The US Coast Guard-Interior Dept. Report released in September lay blame "squarely at BP's feet" based on "months of sworn testimony and subpoenaed records." In contrast, Obama's Jan. 2011 Presidential 'Oil Spill Commission' which had no subpoena power (parag. 10) said the cause was "industry-wide" problems. The official report in no way says this but congress allows Obama to continue slowing permits. He says he needs millions more tax dollars if we want him to move faster. Congress is wasting time on more investigations because none of them will stand up to Obama.
10/12/11, "Deep-water drilling lags behind pre-spill levels," Houston Chronicle, Dlouhy
"In the meantime, 11 floating rigs have left the Gulf, with seven heading to Africa, three going to South America and one more mobilizing to Vietnam, Shafer said."...(parag. 13)
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9/14/11, "Key report blames Gulf oil spill on poor management decisions," News Herald, Panama City, with AP
PANAMA CITY, "After months of finger-pointing and accusations, the party ultimately responsible for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf is BP itself, a newly released federal report charges.
The report goes further than other investigations in placing ultimate responsibility on BP for the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history and the deaths of 11 rig workers, especially regarding the cement seal put in place the day before the explosion that triggered the spill.
“The findings don’t come as a surprise to me,” U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said Wednesday. “It’s another reason why BP shouldn’t get a tax deduction for writing off $11 billion in cleanup costs.”
The details were contained in the final report from the joint Coast Guard-Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement investigation, which was among the most exhaustive. The panel held hearings in the year following the April 20, 2010, Deepwater Horizon catastrophe.
“It’s BP’s well and its BP’s responsibility,” Bay County Commissioner Mike Nelson said Wednesday. “They can point fingers at whomever they want, but companies like Halliburton were bit players.”
At one point in the oil spill investigation, BP tried to blame Halliburton, saying that company was responsible for the cementing operations that ultimately failed.
The report, released Wednesday, said in the days leading up to the disaster, BP made a series of decisions that complicated cementing operations, added risk and may have contributed to the ultimate failure of the cement job.
The report said BP, and in some cases its contractors, violated seven federal regulations at the time of the incident, including failure to take necessary precautions to keep the well under control at all times, perform a cement job that kept the oil and gas down hole, and maintain the blowout preventer — which is supposed to lock in place to prevent a spill in case of an explosion — in accordance with industry-accepted practice.
U.S. Rep. Steve Southerland, R-Panama City, said the regulatory process should also take part of the blame.
“While BP certainly deserves to shoulder its fair share of responsibility for the Gulf oil spill, we must also focus a close eye on the failed federal regulatory structure that allowed BP to run up over 700 safety violations in the years prior to this economic and ecological disaster,” Southerland said. “Had the proper safety measures been enforced, this tragedy may never have happened.”...
In the report’s 57 findings about the disaster, only one person — BP engineer Mark Hafle — is mentioned by name. It said Hafle’s failure to investigate or resolve anomalies detected during a critical test possibly contributed to the crew’s failure to detect the initial influx of gas and oil. Hafle also chose not to run a cement log, a test that evaluates the quality of the cement job, in violation of BP procedures, the report found.
Hafle — a key decision maker on the doomed rig — refused to testify before the federal panel in August 2010,
- citing his constitutional right against self-incrimination."...
Obama appears to be protecting BP.
9/22/11, "Gulf oil spill investigators silenced, U.S. House panel chairman says," New Orleans Times-Picayune, David Hammer
"A U.S. House committee was forced to postpone a hearing on the findings of a federal investigation into the causes of the BP oil spill because the Obama administration suddenly refused to let investigators testify, the committee chairman said.
The alleged silencing of the members of the joint Coast Guard and Interior Department investigative team comes in the wake of the sudden resignation of Interior's lead investigator, Hammond resident
- David Dykes....
- missed two deadlines,
President Barack Obama's Oil Spill Commission came up with significantly different findings about the cause of the spill than the Coast Guard-Interior report that was finally released last week. The presidential commission, with no subpoena power, determined the root causes of the spill were systemic and industry-wide, something that some experts disagreed with. By contrast, the Coast Guard-Interior report, the official accident investigation based on months of sworn testimony and subpoenaed records, placed the blame for key causes of the explosion
- squarely at BP's feet.
The (Presidential) Oil Spill Commission's findings in January helped justify the administration's deepwater drilling moratorium and cautious approach to resuming drilling activity under new permitting standards. The industry has long argued that a slowdown in drilling can't be justified if the causes of the Deepwater Horizon incident are
- specific to BP's management decisions."...
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McClatchy used 'industry-wide' in the headline which is all many will see even though this isn't the definitive report, just Obama's version. His had no subpoena power nor months of sworn testimony (parag. 10).
1/5/11, "Panel: BP well blowout revealed industry-wide problems," McClatchy, Seibel
""The root causes are systemic and, absent significant reform in both industry practices and government policies, might well recur," the panel says in its final report..."The missteps were rooted in systemic failures by industry management . . . and also by failures of government to provide effective regulatory oversight of offshore drilling."...
- Later in the article it lists some specific errors that were made, but Obama's personal report comes 'reluctantly' to the conclusion that, it was Halliburton and Transocean more than BP, and America must suffer much more:
"Do we have a single company, BP, that blundered with fatal consequences, or a more pervasive problem of a complacent industry," commission co-chair William K. Reilly, a former head of the Environmental protection Agency, asked in a statement. "Given the documented failings of both Transocean and Halliburton, both of which serve the off shore industry in virtually every ocean, I reluctantly conclude that
- we have a system-wide problem.""...
10/13/11, "Hastings: U.S. blocking gulf development," UPI
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