It takes a tragedy like the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico for the truth to emerge about just how oil companies - and BP in particular - operate. It was after Hurricane Dennis on July 11, 2005 when a passing ship spotted BP's huge $1 billion oil platform, Thunder Horse, listing precariously to one side, looking like it was about to sink.
A valve was put on backwards and caused flooding during the hurricane before any oil had even been pumped. There was also a dodgy welding job that left underwater pipelines brittle and full of cracks. Had they started pumping the oil, it would have been another Deepwater Horizon catastrophe.
Thunder Horse was a warning of just how unwilling BP were to learn from their mistakes. "They were very arrogant and proud and in denial" said Steve Arendt, a safety specialist appointed by BP to investigate the company's refineries after a deadly 2005 explosion at its Texas City facility. "It is possible they were fooled by their success."
And successful they were. BP grew into the industry's second largest company, behind Exxon Mobil with soaring profit, fat dividends and a healthy share price. They were bold and Tony Hayward once said they do "the tough stuff that others cannot or choose not to do".
When Tony Hayward became BP's chief executive in May 2007, he promised to get the company back to basics. A plain-spoken geologist and longtime company man, Mr Hayward dispensed with the limousine used by his socially prominent predecessor, John Browne, and closed the concierge desk in the lobby that organised dry cleaning and theatre tickets for the BP employees.
Tony Hayward promised to fix the safety problems that contributed to the downfall of his predecessor John Brown. Brown led the company from 1995 to 2007. Though the company would continue doing the "tough stuff" it would make safety its "No 1 priority". But they didn't.
In 1995, the British government sold the last of its stake in BP to a member of the English upper crust, John Browne, who took over. He transformed the company into a global giant, buying properties all over the world. Under him, BP's share price doubled and its cash dividend tripled. He was knighted and became a member of the House of Lords. But he was ruthless, to cut costs, he outsourced many operations and fired thousands of employees, including many engineers.
But his fall from grace started when 15 people died and 170 were injured in a huge fire and explosion at Texas City on 23rd March 2005. The facility was built in 1934 and was poorly maintained. Two months before the accident, a consulting firm hired to examine conditions said the idea that 'I could die today' was very real. To add to his troubles, Brown's reputation was sullied by a lie he told in court papers about his relationship with a male companion and he resigned under pressure in 2007.
A year later, 167,000 gallons of oil leaked from BP's pipelines in Alaska and once again, the cause was preventable. Investigators found corrosion in under-maintained and poorly inspected pipes. BP eventually paid more than $20 million in fines and restitution.
Meanwhile, serious problems were developing offshore at BP's Thunder Horse platform. The engineering consultant who worked on it said BP bosses rushed its construction. They moved it to the gulf before it was ready, to show shareholders that the project was on time and on schedule. Gordon Gekko would have been proud. They had to rip it out, retrieve and fix heavy pieces of equipment lying on the sea floor, some weighing more than 400 tons. Altogether, the blunders cost BP and its minority partner Exxon Mobil hundreds of millions of dollars in repairs and set back production by three years.
Revisiting Texas City in 2009, inspectors from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration found more than 700 safety violations and proposed a record fine of $87.4 million - topping the earlier record set by BP in the 2005 accident. Most of the penalties were because BP had failed to live up to the previous settlement, they hadn't fixed the problems.
Accidents continue to happen in Alaska. On May 25, a power failure led to a leak that spilled about 200,000 gallons of oil. Mr Waxman whose committee is investigating the Deepwater Horizon accident said "BP cut corner after corner to save a million dollars here and a few hours there and now the whole Gulf Coast is paying the price".
But what's this? Gordon Gekko isn't smiling, the shareholders are not happy. BP stock is falling every day and there's no dividend. His "Greed is Good" philosophy has backfired - cutting corners for profit didn't work this time. And we look at the aftermath and weep.
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