Personal Injury Law

BP Executives Under Senate Fire

By Regan Zambri & Long

Posted by: Salvatore J. Zambri, founding partner

BP executives have been receiving emotionally charges and pointed questions from Senators during hearings over the Gulf spill.  The Nightly News reported that "Senators had no patience ... Senators wanted answers and accountability. Two big issues drew deep skepticism. What fix will actually work and who covers the spiraling cost?"

According to the AP, "Congress called BP and its drilling partners to account Tuesday for a 'cascade of failures' behind the spreading Gulf oil spill, zeroing in on a crucial chain of events at the deep-sea wellhead" just before the explosion, during back-to-back Senate hearings. Said Sen. Jeff Bingaman, "If this is like other catastrophic failures of technological systems in modern history, whether it was the sinking of the Titanic, Three Mile Island, or the loss of the Challenger, we will likely discover that there was a cascade of failures and technical and human and regulatory errors." But Lamar McKay, chairman of BP America, told the hearing, "Liability, blame, fault - put it over here," referring to Transocean and Halliburton, "Our obligation is to deal with the spill, clean it up and make sure the impacts of that spill are compensated, and we're going to do that."

The spill has the potential to cause billions of dollars in damages to individuals, states, industries, and governments.  There is plenty of blame to go around.  This terrible incident should not have happened.  I hope the entities involved will do what is right and accept accountability for the errors that caused so much damage.

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BP, Gulf Spill, Oil Spill, Senate Hearing

Full post as published by DC Metro Area Personal Injury Law Blog on May 12, 2010 (boomark / email).