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Panel: Gulf oil spill could happen again

Published:Friday | January 7, 2011 | 12:00 AM
In this June 26, 2010 file photo, oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is seen floating on the surface of the water in Bay Jimmy in Plaquemines Parish, La. As the Gulf oil spill gushed out of control this summer, BP's financial liabilities expanded so rapidly that experts wondered if the company had drilled its last well. Only months later, though, the British oil giant has pulled itself back from the brink. - ap

NEW ORLEANS (AP):

DISASTERS LIKE the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig could happen again without significant reform, according to the conclusions of a presidential panel that described systemic problems within the offshore oil and gas industry and government regulators who oversee it.

In a 48-page excerpt of its final report obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, the companies involved in the nation's largest offshore oil spill once again blame each other for the failures.

The full report is to be submitted to the president January 11. But key questions will remain, namely: Why didn't a hulking piece of equipment that sat at the well head and was supposed to choke off the flow of oil in the event of a blowout, do its job? Federal investigators analysing the blowout preventer at a NASA facility in New Orleans are not expected to finish until February.

The Justice Department continues its own investigation, as does a joint U.S. Coast Guard-Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement panel.

The oil-spill commission said poor decisions led to technical problems that contributed to the April 20 accident that killed 11 people and led to more than 200 million gallons of oil spewing from BP's well, a mile beneath the Gulf of Mexico. Inquiries by BP and Congress have found the same.

BP, Halliburton and Transocean, the three key companies involved with the well and the rig that exploded, each made individual decisions that were meant to save time or money, but increased risks of a blowout. Ultimately, the Deepwater Horizon disaster came down to a single failure, the panel says: management. When decisions were made, no one was considering the risk they were taking.

In one example cited by the commission, a BP request to set an "unusually deep cement plug" was approved by the then-Minerals Management Service in 90 minutes. That decision is one of the nine technical and engineering calls the commission says increased the risk of a blowout.

"The blowout was not the product of a series of abberational decisions made by a rogue industry or government officials that could not have been anticipated or expected to occur again. Rather, the root causes are systemic, and absent significant reform in both industry practices and government policies, might well recur," the commission concluded.

Interior Department spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff said the report focused on areas in which the agency in charge of offshore drilling has already made improvements.

"The agency has taken unprecedented steps and will continue to make the changes necessary to restore the American people's confidence in the safety and environmental soundness of oil and gas drilling and production on the Outer Continental Shelf, while balancing our nation's important energy needs," Barkoff said in a statement.