If you have been following the news, you may have recently heard that an oil rig leased by BP to drill for oil in the Gulf of Mexico exploded on April 20th. The explosion killed eleven workers and, after two days, the rig, Deepwater Horizon, sank in 5000 ft of water.

I do follow the news about BP a little and, to me, this does not come as a great surprise. BP has a long and poor safety record, which includes a refinery explosion down in Texas back in 2005, which killed fifteen workers. From what the media has been saying, the reason for this latest disaster is, once again, due to poor safety.

The consequences for this latest disaster are going to be severe. Oil is leaking from the broken wellhead and it appears no one is quite sure how to stop the leak. It could be months before this is sorted and, in the meantime, crude oil is spilling into the Gulf of Mexico.

This all goes to show that, yet again, a big corporation has put profits before safety and you can be pretty sure that the government has allowed them to get away with lax health and safety. It is sad that many people are now going to suffer for big oil incompetence.