Murphy's Law seems to have claimed the ill-fated Macondo well not through a single failure but through a litany of slipups, penny-pinching, and poor governance. Much investigation remains to be done, but the first reports on where and how the failures occurred are already coming out, including in this article in today's Washington Post. Government failed and the market failed, and yet another investment goes bad for which the potential rewards would have come to relatively few people while the risks are distributed among millions of us.
I haven't heard anything for weeks about the continued use of the dispersant Corexit, of which as much as 2 million gallons have been added to the spill basically to hide the oil and gas from view. As more tropical storms and hurricanes come into the Gulf this hurricane season, the cocktail will spread far and wide. I guess we'll see what happens!
