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Pretty much everyone on the rig has told the same story. The well was over a month behind schedule and BP wanted to them to speed up. The engineers on the well said they needed to slow down and use drilling mud instead of seawater to continue drilling. A rep from BP flew out to the well and pulled rank on the rig operators, forcing them to continue. A few hours later the rig blew up.
BP was responsible for the actual explosion and they were complicit in the deregulation that allowed them to operate pretty much without rules. BP also filed a bogus clean up plan when obtaining the license to construct the rig, full of errors and phony telephone numbers, leaving them totally unprepared for a leak.
I don't think the taxpayers share any of the blame for this mess.
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