Massive oil spill 'could happen again'

Poor decisions led to technical problems that the commission, and inquires by BP and the US Congress, have identified as contributing to the 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.

BP, Halliburton and Transocean, the three key companies involved with the well and the rig that exploded, each made individual decisions that increased risks of a blowout, but saved significant time or money.

But 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.

“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 in a 48-page excerpt of its final report, obtained by The Associated Press.

The final report is due to be given to the president by January 11.

Interior Department spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff said the report focused on areas in which the agency in charge of offshore drilling had 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,” she said.

The panel underscores its central conclusion with a quote from an email written by BP engineer Brett Cocales on April 16, just days before the disaster.

“But, who cares, it’s done, end of story, will probably be fine and we’ll get a good cement job,” he wrote, after he disagreed with BP’s decision to use fewer centralisers than recommended.

Centralisers are used to centre the pipe to ensure a good cement job. The cement failed at the bottom of the Macondo well, allowing oil and gas to enter it, according to investigations.

The suggestion that the BP disaster may not be an isolated incident runs counter to assurances by the oil industry, which has worked hard to portray the accident as a rare occurrence.

“This clearly was a rare incident,” president of the American Petroleum Institute, Jack Gerard, said yesterday when his organisation published a new report urging congress and the Obama administration to open more areas to oil and gas drilling.

Outside experts in technological disasters were split by the report’s excerpt. They lauded the commission’s focus on organisational and managerial failures instead of blaming the rig workers. But they were divided whether the panel went far enough in criticising the companies for taking time and money-saving shortcuts.

University of California at Berkeley engineering professor Bob Bea, who has studied and worked on offshore oil rigs for decades and is an international expert on technological disasters, praised the panel for “articulating the hows and whys”.

“This was a preventable disaster,” said Prof Bea, who ran a Berkeley investigation into the accident. “We failed to manage and we were managed.”

BP said the report, like its own investigation, found the accident was the result of multiple causes, involving multiple companies, but the company was working with regulators "to ensure the lessons learned from Macondo lead to improvements in operations and contractor services in deepwater drilling''.

Transocean, which owned the rig being leased by BP to perform the drilling, said in response to the commission’s findings that the “the procedures being conducted in the final hours were crafted and directed by BP engineers and approved in advance by federal regulators”.

Halliburton, the cement contractor on the well, also said it acted at the direction of BP and was “fully indemnified by BP”.