President Obama’s planning to “get mad” today at his partner BP over the continued Gulf oil gusher. This comes as we learn that oil is spurting out of the seabed much faster than estimated, perhaps by a factor of 14. Steven Wereley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, analyzed videotape of the [...]

Where were all the government engineers and environmental scientists who must have known about the dangers and risks of deepwater drilling? The Times reports the answer: they were muzzled by pro-drilling managers up and down the Administration and afraid to speak out or lose their jobs.

The President is reportedly frustrated by the continuing underwater gusher in the Gulf of Mexico. Hopefully he is just as frustrated by the almost non-existent regulatory regime in the run-up to this disaster. We’ve known about the failures of the Minerals Management Service for many years before the Obama Administration even came into power. Yet [...]

Committee hearings Tuesday contained no explicit admissions that anyone had done something wrong, but the second hearing helped focus on the breakdown in the environmental review process. That’s a legal timebomb.

BP has a recent history of blowing off the procedures and training that are one key to emergency management in this industry.