BP Execs Get Down While Rig Goes Down

No, this isn't about Rick Santelli having a spot of tea with Ann Coulter. It's about this article that came out a few hours ago from AP. Here are the lines that fly in your face like a spittle-flecked teabagger, according to BP's internal investigation:

A group of BP executives were on board the Deepwater Horizon rig celebrating the project's safety record, according to the transcripts... The BP executives were injured but survived, according to one account. Nine rig crew on the rig floor and two engineers died.

No wonder they wanted to isolate these guys before they had a chance to speak to families, the press and their lawyers.

Note that the AP article only mentions the presence of the hearty partying executives in passing. That could be because of a deliberate unwillingness to highlight this display of sociopathy or it could be that British Petroleum's internal investigation, obviously based on interviews with the rig workers on site at the time of the explosion, is deliberately downplaying it.

Either way, it points to a serious disconnect in BP's self-perception, in high-fiving themselves and patting each other on the back because one particular rig hadn't yet suffered a horrible accident such as the one that took place moments later. It's a troubling disconnect from reality because in a recent post I'd already gone into just a fraction of BP's horrible safety record. One of their biggest fuckups, in fact, occurred when Hurricane Dennis struck the very same Gulf Coast just the month before Katrina and also sank. It took engineers and laborers a week to get it back on its pylons.

Here's just a taste of what happened in the moments leading up to the explosion: A bubble of methane gas, rising a mile up from the bottom through the drill column, raced its way to the surface with the force of a cannon. Bursting through "several seals and barriers", the gas then exploded and the engines followed, blowing off the rig.

It all began with a geyser of water that shot 240 feet into the air, followed by an enormous bubble of methane, then flames, then explosions.

In other words, hell breaking loose.

Sure, 11 workers died but thank goodness the executives were spared. No wonder they think they're God's Chosen Ones.