BP’s somewhat mystifying response to this "accident" has to do with well known forms of risk management and quality control. Where it's seen as important, it is straight forward to limit risk, but when money is optimized, the safety net is pruned to a few old strand of jute.
This is happening EVERYWHERE in industry, as "productivity" and "profitability" is perpetually maximized.
The MMS actually has pseudo-scientific "studies" to "prove" that decreased inspection frequency has no impact on accident probability. The studies use uncontrolled data from a tiny sample to suggest that moving from inspections every week to every month will result in no meaningful increase in accidents. It’s a complete snow job cloaked in science and statistics.
Also a recent reality check; the top kill failure suggests the pipe is unsound UPSTREAM from the blow out preventer...so it wouldn't have worked even if it had an intact annular, no hydraulic fluid leak and/or dead backup battery. So those 4000 wells ALL have "safety features" which are untested and likely don't work as promised.
Successive waves of "analysis" to minimize safety practices and maximize profit gives the eventual result; a high probability of a sporadic mega disaster.
With 4000 drilling operations in the gulf, the BP "spill" likely remains "statistically insignificant" although it’s painfully obvious that it IS very significant in its impact on the US.
The same "analysis" is being done in pharmaceutical manufacture, air travel, mine management, chemical manufacture and waste disposal. It’s all they do. The inevitable results are in no real sense "accidents".
Trimming multi-component safety requirements for fractional increases in profit is NOT expected to result in a massive increase in total catastrophic failures. "Thousands of wells didn't blow up" is an incredibly shallow and hugely repeated positive spin on the current affairs. What is changed is the probability of multiple failures clustering on a single well, or an increase in the rare mega-disasters.
As an analogy, if we all don't wear seat belts, we aren't guaranteed a massive increase in the number of road deaths, rather we are guaranteed that when other bad events (slick road, drunk driver in SUV etc.) cluster WITH our lack of seat belts the results will be much worse for that "unlucky" individual. If some unfortunate dummy gets killed by not wearing his seat belt (or motorcycle helmet) AND rolling "snake eyes" in the random probability of slick road, geometry of fall, involved vehicles etc. we just say "he made his bed and now he's got to lie in it" or some variation. This is NOT the same as in large systems because the bed is infinitely larger; we are all in BPs bed.
Corporations know this difference between large systems and individuals full well. When it is important to a company (ie makes them more money or not less money) they implement systems which can decrease these sporadic large scale failures to very near zero (look up six (or seven or eight) sigma).
Where it is NOT important to a company they say "oops!" and try their best to avoid culpability by massive PR campaigns letting the little people know they are just like you. "Our little oils spill is just like the time your condom broke, your drunk drive home ended badly, your handgun killed your kid etc. etc." Its an act of god, impenetrable by mere logic and science. Bullshit.
A very large effort is underway to convince individuals that their risk assessment and avoidance strategies and completely applicable to large scale systems. Many Libertarians believe that their decision making process is completely transferable to large scale systems. The parties promoting this fallacy are easily discernible with a little critical analysis.
A similar tact is being taken in, as an example, air safety. "Planes aren't falling from the sky" says the libertarian, but the risk has just been shifted to (poorer) people flying from (smaller) airports on (regional) airlines. If this isn't you then F 'em. The CEOs don't fly those flights, and each individual airplane is a relatively small system (200 deaths tops in each "unavoidable" accident).
BPs bed is huge, the deaths are (currently) mainly the animals God put here for our use, gratefully out of sight, and the human deaths will come quietly over the following centuries, the human losses doled out in little packages all over the country, mostly to the poor. Tony Hayward can steer his yacht to cleaner waters while the "little people" have no such option.
Bad luck, too bad , Gods will?
No, all easily avoided at tiny comparative cost.
Also a recent reality check; the top kill failure suggests the pipe is unsound UPSTREAM from the blow out preventer...so it wouldn't have worked even if it had an intact annular, no hydraulic fluid leak and/or dead backup battery. So those 4000 wells ALL have "safety features" which are untested and likely don't work as promised.