Obama Forms Presidential Investigative Unit On Oil Spill 

May 18. 2010

U.S. President Barack Obama

The damaging oil spill that occurred on America's East Coast, after a rig operated by BP, Transocean and Halliburton, with equipment by Cameron ("blow out preventer") eviscerated 11 men, was the subject of hearings in Congress and is under the investigative eye of President Obama's new panel created to look into the debacle.

It is the biggest oil spill in U.S. history. The ocean and beaches have been polluted. Billions of dollars in oil has been lost. Billions more in income related to fishing and wildlife has also been erased from the economy.

The U.S. federal agency, the Minerals Management Service, has come under intense scrutiny for their role in the scandal. The President and Congress contends they did not provide enough oversight of the oil industry.

This led to poor working conditions and criminally negligent, barely there supervision of a dangerous working environment that must adhere to strict standards of operation.

Previously, the Minerals Management Service was embroiled in a terrible scandal that revealed their employees were having sex and drugs with representatives from the oil industry that they were supposed to be overseeing.

Maybe their definition of overseeing is different from everyone else's meaning of the world, as sadly, they were overseeing them with their body parts. This misconduct clearly compromised their judgment, leading to lax working conditions and a terrible oil spill that will take years to clean up.

It's a shame what has happened to the natural beauty of the area, due to this incident.