The oil industry should pay more attention to human and organizational aspects in order to fundamentally improve safety. The industry does not learn enough from oil spills because learning is a conflict of interests: “Parties try to protect or promote their interest and try – consciously or subconsciously – to exclude each other from the learning process.” This conclusion is the result of an investigation into the aftermath of the major oil spill caused by the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig disaster in 2010 conducted by Bruno Verweijen, who will be awarded his Ph.D. by Radboud University on 27 September.