Huffington is pure goo, but she happens to be right in this instance, even if she doesn't actually understand why. Oil gets drilled in the US (and around the world) by way of 'leases' granted by the government for big money. Not to digress, but oil companies have utterly plundered third world nations for decades by paying off corrupt dictators for these same leases. Ironically, they leave the countries poorer for having found oil, with vast environmental damage they can't pay for, and the presumed prosperity of oil becomes national tragedy. Ecuatorial Guinea and Ecuador are two glaring examples of this, but there are many others.
In this case, BP (or any energy company) had to negotiate its leases to drill in the Gulf through the Minerals Management Service, a bureau of the Department of the Interior. Like nearly every major government agency (DOD, the FDA, etc.), the MMS is a revolving door between private industry and public service. Thus, execs in the private sector rotate in, rubber stamp **** for industry, and then rotate out to the green pastures of lucrative board positions or fancy title jobs.
The MMS has already come through a scandal. The royalties it oversees leaves lots of untidy room for kickbacks. Relative to BP, the Bush administration wanted to streamline oil and gas drilling projects. To that end, it exempted BP from full environmental reviews of its projects by way of a 'categorized exclusion' in 2009 which led to the Horizon rig.
It's more of a bureaucratic nightmare to add on a room to your house than it is to drill for oil in the Gulf of Mexico.
