Don't you trust BP ever. The New York Times has an indepth article why.

[alp227]

For BP, a History of Spills and Safety Lapses
by Jad Mouawad
The New York Times
May 9, 2010, A22

After BP’s Texas City, Tex., refinery blew up in 2005, killing 15 workers, the company vowed to address the safety shortfalls that caused the blast.

The next year, when a badly maintained oil pipeline ruptured and spilled 200,000 gallons of crude oil over Alaska’s North Slope, the oil giant once again promised to clean up its act.

In 2007, when Tony Hayward took over as chief executive, BP settled a series of criminal charges, including some related to Texas City, and agreed to pay $370 million in fines. “Our operations failed to meet our own standards and the requirements of the law,” the company said then, pledging to improve its “risk management.”

Despite those repeated promises to reform, BP continues to lag other oil companies when it comes to safety, according to federal officials and industry analysts. Many problems still afflict its operations in Texas and Alaska, they say. Regulators are investigating a whistle-blower’s allegations of safety violations at the Atlantis, one of BP’s newest offshore drilling platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.

Now BP is in the spotlight because of the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon, which killed 11 people and continues to spew oil into the ocean. It is too early to say what caused the explosion. Other companies were also involved, including Transocean, which owned and operated the drilling rig, and Halliburton, which had worked on the well a day before the explosion.

BP, based in London, has repeatedly asserted that Transocean was solely responsible for the accident.

However, lawmakers plan to question BP executives about their overall commitment to safety at Congressional hearings this week on the Gulf incident.

“It is a corporate problem,” said Representative Bart Stupak, Democrat of Michigan, who has been particularly critical of BP’s operations in Alaska and will lead the House committee hearing, on Wednesday. “Their mentality is to get in the foxhole and batten down the hatch. It just seems there is this pattern.”

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/business/09bp.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

And BP wonders why it failed at capping the well today.

[TexasObserver]

1. Recommend

[chillspike]

2. Atlantis?

is it going to sink into the ocean like Atlantis too?

[Festivito]

3. BP, Bad Platforms, Bad Pipelines, Bad Promises -- Bad Problems.

Bad Pattern, Bad Pledging.

Bad Planning.

But, Problem is, they're not the only Bad People.

[troubledamerican]

4. Post title without irony: Don't trust BP -- trust the NY Times??????

Try Greg Palast instead. Do I have to remind people about Judith Miller, Bill Keller, Jayson Blair, WITHHOLDING James Risen's bombshell about warrantless wiretaps until AFTER the 2004 election to HELP BUSH, BURYING the lede on the Florida newspaper consortium recount which showed that Al Gore won -- in paragraph 17 -- while headline reads Bush won ... Shall I continue about the NY Times???

http://www.gregpalast.com/slick-operator-the-bp-ive-known-too-well/

[underseasurveyor]

5. Can't trust any oil companies

They all plunder, rape, pillage and kill the earth and human kind alike. It's been long documented for decades. They just don't plain give a rats ass as long as they get their oil and money.

[donheld]

6. +1

[alfredo]

7. corporations are amoral. So are rattlesnakes

[underseasurveyor]

8. I have no problem with rattlesnakes

They are instinctual creatures. They are not bad or evil. Now corporations that displace whole villages, destroy eco-systems, remove or enslave and/or kill local peoples like oil companies do, and these oil companies are run by greedy, ruthless people that are bad and yes sometimes even evil (george and dick come to mind) are a completely different animal all together and trying to compare rattlesnakes to human=corporations is absolutely ridiculous, don't you think:eyes:

[alfredo]

9. Both are poisonous. Both willing to kill without remorse.

[underseasurveyor]

10. Rattlesnakes kill to eat or to defend themselves in order to survive.

Even if it could a rattler isn't going to feel remorse for surviving and behaving as nature intended.

Big O corporations kill for self interest and greed. To be amoral is to be neither moral or immoral.. Big oil corps ARE immoral. They do what they do with intent and malice with no regard for plant, animal or human life.

I think we basically agree, it's just the comparison between a rattlesnake and big oil just doesn't. I like reptiles and they do hold an important place in the whole scheme of things.

[blindpig]

11. The thing about a piece like this...

is that it is to a degree scapegoating, damage control. Yeah, BP is six kinds of fucked up, as is Exxon, as are the rest. So they throw BP under the bus, hoping that will take the heat off of the rest of the capitalist scam. But if not BP, then someone else, somebody gonna scarf up them profits.

Nationalize. Expropriate without compensation.