BP Oil Company Displayed "Titanic" Mentality

Like the captain of the Titanic ocean liner, BP Oil Company, in it's haste to get the Deep Water Horizon up and running, barreled ahead at full speed acting as though they were immune to accident or mishap.

But they were wrong. Dead wrong.

In the months prior to the underwater accident, BP violated standard construction procedures for offshore drilling, shortened or totally avoided testing of the blow out valve responsible for shutting off the flow of oil after an oil leak and falsified documents pertaining to these issues.

Mere hours before the oil rig blew, witnesses reported seeing a BP official arguing with a worker over an issue dealing with drilling procedures.

And the cozy relationship that BP had with the Minerals Management Service (MMS), the federal agency responsible for overseeing offshore drilling, didn't help BP's attitude very much.

MMS's relaxed, bordering on non-existent, oversight of BP gave them a comfortable launching point to violate or totally ignore any regulation that they chose.

British Petroleum Oil Company knew that they were taking enormous risks in operating as they were but in their minds the reward outweighed the risks. All BP saw was dollar signs, not the icebergs ahead.

For the depth that BP was drilling, there were supposed to be 21 centralizers (stabilizing supports) in the oil well.

BP had only 6.

The other 15 were not installed because it would have taken 18 hours to do so and drilling was already months behind and millions of dollars in the red.

The blow out preventer that was designed to shut off oil flow in the event of an oil leak was supposed to be tested weekly for at least 30 minutes under high pressure.

A former BP oil engineer interviewed by CNN reported that BP routinely did not test the blow out valve and when they did would drastically shorten the test in order to get back to drilling.

He stated that many times the valve was tested for only 5 minutes under less than standard pressure.

Even after the oil well explosion, like the captain of the Titanic, BP acted as though there was nothing to worry about.

At first they did not acknowledge that there was a leak. Then when they finally admitted that there was a leak, they moved slowly to control it as if they had things under control when they knew that they had no mechanism in place or procedure to follow that would stop the flow of oil.

In the days and weeks to follow, BP continued to try to fake out the American public using one failed procedure after another to try to stop the oil leak that was spreading.

The ship was sinking but BP would not admit it.

Their infallible plans had failed and there they were with egg on their face.

Finally, the federal government and the White House issued the order for all hands on deck.

Weeks after the initial blast, President Obama and the federal government took over major control of the gulf operation and began to mobilize various federal agencies as well as scientists and other experts to aid in the efforts to stem the flow of oil in the gulf.

We are now nearly 60 days and 2 million barrels of crude oil into the gulf coast disaster with no relief in sight.

A cap has been put over the non-functioning blow out valve. But that cap is only capturing a fraction of the oil which is leaking from the underwater well.

Two relief wells are being drilled to relieve the pressure coming from the damaged well which should all but stop the flow of oil coming from the leaking rig.

But those wells won't be completed until August.

What do we do until then?

Pray for a miracle because BP doesn't have a clue.