Nobody knows

Word is that the Obama administration has been consulting all the oil majors on the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

The response is basically, "Hey, nobody has ever had a leak at this depth of water before, so all of us would be scrambling around like chickens with the heads cut off, like BP is doing." 

As many safety features as are built in to modern offshore oil rigs, they have not had a real-world situation in which to test their disaster response.  Now, we have one.  And it's taking a long time to fix.  I am not convinced that an "acoustic switch" would have been any more successful than what is currently in place, but I have a feeling that we will see that system become SOP for future offshore rigs.

Then you have all these people who are clamorning for the Obama administration to "take over" the operations from BP.  As if!  As if the government has the same kind of expertise as BP, Shell or Exxon?  Get real.  And these are the SAME people that scream to "keep the government off my back and out of my business."  But when there is any catastrophe, they suddenly look to the government to fix everything.

Hypocrisy is not a new phenomenon.