http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/business/09bp.html
BP has had major incidents in the past, and yet the financial penalties haven't been enough to compel them to "clean up their act."
There are two issues driving this that free markets have nothing to do with:
1. Corporations are government entities created to reduce liability of owners and managers. In the USA these have may of the rights that only individuals can have. Corporations do not exist. The officers of a corporation should have all the liability of individuals and some of it may be criminal. And individuals damaged by the actions of BP should be entitled to full restitution including loss of income and damage to property. If the officers are bankrupted and impoverished then so be it.
2. Ownership of the property. The US Govenrment owns the property illegimiately (The Gulf of Mexico). There is no single person owning the property and therefore the collective of the US Government is not as concerned with the property as are individuals who actually own it. Furthermore, individuals would be liable for damages done to others and would therefore be more concern with how BP or its operators handled their property.
Solution:
If you allow people to homestead the oceans and the Gulf of Mexico then you will have legitimate ownership. The owners would be very interested in having BP behave in the safest manner possibly or face shutdown. These owners would not want the oil rig on their property to damage the property of others nor would they want the dangerous work envrionment that existed there.
Similarly, if you disolve all corporations and undo corporate law limiting liability then you will see corporations behaving better as the managers would have lots of incentive(Their freedom and impoverishment) at stake versus just claims for the assets of the corporation.
Read This.
In fact, the owners of that part of the ocean can bar drilling entirely.
This sort of reasoning by anti-capitalists is biased anyway. We're supposed to believe that the profit motive causes all these bad things, and never examine instances in which the profit motive DIDN'T cause anything bad to happen. You never hear about all the drilling rigs that didn't sink, spilling zillions of gallons into the ocean.
Its called confirmation bias.