Hayward: "Assurance is killing us"
Liveblog by Khan
Rep. Stupak from MI has had the most excoriating opening statement so far. Citing statements from Hayward in 2007, when Hayward said: "Assurance is killing us…I don’t think having all of these layers of assurance reduce risk and it can actually increase it," Stupak scolds Hayward for his "cavalier" approach to risk. (In Britspeak, "assurance" would mean "insurance," which of course costs money, but he seemed to be talking more broadly about risk reduction/safety costs.)
The inclination in opening statements so far has been to paint the oil spill as avoidable. Contrary to Hayward’s previously reported statement that the leak had a one in a million chance of occuring, the committee seems intent to demonstrate that BP is liable for the damage in every way–it is trying to prove BP had intent, the equivalent of mens rea in criminal law, or at the very least, gross negligence.
The question is, however, will a demonstration that BP could have easily prevented this help or hurt calls for new energy legislation? If it can be shown that simple changes in our regulatory regime could have prevented this, the urgency for the energy biil is certainly lessened. Rather than showing that BP or MMS could have taken easy steps to prevent the oil spill, maybe Congress should see the spill as a microcosm of the inherent risk of the oil industry as a whole–that events like this are bound to occur again if we don’t move away from fossil fuels.