On Mon, 31 May 2010 23:10:15 -0400, J. Clarke wrote:

> On 5/30/2010 9:04 PM, sf wrote:
>> On Sun, 30 May 2010 17:54:25 -0400, Dave Smith
>> > wrote:
>>
>>> Some other countries require the off shore operations to be equipped
>>> with remote control safety valves. The US does not. Big Oil lobbied
>>> successfully to make sure the US did not make regulations mandating
>>> them.
>>
>> Yes indeed! Time magazine has an article by Joe Klein on that.
>>
>>> They argued that it wasn't worth the $500,000 per site. That half
>>> million dollars is going to look like a bargain by the time this mess is
>>> cleaned up.
>>
>> So far, I'm very skeptical that BP will keep all of their promises
>> after the oil leak has been stopped. It will become another lawyer's
>> game of deciding what "is" is.
>
> The 500K per site wouldn't have done diddly. All it does is provide an
> alternative method of manually actuating the blowout preventer. The
> blowout preventer is broken. You could send it every signal in the
> universe with your 500K gadget and it still wouldn't work.
>>

maybe so, maybe not. but it looks like cheaping out on the device is going
to cost BP many, many multiples of 500 thousand.

blake