Weather hampers Gulf of Mexico oil slick clean-up
Found on BBC News on Friday, 30 April 2010
Reports suggest that the slick is growing rapidly - one report said it had tripled in size in a day.
Up to 5,000 barrels of oil a day are gushing into the sea after the British Petroleum-operated Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank last week.
As pressure mounted on BP, the governor continued: "We certainly have passed the point of waiting for clean-up plans from BP or the incident commander."
BBC business correspondent Joe Lynam says that BP has no external insurance cover in the traditional sense, instead using a form of "self insurance" to cover major events like this.
Once again it turns out that those who operate large and dangerous industries tend not to be in control if a worst case scenario turns up. BP sticks the head in the sand, tried to manually close automatic(!) security valves and now comes with the "it's ok, we'll pay some money" card. The sad part is that the "sit and wait" strategy will probably work, as always. Oil companies need to have their influences limited and should be put under a stricter environmental monitoring. There's no reason why they should get permissions to drill in sensitive ecosystems or operate platforms without self-sufficiant security valves that shut off the oil when the slightest problem is spotted.