Goddammit, Oil Companies

[Geminex]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11014645

So, a "Marina Energy" oil rig has recently exploded in the gulf of Mexico. Nobody died, the fire's been put out, and there appears to be no sign of oil leaks at the moment, thank god.

But seriously, what the hell is this crap. I know, I know, it may be over-idealistic to hope that one little massive oil spill, the consequences of which will last for years to come, would make companies drilling in the gulf of mexico, y'know improve their security precautions and do what they can to stop something like this from happening again, but I can't help but feel disappointed that my cynical side turned out to be right again.
Yes. It may not be cost-effective, and it may take a while, but from the report I've read, very little has happened, and I fear that very little will happen!

[Viridis]

Stop exploding, goddammit.

To tell the whole story, though, it was more like a floating oil refinery than a drilling rig and was inactive at the time, from what I understand.

On the other hand, this is directly south of me and stop exploding, goddammit.

[Flarecobra]

Techically, it was not an explosion. It was just a fire. From what I've seen on TV, they're guessing some of the chemicals used for cleaning caught fire.

[Viridis]

Stop catching fire, goddammit.

[BitVyper]

The problem is that you're thinking of the companies as like, a guy making a choice to be unsafe. What actually happens is a lot more complex, and far far worse. Very simply put, what you actually have is corners being cut at every level from the workers to the upper management, and everyones' bosses turning a blind eye to it because the pressure is coming down from above to get results and be efficient, not be safer. It's a million little decisions made by different people combined with willful ignorance at every level. Most of it is fairly innocent too: You know the guy below you is under pressure, and you're trying not to be a huge dick, so you don't constantly peer over his shoulder about every little maintenance issue as long as he gets results that your boss is demanding from you. This happens every step of the way, and the result is that everyone is picking up slack and cutting more and more corners to do so, and the people who are really in charge of the whole thing can just play dumb and it's not even a gamble because limited liability keeps them safe even if something DOES go wrong.

Edit: Which isn't to say that's how EVERY stupid thing happens, but a lot of them are just compounded from that. There's more happening too, like by the time information reaches the top, there's so much lying done that the information can be used by greedy upper upper management (who bloody well know that everyone is telling lies of omission all the way up the chain) to justify more stupid shit, which causes everyone below them to cut corners to pick up the slack so that the whole thing repeats.