BP (NYSE:BP), Others, Weren't Inspected Properly by Feds

As anyone knows who has workplace inspections, most of them are announced far in advance, and conditions created to give the appearance of being on top of things. That's what has been the practice of federal inspectors of BP (NYSE:BP) and other companies over the years.

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, in 2000, about one out of nine federal inspections of deepwater drilling platforms were unannounced. By 2009, only close to one out of eighty were unannounced, basically making them ineffective.

Everyone knows if an inspection is anticipated it will end up with skewed results, as everything is made to look far better than under normal operations of the business on a daily basis.

In other words, when a company knows about it they're being set up to succeed in the inspection. That may sound good, but in reality it is harmful to any company, but in the case of offshore drilling, the stakes are too high to play that game.

Inspections for offshore drilling platforms had also plummeted to only three a year on average, leaving huge gaps of time where any potential damaging practices could go on undetected or unobserved.

The obvious answer is to perform more inspections on a random basis with no one knowing they're going to occur.

After all, why notify an oil platform or oil rig that you're coming? That only does harm, as if there are risky practices going on, they could be discovered and taken care of.

There's no value in giving a free pass to companies in order to get a good grade which otherwise wouldn't have been obtained.

BP (NYSE:BP) Legal Hearing, Criminal Lawyers Lash Out

Today marked the beginning of the fourth hearing for BP (NYSE:BP) as well as other companies holding a stake in the Macondo well. The Federal investigators and criminal lawyers are saying that BP was fully aware of the fact that there were extreme technical problems, but did not take any action leading to the April 20th explosion of the Deepwater Horizon.

There is a joint panel combining The Department of Interior and the U.S. Coast Guard. It is the responsibility of this panel to come to a conclusion as to cause of the massive oil spill. One of the main lines of questioning focused on whether there were major equipment failures on the rig, which would have played a part in the disaster.

A shot of natural gas catapulted to the surface from under the seabed, causing the rig to explode. Despite many precautions that are in place and designed to prevent this, the explosion still happened.

In a September 2009 audit done on BP, there were numerous problem found aboard the Deepwater Horizon. Panel member Jason Mathews, questioned BP's top official for maritime safety in the Gulf Neil Cramond, "With all these flaws identified within this audit, do you think it is a fundamental flaw for BP to pay [Transocean, the rigs owner] $500,000 a day knowing that there are all these problems with the rig." Cramond said he was comfortable with how the safety issues were handled.