BP has 15% of its company assets deployed in the Gulf of Mexico, which is more than Hess (12%), Murphy Oil (9%), Chevron (5%), Shell (5%), Marathon Oil (5%), ExxonMobil (2%) or any other company. Despite this fact, BP has openly acknowledged since at least 2004 that it wasn't prepared for the "long-term, round-the-clock task of dealing with a deep-sea spill."

It is important to remember that the Deepwater Horizon was a drilling rig, not a production rig. Its function was to locate and drill for oil. Once it completed that task, it was the job of workers on the rig to "cap" the well until another vessel could come and capture the oil and gas.

On April 20, the Deepwater Horizon crew was in the process of capping the well. Standard operating procedure calls for pressure testing to be done to ensure that the cement utilized to set and cap the well is not allowing any leakage or seepage of oil and gas.

In this New York Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/11/us/11prepare.html?hp), experts discuss BP's preparedness for an uncontrolled blowout on a deepwater drilling rig and offer some pretty tough commentary:

- "Blowouts are surprisingly regular occurrences. But ones that lead to catastrophic spills like this are quite rare." John Amos, Geologist who testified before Congress that the East Timor blowout was a warning signal to industry to...

In this article (http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/05/bp-oil-spilling-financial-reform...), Mother Jones highlights BP's efforts to fight certain aspects of the financial reform legislation being discussed on Capitol Hill.