It was only a matter of time – an incriminating e-mail was uncovered in the BP oil spill mess.  The bullets:

• (From the article)..BP took measures to cut costs in the weeks before the catastrophic blowout in the Gulf of Mexico as it dealt with one problem after another, prompting a BP engineer to describe the doomed rig as a “nightmare well,” according to internal documents released Monday….The comment by BP engineer Brian Morel came in an e-mail April 14, six days before the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion that killed 11 people and has sent tens of millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf in the nation’s worst environmental disaster….(Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100614/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_washington)
• Over under on the number of these headlines over the next year:  122
• How happy are Toyota and Goldman Sachs right now?  Those news stories are buried behind Tiger Woods marital issues and the silly analysis on what the final episode of “Lost” really meant.
• If I was a corporate counsel for any energy company, I would be having regular information management and electronic discovery strategy (and planning) discussions.  The number of audits that will result from this whole fiasco are going to be more common than flight delays in and out of O’Hare in the winter.
• I hate to speak of the irony in such a horrible situation, but I am an analyst and that is what we do.  Many pundits attribute the Exxon Valdez trials as the catalyst for electronic discovery as much of the necessary “facts” were on backup tapes.  Will this situation take electronic discovery to the next level?  If I am a betting man (see the over / under reference above), I would say yes.  We have yet to see the mountains of e-mails, files, and other data that will be requested in this mess.

Read Brian’s other blog entries at IT BULLETins.

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