Major blow for British petroleum
Published:Thursday | July 15, 2010 | 3:47 PM
A United States Congressional committee has agreed measures that could ban oil giant British Petroleum (BP) from new offshore drilling for seven years.
The House committee on natural resources voted in favour of precluding companies with poor safety records from offshore oil exploration permits.
The proposed law does not name BP, but will apply to any company that has experienced 10 or more deaths in the last seven years.
The April explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon rig killed 11 workers.
According to the draft legislation, the deaths must have taken place at drilling, production facilities, or refineries, and must have broken US health and environment laws.
The Deepwater Horizon disaster is still being investigated.
BP has already accepted its guilt in a separate accident in Texas in 2005 that killed 15 people.
Meanwhile BP has fixed a leak on the cap on the leaking Gulf of Mexico oil well, which delayed a crucial test.