It depends on who is the customer and who is the store proprietor.   It would not surprise me if industry sees itself as the proprietor, and the government as the customer.   As I noted, industry has the expertise in drilling and maintaining deep-water wells; the government does not--partly since the government no doubt does not pay the salaries paid to the top expertise in this field by industry;   thus can't attract and/or keep top talent.

But as we've just seen dramatically illustrated, here the customer (government) must override the store (industry) sometimes---for safety and environmental reasons.

So maybe the customer/ store model doesn't exactly work here.

But the main problem in the government/industry relationship in this issue, as I indicated, is that the pressure for income will probably never go down--so the pressure to let industry have its way--in order to maximize production, and hence oil and gas taxes--will also never decline.