Yesterday (Wednesday) BP released their internal investigation into the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, paving the way for one of the biggest corporate legal battles in years.
Essentially BP accepts some of the blame but also firmly points the finger at Transocean and Halliburnton who operated the rig (along with BP).
BP have come up with 8 key findings about why this disaster happened, of which they personally admit responsibility for half of one of these findings - Transocean seem to come out worse with Halliburton not far behind.
Of course this is BP's initial attempt to try and pass the responsibility onto someone else, and thus try and escape without being done for gross negligence. But it seems to me that there are so many different reasons as to why this happened that it is very difficult to portion sole blame to any one company.
Because of this, legal and market analysts from the City of London seem to think that the fine dealt out for the disaster could be as little as US3bn, a far cry from the 20bn that was touted a couple of weeks back.
It all seems rather reminiscent of the Exxon Valdez spill when the local community, environment and economy was brought to a standstill whilst Exxon got off with a tiny fine (relative to the damage done).
Admitably, I live thousands of miles away from the Gulf, but it seems grossly unfair that BP (and the other companies involved) can pay millions for the best lawyers to save them billions, but the local communities see fuck all.
Should be a really interesting landmark law case that could take years (or decades) to complete. I for one, will be watching with my ears and eyes open.
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