evolved in a piecemeal way, with the few deepest drillers getting many exemptions to safety procedures adopted for drilling in shallower waters. Regulators appear to have given little attention to BP’s emergency spill plan—the documents contained a link to an Asian shopping site and mentioned protecting walruses, creatures not too common to the gulf. Rig workers described a conflict between BP, which made more cash by drilling faster, and Transocean, paid by the day, which made more money by drilling slower. And costly delay in drilling led to missed signs of danger: A Halliburton worker fretted about cement use, another about casing quality. At the same time, regulators granted BP a pass in testing its blowout preventer.