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I can’t believe that no one noticed that the well was flowing.

You know as well as I that they did notice, but the wrong people ( money people) made decisions instead of the drilling folks.
I made my coins in the oil industry and most of my friends make their coins in the oil industry. Thanks to BP's greediness the oil industry is badly damaged now.
Friends in the industry are looking at large layoffs in the very near future. A relative has already had his hours cut and is looking at a layoff.
Oilfield workers are now in the same shape as fishermen, shrimpers and oyster men. They may be in worst shape because the only thing they will get is being laid off.

Another thing that pi$$es me off is the rumor being circulated that the current state of the art in the industry can't handle drilling a well like this. This is pure BS. The technology available was NOT used because of BP greed. This would have never happened if proper procedure was used.

Believe me if you have a major oil company going broke or nearly going broke and the clowns that made the bad decisions (higher ups with BP and the government) going to jail, this will not happen again. Fear alone will cause the industry to correct itself, not Obummer stopping drilling and trying to pass a thousand pages of redtape mostly useless laws.
Thanks to BP greed and the idiot commie Kenyan in the White Hut, the country will be entering a 9 line energy bind very quickly.

Rant over ;^)

Fear alone will cause the industry to correct itself, not Obummer stopping drilling and trying to pass a thousand pages of redtape mostly useless laws.

Tell me, why does "the industry" need to "correct itself"?

The "industry" has an excellent safety record. This was a one-off occurrence under difficult conditions. Nothing like it has ever happened before (unless Pemex was involved).

In this case, BP may well be responsible and, thus, due some serious consequences. But I fail to see how that stains an entire industry of refiners, producers, drilling, seismic and service companies.

How to stop this sort of thing in the future:

1. Make BP pay for every damn thing they have caused, even if they go broke.
2. Whoever made the bad decisions in BP goes to jail (and I don't mean some low level scapegoat).
3. Whoever in the government MM division that allowed BP to use bad procedures goes to jail.

BP applied for and got expedited permission to drill this particular well, with waivers of environmental impacts studies, from the Obama Administration. After the drilling was complete when BP wanted to bypass standard procedure and do what ultimately led to the disaster, it applied to the MMS and got the okay. The ones ultimately responsible for this are the ones who made it happen by altering standard procedure. The question is what induced them to permit this kind of bypassing? Could it have anything to do with the fact that Obama got more money from BP than any other single candidate?

I can’t believe that no one noticed that the well was flowing.

This well flowed from a much higher zone weeks before the blowout occurred. They lost circulation on the danged thing three times and stuck pipe once to the point that they could not free it and had to reroute around it.

FIT's were done but no leak offs in every case! Does this sound like they were really paying attention?

I agree with you Cajun! This has nothing whatever to do with the current state of drilling technology but it sure as hell has a lot to do with the lack of judgment those home office types who were in constant communication with the BP company man displayed! It also, sadly, speaks to the state of affairs in our economy today. I remember a time, not so long ago, when if some REMF had come up with this BS the company man, not to speak of the rig manager, would have told him that if he wanted it done that way he had better get his A$$ on a chopper and come do it himself cause we ain't about to do it like that!