"If you don’t know about the earlier blow-out, it’s because BP didn’t tell you, didn’t tell anyone but its drilling partners Exxon and Chevron — and in a top secret cable, George W. Bush’s State Department. The oil company chieftains kept the devastating information tightly concealed — even though US law required they report such rig failures to the US Department of Interior.

If BP had reported the disaster to Interior, the 11 men would be alive today, because Interior’s experts had tried to stop BP from drilling in the unstable deep waters of the Gulf.

But US executives of the oil giants testified to Congress that there had not been a deepwater rig disaster “in over 50 years” despite knowing that their platform in the Caspian had blown out just months earlier. Interior caved to the pressure, let BP drill, and drill using a supremely dangerous method, ignorant of the prior blow-out.

And did I mention that Chevron named a super-tanker after Bush’s US Secretary of State, its former board member? The VLCC Condoleezza."