The people who made those fateful, wrong decisions on April 19 and 20 during completion of the Macondo well know who they are. Further investigation will reveal them to all of us. But this we do know: they changed the game. Their poor judgment or negligence has set in motion a cascade of events, each worse than the one before. Now, the entire oil and gas industry—and not just offshore—faces big regulatory changes, drilling and permitting delays and higher costs.

So, first proposal: Fire them.

Second proposal: Remake the corporate culture to favor technology, safety and employee needs, with profits to follow. This relentless pressure to drive down costs and chase the next quarterly number for investors, above all else, has to stop. Manage your business, not your numbers. Do it right and the numbers will follow.

We assume the offshore industry will be safer going forward—not because of caution, but because of well-designed safety procedures and best practices. But for now, the emperor has no clothes. During testimony before Congress, chief executives of the majors sought to distance themselves from BP and declared they would not have drilled such a deep well in the same manner. Probably, that’s true. Press reports indicate bad judgment calls were made in haste, to save money.

But at the same time, the ridiculous safety documents that were exposed in the hearings have done this industry a great deal of harm. Listing the phone number of a safety consultant who had been deceased for five years? Vowing to protect seals and walruses in the Gulf of Mexico? It is shocking that supposedly-sophisticated international companies such as these, that are purported to be technical and business leaders, could be caught with their pants down.

“We do not currently have a satisfactory way to benchmark oil companies’ safety performance,” said Deutsche Bank research analyst Paul Sankey in a May report.

“Although each major oil company releases a health and safety report annually, it is impossible to benchmark the data, because there is no aggregation or standardization of the data…we have to know at what point companies are sacrificing safety to increase profits—the single most risky and potentially value-destroying strategy possible.”

So, third proposal: Create an industry-wide coalition of company safety engineers to step up efforts to share best practices on offshore drilling, completions and safety. Rewrite the rule book and standardize the data. Invite North Sea, Pemex and Petrobras experts to share their expertise—for they, too, have suffered horrible offshore incidents. A U.S. task force recently was announced by the API, IPAA and other industry groups to do this.

A fourth proposal: Remove partisanship from energy policy. It’s too important to play with.

“I think these decisions about energy and diversity of supply should be made from a practical point of view, not based on ideology,” said former New York City mayor Rudy Guiliani, speaking at our third annual Energy Capital Week in Houston in mid-June. Guiliani advocated that better decisions be made on America’s energy sources, to include diversified supply from nuclear plants and natural gas. He especially thinks

Marcellus shale drilling should be allowed in New York state, he said, for the clean-burning gas it provides and for the jobs it will create.
Scott Segal, a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Bracewell and Guiliani, said, “It’s hilarious when you hear people criticize the ‘cozy relationship’ between this administration and the energy regulators, because this administration has gone out of its way to not hire anyone with an oil and gas background.” Segal spoke at a workshop before the conference.

“I think the administration has had a wake-up call and sees that sometimes, it’s good to have an expert on hand.”

No less an innovator than Bill Gates, along with a group of fellow executives such as GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt and Xerox CEO Ursula Burns, have formed a new group, the American Energy Innovation Council. In June it released a report calling for America to triple its R&D budget on new and alternative energy solutions. The group notes that the U.S. spends less than $5 billion annually on energy research, versus close to $30 billion on health research.

“In the defense, health, agriculture and information technology industries, this country has made a deliberate choice to use intelligent federal investments to unleash profound innovation. As a result, the country leads in all those realms,” they said in a new release.

“In energy, however, the United States has failed the grade, and is paying a heavy price for that failure. We are optimistic about the potential for dramatic change in the energy realm. To seize this opportunity, America must put aside partisan interests and make a strong, bold commitment.”

That’s not a bad proposal.