Personal thought - Though the press in general and the American senate in particular are having a huge bout of Schadenfreude (a perverse pleasure in the misfortune of others), those proud Americans, as usual, are seemingly in denial.
They own half of BP, which generates many of their pension "pounds", so they are taking collateral damage whilst berating the "British" face of this company with huge, impotent "Obamawords". They forget to remember that the destroyed rig was American owned (by a third party), American run and maintained, American designed and stocked with wholly American hardware, installed (incorrectly) by American sub-contractors to a plan signed off by the American government, who need to blame anyone other than their "own" American people.
Sure this is a global cock-up and there is no doubt that the Americans on the rig were instructed by head office to save on costs, what international company has ever not said "save on costs"?, but was it those American managers (at rig-level) who went too far in the corner-cutting. They may have died, but were they to blame?
The "slick" offered up for slaughter by the BP board is a PR joke, who has as much influence as Obama (none at all!) over the delivery of the eventual fix for this leak. Obama has to jump up and down so as not to seem politically impotent, whilst our "British" friend has to stonewall because no-one (yet) has any idea of how this beleaguered company will actually get to the beginning of the end-game of this disaster.
The only good thing on the horizon is that America will finally question and address its love affair with oil (hopefully).
UPDATE (6th Feb 2018): Obama out, lunatic/visionary/paradigm shift/narcissistic criminal in (Trump) and BP is now back into big profits: Fourth quarter profit in 2017 was $2.1 billion, even after another charge of $1.7 billion for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon ecological disaster.
