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Interior Dept.-Coast Guard report faults BP, contractors for Gulf oil spill
A major federal report released Wednesday details a series of missteps by BP and its contractors that led to last year’s massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The joint Interior Department-U.S. Coast Guard report on the disaster, which claimed 11 lives in April 2010, lays the groundwork for another set of Interior rules that further toughen drilling standards.
“The loss of life at the Macondo site on April 20, 2010, and the subsequent pollution of the Gulf of Mexico through the summer of 2010 were the result of poor risk management, last‐minute changes to plans, failure to observe and respond to critical indicators, inadequate well-control response, and insufficient emergency bridge response training by companies and individuals responsible for drilling at the Macondo well and for the operation of the Deepwater Horizon,” the two federal departments stated in their report.
The report includes tough language about BP, noting for instance that “cost or time saving decisions without considering contingencies and mitigation were contributing causes of the Macondo blowout.”
The report follows almost a year’s worth of hearings by the agencies’ joint investigative team, which issued more than 90 subpoenas for documents and other evidence.
It faults an array of BP decisions and actions, and focuses heavily on the concrete job on the well, noting that a “central cause” of the blowout was the failure of the concrete barrier in the high-strength steel pipe set in the well to ensure integrity and allow future production.
The report criticizes BP’s decision to use only one concrete barrier, and the location the company chose to set the production casing in the well, among other decisions.
The report notes that BP failed to communicate the decisions and associated risks to Transocean.
But the other companies don’t escape blame in the detailed, 212-page account of the disaster and its causes.
The federal investigators say there’s evidence that BP, and in some cases the contractors, violated a slew of federal safety regulations.
For instance, it notes evidence that BP and Transocean failed to conduct major inspections of key parts of the well’s blowout preventer, the supposedly failsafe device that did not stop the runaway well.
The report describes failures by the rig’s crew to detect anomalies in their tests that could have allowed them to take actions to handle the well before the disaster was out of control. It faults the BP and Transocean crews for a “collective misinterpretation” of test results.
Although the investigators concede that it’s impossible to parse the “precise combination” of decisions and actions that set the blowout in motion, they find that “increased vigilance and awareness by BP, Transocean and Halliburton personnel at critical junctures during operations at the Macondo well would have reduced the likelihood of the blowout occurring.”
An earlier Coast Guard report,
which was part of the probe, found “numerous” deficiencies by
Transocean related to the explosion and fire on the rig after the well
had ruptured.
Michael Bromwich, head of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, has said the agency will begin laying the groundwork for further enhancements of drilling standards once the investigation is complete. The agency plans to issue an advance rulemaking notice to begin soliciting feedback.
The report contains a series of recommendations regarding improved design of wells, testing, detection of hydrocarbon “kicks,” blowout preventers and other issues.
