BP Spill: It Makes One wonder Who Is Really At Fault....

BP Relied on Faulty U.S. Data

BP PLC and other big oil companies based their plans for responding to a big oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on U.S. government projections that gave very low odds of oil hitting shore, even in the case of a spill much larger than the current one.

The government models, which oil companies are required to use but have not been updated since 2004, assumed that most of the oil would rapidly evaporate or get broken up by waves or weather. In the weeks since the Deepwater Horizon caught fire and sank, real life has proven these models, prepared by the Interior Department's Mineral Management Service, wrong.

Oil has hit 171 miles of shoreline in southern Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and northern Florida. Further, government models don't address how oil released a mile below the surface would behave—despite years of concern among government scientists and oil companies about deep-water spills.

This isn't about administrations or particular presidents; it's about government's long list of failures in the area of control. If BP was required to employ faulty government models in their response, should we not cast the eye of blame on those who formulated the models?

As Reagan said "government isn't the answer to our problems; government is the problem"