The more we learn about how BP operated in the days and years before the Deepwater Horizon blew up, the less the resulting spill seems like an accident and the more it seems to have been bound to happen. And for those watching for signs that BP is backing away from it’s highly visible “it’s our spill, and we will make it right!” PR campaign…no, wait, “backing away” would mean they once meant it, let’s just say “continuing to mislead”…there’s a priceless quote from the new BP response leadership. Priceless…and, well, complicated.
“I think we will find that this was an incredibly complicated set of events with individual decisions and equipment failures that led to a very complicated industrial accident,” the NYT quotes Robert Dudley as saying. He was denying there was any corporate disregard for safety. If those words are not right off a BP legal strategy talking points memo, I’d be very surprised. There was no firm indication from the Times, but the comment was apparently delivered with a straight face.