Luckily, the Bush administration was unable to convince Congress to repeal the Clean Water Act. Under the Clean Water Act, an oil company can be fined up to $1,100 per barrel of oil spilled. Given the size of the Gulf oil spill, the fine BP may have to pay is HUGE.
Can BP afford the damages? I hate to spoil the fun you all are getting from gambling on BP stock, but BP is an enormous company. BP is also sitting on the VAST oil reserve which is causing the oil spill. We have no choice but to allow BP or another oil company to tap these reserves as new wells are the only long term solution to end the oil spill.
As a congressional hearing proved, NO OIL COMPANY has actually bothered to make an emergency oil spill plan for a particular geographic area. (Dumb, I know.) We are going to have to think of this mess as that Bruce Willis movie where the oil men were the only people with the skills to solve the problem. Book learning does not suffice when you are drilling.
HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?
My guess is that some middle managers decided save money by taking risks that they did not fully explain to their bosses. This often happens, because, for some reason, bosses never believe that their middle managers are NOT telling them the entire truth.
THIS IS WHY we have regulators. If the middle manager knows that he/she will have to satisfy an inspector as to the safety of the operation, then he/she is more likely to give the boss the bad news about escalating costs. That, of course, assumes that we have inspectors, and that the inspectors are doing their jobs.
The Republicans have this theory that we do not need governmental regulation and many of you believed them. Now we have had a financial crises and an oil crises, both caused by lack of regulation and/or by lack of enforcement of regulations.
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